Book Review: The Long-Distance Leader

Leading Remote Teams, Direct Reports, and Team Members 

It is not often that a new leadership book captures my attention from start to finish. So I am pleased to share that The Long-Distance Leader by Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel did so.

The Long-Distance Leader is a comprehensive guide to the challenges faced in leading remote teams and direct reports.

Authors Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel have done an excellent job in highlighting and explaining how managing remote teams is more difficult and challenging than leading a group of collocated team members. More important, they provide a range of easy-to-implement techniques and processes to overcome these hurdles and minimize the difficulties caused by geography and time zones.

The book clearly shows how to enact the core principles of leadership with employees, colleagues, and direct reports spread across different workplaces and scattered across multiple time zones. In the view of the authors, leadership comes first, location second.

With an emphasis on a handful of leadership best practices, the authors take the approach of leadership first, location second. As they write, “Leading a team at a distance is first and foremost about leadership, and the principles of leadership haven’t changed — they are principles. What has changed is that people are working in different places and perhaps at different times. Given those changes, how we apply the timeless principles of leadership in this new world matters a great deal — for the team members working at a distance, for you as their leader, and for the organization that you all serve.“

Throughout the book the authors place a focus on achieving desired outcomes at a distance and engaging others who work remotely, The Long-Distance Leader provides insights and tools for improving how anyone leads remote team members.

This is a very timely book as more leaders, particularly first-level leaders and supervisors, are being assigned to lead, motivate, coach, and develop remote team members. Unfortunately, most are not given training in how to do so effectively and efficiently. Thus, this book fulfills a major knowledge gap on a skill that an increasing number of leaders and managers will need to successfully deliver future results.

As such, I am pleased to make The Long-Distance Leader the latest addition in my list of recommended leadership books.

Note: You can click on the book cover image above to purchase this book directly from Amazon.