Mastering remote leadership to empower Security teams in a decentralised world

Our Operational Transformation Director - Chris Sisson (MSyI SRMC®) - considers how through focusing on competencies and outcomes, we are empowering our security teams, fostering innovation, and delivering excellence for clients. 

Leading Remote Teams: Challenges and Opportunities

The rise of remote working has brought unique opportunities and challenges, particularly in industries like the UK security sector, where the ability to manage dispersed teams effectively is crucial. For regional and area managers in this field, who often geographically remote from their frontline security colleagues, the challenge is even more acute. They need to ensure that both the objectives of their employer and those of the client are met, all while managing teams they may rarely see in person. The task of leading these managers requires a careful balance of trust, clear goal-setting, and a focus on outcomes over hours worked.

Adopting Competency-Based Recruitment to put trust at the foundation

It all begins with the recruitment process. Traditionally, hiring decisions have focused heavily on past CV experience, with leaders valuing the number of years someone has spent in a particular role or industry. However, when it comes to remote working, particularly for those overseeing multiple sites and teams, competencies should be prioritised over conventional experience.

As leadership expert Patrick Lencioni has suggested, trust is the foundation of any high-performing team. This trust starts with hiring individuals who demonstrate the core competencies required to succeed in a remote management role - such as communication, decision-making, and problem-solving. These skills are critical for area managers who need to handle dynamic, on-the-ground situations while remaining aligned with corporate and client objectives.

In the security sector, the ability to manage relationships, navigate client demands, and coordinate teams across multiple locations requires a high level of autonomy. By hiring individuals based on their ability to demonstrate these key competencies, leaders can trust that their area managers will take initiative and make informed decisions. This trust in their capabilities becomes the bedrock of a successful remote management structure.

Objectives and Autonomy: A Balanced Approach

Once the right regional managers are in place, setting clear objectives is critical. It’s essential however for leaders to balance the need for direction with the freedom to allow managers to apply their own methods to achieve those objectives. This approach is supported by Daniel Pink’s research on motivation, which highlights the importance of autonomy in driving engagement and performance. For remote area managers, this autonomy is not just a driver of performance, but a necessity. The nature of the security sector means that no two days are the same, and the situations that regional managers encounter vary significantly from site to site.

Leaders must set clear goals—such as maintaining high levels of site safety, improving client satisfaction, or meeting KPIs around service delivery standards and indeed innovation. However, regional managers should have the autonomy to determine how best to meet these targets. By empowering them to take ownership of their approach, leaders foster a sense of responsibility and creativity, allowing their managers to respond flexibly to challenges. Whether it’s organising staff training, restructuring on-site processes, or directly managing client relationships, remote regional managers need the freedom to adapt their approach to meet the unique demands of each situation.

For example, in a security contract with multiple corporate sites, an area manager may find that client expectations vary widely between locations. Instead of applying a rigid, top-down approach, giving them the autonomy to tailor solutions at each site ensures both client satisfaction and operational efficiency.

Bringing Teams Together

While autonomy is crucial for regional managers, it’s equally important to bring teams together regularly to share knowledge and build cohesion. In the security sector, where managers can regularly work in isolation, these gatherings—preferably in person—allow for the exchange of best practices, lessons learned, and innovations that benefit the wider team. Such meetings foster a sense of community, strengthen alignment with company and client objectives, and balance the remote nature of the work by encouraging collaboration and mutual support. By ensuring regular team engagement, leaders can maintain cohesion and drive continuous improvement across their remote teams.

Individual accountability to address failure

A common challenge when leading remote regional managers is dealing with failure. In an office-based environment, mistakes or issues can be identified and addressed swiftly. With a remote workforce, failures may take longer to surface, and the temptation may be to implement restrictive, across-the-board policies that impact everyone. However, as Brené Brown, a well-regarded thought leader on leadership, suggests, addressing failure at an individual level is far more productive than imposing broad restrictions.

In the context of the security industry, where regional managers often work independently, a one-size-fits-all response to failure can stifle innovation and morale. For example, if a manager fails to meet a specific KPI or mishandles a client issue, it is more effective to work directly with that manager to understand what went wrong, and how it can be corrected. Was it a communication breakdown? Were they lacking the necessary support from their team? Or were expectations unclear?

Leaders should focus on coaching the individual manager rather than applying blanket rules that limit the flexibility and autonomy of the entire team. This personalised approach not only leads to better individual performance but also reinforces trust within the wider team, who can continue to operate with the freedom needed to meet client and business objectives.

Managing by Output, Not Hours

One of the key shifts that leaders of remote area and regional managers must embrace is the move away from managing based on presenteeism—the idea that employees must be visibly working during specific hours to be considered productive. In the security industry, where area managers often cover wide geographic areas and work irregular hours to meet client demands, this concept is both outdated and counterproductive.

Effective leadership in this space requires a focus on managing against outcomes rather than the number of hours worked or indeed presenteeism. This means setting clear, measurable objectives for regional managers—whether it's the reduction of incident response times, improvements in site-level safety compliance, or maintaining client satisfaction. These objectives should be the yardstick by which performance is measured, not the time spent on the clock.

By shifting the focus to output delivery, leaders can empower their regional managers to manage their own time and responsibilities in a way that works best for them. As long as they are meeting the KPIs and delivering against business and client expectations, the specific method or hours worked should be of secondary concern. This approach not only fosters a culture of trust but also encourages a focus on high-impact, results-oriented work.

Conclusion

The task of leading remote regional and area managers in the UK security industry is complex but entirely achievable with the right approach. By focusing on competency-based recruitment, providing clear objectives while allowing autonomy, addressing failures on an individual basis, and managing by output rather than time spent, leaders can create a high-performing, trusted team that consistently meets both business and client objectives.

Ultimately, the key to success lies in trusting remote managers to deliver on their responsibilities, supporting them with clear direction, and empowering them to find their own solutions to the challenges they face. By building this culture of trust and autonomy, leaders can ensure that their remote teams are not only effective but are also able to adapt to the evolving needs of the industry.