
Traits of good remote leaders - sfg
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200827-why-in-person-leaders-may-not-be-the-best-virtual-ones
======
mumblemumble
I suspect that the ideal primary role of a leader in a remote setting is to
serve as a communication channel.

In person, it's somehow easier to tune the office chatter in and out as needed
to keep track of what your colleagues are up to. I have yet to find an
electronic replacement for this phenomenon. Email, if nobody thought to CC
you, you simply won't find out. If people deal with this by defensively CCing
everyone, you drown in email. Slack's value is inversely proportional to its
uptake: The more people talk on it, the more it resembles a sort of workplace
Twitter where it's simply impossible to try and keep track of what everyone is
saying, so you give up and resort to only looking at it when you're trying to
slack off. Threads attempt to work around this by replicating the problems of
email in a chat app.

I suspect that an old-school web forum like phpBB could work well, but any
technical merits won't overcome the social perception. There's just no getting
around the nerd factor there.

The only technique I've seen work well is the manager-as-dispatcher approach.
This poor soul becomes the designated firehose-drinker. They get CC'd on every
email, and they subscribe to every Slack thread. They keep an eye out for
anything that Sam or Pat might want to know about, and check in to make sure
that Sam or Pat is keeping an eye on it.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> They keep an eye out for anything that Sam or Pat might want to know about,
> and check in to make sure that Sam or Pat is keeping an eye on it.

This is miserable for everyone. Don't make Slack the center of your workflow.
Don't let spontaneous Slack chats dictate your process.

The manager's job shouldn't be to scour Slack for information and then ping
every person who might need to participate in or read each conversation. That
just amplifies the noise. It's terrible to be deliberately ignoring Slack for
30 minutes to focus on work, only to have your manager ping you back into
Slack to make sure you don't miss something.

Instead, the manager should be forcing important conversations to happen
outside of spontaneous Slack conversations. If something important is decided
in Slack, the decision needs to be recorded in the tracking ticket, Wiki, or
other important location. If it changes anyone's active work, they should be
interrupted. Otherwise, they can pick up the information from the single
source of record (ticket, wiki, etc.) rather than being expected to follow
every detail of Slack all day.

Small groups working on tasks together should have private PMs or channels to
discuss implementation details, not giant Slack channels with 10s or 100s of
members.

A good manager will avoid design by committee and will stay ahead of the
spontaneous Slack firehose by arranging planning sessions and scheduled
meetings where necessary.

Don't let the Slack chaos drive your workflow. Don't try to make managing
Slack someone's job. Manage the workflow first, deliberately rather than
reactively. If important conversations are happening spontaneously in Slack
too often, that's a sign that you need to fix your workflow.

~~~
mumblemumble
Sorry, allow me to rephrase. I didn't meant that the manager's job is to
dogpile everyone onto every issue. It was to make sure that work is being
judiciously assigned to the right people, and everyone else is getting
progress updates as needed.

My working hypothesis here is that, when there is someone that the team trusts
to do that, it will ultimately reduce the level of overcommunication and
design-by-committee. Everyone feels more comfortable focusing on their
immediate work, and limiting their active participation in things that don't
require their active participation, because they know they'll get the memo.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
It doesn't matter much if the manager dispatches the pings ASAP or buffers
them up for later. You're still letting Slack chaos drive your process instead
of leading with process and using Slack as a tool.

In some ways, having the manager buffer up the pings is even worse, because
then each person has to revive the topic again if they want to have a voice.
People don't want to be left out of important conversations, so the only
solution is to watch Slack like a hawk all day. The people who spend all day
in Slack instead of doing work end up dominating the decision making while the
people who focus on work suffer.

Instead, don't hesitate to gather people for a scheduled call after lunch, at
the end of the day, or first thing tomorrow morning to clear it up. Record
important decisions in a single source of truth that isn't Slack, like your
Wiki or ticket tracker.

Treat Slack almost like you would in-office conversations: If you have a
spontaneous watercooler conversation about an important topic in-person, you
wouldn't go gather everyone involved to come to the watercooler to continue
the conversation. You'd send out an e-mail update to others who need to know.
Or you'd scheduled a follow-up call or meeting to discuss it.

The in-person rules of communication and avoiding interruption are a good
template for how to behave in Slack.

~~~
ticmasta
>> scheduled call after lunch, at the end of the day, or first thing tomorrow
morning

This sounds great in theory, but one of the key issues with managing remote
teams is there is no common time in the day that is "after lunch, end of day
or first thing in the morning".

The reality is most remote scenarios require you adopt at least some async
process; fighting this is a losing battle.

Some good news: your manager's job was always facilitate internally and
protect externally; how this is accomplished has certainly changed but the
core essence of management, if anything, is even more crystallized now.

~~~
mjayhn
I feel like I need to mention this in case some eyes see it that need to hear
it. If you're running global teams and you have a side of that team that has
to show up at the ass-crack of dawn every morning while you get to show up at
4PM with the entire context of a full work day behind you - ROTATE THE TIMES
or ASK the engineers on both ends of the spectrum how they feel about it and
be understanding if some of them don't want to show up at 8am anymore. Not to
mention it puts us into a super weird conversation where we're half asleep and
trying to sound like we know what's going on to someone grilling us with full
cognition.

Also, async is one thing. Respecting your peoples time is another thing.
Slack, etc can show you what time it is in that employees time zone. How do
you feel when the first thing you do is open Slack while sipping coffee and
eating your bagel and your boss has 10 messages to you from 6am-9am your time?

Probably not the best start to your day. Let people log in, socialize, be
humans and colleagues for a little bit before you hammer them, especially now
when work is the only real human interaction some people are getting.

~~~
sokoloff
> How do you feel when the first thing you do is open Slack while sipping
> coffee and eating your bagel and your boss has 10 messages to you from
> 6am-9am your time?

Feels like it’s a day that ends in ‘y’. (My boss and our team get along
famously and are all in the same time zone, yet have loads of traffic on our
channel(s) between 6 and 9 most days.)

~~~
mjayhn
Oh totally in team slacks, I'm talking more about the "do this as soon as you
wake up" DM you types, usually the "Hey.."'ers.

------
werber
IMO, the best leaders I've had were great I've had have been great online and
in person. And I've always preferred a mixture of IRL and off site work. It
has never mattered to me if a person is extroverted or introverted, messy or
organized, just that I can trust them and that they trust me. When that
contract is fractured there is no way to have a healthy working relationship
in my opinion. Mutual respect is the most important thing in the office to me

~~~
zmmmmm
It's an interesting point you raise around trust. It's certainly one of my
biggest challenges in a management role - there are staff I struggle to trust
due to past instances where they have gone significantly off track and failed
to deliver due to ignoring or taking too much license with the direction they
were given. We've got huge piles of technical debt and whole series of poor
decisions we're just living with due to this kind of thing. The challenge now
is how to continue to delegate to such people, without creating a huge amount
of overhead to track what they are doing and how it is being executed.
Simultaneously with all this, those same people are in a technical sense the
most skilled in the team. Finding a way for these people to mature into their
roles would be ideal but it's really hard work.

~~~
werber
I feel that. Sorry if you never see this due to the late reply, but i strongly
feel that trust is a constantly built thing. The team needs to trust working
with each other, and have open communication horizontally and vertically. I’m
not a 10x dev and have seen way better developers than me go off the rails
because they weren’t able to communicate and their work becomes unmanageable
because of that lack of trust. I think it’s ok for a junior developer to feel
safe taking on less points and doing things slower and spending more time
pairing and mentoring. But This has only ever worked on teams I’ve been on
where people had the opportunity to fail. And with that being said, once a
team loses passion it is so hard to work back to a healthy self regulated
environment

------
hownottowrite
I worked remote for most of the 90s. Wooo 9600 baud!

Competency was probably the most important trait. A boss without a clue was
easy to dupe and avoid, but also a pain when you were actually doing plenty of
work. A boss that knew what was what would be on your case if you slacked, but
also super relaxed if you were producing to expectations.

Clear communication was also critical but it was even more important to be
measured in the volume.

~~~
PragmaticPulp
> A boss without a clue was easy to dupe and avoid ... A boss that knew what
> was what would be on your case if you slacked, but also super relaxed if you
> were producing to expectations.

Very true. We struggled with this at a past company. Most engineers were
inherently honest and hard working, but maybe 1 in 5 were constantly playing
games to convince their manager that they were working harder than they really
were.

Managers who were formerly engineers had no problem spotting this. It was the
managers with non-technical backgrounds who struggled to gauge if their
employees were really working hard.

My workaround was to coach non-technical managers to pick up clues from the
person's peers. If you privately ask 3 random team members to estimate tasks
and 1 person constantly gives estimates 10x longer than anyone else, that
person should be watched closely for performance issues.

It also helps to group people together to finish tasks, then ask each of them
how it went in private direct conversations (your schedules 1:1s). The
person's honest peers will give strong hints that another person isn't pulling
their weight.

Trust your employees until they prove themselves untrustworthy, but be
careful. We had at least one confirmed situation where a remote employee took
another full-time job but didn't quit our company. Instead, they worked on
doing the bare minimum to keep their manager satisfied so they could collect
paychecks until we were forced to fire them. I suspect this play will become
more common now that WFH is on the rise.

~~~
KKKKkkkk1
> My workaround was to coach non-technical managers to pick up clues from the
> person's peers. If you privately ask 3 random team members to estimate tasks
> and 1 person constantly gives estimates 10x longer than anyone else, that
> person should be watched closely for performance issues.

So I had a boss who would call a group meeting, bring up a problem that needs
to be solved, and ask people who can do it. One engineer would explain that
this is a research-level AI problem that would take years to solve, another
engineer would say he's going to have some time to hack on it later in the
week, and a third would say that he can pull an all-nighter tonight and solve
it. So the manager would pat himself on the back for a job well done. He
created a spirit of healthy competition in the team, he exposed the slacker
(the first engineer) for what he is, and he squeezed the third engineer for
all he got. A year later, the team would be back in the same place, with the
manager calling a meeting and bringing up the same problem, which as it turns
out the users are still suffering from and higher-ups in management are
pestering him about again.

~~~
stripline
> A year later, the team would be back in the same place, with the manager
> calling a meeting and bringing up the same problem, which as it turns out
> the users are still suffering from

I thought the third engineer pulled an all-nighter to solve it?

~~~
saberdancer
I am guessing that the first engineer was right. Usually there is not one
solution to the problem and judging who's the slacker by estimates might be
wrong. You can usually hack something up quick, but making a strong and
lasting solution requires more time.

~~~
RandoHolmes
Judging who the slacker is by estimates is wrong, period.

There's a habit of technical folks to come to conclusions they shouldn't, and
this is a perfect example. It generally manifests itself in interviews where
the technical interviewer will come to conclusions that don't necessarily
follow, only in this case it's not in an interview, but with respect to fellow
co-workers.

I mean, you can see the hubris in the poster, who would have you believe that
they're somehow "training" their management to "spot poor co-workers". Yeah,
ok.... sure you are. Because managers are like monkeys apparently?

------
paulryanrogers
IME remote managers have to communicate more explicitly, which I prefer.

Remote also feels more empowering should one encounter a bad manager. During
my WFO days I had a boss who berated me privately and publicly; even in front
of clients. It was humiliating and destructive. Only when a more senior (by
age, not rank) engineer finally rebuke them did the situation improve.

~~~
spurdoman77
The good thing with WFH is that if your superior pisses you off you can just
start drinking beer and stop working, and no one will probably notice.

~~~
acron0
If that's the case where you work then I wish you good luck!

~~~
paulryanrogers
That manager was fired for other reasons. Company folded years ago, also for
other reasons.

Ironically I think the hardest part is not internalizing the temptation to be
an ass to others. Maybe if I had called them out on it myself? IDK.

~~~
mjayhn
I have a string of terrible workplaces that I'm pretty sure gave me work-
anxiety/ptsd (not to belittle worse experiences, but these were bad) and I
still have a lot of shame that I didn't speak out more or do more - but I was
at the start of my career and had no power to do so that wouldn't have
directly affected my ability to eat. That was 10 years ago, now I just try to
be the opposite for everyone and amplify peoples knowledge that there really
are abusive places and on the inverse there are supportive and collaborative
places.

On the flip side I can say after 5 years there I never once referred a soul
and in fact helped many get jobs elsewhere and have pulled friends out of them
when I could.

------
shubb
This study seems to answer the question of 'who would the team select as a
leader', but in reality project leadership at companies is rarely a democracy.

People move jobs a lot in the tech industry, so as a result senior roles are
often filled externally. It helps to have a recommendation, but roles are
rarely filled by asking the team who they would most like to work with an
approaching them. Normally companies advertise roles and try to use some kind
of standardized process. So CV writing and interview technique are critical.

Promotions often happen because people apply for the role up when it is
advertised competitively. My observation is that people succeed at this by
focusing on performing against their current objectives, not being a problem,
requesting training, and picking up the tasks relevant to their current role
that will be on the job description for the next one up. That next role up
might be in another team so your own teams favor matters less. The main thing
is not to have been a problem to management and to present yourself well
during the application process.

I think external upwards moves are more likely to be powered by skill at
believable exaggeration, and internal promotions by rules compliance and
consistent ambition driven box ticking.

Finally, some people get promoted because management need someone they trust
to do that job now, at least temporarily. This happens when a new project team
is created and someone is told they are in charge of it, or someone quits and
their duties are reallocated to an immediate report. These reward competence
yes, but such a people keep their winnings or fall back by their actual short
term success - if things look shaky management go out externally for a
permanent replacement and quietly put them back where they were.

I don't really see any of this changing due to work from home.

It is probably different at high levels of management because these roles seem
to be filled more based on relationships.

------
api
I am hoping remote work will “nerf” in person charisma. It’s not that charisma
is bad, but in person it often seems to overcome any other concern. I have
seen so many examples of total fools who nevertheless gain power and
leadership on charisma alone. It has the power to overcome reason and speak
directly to the brain stem.

~~~
throwaway0a5e
Something else will replace it. The people who are effective on calls, emails
and chat will get the brownie points instead.

~~~
mwcampbell
Sure, but being effective in calls, emails, and chat requires fewer advantages
from factors that aren't under your control. Consider that on an audio-only
call, a blind person can be just as effective as a sighted person, if not more
so (edit: until sighted people learn to go without visual cues as if they were
blind). And in email or text chat, a person with a thick accent, a person with
a speech impediment, or a deaf person can be as effective as someone who
speaks well in the team's common language.

~~~
ZephyrBlu
I can't quite pinpoint it, but something feels off about this reasoning.

No matter what, some group of people is going to be at a disadvantage. It
doesn't really make sense to me that you want everyone to specifically cater
for the minority, as opposed to the majority.

Trying to somewhat accommodate everyone? Great. Forcing changes to accommodate
minorities? Doesn't really make sense to me.

~~~
mwcampbell
Here are the best responses I can give to that:

1\. Fully abled people are already, as John Scalzi put it (with regard to
another category), playing on the lowest difficulty setting, across all of
their lives. SO I think it's not so bad to take away some advantages, to level
the playing field.

2\. There are different kinds of disadvantages. There are disadvantages from
skills you haven't yet learned, and there are disadvantages from abilities you
can never have. What I propose is to replace the latter category for some
people with the former category for others. Of course, if biotech someday
allows us to give physical abilities to people who don't have them, that
changes the equation. And perhaps my thick accent example was weak; my
understanding is that it's possible, with great difficulty, to change one's
accent.

------
enriquto
This is an interesting read, if a bit light. Unfortunately, its quality is
diminished by the ridiculous stock photos that have nothing to do with the
text.

~~~
noisy_boy
So I am not the only one who noticed that all the books were facing backwards
or their cover not visible in the stock photo (probably for the same reason
they don't show brand of the phones being used in movies, unless it is a
deliberate product placement).

~~~
afandian
Sadly the BBC (which as an institution I will defend) feel the need to put
pictures on everything, whether salient or not. I'm sure there's research that
says that readers like their news articles to have pictures, but they don't
always add anything.

Yesterday, though, the pictures editor made a masterful choice.

[https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54088206](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-54088206)

------
stakkur
_researchers conducted a series of in-lab experiments with 86 four-person
teams, and also traced the communications and experiences of 134 teams doing a
semester-long project in a university class_

This research isn't based on what's happening in the real work world, with
real workers, in real companies. After reading the summary, I'm having a hard
time giving this much weight.

------
SiempreViernes
the WEIRD sample strikes again! I hope we at least have a round of
reproducibility crises in management research within a decade, because
evidently it's not reached them yet.

> The researchers conducted a series of in-lab experiments with 86 four-person
> teams, and also traced the communications and experiences of 134 teams doing
> a semester-long project in a _university class_

~~~
triyambakam
What is WEIRD in this context?

~~~
bobbiechen
>Behavioral scientists routinely publish broad claims about human psychology
and behavior in the world's top journals based on samples drawn entirely from
Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies.

[https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-
brain...](https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-
sciences/article/weirdest-people-in-the-
world/BF84F7517D56AFF7B7EB58411A554C17)

------
khalilravanna
Unless I'm reading the summary of the study's findings wrong, the study showed
what people are _selected_ as leaders, right? Which is super interesting but
not the same as who _is_ a good leader. The summary of the article
inaccurately states, "Strong in-person leadership skills don’t necessarily
translate to being a good virtual leader", which feels like a huge leap with
no evidence. Unless being chosen as a leader by the group directly correlates
with who is actually successful as leaders this doesn't seem like a huge
takeaway. Would be very interested to see something more substantive on this
front.

~~~
mannykannot
The article is based on a study that it links to. Like just about every other
study, it is done within the context of existing work, in this case
'multilevel leadership emergence theory'. While it is possible that this field
is flawed to the core, I am not yet ready to assume that it is, so that, for
example, there is little correlation between who gets _selected_ for
leadership and who is _suited_ for it, without having first done some digging
into the literature myself.

~~~
khalilravanna
Thanks for the added insight. I guess I have two follow up questions to that.

1) Is anyone who does have the context able to weigh in?

From my own digging I'm not seeing a lot of agreed upon definitions of
"leadership emergency theory". I found one paper [1] which I read the abstract
of. It again, like the OP, seems to talk about how "leaders emerge in teams
that lack a hierarchical structure". From my experience this doesn't seem
incredibly useful given all managers/leaders I've seen have been _appointed_
by someone else. It's not some subconscious, democratic process where they're
chosen by the group.

2) Kind of meta, but did the writer of the article do the research that seems
necessary for this? And if not is this acceptable, given that I can only
assume numerous people will take this at face value and may even make
organizational changes as a result?

[1]
[https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LODJ-08-...](https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/LODJ-08-2012-0109/full/html)

------
supergeek133
There is also another important factor... mutual respect.

To be stereotypical, I'd go ahead and assume that a majority of people on HN
work in tech and likely are paid a decent salary.

The one thing I find in bad leaders (remote or otherwise), and relational in
poorly run companies is the lack of trust.

I've worked with leaders who micromanage as much/more than I was when I worked
a minimum wage/high supervisory job. This is bad and holds back many
employees/companies. It encourages "shared courage" and centralized decision
making.

I'm usually amazed at how much responsibility people are given who make over 6
figures, but yet how little _decision_ power they are given. Even when the
leader may not have the same knowledge level as their employee.

I've had the pleasure of working with many people who respect that I know how
to manage my time, that I know things they don't, and the understand that I
appreciate the same about them.

I can imagine how much the "wrong" side of this is amplified when you suddenly
aren't around each other all the time.

~~~
zmmmmm
> I'm usually amazed at how much responsibility people are given who make over
> 6 figures, but yet how little decision power they are given.

It's an interesting distortion of the inflated tech-skill market I think. I
have individual team members doing software who are paid more than entire
group leaders doing other things but they are still very immature, and in no
way can accept responsibility for more higher level things.

I do agree about the responsibility / decision power point though. To me one
of the most powerful motivating forces for tech people is giving them autonomy
to make technical decisions themselves. It's somewhat tragic that this is so
negative in the large - allow a whole team of engineers to each choose a
different web stack and they'll love it, but you're in for a disaster.

------
Hoasi
> “Suddenly it’s not just about who talks the most, but rather, who is
> actually getting stuff done.”

One wishes. That almost sounds too ideal to be true.

------
joubert
"“To me, this is half the story,” she says, pointing out that though the study
data touches on interpersonal relationships, it more heavily measures task-
oriented actions, which are only a portion of what drive leadership. “The next
logical step is [to study] how team members manage interpersonal relations and
behaviours and who emerges as leaders. We don’t really know that.” For
example, a follow-up study might explore whether doer leaders maintain
interpersonal skills over time."

------
raintrees
The virtual version of Joel Spolsky's "Good managers move chairs out of the
way to assist programmers getting work done" (heavily paraphrased from
memory).

------
bloodorange
Man, at some point, someone has to point it out. What the hell is with these
clickbait headlines on HN. Is there no place on the internet saved from it?
Even what used to be reputable news websites have it everywhere (and BBC of
course shamefully is one of them). Does it help to flag these? Or is this now
the new normal on HN?

EDIT: I'm glad it has now been edited to be more sensible.

------
maerF0x0
IMO the best of any kind is one that designs themselves out of the hot path.
What does that mean for leaders? Don't _be_ the conduit to good communication,
instead tend to it like something external to you. Processes and tooling are
like code for businesses and can be updated over time to fix the bugs.

~~~
dcolkitt
I think this is definitely true. But the biggest reason it's rare in practice
is because middle managers who aren't viewed as essential to day-to-day
operations are likely to be made redundant by senior leadership.

Managers bias towards taking an overly hands-on, interventionist style,
because that creates a lot more visible signals that they're not easily
replaced. There's no incentive to build a well designed process that the
team's empowers self-driven success. As often happens to programmers, that
type of manager often finds that he's engineered himself out of a job. Much
better to create busywork, lest senior executives start asking "what exactly
would you say you do here".

What often separates out great senior leadership is recognizing the pernicious
influence of this bias. John D Rockefeller was famous for having tons of
middle managers who barely worked at all, took naps in the afternoon, and the
like.

~~~
bfuclusion
I mean that works if all you want is to rise to middle management. When you
start having actual revenue or project goals then that method falls apart.

------
Nimitz14
The primary role of leaders is communication, so I'm a bit confused by this
idea that the leader is whoever "does" the most. You're not leading much of
anything if you have time to do the work yourself I believe.

~~~
john_cogs
In my lived experience at GitLab, leaders can deliver results through
efficient communication that enables others to do their jobs successfully
(rather than waiting hours to respond to messages), helping team members
iterate on the scope of projects to ensure progress is made on goals, and
modeling our company values which helps others better understand the values
and incorporate them into their work.

------
eb3c90
I suspect it is still important to get to know people and build trust in the
flesh, even if having a remote leader can be good.

------
troughway
The surprising thing to me is that there is no mention of the copious online
communities we have had for the past few decades. The number of WoW guilds
alone is staggering. If you want to know the "surprising" traits, just look to
the people* leading these, you have ample data there.

*BBC put up some qtπ photos with makeup. In reality: pasty, overweight nerds, neckbeards and warlocks.

------
virgulino
What's up with the books in the second photo?

------
spurgu
> President Trump has set Sept. 15 as a deadline for the company's Chinese
> owner, ByteDance, to find an American purchaser, or it will face a ban in
> the U.S.

I know it's been almost 4 years but I still have a hard time grasping that I'm
not on The Onion when I'm reading sentences like this...

------
theaeolist
And the evidence for these considerations is what?

~~~
sfg
They reference a study:
[https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10869-020-09698...](https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10869-020-09698-0),
titled: "Who Emerges into Virtual Team Leadership Roles? The Role of
Achievement and Ascription Antecedents for Leadership Emergence Across the
Virtuality Spectrum".

~~~
westurner
Fortunately the references are free to view.

"Table 4 – Correlation of Development Phases, Coping Stages and Comfort Zone
transitions and the Performance Model" in "From Comfort Zone to Performance
Management" White (2008) tabularly correlates the Tuckman group development
phases (Forming, Storming, Norming, Performing, Adjourning) with the Carnall
coping cycle (Denial, Defense, Discarding, Adaptation, Internalization) and
Comfort Zone Theory (First Performance Level, Transition Zone, Second
Performance Level), and the White-Fairhurst TPR model (Transforming,
Performing, Reforming). The ScholarlyArticle also suggests management styles
for each stage (Commanding, Cooperative, Motivational, Directive,
Collaborative); and suggests that team performance is described by chained
power curves of re-progression through these stages.

[https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=%E2...](https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C43&q=%E2%80%9CFrom+Comfort+Zone+to+Performance+Management%E2%80%9D+White+%282008%29&btnG=#d=gs_qabs&u=%23p%3D38spZfy7PdsJ)

IDK what's different about online teams in regards to performance management?

------
fivre
there are actors who excel in the status quo through virtue of said quo
lauding their strengths (here, putting on a good face during sync
communication) alongside basic competency in other skills (having a bare
minimum capability outside their face fronting forte)

when that status quo slips away, it exposes those who were merely charlatans
acting the lauded part (putting on a good facade face while lacking depth in
teh actual capabilities society and organizations rely on, simply fronting a
good appearance)--the changes uncovers those who failed to put forth the front
out of ignorance of or disdain for it. it raises those whose true strengths
mattered more all along, but to which broader culture was blind to, having
long lost its way tacking too hard towards praising the facade, assuming it
implied the foundation

fires burn away some moss; the hardwood remains--it was always there, but now
we get to see it, and further see that some of the most elegant fungus was
naught but a large clump of mold growing upon itself alone, without much
underneath

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JoeAltmaier
My takeaway: in-person leadership is a charisma game where somebody fools
everyone into letting them be boss. Perhaps to the detriment of the project
and goals.

Virtual leadership is based on performance and productivity. It related
directly to achieving goals.

Another big win for virtual work? It factors pointless, harmful charisma out
of the equation?

~~~
jordache
100% wrong and no doubt myopic to your own personal and likely limited
experiences.

a venn diagram of good leader qualities and charismatic qualities has non-
trivial overlap. A leader lacking people skills has a very limited ceiling in
what he/she can affect.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Explain the OP then? Almost a perfect experiment in removing charisma from the
work equation - everybody works remotely and communicates through a limited
channel. And things get better.

And perhaps delve into 'charismatic' as it relates to loud, aggressive or
overbearing.

~~~
jordache
one can convey charisma through digital/remote channels.

Just because the physical connection is gone, it does not mean a robotic /
formulaic approach is now the only way to lead/manage humans

~~~
JoeAltmaier
It reduces the effect. It becomes possible to squelch the loudmouth, take
turns talking, hear from everyone. It removes physical intimidation and most
body language.

Nobody is suggesting 'robotic' or 'formulaic'.

~~~
xauronx
In my experience the "loudmouth" in-person is the same way on a video call.
They always get their two cents in, and are sure to jump in regardless of
whether or not another person is patiently waiting their turn.

