The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success (The Long-Distance Worklife Series)

Design and cultivate remote work teams that actually work.

From the experts who brought you The Long-Distance Leader and The Long-Distance Teammate comes the proven and practical guide for leaders to consciously design teams, define and create their desired culture, and encourage and nurture employee engagement—all from a distance.

Team design and culture are often presented as separate concepts when they are in fact intertwined in the remote work setting. Using the 3C model of communication, collaboration, and cohesion, leaders will be given the tools to overcome challenges, such as proximity bias and deteriorating social connections, to create an environment where everyone can contribute and add value equally, regardless of location.

The 3Cs are

• Communication—While communication is a fundamental part of being human, it is also a critical foundation of successful work. Without it, teams break down.

• Collaboration—Remote leaders face the misguided belief that physical presence is required to have a collaborative team. The truth is that proximity has nothing to do with successful collaboration.

• Cohesion—This dimension includes decidedly nonstructural aspects, such as relationships, trust, and accountability. While difficult to measure, a team’s cohesion is critical to its success.

Using this framework, leaders of all levels will learn to assess, design, and develop their communication channels, methods for remote collaboration, and ability to foster cohesion to build successful long-distance teams. While a hybrid culture will be different, it can, when done right, be better than what existed before.

Kevin Eikenberry is the chief potential officer of the Kevin Eikenberry Group. Global Gurus includes him in its World’s Top 30 Leadership Professionals. His other books include Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss, The Long-Distance Leader, and The Long-Distance Teammate.
Wayne Turmel is the cofounder of the Remote Leadership Institute. He is the author or coauthor of fifteen books, including The Long-Distance Leader and The Long-Distance Teammate. He has been named to Remote Work Junkie’s Top 50 Remote Experts and Leaders to Follow multiple times.