Leading Remote Teams: 3 Hard Lessons on Time, Trust, and Coaching
What I wish I knew sooner about leading remote teams.
The challenges of leading from a distance
Managing remote teams is deceptively different from managing in-person ones. At first, I assumed leadership was leadership, regardless of location. But as I transitioned from managing colocated teams to leading people across time zones, I quickly realized that what worked in an office didn’t always translate remotely.
Suddenly, casual hallway conversations were gone. Visibility into my team’s day-to-day challenges was reduced. Feedback loops were slower, trust took longer to build, and coaching became a game of patience.
But the hardest part? If I wasn’t intentional about how I spent my time, structured my communication, and built trust, things quickly spiraled out of control.
Over time, I learned that leading a distributed team requires three key disciplines:
Tracking your time with intention - so you don’t get overwhelmed.
Practicing radical transparency - because trust isn’t built passively.
Creating structured coaching systems - to make up for the lack of real-time interactions.
Each of these lessons helped me become a better leader—and more importantly, helped my team thrive despite the distance.
Each of these lessons shaped the way I lead today, and they continue to serve me as I navigate the complexities of managing teams across different locations. Here’s what I learned.
1. Track your time or it will control you
You alone are responsible for how you spend your time. At the peak of my organization’s size, I managed 20 people across multiple time zones, and my workweek followed a familiar pattern:
9:00 AM: Catching up on overnight messages, emails, and document updates.
Late morning to early afternoon: One-on-ones with local team members, making the most of our shared time zone.
I was driven by ambition—determined to build a world-class team. But in the process, I ended up working 13-hour days: checking in on everyone, staying updated, coaching, and firefighting.
It didn’t take long before I started dropping the ball. Quarterly surveys confirmed what I already felt—team members noticed that I had too much on my plate and needed help.
“I can handle this,” I told myself.
But no one asked me to work this way. No one told me to burn the midnight oil and micromanage everyone’s work.
I was doing this to myself.
A few months later, I finally admitted this to my boss. I’m lucky to have a great boss who immediately said:
“You need to tell me when help is needed.”
What struck me was how hard it is to gain perspective in the moment. When you’re deep in the work, tackling the next task always seems like the priority. It’s easy to lose sight of what actually matters.
How I regained control
To break free, I tracked every task in my calendar and color-coded it:
How much time was I spending on one-on-one coaching?
How much time went to backlog reviews and prioritization?
Was I still contributing individually?
This exercise transformed my approach. My schedule stopped slipping through my fingers, and I could finally see where my time was going—and, more importantly, where it should go.
2. Transparency isn’t optional—it builds trust
As an electrical engineer who transitioned into software and later management, I initially believed leadership was a natural extension of technical expertise. But I quickly learned that being a great manager requires more than technical skills—it demands self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and the ability to connect with others.
When I worked in-person with my Zurich-based team, they saw how I operated daily—approachable, open, and transparent (or so I hope!). But in a remote environment, all of that disappears. People can’t see how you interact, read your body language, or fully understand who you are beyond the screen.
When transparency became critical
Early in my time with a new team that had just been assigned to me, I noticed signs of distrust. It wasn’t explicit, but their questions revealed uncertainty:
“Are you planning any big changes in the next weeks?”
“What’s your management style—hands-on or hands-off?”
“Do you have background in computer vision?”
“How do you know that you will be able to effectively lead our team?”
One moment, however, made the situation crystal clear.
During my introductory meeting with the team, one person openly pushed back against the reorganization, questioning both my role and the company’s credibility.
Right there, I knew I had very little time to fix this.
But I didn’t know what the solution was—yet.
How I turned it around
In a moment of doubt, I reminded myself to go back to first principles: transparency builds trust.
I introduced a 30-60-90 day milestone document—a structured plan to listen, learn, and lead effectively.
This simple tool provided:
Clarity on my intentions—no hidden agendas.
A structured way to engage the team—so they felt heard.
A way to show who I am—not just as a manager, but as a person.
Over time, the resistance faded. The team saw that I wasn’t there to impose changes in secrecy, but rather that I was there to build with them, not against them.
Just as office interactions make a manager an open book, transparency in a remote environment must be intentional.
3. Coaching across time zones requires structure and discipline
Managing a distributed team is like being the captain of a slow-moving ship—you set a new course, go to sleep, and wake up to see the change in direction. But unlike steering a real ship, you can’t adjust in real time. You must trust your judgment, trust your team, and wait—sometimes for hours—to see whether your coaching and decisions take hold.
This delay became especially apparent when I took over a new team. I wanted to establish myself as a coach and mentor, while also fostering a culture of open feedback. But the 9-hour time difference between Zurich and the Bay Area made traditional coaching ineffective—I couldn’t observe how people applied my feedback, nor could I give real-time course corrections.
Now, think about how most people handle coaching:
You give feedback in a 1:1.
Your report acts on it.
You observe, adjust, and reinforce as needed.
In an office, this cycle happens naturally. But in a remote team, I might not see the results for 16+ hours—or even until the next 1:1 meeting a week later. I needed a way to bridge that gap.
How I built a system for effective remote coaching
What’s the challenge? – The direct report documents the issue they are working through.
What actions are they taking? – A record of steps they’ve attempted or plan to take.
What’s the result? – Tracking outcomes and iterating based on what worked (or didn’t).
This was a game-changer. The document provided:
A written history of coaching progress, making it easy to see growth over time.
Clarity on next steps, ensuring feedback didn’t get lost between meetings.
Asynchronous visibility, so I could review and provide input even when we weren’t online at the same time.
Seeing the horizon, even even you can’t control the ship
Just as a ship takes time to change course, you can’t control how quickly someone applies coaching. But what you can do is enhance their vision of the horizon—helping them see their growth and progress over time.
To reinforce this, I also started documenting feedback—both positive and constructive—for each direct report. Over time, this created a visible timeline of their growth and the challenges they had overcome.
In the end, remote coaching isn’t about being present in every moment—it’s about providing the right structure so that your presence is still felt, even when you’re not in the room.
Remote leadership is an intentional practice
Managing remote teams isn’t about replicating office dynamics online. It requires a different mindset and skill set.
Without tracking your time, work expands endlessly, leaving you overwhelmed.
Without transparency, trust erodes, leaving teams uncertain and disengaged.
Without structured coaching, growth becomes inconsistent, leaving employees without the support they need.
Remote work doesn’t naturally foster alignment, connection, or clarity. You have to build them intentionally.
In the end, I believe that the best remote leaders not only adapt to the challenges of distance, but they embrace them and use them to their advantage—by creating systems that allow people to work effectively, no matter where they are.