This episode is about managing teams across multiple locations and how to make your decisions stick with teams who may hardly ever see you in person.

Managing distributed teams means you have formal authority but often can't get a clear picture of what's happening on the ground. Almost everything you learn about a site comes from the person you put in charge of it, which makes your read on that team only as good as their judgement about what's worth passing on.

In this episode, I cover six things that help:

* How to set communication rules with each site manager
* How to build a second line of sight into each location without creating backchannels
* Why who you put in charge is your single biggest decision
* How your visits can undermine the manager you appointed
* How to pick the one or two things per site worth fighting over
* When to stop persuading and start instructing

Plus a closing thought on proximity bias, and why the people you see least are the ones missing out when it's time to get promoted.

You got promoted, and the people who were at the same level as you now report to you. The relationship you built with them will need to be reset, and how you handle that reset will determine whether your team ends up working with you or around you.

In this episode, I decided to take a slightly harder, more political look at managing former peers after an internal promotion.

I talk about why being likeable won't be enough to earn their support. How the balance of power has shifted, and why people start managing what they let you see now that you control their pay and their career prospects. I also discuss how to work out what each person actually wants, using what you already know about them from years of sitting alongside them.

Office Politics, Unpacked gives senior managers and directors honest guidance on the human side of leadership: influence, visibility, stakeholder dynamics, and the unwritten rules that decide who gets ahead.

Being called reliable, dependable, or a safe pair of hands sounds like a compliment. At senior level, it often isn't.

In this episode, executive coach Kris Verlé explains why the reliable label creates a self-imposed glass ceiling, why so many senior managers are making it worse without realising it, and what you need to start doing differently to change how you're seen.

It comes down to three things: visibility, conflict, and point of view. Each one is a gap in your record that decision-makers notice, even when they don't say so out loud.

If you're a senior manager who works hard, delivers consistently, and still feels overlooked, this episode is for you.

Office Politics, Unpacked covers the unwritten rules of organisational life that you won't find in a leadership manual. Hosted by Kris Verlé, executive coach and former political advisor and lobbyist.