How to lead async - my learnings
To lead in an async first setting, such as in a remote or hybrid team, you have to manage both yourself and your directs deliberately and organized and give your directs clear yet constructive guidance.
Here is some advice that has proved useful for me:
- Ask requesters to give context, why it is important and till when the person needs an answer
- Explain to them that you need to quickly understand the "Why? What? How?" while jumping from one topic to the next
- There’s no over communication
- As there are no quick over-the-shoulder "Hey, can I quickly remind you about the question I asked", you need to use all written methods to keep in the loop
- Explain to your directs that they can remind you (via tagging, sending follow-up messages) about anything that you forgot to follow-up on
- Also, repeat all your questions (especially the next two) to your directs again and again
- Ask, whether help is needed
- I feel it's much harder to ask and accept help in a remote setting
- That's why you as a leader need to repeat it time and again that your directs learn that it's absolutely fine to ask remotely for it
- Ask, what for you can give feedback
- Another aspect of remote work is that everyone focus massively on own topics and rarely has a quick glimpse on someone else's work (think: over the shoulder glimpse of a design and asking what's it about)
- This leads to rarer feedback on work in progress and more "Here's the final thing"
- That's bad for you as a leader as earlier feedback means more chances to correct a direction
- That's why you should ask your directs to share WIP and actively give constructive feedback on it (so they learn that they can share it with you asap)
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