If you weren’t leading a virtual or hybrid team before the pandemic, chances are that you are now. Circumstances throughout the pandemic have forced a cohort of reluctant leaders into leading virtual teams. However, following the pandemic, virtual and hybrid teams have stabilized at an unprecedented pace. The virtual work environment is here, and it’s not going away soon – if ever. It’s time that leaders transform their skills and styles along with it.
Virtual environments pose new challenges for leaders, many of whom have had to adapt to them quickly and without warning. According to Deloitte, virtual teaming affords many benefits but presents a higher risk of misalignment and lack of collaboration, which may damage team trust and employee engagement. Having learned this lesson the hard way, leaders have watched millions US workers quit their jobs over the last few years. These employees demand new skills from their leaders, such as empathy, appreciation, and connection.
However, many confused and overwhelmed leaders are responding to these demands by repeating common mistakes from the past, such as:
- Managing through command and control
- Mandating excessive random or routine check-ins and meetings
- Requiring cameras be on throughout the workday
- Overloading team members
- Lacking empathy and compassion for team members’ circumstances, challenges, etc.
Leaders are overwhelmed and unprepared for the virtual workplace and must adapt and reskill. Knowing that new skills will be needed well into the future, securing virtual leadership capabilities is crucial – not just now – but likely for some time to come. So, what skills and mindsets do leaders need to successfully lead in a virtual environment? Deloitte has isolated eight behaviors that leaders need to demonstrate to set their teams up for success in a virtual environment:
- Re-ignite team purpose & clarify roles
While often ignored, revisiting your purpose and team roles is vital to virtual teams and will drive direction and provide a sense of belonging. Ensure that your team knows its purpose both on an overall team level and a project level. The purpose and the principles you work by need to be crystal clear, understood by, and committed to by all team members. - Establish a new rhythm
Make new traditions. The first 30 days as a virtual team will determine how you work together for as long as the team lasts. Stand-ups, check-ins, and regular team meetings are examples of the recurrent activities you could host. Informal gatherings are invaluable to engagement and productivity, but they might not happen by themselves. Encourage people to be creative about how they meet. Deliberately decide what should and should not become a tradition for your team. - Track capacity & progress
It’s best to be extremely structured in prioritizing your team’s tasks. Especially as you go from physical to virtual, it is important to reassess what tasks are no longer relevant, are missing, or have suddenly become critical. Awareness of your team’s individual and collective capacity, while having a continuous overview of task progression is key to engagement and productivity. However, getting it right requires discipline and consistent use of technology. - Leverage technology to collaborate
70% of business professionals expect the use of online collaboration platforms to increase in the future. Virtual teams truly need to explore and incorporate technology into their normal workflows to succeed. Your new reality is virtual and technology will therefore be your eternal enabler. Overcome initial frustrations, and focus on designing seamless ways of working through technology. Mastering this can even speed up your existing business processes. - Be visible & check in frequently
Virtual distance can lower your team member’s trust by 83%, ability to innovate by 93%, and engagement by 80%. To counter this distance, make yourself available. Stay open-minded to the changing needs of each team member – listen and do what you can to accommodate. - Strategically over-communicate
Leaders often question how they should communicate with their teams virtually, which typically results in radio silence. However, there is no such thing as communicating too much when it comes to virtual leadership. “During these uncertain times, it’s critical that people know what’s going on more broadly in the organization. In the absence of physical ‘water cooler’ type conversations, It’s incumbent upon leaders to go beyond talking about the work their teams are doing and make sure they’re talking about what’s going on in the organization more broadly.” – Drew Bird, The EQ Development Group - Empower & promote self-leadership
Leading remotely presents a paradox, as you need to maintain a broad overview, but you cannot lead everything all at once. Instead, empower your team to take action and initiative to keep the wheels turning. By trusting your team, you give the green light to act fast and try out new things. As a result, you will see innovation emerge from new and perhaps unexpected places on your team. - Ensure well-being
The well-being of your team members is critical to their engagement. Yet, well-being is considerably challenged by the virtual nature of your team, requiring you to be more aware than ever to create the right conditions. Most aspects of your life quickly blend together in a blurry haze when working virtually. To prevent this, encourage your team members to set boundaries and conditions for their work.
The new virtual work world requires the courage to lead differently and with a different mindset. Leadership must accept this new reality and develop the human-centered mindsets and tech-savvy and empathetic leadership styles that employees will continue to demand. Many leaders are already mastering these skills. So must we if we want to secure and retain the best talent.