{"id":25714,"date":"2020-04-27T09:22:04","date_gmt":"2020-04-27T09:22:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/?p=25714"},"modified":"2026-02-12T11:24:52","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T11:24:52","slug":"remote-management-balancing-trust-and-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/remote-management-balancing-trust-and-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Remote Management \u2013 Balancing trust and control"},"content":{"rendered":"

Since we developed the world\u2019s first remote and virtual teams training over 30 years ago, one of the consistent themes participants have raised has been finding the right balance between control and trust<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People working from home during the pandemic lockdowns became very sensitized to this, some managers worked through empowerment and trust and gave their people flexibility to manage a difficult situation, others tried to micromanage remote activity and have experienced resistance. Both groups left a legacy with their people which has had a long term impact on their leadership legacy and corporate cultures.<\/p>\n

Balancing trust and control is a challenge for managers new to remote management who often feel outside of their comfort zone in managing the performance and outputs of people they can\u2019t see.<\/p>\n

This is despite the fact that research has shown that people who work from home are consistently more productive than people who work in an office.<\/p>\n

The popularity of Return to the Office (RTO) mandates in some industries and organizations is arguably driven in part by a lack of trust that people will be productive working from home.<\/p>\n

About 80% of mangers and professionals work at least part of their time with people, who are not in the same location as them, so virtual team working<\/a> is now the norm. It is worth spending the time to adapt our management techniques to cope with this important dilemma.<\/p>\n

In our remote and virtual management training we start by showing managers how to make active virtual trust building a part of their leadership agenda.<\/p>\n

In a traditional face-to-face team we usually build trust as a free by-product of being in the same location, it\u2019s just easier to get to know people\u2018s character and capability.<\/p>\n

When we work virtually we need to organize and create explicit opportunities for people to demonstrate and maintain trust – and this is different virtually.<\/p>\n

This is an important first step because we won\u2019t empower people if we don\u2019t trust them. If we lack trust, we increase control, and then we risk a vicious circle of increasing micromanagement and decreasing trust.<\/p>\n

Once basic trust is in place, managers need a strategy and toolkit for moving people from being new to a role into being fully autonomous and empowered.<\/p>\n

Some organizations are proud that they hire good people and leave them to \u201csink or swim\u201d. This is not a development strategy, it is an abandonment strategy and is unfair on the individual and the organization.<\/p>\n

We train people in a three stage process for managing the empowerment journey.<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Ensuring that people have the capability to do the job<\/li>\n
  2. Building the mutual confidence needed for people to take on more empowerment. First does the manager have the confidence to let them go? Then does the individual have the confidence to take on more responsibility? This usually involves use of remote coaching techniques.<\/li>\n
  3. Once we have done that, we can take the opportunity to further relax our controls and give people successively higher levels of empowerment.
    \nIt is important to do this in a managed way. We observe that many great companies empower people too much in the early stages, when they\u2019re not clear about how to do the job. They then often empower people too little in the later stages where they are competent, trusted and could be left to get on with things, only involving their managers if they need them.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Finding the right balance of control and trust is a challenge in remote management situations, it\u2019s easy to say that trust is the right answer (and it usually is) but we need a systematic process for leading people on that journey – so the organization gets the results it needs and individuals feel supported when they need it and empowered whenever possible.<\/p>\n

    Finding the right balance of control and empowerment<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    People new to remote management often feel out of control when leading peole they cant supervise closely and can compensate by increasing control. How can we find the right balance between control and trust?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":24,"featured_media":25716,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-25714","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","type-blog","training-virtual-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nRemote Management \u2013 Balancing trust and control - Global Integration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"People new to remote management often feel out of control when leading peole they cant supervise closely and can compensate by increasing control. 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