The Effective Manager, 2nd Edition

11How to Coach Remote Directs

It is only a little more difficult to coach remote directs than it is to coach directs with whom we're collocated. We're not going to see remote directs as often. And we're not going to be able to directly observe their behavior as often, unless you create situations where their coaching tasks are observable by you.

But the vast majority of your coaching work is identical whether you are collocated or distant from your directs. During a coaching engagement with one of your directs when you're collocated, 95% of YOUR work will be done during your One on Ones (O3s).

Think about it for a minute. You're still doing O3s, right? (If you're not, coaching gets really hard, really fast.) If you are, you're still having your weekly meeting. If you're following our guidance, you're doing it over Zoom. Further, you're insisting on their video being on during your O3s.

Our experience with thousands of managers doing MTO3s over Zoom and coaching directs shows that there is almost no difference in coaching using the Manager Tools Coaching model.

You might want to consider the following differences:

• If your MTO3s are already long, you may want a separate coaching meeting. This doesn't happen that often, but it does happen.
• Because you don't see your directs as often on an ad hoc basis, you'll have less sense of how they're doing on their coaching tasks. Even though you see them in meetings, Zoom meetings are not like face‐to‐face meetings in terms of the opportunity ...