Page 110 - Managing the Mobile Workforce

trust or Bust � 89

but that start to bind people together. If you can, find ways to meet oc-
casionally with your workforce face to face, when you can break bread
together, and celebrate personal victories or regret losses together.

Be Consistent
Be consistent in every way—rewards, the messages you send, whom
you recognize and why, how you treat people, how you make deci-
sions, the values you support. Doing so tells people if you are just
blowing in the wind, depending upon the situation involved, or can
really be relied upon. Don’t react with a meow to one set of bad news
and then with a roar to an equivalent set. People won’t know what to
expect from you. No one likes to walk on eggshells.
Consistency when working mobilely is at least twice as important
as it is when people can see you in action every day, because they will
use their imagination to fill in the gaps. If you are consistently incon-
sistent on some matters, they will assume that you can’t be trusted in
any matters at all.

don’t overcompensate by Being overcontrolling
It’s natural to feel insecure when beginning to manage a mobile work-
force. You can’t see, hear, touch, or smell what’s going on nearly as
concretely as you could before. Your tendency may be to microman-
age. Don’t. Overly controlled work environments tell your workforce
that you don’t trust them. They also don’t allow trust to develop be-
cause every action is prescribed. One of the biggest demotivators in
the workplace is micromanagement. You don’t want an experienced,
highly productive performer sitting around waiting for instructions
from you. Clear goals and expectations? Absolutely! Micromanage-
ment? No.
In fact, manager overcontrol is really a symptom of insecurity, ac-
cording to Camille Venezia, the founder and owner of Venezia Enter-
prises. “The command-and-control system,” she says, “reflects a deep