When I talk with my clients about outsourcing, or provide consultancy and answers to their questions, the assumption is always that they are required to be the boss, to manage their staff and to grow their business.

If you have been a reader of outsourcemadesimple.com for some time, you will know that one of the biggest philosophies that I have is to staff your weaknesses. It does not have to be the case that you are the manager of your team. After all, if management and leading a team is a weakness of yours, then staff someone to do that for you.

I have a manager on my staff that looks after my remote team for me, they share the same culture, the same time zone, and even the same language. This has helped to overcome many problems that I have encountered in working with a remote team.

Even if management is a skill that you possess, or leading a team is something you’ve had experience with, perhaps there are other logistics such as time zones that this can overcome. If you live in the United States and you employ remote workers in the Philippines, your time zones do not align as well as they do for me in Australia, and this was one of the reasons why I employ most of my team from the Philippines. The Philippines and Australia share a time difference of only two to three hours meaning when I start work mid morning, my team are starting work as well which makes it much easier to collaborate with.

Back to the original point, who said you have to be the boss? You don’t have to be the boss! If you have a passion to setup a business and use a remote team, you don’t have to possess the skills to manage that team . Find someone to do that for you, and leave you to work on not only what you are passionate about, but what you are good at .