509: Transitioning to Remote Leadership, with Tammy Bjelland

Tammy Bjelland: Workplaceless

Tammy Bjelland is the Founder and CEO of Workplaceless, a training company that teaches remote workers, leaders, and companies how to work, lead, grow, and thrive in distributed environments. Workplaceless is a fully distributed company supporting enterprise, remote, and government clients such as Toyota, GitLab, and the US Department of Commerce.

In this conversation, Tammy and I discuss how leaders can establish a mindset that helps them lead remote teams more successfully. We discuss how to take on a placeless mindset, explore the importance of shifting from how to why, and the best starting points for a communication charter.

Key Points

Five key principles of a Placeless mindset:

1. Embrace location independence over physical presence.
2. Empower autonomous work with flexible schedules.
3. Impact productivity with asynchronous communication and collaboration.
4. Be open and transparent.
5. Trust your colleague and employees.

• Fear of losing control tends to keep organizations from being able to make useful shifts in mindset.
• Leaders and organizations that move beyond the “how” of remote work and focus first on the “why” will have more sustainable success.
• Beware of simply trying to replicate what happened in the office. The whole point of remote work is that it is not like the office.
• Establish a communication charter. This makes it clear what tools are best — and also how to intervene when things don’t work as anticipated.

Resources Mentioned

• Placeless Mindset by Workplaceless
• Goplaceless by Workplaceless

Related Episodes

• Start With Why, with Simon Sinek (episode 223)
• How to Balance Care and Accountability When Leading Remotely, with Jonathan Raymond (episode 464)
• How to Lead a Remote Team, with Susan Gerke (episode 465)

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