Managing remote teams: leadership in the distance

Mark Fritz and Pilar Zulueta share insights on Managing Teams Remotely

On May 19th, we shared an EPWN lunch with over 40 members and guests on the topic of managing teams remotely. The event counted on two speakers who brought in the room their international mindsets as leaders to the discussion.
Pilar Zulueta joined Warner Bros in 1997 as GM Iberia and now is the GM for consumer products for Warner Bros across 14 countries.
Mark Fritz has more than 20 years experience working in Egypt, Italy, Japan, The Netherlands, Singapore, UK, USA and running operations for a multinational organization.

Setting your attitude
Prof Mark Fritz, author of book “The truth about Getting Thinks done” explained the one skill that is critical for leading remote teams. “As a leader you must set your attitude ahead of time, you can not let the environment lead you”, he says. Distance magnifies everything a leader says or does: interaction between a leader and team can be scarce which can magnify the last interaction the leader had with then. It take more leadership skills than management skills to magnify the right things, thus, the first three sentences of a conference call set the tone for what is coming next. In downturns as we live today with travel bans, Prof. Fritz suggested to spend the first two to three calls describing who is on the call. This all helps create a foundation for what comes later. The leader has to set the example.

A matter of trust
If there is no trust then the team will not feel comfortable to call on each other for problems or opportunities. Leaders have to mine for conflict as a key piece to drive a higher performance (ref. book “The five dysfunctions of a team”). By arguing, teams will be able to keep a trust bank with others.

A second important factor is to drive focus on outcomes and tracking achievement rather than measuring activity. Teams that are activity focused do not have ownership of the project but instead only their activity, so if a problem comes up the team goes straight back to the leader to fix it. The “why” of a project needs to be clearly communicated to create push power instead of pull power. According to Pilar Zulueta, emotions need to be built face-to-face in some sort of teambuilding such as a cooking contest. Pilar is also a great defender of playing positive politics from day one. Even in such projects as getting the rights for soccer games in Europe, you have to provide your people with positive politics one year ahead so that when the final decision is on the table the decision-making can be done more quickly.

What makes successful leaders
Prof. Fritz pointed out a tip for a successful leader in one sentence: “put the action first, the inspiration comes alone”. Successful people let behaviours drive their feelings. Unsuccessful people let feelings drive their behaviour. The first action is the only difference between successful and unsuccessful people. Procrastinating just pushes the future into the future.

Following P. Drucker theory, in an environment of low uncertainty and low complexity the search is for answers. But, as we move to higher levels on uncertainty and complexity the paradigm changes and we must look for options, not answers. This is especially relevant in the case of working with different cultures that have different calendar holidays and traditions something that Pilar Zulueta is very aware of in managing her EMEA region for WB.

Awareness to use of technologies
One main concern of several managers in the room was the importance of web conference etiquette. One way to make the team members aware of the rules is to create a one-page document stating them.

Marta Domínguez, EPWN and Bridget Garahan, IE graduate
Special thanks to IE Business School for facilitating the room