Who would be best at leading you remotely? : YOU

 

Self-leadership

Self-leadership is not something to discount in the new remote workspace. Every employee should be encouraged to self-lead. In the remote work environment, it is vital to master self-leadership. If you do not lead, then who will? You are the best at teaching, motivating, and encouraging yourself to complete top-quality work. 

I love working remotely. I can control the noise level and the temperature. I can play music while I work and choose what to listen to. It saves me time, and it helps conserve my energy making it possible to be more productive. I have often thought about leading those that you cannot see. It isn't easy, so do not do it. Teach remote workers to lead themselves. Show them how to motivate, encourage, and educate themselves. 

As many of us work from home or other locations, we are not always under the direct supervision of managers, leaders, or mentors. Many workers are hurrying back to the office, and they are very excited to go back to the traditional way of working. However, many workers prefer remote work, and they feel like the arrangement is cheerful and evolving continuously. Recent studies have shown that millennials prefer flexible work relationships, and many will not accept a role that does not allow remote work.

The concept of self-management is becoming very important. It is essential to understand its value and to learn techniques to self-manage. While performing my dissertation research on the best leadership style for remote workers to achieve positive work outcomes, I worked with two subject matter experts. One was employed at Bank of America and one from Autommatic. Both SME’s stated that I should not discount self-leadership. For leaders to feel comfortable allowing remote workers to make their own decisions on how they will lead themselves and complete their work, they will need to trust their employees. 

Trust is necessary for the leader/ follower relationship to be successful. All workers want to be trusted in their work environment, whether at home or in the office. Trust is a basic need for all people. Many remote workers feel that they are not trusted, and many managers think that remote workers cannot be trusted with this much freedom and autonomy. If trust is established, then e-leaders can allow remote workers to self-lead. 

Self-leadership is the ability to manage oneself without other leaders, e-leaders, managers, or supervisors. Self-leadership includes setting clear personal goals and limits (Hertel et al., 2005). Remote employees must set personal goals and meet them without close supervision (Hertel et al., 2005; Macduffie, 2007; Nurmi, 2011). Leaders can encourage and reward autonomy and self-advocacy, encouraging and leading to self-leadership. E-leaders can help remote workers set goals and limits and allow remote employees to work independently.

Autonomy is associated with trust, self-advocacy, and coping skills. The remote worker must possess coping skills, self-advocacy, and the ability to set goals and limits. Autonomy was shown to encourage the ability to self-lead. The correlation may be due to increased trust given by the leader. Therefore, trusting remote employees may promote and increase the capacity to self-lead.

Remote workers must work autonomously (Horwitz et al., 2006). “Autonomy from the parent organization led to higher performance” (Hertel et al., 2005, p. 82).“Differing levels of worker autonomy are reflected in the level of trust held by employers” (Clear and Dickson, 2005, p. 227). This may explain why some employees are given more autonomy than other employees. The remote worker must be able to work independently, and e-leaders must encourage autonomy and self-leadership. Researchers found a significant relationship between autonomy, learning, and engagement. Autonomy leads to positive outcomes, including work motivation and job performance (Grant et 95 et al., 2013). Autonomy can lead to the ability to self-advocate and eventually self-lead (Van Kortenhof, 2013).

Self-leadership skills are critical for avoiding overloading work situations (Hertel et al., 2005; Nurmi, 2011). Self-leadership skills include setting clear personal goals and limits (Macduffie, 2007). Self-leadership requires that an employee be a self-starter (Hertel et al., 2005), and remote employees must set personal goals and meet them without close supervision (Macduffie, 2007; Nurmi, 2011). Increasing remote workers’ ability to self-lead may alleviate some of the burdens on e-leaders and the remote workers that know to set limits and self-advocate.

Employees with good self-leadership skills were better able to cope with strain, possibly due to their ability and willingness to prioritize their workload (Nurmi, 2011). Employees identified the need to develop self-advocacy skills and express their needs to their leaders and other coworkers (Macduffie, 2007; McNaughton et al., 2013; Nurmi, 2011).  By prioritizing workloads and self-advocating, self-leadership allows teleworkers to better cope with the strain. Self-leadership increases motivation and discourages procrastination.

Relationship-based leadership is most effective when leading remote workers. This includes transformational, empathetic, authentic, and servant leadership. These types of leadership encourage trust. This trust can allow remote workers to thrive and lead themselves when away from the office.

Be good to yourself; we are all in this together.

Dr. Even