Async Leadership As a Skill
A reflection from Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
This is part of the "Meller Highlights" series with reflections from my personal book highlights.
One thing I’ve been trying to do every day is to pick one idea from my reading and think about how to actually apply it.
Not just understand it in theory, but find a way to live it a little.
Today’s highlight: Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson
The big transition with a distributed workforce is going from synchronous to asynchronous collaboration. Not only do we not have to be in the same spot to work together, we also don’t have to work at the same time to work together.
Most leaders got used to seeing collaboration as something that happens live.
Meetings, calls, shared calendars. If we’re not talking together at the same time, then we’re not really working together. That mindset is still everywhere.
But things have changed. And they keep changing. And here’s the thing: working remotely is not the real shift.
The deeper shift is working asynchronously. That means people don’t have to respond instantly.
They don’t have to be online at the same time. The work keeps moving, without needing real-time conversations all day long.
This might sound obvious, but it’s not how most teams operate. They go remote, but still behave like they’re in the same building. Same hours. Same pressure to reply fast. Same number of meetings. And then they wonder why people feel tired, disconnected, or stuck.
The transition to async isn’t just about tools.
It’s about trust.
It’s about clarity.
And it’s a big shift in leadership style.
Because if you’re leading a team that’s not in the same place or timezone, you need to get better at writing. Better at explaining clearly. Better at defining what success looks like without being there to guide every step.
You also need to stop measuring presence. It doesn’t matter if someone replies fast or shows up to every check-in.
What matters is what they deliver, how they think, and how they move things forward without needing you all the time.
This kind of leadership is less intrusive. More structured. You spend more time setting things up well so others can run on their own. Less micromanaging. More autonomy.
It’s hard at first. You’ll want to jump in. To answer fast. To keep the chat alive.
But if you’re always online, always present, always reacting, you’re training your team to depend on your speed, not their thinking.
Async forces you to slow down a little, so others can speed up on their own.
It also forces better questions. Instead of “Can we jump on a call?”, you start asking “What problem are we trying to solve?” Instead of daily standups just to say you showed up, you create documents that explain where things are and what needs attention.
The best part?
This doesn’t kill collaboration. It improves it.
It gives people time to think. It gives space for deeper work. It respects different time zones, different energy levels, and different work rhythms.
So if you want to grow as a leader now, especially in a distributed setup, build this skill.
Create systems where people can work independently, communicate without always interrupting, and think before they speak.
Have you worked on a team that got async collaboration right? Or maybe felt the pain when it didn’t? If you feel like sharing your experience, I’d love to hear it.
This is your tip today, inspired by one of my highlights from Remote by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson.
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