University of Minnesota - UMN Executive Leadership Insights
The Long-Distance Leader
Book

The Long-Distance Leader

Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership

Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel
Berrett-Koehler, 2018
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable
  • Well Structured
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

The Project Management Institute reports that 90% of project teams now include one or, often, more workers who operate from different locations than their supervisors and teammates. Nearly 80% of managers now supervise a worker or workers at remote locations. Many leaders face isolation because their team members are far away. These “long-distance leaders” need to use a variety of tools specifically designed to address distance leadership issues and concerns. Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel’s comprehensive, research-based manual offers valuable insights for those who lead remote workers, including 19 rules for long-distance leaders. 

Summary

Remote leadership’s fundamental rule is that leadership always matters more than location.

In the opinion of NASA rocket scientists, leadership is complex and multilayered. When asked which is more complicated – leadership or rocket science – many of NASA’s most admired and experienced thinkers decisively identified leadership.

Rocket science calls for exactitude: careful math involving precise numbers meticulously poured into elegantly conceived formulas. Factor in everything properly, do the correct calculations and you can feel pretty confident about the precision of your answers. In contrast, leadership is imprecise and involves complicated, indecisive, changeable human beings. 

Leading people is difficult enough when you and your team are in the same place, and becomes more complex when the boss is in one location and the employees work somewhere else. Leadership calls for action that leads to identifying and meeting goals and achieving results. Leading calls for “vision, influence, direction and development,” even with distant employees. Take as the first tenet of leading from afar...

About the Authors

Kevin Eikenberry is the chief potential officer at the Kevin Eikenberry Group. Wayne Turmel is a co-founder of the Remote Leadership Institute. 

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