Virtual Leadership: Tips To Leading and Managing Remote Teams
Has managing people gotten even tougher the past two years or what? The pandemic wreaked havoc on everything work-related, leading us to the place we are now – figuring out how to be better virtual leaders while managing hybrid/remote work teams.
The current global situation means managers across the world are in some version of remote working, and many employees and managers alike are struggling to adapt to this new way of life.
At the same time, it looks like our work environments are going to stay this way, with Gartner reporting that 74% of companies plan to shift some of their employees to remote working permanently after COVID-19.
Back in 2020, companies such as REI, Square, Twitter and Google announced plans for long-term or permanent remote working, and moving into 2022 it seems like others are joining the list every single day.
In this post, I talk about virtual leadership and and share tips to successfully manage a remote team.
Keys to Mastering virtual leadership
Working remotely means we’ve lost those micro-moments where teams are built and bonded. We can no longer have casual conversations before a meeting starts or in the hallways, and there’s a lot that suffers because of this innate disconnect.
Yet, it is possible to translate your in-person leadership skills into virtual skills, so that you and your team can settle into a new normal when it comes to delivering great work. It just takes a bit of intention and conscientiousness.
My guess is mastering virtual leadership is going to be the #1 critical agenda item of all companies moving forward. Without strong leadership that can maintain an impact remotely, a company will find it incredibly difficult to have a business culture that’s productive, collaborative, and able to succeed in this ever-changing world.
Let’s start with a few basics when it comes to managing a team remotely.
What is virtual leadership?
In an obvious definition, virtual leadership is managers doing their thing away from an official office environment. Teams are managed via a remote working environment vs coming into the office daily. Just like traditional leadership behaviors, virtual leaders focus on the exact same things with an added focus on motivating employees and helping them find a rhythm and effectiveness to delivering their work while working somewhat alone and from afar.
Virtual leaders have been thrown somewhat of a wrench in their management game as things aren’t face-to-face anymore. As such, virtual leaders need a different skill set when it comes to the way they communicate, delegate, motivate, and so on.
For all these reasons and more, this is why I say this is the most critical thing a company must figure out in 2022 and beyond.
The importance of virtual leadership
As a manager, you must figure out your own virtual leadership game. What needs to shift in the way you operate? Where do you need to be stronger in the way you manage your team? What isn’t working for the team and how can you improve it?
I can’t express the importance of mastering your virtual leadership skills. With the Great Resignation at hand, it’s almost as if managers are running out of time to optimize how they manage their people to keep them from leaving.
You already know this, but it bears repeating - How you lead is directly related to retention rate. Gallup tells us that every year – employees leave their jobs a high majority of the time due to their manager. Remote workers who become disengaged, frustrated due to lack of communication or clarity, unchallenged due to unclear expectations or disconnected from their co-workers and teams are less likely to stay.
Ok, so what’s it going to take to help you get stronger in your virtual leadership skills? Let’s talk about a few:
1. Communication (duh)
2. Empathy and Trust
3. Effective Remote/Team Tools
4. Collaboration and Maintaining Productivity
5. Injecting Fun and Fostering Team Spirit
Communication
I listed this number one because I truly believe it is NUMBER ONE in the level of importance when it comes to mastering virtual leadership.
When folks are remote and communicating from a distance, there’s a lot more room for misunderstandings when you don’t have the benefit of tone, facial expressions, and body language to help you decipher what someone means when there’s any ambiguity.
I share this stat in my manager training and leadership coaching all the time, whether its virtual training or in-person training – 93% of what is communicated to a person to help them understand what you are saying comes from body language and vocal expression. This makes it tough on a phone call or a video call when cameras are off and nearly impossible via email/text/IM.
That means there’s a really high chance of having miscommunications if you and the folks on your virtual team are not excellent communicators. In a normal office environment, communications should be clear and concise. Remotely? Even more so.
Start by making it a habit to audit your communication on a frequent basis. One way to do this is by incorporating a few questions at communication junctures (before you hit send on an email, for example) Questions like:
Am I being clear and succinct?
Am using any wiggle words – ones that can be easily misinterpreted? (for example, they – who is they and is the they you are thinking of the same they the other person will think of?)
Is this the right mode of communication for this conversation?
Empathy and Trust
Here’s the scariest piece of research I’ve read - it says, “virtual teammates are 2.5 times more likely to perceive mistrust, incompetence, broken commitments, and bad decision making with distant colleagues than those who are co-located.” Whaaa?!
Two and a half times more likely to perceive ill will on remote colleagues than if folks were working together onsite! Wow. If that doesn’t scream a need for more empathy and trust on a team, I’m not sure what does.
For managers, building empathy and developing trust in and among their team is the game changer when it comes to having success with a remote or hybrid team. The key here is to be intentional with these two skills vs. letting them develop in a passive way.
Check-in not just about their daily workload, but also about how they are doing personally and mentally. Burnout is rampant since the pandemic started and a manager has the important job of using check-ins to help monitor the mental status of their team. Let them know that you see them as a person, not just an employee.
When you lead with empathy, you create an element of humanity in an otherwise detached virtual environment. When you delegate and give autonomy to get work done, you curate a trusting space for people to get their work done. Both these efforts work to reduce the friction that comes along with a remote or hybrid job.
Effective remote/team tools
The success of transitioning to working from home was partly based on the fact that virtual leaders had an excess of technology at their disposal. Between Teams, Zoom, and all the other software tools, managers kept the communication lines open with somewhat ease.
The key is to tap into the right tool at the right time.
Instant messaging. Programs like Slack and Google Chat are best for quick communication needs, like checking project statuses, asking a short question, or other brief conversations. If you are typing paragraphs into IM, that’s your clue to it’s not the right tool. Remember, the more written words on a page without vocal tones or body language to go with it, the more room there is for misinterpretation.
Video. Video saved the day for us in 2020 and still it proves to be the medium of choice for most companies. Seeing a face and being able to see body language and read emotions is critical to team communication, although managers need to be cognizant of when videos on is most impactful and when videos off is equally productive. However powerful it is to communicate via video conference, keep in mind that Zoom fatigue is real and your team may need a break from non-stop video meetings.
Scheduling or Project Management. When you can’t poke your head over the side of your cubicle to check on a project, having effective project management software becomes crucial among a team. If it is clear who is working on what and when it’s due, that’s a good place to start. There are endless choices when it comes to a scheduling program, so managers should audit if the one they have is still a good choice now that we’ve been remote for a while.
Collaboration and maintaining productivity
This may be one of the biggest challenges for managers who are virtually leading their team. How do you maintain momentum with people’s work and deliverables and foster a collaborative workspace when people aren’t all in the same room?
The conundrum comes up between meetings that are required for collaboration to happen and the potential for meeting burnout because people are in meetings all day! My 1 on 1 coaching clients often tell me they are meetings for 6-7 hours straight, after which they sit down to do their actual work.
Here are a few suggestions to help encourage collaboration and productivity:
Ask how your direct reports about their ideal work times and what shifts they need to make based on their home obligations (driving kids to and from school or taking their pet out for a walk a few times a day). Share this with the whole team.
Practice transparency in your 1-on-1 and team communications. Being honest about how things are going, being authentic and encouraging open conversations helps build trust.
Get really good at meeting management. Make it a goal to shave as much unproductive time out of meetings as possible. Start with using an opening statement like, “The purpose of this meeting is….” to align everyone right at the start and discourage getting off track.
Improve your ability to delegate without micromanaging. Checking in on employees every hour is not productive! Delegation is an art that takes practice, even the best managers want to know the work they assign is getting done – and this is difficult to track in a remote work environment. There’s more advice and tools on delegation in a training I did for managers HERE.
Nurture team spirit
This is your life folks! No one wants to spend it at home, isolated and detached from the energy of their team. As a team manager, you play a big part in curating the culture on your team, especially when it comes to engagement and a healthy team spirit.
Here are a few samples (which you may already be doing) to help cultivate the energy and enthusiasm of your team:
Create Teams or Slack channels to foster conversations around non-work topics, like pets, hobbies, kids, or side interests. This allows a bit of reprieve from thinking about work 24/7 and provides a casual place for people to bond.
Don’t forget about non-work-related team building activities, like a virtual happy hour or team lunch or in-person meet-ups when possible. A team becomes a stronger team when it can see, feel and strengthen its connections, and what we did a lot of in early 2020 we may be losing steam on moving into 2022.
Inject variety wherever you can. Have someone new run the weekly status, partner up people on a project differently than normal, schedule meetings for either 25 or 50 minutes, and consider organizing skip level meetings – adding an expected element to the workday. Monotony and sameness breed unenthusiastic employees and a manager needs to be working intently on mixing things up with the goal of adding energy to the team.
Acknowledge milestones with flair – birthdays, work anniversaries, new hires, and even more personal ones like a new pet or completing a personal project. When a team celebrates things, it helps to uplift and build on a positive team environment.
Encourage and enforce (with care!) rejuvenation time. The boundaries between work and home got very blurred and the potential for burnout has skyrocketed over the past 2 years. Make sure your team knows the priority of scheduled time off and role model what taking a vacation without checking email constantly looks like.
Managing a successful remote team takes patience and practice
There are a lot of skills to successfully manage a remote or hybrid team. Just like Rome, you can’t build them all in a day: it’s an ongoing process that takes a lot of time and patience to get right.
Be flexible with yourself and your team as you all learn to master remote and hybrid work. Be willing to change your approach as the needs of your team evolve; Everyone is learning as they go and there is always room to optimize how things are going. Keep asking questions and checking in both individually with your direct reports and together as a team and keep evolving your leadership skills to adapt to this continually changing environment.
It’s a whole new world when it comes to mastering virtual leadership, but one thing I do know – You got this!
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About The Author
For the past two decades, Cecilia Gorman has helped advertising agencies and other creatively-minded companies fix costly communication and productivity issues by teaching managers how to become better connectors, motivators, and leaders. Cecilia is the author of Always Believe In Better, creator of the digital learning course for managers—Manager Boot Camp, and co-founder of the global training and support community for working women—Empowership.
Interested in growing your skills as a manager? Check out how Manager Boot Camp might help.