Remote Leader Selection Framework
Introducing the Remote Leader Selection Framework: a comprehensive framework for identifying, evaluating, and hiring the best asynchronous leaders for your organization. This systematic approach ensures that you find the right leaders to drive your company's growth and inspire your team, ultimately setting your business on a high-paced growth trajectory.
Define desired qualities: Identify the key traits and skills you want in an asynchronous leader, such as being inspirational, focusing on delivery and results, trusting and caring for their team, and operating in a modular setup.
Create an Asynchronous Leadership Scorecard: Customize a scorecard with six zones to evaluate potential candidates. Each zone will have a range of 1 to 5 points, with a maximum total of 25 points. A candidate should score at least 20 points to be considered an excellent leader for your company. The zones:
Remote work experience: Prioritize candidates with remote work experience. Assess this through a screening interview and references. Assign points based on the extent of their experience.
Communication skills: Remote leadership relies heavily on written communication. Test their skills by having them write a clear and precise briefing for a given problem. Evaluate their briefing for clarity and effectiveness.
Inspirational mindset: Leaders should be able to convey the company's mission to others. Assess their ability to summarize and communicate the mission in an inspiring manner, preferably through a video or other suitable platform.
Management skills: Leaders should be able to scale the company up, build processes, and grow their teams. Test their approach to building a team with limited resources and assess their plan for modularity, timeframes, workflow testing, working with freelancers, and alignment with the company's mission.
Leadership personality: Test their personality traits, focusing on curiosity, organization, warmth, empathy, calmness, and supportiveness. You can use tests like the Big Five Personality Test or the Integrity Test.
Chemistry (with less weight compared to the other zones): While chemistry is less crucial in asynchronous work, it still plays a role in building trust. Assess chemistry subjectively on a scale of 1 to 5, but don't let it overshadow the other zones.
Screen candidates: Conduct interviews and provide tasks to assess candidates based on the scorecard criteria. Gather information about their remote work experience, written communication skills, ability to inspire, management capabilities, personality traits, and chemistry.
Evaluate scores: After assessing each candidate, calculate their scores in each zone and their total score. Compare the candidates' scores to identify the most promising leaders.
Consider additional factors: Besides the scorecard evaluation, pay attention to candidates who demonstrate commitment, motivation, adaptability, and an ability to think beyond silos and practical terms.
