Being a leader isn’t a gift endowed to everyone. People often believe that a good leader isn’t born but rather made.
When you have the potential to be a good leader, it will not only benefit yourself but those around you too. Leadership can be learned, acquired, and mastered. It just takes the right determination, perseverance, and attitude.
No matter how small, every organization needs a leader who’s strong enough to be on top of every step towards success. Leaders will always be needed at every level, in every department, and in every business.
Promoting leadership is a challenging task to accomplish, especially when handling employees from different parts of the world. The distance alone is a massive challenge already. But with the right steps, it will become completely achievable.
Working remotely has become the new normal for most businesses worldwide due to the circumstances brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic. This article will tell you more about the effective steps in promoting leadership within your remote employees.
How do you promote leadership within your remote employees?
Table of Contents
1. Create a vision that compels them to realize their purpose.
Having your employees be aware of their purpose is a critical factor in making them realize what they’re capable of. When they know their capabilities, it’ll be easier for them to lead the way and develop the traits needed to be called leaders. Every employee must realize their potential to make them more confident and determined in what they’re doing.
Recognizing employees for their unique skills and capabilities will promote leadership in the whole team. Since you’re working remotely, you can track their performances and observe their strengths and weaknesses. This step is now made possible with the use of modern technology.
2. Encourage accountability.
After knowing their strengths and weaknesses regarding their remote work, you must teach them how to be accountable. Encouraging accountability in your employees will make them make their own decisions without the influence of others.
They will be able to stand up on their own and have valid reasons behind it. Giving your employees authority and accountability will make them realize how much you trust them in their field of work.
3. Promote effective communication techniques.
How will a person become a leader and influence others when he doesn’t know how to express himself? Effective communication techniques play a critical factor in transforming employees into leaders.
Communication is crucial, especially in a remote work setting where there’s less face-to-face interaction. As a leader yourself, you need to promote effective communication because your workflow will be significantly affected without it.
Image credit: Pexels/Anna Shvets
4. Lead employees to collaborate and cooperate.
A team of people working in a remote setting will appreciate the presence of a leader that will bind them all together to accomplish their assigned tasks effectively. When you have the same vision and mission, you all need to learn how to cooperate reasonably and collaborate.
Your employees’ collaboration will stimulate the birth of powerful ideas and make them more bonded, despite not working in the same office. Collaboration and cooperation have become more accessible for employees because of modern applications such as Slack, ULTATEL, Zoom, and others.
5. Know how to delegate the right tasks to the right employees.
Even though every employee must be given the right to showcase their potential, some deserve the applause more than others. Even in a remote setting, you’ll notice one employee performing better than the other one. It’s an inevitable fact that’s been going on for centuries.
To inspire your employees to become leaders, you must also know how to delegate the right tasks to the deserving employees. Their potential will invite you to trust them, and this trust will become their foundation in growing professionally as a leader.
6. Inspire them to be involved with projects that will help their professional growth.
Challenge is always a part of growth. When you’re complacent in remaining where you are, you’ll never find yourself coming out of your shell, or your comfort zone will always remain to be your safest habitat. For an employee, being stagnant isn’t a good thing.
Remote work is evolving. It’s always growing each year, and you need your employees to cope with the learnings they need to develop. Help them grow professionally in their field of work by giving them challenging projects.
7. Teach them how to influence others positively.
Another step in becoming an effective leader is to be able to influence others positively. Teach your employees how to protect their reputation, especially online.
We now live in a world where our whole lives can be narrated through a search engine. For remote employees, being a good influence to others requires having an impressive impression. You can’t motivate others to become something that you are not.
Also, teach them how to handle social media accounts responsibly. Improper use of these platforms might lead to a strain on their reputation.
8. Constructive criticisms should be taken as learning opportunities.
To become a good leader, your employees must display a character that views constructive criticisms as learning opportunities. Help them deal with mistakes and failures graciously.
If possible, let them commit mistakes and observe how they correct or handle them. The way they handle their mistakes will show you their potential to become great leaders in the years to come.
What We Can Take Away
The changes brought about by the COVID-19 pandemic have genuinely changed the way businesses work. Most of them are forced to function remotely. When employees aren’t contained in one working environment, it becomes a challenge for you to handle them.
When these challenges start to overwhelm, you’ll feel a sudden desire to find the right employees set as leaders in the team. When you have leaders in your team, it will be easier for you to manage them remotely.
However, leaders must be trained and must be appropriately chosen. The following steps we mentioned earlier are enough to orchestrate an employee to become a leader. These steps are significant, and they work great regardless of your environment setting. Executing a workplace with a strong leadership strategy will probably be one of the best achievements in anyone’s career.
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Bryan Osorio is a Blogger, SEO enthusiast, Content Marketer, and Digital Marketer with 3 years of experience within the Tech and Digital Marketing Industry. He likes to read, write and talk about Science, Technology, AI, Video Games, World News and more. He studied Psychology at the National University of Colombia and enjoys writing about leadership, remote work, team motivation and others.
- How To Promote Leadership Within Your Remote Employees - November 10, 2020
