537: How to Engage Remote Teams, with Tsedal Neeley

Tsedal Neeley: Remote Work Revolution

Tsedal Neeley is a professor at the Harvard Business School. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She has published extensively in leading scholarly and practitioner-oriented outlets and her work has been widely covered in media outlets such as the BBC, CNN, Financial Times, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, and The Economist.

She was named to the Thinkers50 On the Radar list for making lasting contributions to management and is the recipient of many other awards and honors for her teaching and research. She is the author of Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere*.

In this conversation, Tsedal and I explore what the research shows us about productivity and fear around remote work. We highlight three key principles that leaders can lean in on in order to engage remote teams better. Plus, Tsedal provides practical examples on how almost any leader can put these principles into action.

Key Points

• The research has been clear for decades that employees are more productive working remotely.
• Surveillance software and services are almost always a poor direction for leaders and organizations.
• Leaders should structure unstructured time for informal interactions — and should be the ones who initiate these conversations.
• Emphasize individuals and individual differences, even more so than you might in person. Avoid referring to people by their membership in subgroups.
• In addition to not shutting down conflict, leaders in remote settings need to force it, so the best ideas can emerge on the team.

Resources Mentioned

• Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere* by Tsedal Neeley
• Tsedal Neeley’s website

Interview Notes

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• The Way Out of Major Conflict, with Amanda Ripley (episode 529)

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