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![\"erika](\"\/images\/andersen.jpg\")
<\/p>\nDear Eager to Make it Work,<\/p>\n
First, let me congratulate you on your good natural management instincts: I think your automatic impulse to meet face-to-face with your folks is spot on. Even though we now have the technology to manage and work remotely, that doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s not important to meet in person. We humans are physical creatures, and there\u2019s something irreplaceable about sitting together, looking into each other\u2019s eyes, and deciding how to be a team. As for others at the company thinking it\u2019s odd \u2014 if you see the benefit to you, your team, and the organization, and can make the case to your CEO in a way that\u2019s compelling to her, that\u2019s what matters.<\/p>\n
So, let me help you make the case: <\/strong> I\u2019d take it even further – if budgets allow, I\u2019d strongly recommend that you bring your folks together for a one or two-day team kick-off meeting at company headquarters (rather than wandering around to meet them). Many birds will fall to that stone: How do you Grow Great Employees?<\/strong> Thank you for writing to Office-Politics. Let us know how it goes!<\/p>\n Best of luck,<\/p>\n Erika Andersen, Author<\/p>\n Erika Andersen<\/a> is the author of the newly released Growing Great Employees<\/a>, which is a Kirkus Reviews recommended business book for 2007. Erika Andersen and her colleagues at Proteus International, the company she founded in 1990, offer practical approaches for individuals and organizations to clarify and move toward their hoped-for-future. Much of Erika\u2019s recent work has focused on vision and strategy, executive coaching, and culture change. She has served as consultant and advisor to the CEOs and senior executives of corporations like MTV Networks, Molson Coors Brewing, Rainbow Media Holdings, Union Square Hospitality Group, and Comcast Corporation. Erika is an inaugural author of the Penguin Speakers Bureau, and she has been quoted in the New York Times, Industry Week, Investors\u2019 Business daily, and Fortune.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Dear Office-Politics, I am about to assume a supervisory role in a relatively new company that is undergoing several changes as it grapples with its development and goals. The new CEO is installing her A-team, and while I am flattered to have been selected as a key member of that group I do have some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-climbing-the-ladder","category-office-politics"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.officepolitics.com\/advice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nYou\u2019re new to management, and you want to do an excellent job. Since you haven\u2019t previously built a team, you want to make it as easy as possible for them and you to succeed: trying to do that only remotely, never meeting, is making it harder than it needs to be.<\/p>\n
\n1) it puts you in the strong position of bringing them to you;
\n2) they get to experience themselves, each other, and you as an intact team (a powerful experience that will carry through to them mostly NOT being together);
\n3) they\u2019ll have a 3D experience of headquarters, which will most likely help them feel more a part of the whole;
\n4) you can make the needed agreements about how you\u2019ll operate just once, collaboratively, with the whole team \u2013 they\u2019ll know what everyone else is committing to do! I\u2019ve often suggested that clients do this with new, distant teams, and it\u2019s always yielded great results.<\/p>\n
\nFinally, in your letter, you\u2019ve asked for help with how to approach managing these folks in a way that will work well for you and for them. At the risk of seeming embarrassingly self-referential, I\u2019d suggest that you read my book, Growing Great Employees<\/a>. One reason I wrote the book was to help folks just like you: people who are thrown into managing simply because they\u2019re smart people and good performers, and are then magically expected to know how to do it, given little or no help, training, or support! It\u2019s a practical handbook for the \u201cwhat, why and how\u201d of people management \u2014 I think you\u2019d find it very helpful. (And for a distillation of the high points, you might want to check out this downloadable ebook<\/a>.)<\/p>\n