Connection in Remote Teams: The Manager's Role

This post has been adapted from our upcoming book, Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams. The book looks at how disconnection can creep into remote work, and what individuals, organisations, and managers can do about it.

Here’s an excerpt from Chapter 6, Manager Support: Connecting Through the Work, where we explore why managers are so central to fostering connection in remote teams. Managers have a unique role in distributed settings — they are often the first to notice when something isn’t quite right, and the ones who can create conditions where people feel they belong.

Managers shape an employee's experience of the workplace in significant ways – with Gallup research suggesting that they account for at least 70% of the variance in team engagement. As it turns out, recent research confirms that managers also influence employees' sense of connection through their behaviours and leadership approach.

More directly, research that took place in 2024, involving 531 employees in Chinese public sectors, showed that when leaders empower their team members, employees develop greater confidence in managing their wider responsibilities, which helps reduce feelings of isolation at work. This relationship appears stronger when leaders and team members engage in high-quality conversations, suggesting that empowering leadership approaches are more effective at combating workplace loneliness when combined with meaningful communication between managers and their reports.

Furthermore, in 2024 Gallup suggested that “intentional planning” and “structured engagement” are fundamental to preventing isolation in distributed teams – all of which a manager is perfectly positioned to carry out.

So what makes managers uniquely positioned to diminish workplace loneliness?

Managers Set the Norms

No matter how flat the organisation, how collaborative a manager is, or how autonomous team members feel, employees will take their cues from managers as to what behaviours are acceptable or not. Leadership behaviour tends to influence team norms. 

Additionally, as someone with formal authority, managers can make decisions around people's schedules and commitments, which, as we saw in the previous section, can help prevent loneliness. They also hold employees accountable for their performance. 

Managers See the Big Picture

It's a manager’s job to know how everyone's work fits together. Of course, all team members need to understand how their work and tasks interconnect, but having an overall view of how the team operates is a manager's responsibility.

By intentionally structuring work processes and interactions, managers can create natural opportunities for collaboration and meaningful engagement. Redesigning a team's work to strengthen relationships and foster a sense of belonging is a powerful strategy for building connection in a remote team – but it is often overlooked. 

Managers Support Growth and Wellbeing

Managers are expected to have regular individual interactions with team members, formally or informally. These conversations go beyond work performance and professional aspirations; they present the opportunity to understand team members as whole individuals, including their personal challenges, motivations, and overall well being.

Regular one-on-ones should be a safe space where team members feel comfortable sharing their experiences, including any feelings of isolation or disconnection. (We cover one-on-ones in the next chapter.)

Managers Act as Connectors

Managers are often part of a leadership team or regularly talk to those in other parts of the organisation. This makes them a good source of information on what's going on in the organisation and positions them as potential "connectors" – people who help broker relationships between team members and others in the organisation. This connecting role increases the chances of team members forming meaningful relationships outside their immediate team and understanding how their work contributes to larger organisational goals.

Given these four points, we can see how manager and team leader behaviour set the tone for an entire team. This brings us to the importance of role modelling. By demonstrating the behaviours and attitudes managers want to see in their teams, they can create a culture of openness, vulnerability, and connection. 

Today’s managers go more than manage tasks — they model connection. By intentionally fostering belonging, they play a powerful role in shaping whether remote work feels isolating or deeply connected.

This post was adapted from our book, Connection and Disconnection in Remote Teams, which explores how leaders can build stronger, more human workplaces in a digital age.