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The work landscape has been radically reshaped in recent years as remote work and geographically dispersed teams have become the new normal. Today's leaders must master the art of virtual leadership, an essential skill for thriving in this evolving environment.
The pandemic and lockdowns may have set the stage, but the shift toward a predominantly distributed workforce is here for the long haul. It's time for forward-thinking leaders to embrace this change and fine-tune their approaches to leading from a distance.
In this article, we'll delve into virtual leadership, offering top tips and best practices to help you forge strong connections with your team and make a meaningful impact, regardless of your physical distance.
Why is virtual leadership challenging?
The conventional office environment is gradually fading, creating a new era of remote and hybrid work models. As a result, leaders must evolve to excel in an increasingly digital workspace.
Adaptability is one of humanity's greatest strengths and has been crucial to survival. However, as social beings, we face unique challenges in a virtual world where many of the nuances associated with face-to-face interactions are altered or lost.
For example, compared to in-person management, remote leadership needs to deal with added obstacles for building trust, promoting collaboration, sustaining motivation, and fostering soft skills. While these aspects are more readily addressed through face-to-face interactions, leaders must adapt and overcome these hurdles in a virtual context.
Losing the ease of in-person communication
In the virtual realm, communication undoubtedly poses the most significant challenge for leaders. It's too easy to miscommunicate, leading to misunderstandings and confusion compared to in-person interactions.
Face-to-face leadership offers the advantage of more effectively conveying emotions, building rapport, fostering team unity, sensing group dynamics and guiding people on a shared journey. In-person communication tends to establish trust more quickly, thanks to the subtle cues and nuances often lost in the digital world.
Five qualities for leadership in the digital age
As we navigate the digital age, leaders must cultivate specific qualities and skills to overcome the unique challenges of virtual work and remote collaboration.
So, what are the top five attributes essential for effective leadership in this new era?
1. Communication skills
In the digital age, leaders of distributed teams must excel in communication.
It's one of the essential virtual leadership skills, extending beyond traditional public speaking or writing abilities. This skill involves selecting the most appropriate channels for various messages, such as chat software, live video, recorded video, email, or newsletters, and tailoring the distribution accordingly. The choice depends on the message's importance and its intended audience.
Regardless of the channel, the essential communication skill a digital-age leader must have is communicating with absolute clarity. Doing so minimizes the possibility of misinterpretation or confusion, which is more prevalent in remote organizations.
Specifically, you need to:
- Ensure absolute clarity. Misunderstandings or confusion are more common in remote work settings, and clarity is the way to minimize them. Leaders should strive for simplicity and conciseness and provide necessary background information when delivering messages.
- Offer feedback mechanisms. For live video conferences, leaders should enable attendees to ask questions verbally or in writing, with the latter option allowing follow-up responses after the event. For written messages, encouraging open replies is critical.
- Practice active listening. You need to pay extra attention to this aspect of communication, as it's easier to overlook recipients' needs when they are not physically present, unlike in face-to-face interactions.
2. Inclusive mindset as a priority
Remote leaders must prioritize inclusivity, ensuring no employee or team member feels excluded or overlooked.
Fully remote and hybrid teams are especially vulnerable to communication breakdowns, as team members may sometimes be in different locations or unavailable at the same time. Ad hoc conversations or decisions may leave out essential contributors.
Hybrid teams, in particular, may experience issues when in-office members engage in impromptu discussions without including remote colleagues. This oversight harms morale and may exclude valuable insights and perspectives from critical conversations and decisions.
Digital-age leaders must remain vigilant in these situations and cultivate a culture that values the inclusion of all team members, regardless of their location or online presence. It's essential to ensure that no one feels like a second-class citizen and every virtual team member has equal opportunities to participate in relevant activities, as they would in a traditional office setting.
3. Trust
A virtual leader can't physically observe their teams working throughout the day in a virtual environment. This lack of visibility can cause discomfort for some leaders who are used to seeing their teams in action.
It feels very industrial age to make this point, but it's a reality even today. It's also something that remote leaders must deal with. Not dealing with it results in a toxic culture where employees feel they must display an online presence every minute of every day, which is silly. It's why a market exists for hardware devices and software tools that keep a person's computer mouse active, so their online status is always active rather than idle or away. How sad! 😔
Instead, a leader must flip this mentality on its head and make trusting their virtual teams and people the default setting. Of course, this is easier said than done, but creating positive and effective digital-age working environments is imperative to flourish.
Trust is a two-way street, and virtual leaders must also earn the trust of their teams. They should use a leadership style that sets clear expectations, communicates openly, and demonstrates transparency. Leaders can foster trust in a remote work setting by being authentic, consistently providing feedback, and offering recognition.
4. Focusing on outcome-based results
Remote leaders can create a friendly and trusting environment by concentrating on outcome-based results rather than measuring output.
Output refers to what someone produces, while the outcome represents the result of that output. For example, in software engineering, the output might be lines of code written, and the outcome is the solution those lines generate. The key here is to prioritize the solution's effectiveness rather than the number of lines written.
Tara Bethell's article, Managing Remotely: Shifting from Time to Outcome Metrics, perfectly captures a digital age leader's mindset on this subject:
"What I do care about are results. Are my employees delivering on their projects on time and with great quality? Are they responsive to clients and coworkers? If the answers are yes, it doesn't matter how they structure their day at home." — Tara Bethell
Remote leaders should encourage an outcome-based results mindset across their teams. What truly matters is the result, not where, when, or how the work is done.
5. Championing a work-life balance
In remote work settings, where boundaries between personal and professional lives can blur, leaders must advocate for a healthy work-life balance and set an example.
Although leaders are just regular people like everyone else, their teams often look up to them as role models. This can lead to unhealthy habits to please management, such as working longer hours or attending back-to-back meetings. Remote leaders must address this by exemplifying a healthy work-life balance and encouraging their teams to follow suit.
Here are some ways to promote work-life balance for remote teams:
- Encourage regular breaks and exercise.
- Refrain from scheduling meetings too early or too late.
- Challenge those who consistently work long hours to log off and rest.
- Foster a flexible working culture focused on results, not rigid schedules.
- Provide resources and coaching that support a balanced lifestyle.
- Emphasize the importance of well-being and a healthy mindset.
- Check-in regularly with team members to monitor their well-being and work-life balance.
- Intervene when you notice someone struggling to maintain a healthy balance.
By prioritizing work-life balance, remote leaders can create a supportive and productive environment for their teams to thrive.
Six tips for leading virtual teams
If you value leadership development, here are six in-depth tips to help you navigate the challenges and maintain a high-performing team in the digital age:
1. Leverage various digital tools
Invest in a comprehensive suite of digital tools for communication, collaboration, and organization. For instance, use Miro for online whiteboards, Trello for project management, Slack or Microsoft Teams for team communication, Google Docs or Office365 for collaborative document creation, and Float for team planning. These tools will help streamline your team's remote work processes and enhance productivity.
2. Encourage camera use during video calls
Foster a culture of turning cameras on during video calls to facilitate better communication and understanding among team members. Seeing facial expressions, body language, and mannerisms is crucial for effective communication and human connection, particularly when resolving conflicts. Normalize casual attire and the presence of pets or children during calls to make remote workers feel comfortable and accepted.
3. Schedule breaks between meetings
Instead of the standard 30- and 60-minute meeting durations, set virtual meetings for 25 and 50 minutes, allowing for brief intervals between back-to-back meetings. This demonstrates respect for people's time and promotes mental well-being by preventing burnout from endless meetings.
4. Promote inclusivity in meetings
Record important meetings so that team members who couldn't attend can catch up on critical discussions and decisions. Actively engage quieter participants during group video calls by inviting them to share their thoughts or follow up afterward. This ensures that everyone's opinions are valued and considered and that meets are inclusive.
5. Adopt asynchronous communication
At Float, we encourage efficient and flexible communication that doesn't rely on real-time meetings or immediate responses. Choosing async options instead of the synchronous approach enables team members in different time zones to collaborate more effectively and reduces the pressure to be constantly available.
As Steve Glaveski wrote in his post The Five Levels of Remote Work, "Companies that truly practice asynchronous communication have stepped out of the industrial revolution and no longer conflate presence with productivity or hours with output, as one might on the factory floor."
Leaders should also practice the no hello rule by providing context in their messages, so employees don't feel anxious when receiving a new message.
6. Organize virtual social events
Set aside dedicated time for virtual social events to help your team bond and relax outside of work tasks. Casual catch-ups, online games, or other team building and interactive activities (e.g., draw battle tournaments) can create a sense of camaraderie and connection among remote team members. This helps foster a positive work environment and supports team morale.
Be a leader in action
Effective virtual leadership requires a shift in mindset, a willingness to embrace new technologies and strategies, and a laser focus on building and maintaining relationships in a digital age. By developing these skills, leaders can create a virtual environment enabling their teams to work collaboratively and productively, regardless of location.
"Companies that truly practice asynchronous communication have stepped out of the industrial revolution and no longer conflate presence with productivity or hours with output, as one might on the factory floor." — Steve Glaveski
If you're ready to take your remote team to the next level, follow the advice above to become a digital-age leader that fosters an inclusive, innovative, and high-performing team!
