If the last couple of years have taught us anything about leadership, it’s that the way we once led isn’t so fit for purpose in a hybrid or completely remote team environment.  Yes, we need to be flexible, adaptable and keeping up with change at rates like never before.  And then there are the fundamental things that, if we aren’t doing, will make it harder to adapt, lead through change and truly engage with our people.  The things that if we aren’t doing them at a basic level, will erode trust. The trust you have in your team and the trust that you have in yourself to be able to lead effectively.

Below I hit the high points for what you can be doing to get the basics right in a hybrid or remote team environment.

1. Ensure alignment with clear directional objectives

Ensure your team are pulling in the same direction, no matter where they are located, and that everyone in the team is on the same page regarding the:

• Purpose of the team (what is the team’s reason for being?)
• Shared team objectives and how they fit with the bigger strategic picture.
• Individual objectives that everyone is working towards in achieving the team objectives.

When we are clear and transparent about these three directional levels, your people will know where and how they need to be investing their energy.  Importantly, our experience shows that it also creates a collaborative and connective team dynamic that is so essential for success in teams that are virtual or hybrid in nature.  Be brave enough to ask your team how they feel about sharing their individual objectives; introducing this level of transparency can help reduce the psychological distance and increase collaboration when we realise that our actions, no matter where we are located, may be able to contribute to the success of a colleague and therefore the team.  Track and discuss all team objectives openly and regularly – they are the binding factor of your team – so use them to your advantage.


2. Set Your Team Up for Success

When we don’t trust our people to get on with things in a remote or hybrid environment, this can often say more about us than our people.  We’ll talk more about us a bit further on, but when it comes to our team, we can remove doubt by applying a couple of simple strategies:

• Equip your team with the skills and team systems to work remotely.  On one level, it’s helping the team learn how to be a hybrid team, and then there is understanding capability of individual team members to work remotely.  So focus on both levels.  Develop your team through simple but effective teaming activities that allow you to co-create the rules of engagement (like a Team Charter) and define the team governance for communication and collaboration – what does good look like for our team?  At the same time observe your team members individually.  Who is thriving, who is doing ok, who needs help.  Identify development opportunities, whether it be through buddying up, mentoring or formal courses.  

 

• Don’t assume everyone is comfortable with working remotely.  Use your 1:1’s to dive into how your team members are really doing on the days you aren’t together in the office.  Or if your team has transitioned to being completely virtual, learning how this sits with individual team members.  You may need to become a ‘mentor manager’ to support them in their transition and their effectiveness.  

3. Set Yourself Up for Success

• Understand your own mindset.  You were once leading a team that was co-located – so how are you with the fact that you are now leading in a hybrid or completely virtual environment?  Do you trust your team to do their job when no one is watching?  Even when they are capable, confident and have the right supporting structures in place?  If you haven’t done your own piece of reflection on this, you may be leading at only half your potential effectiveness, and this will be impacting your approach to how you get your own job done as well as how you lead, engage, and inspire your team.  

 

• Adapt your approach.  Similar to the above; the skills, techniques and tactics we use as leaders in a co-located environment will need to be different for a team that is spread out.  Little things like consciously make time to connect with your team members will make a difference, as will using effective delegation.  Your ability to communicate well and consistently across more than one medium is also a must-have capability.

The final word…Reflect

Carve out time each week to reflect on the team and yourself.  This is a practice that is fast becoming a non-negotiable for leaders in a hybrid world that helps us stay in touch with reality, ourselves and our team.  Reflect on yourself and your team through the lens of the points in this article.  What’s working well? What could be better?  Then build this discipline into your week, because leading to get things done through others is the big part of your job…and how we do this is changing faster than ever.​

A longitudinal study by Google over a period of two years shed some further light on this.  They found that team performance across their business was less about who they hired, and much more heavily related to the environment they worked within and how this enabled (or not) team members to work together constructively. More specifically, this was about the environment created by the leader to build trust among team members, and to allow them to put forward ideas and have healthy dialogue without conflict.  The Google findings and subsequent publications identified four key elements critical to team collaboration and ultimately high performance: 

1. Psychological safety – essentially, this is the ability for team members to speak their mind (respectfully, of course), float their ideas, and take measured risk without fear of reproach.  A team environment where members feel psychologically safe is now consistently recognized as the most critical element in driving high performance. Such an environment is a prerequisite for innovation and autonomy.  Physiologically this can be explained by the fact that when we feel criticized or judged, the body’s ‘fight or flight’ response is activated by the amygdala (the part of our brain that controls reasoning and decision making), rendering us unable to respond rationally and think laterally – let alone strategically.

2. Trust between team members – closely linked to the culture of safety within the team, the strength of the relationships between its members is key to its overall performance.  Teams with high trust depend upon each other, support each other, and ultimately collaborate to achieve a common goal; this last point being very important.  The distinction here is that high performing teams are more focussed on the overall team’s outcomes than their individual results because the inherent trust between team members serves to override the potential human inclination to compete with other team members in order to prove our own worth.

3. Role and goal clarity – it stands to reason that the team must have a clear understanding of its ‘north star’ in order to deliver exemplary results.  This also means that team members must have absolute clarity of their own accountabilities and how each member of the team contributes equally to its overall success.  This belief that each member of the team is equally vital to its success is another key element driving genuine collaboration.

4. Autonomy and purpose – as identified by Daniel Pink in his book “Drive” it is the intrinsic motivators of role autonomy, mastery and purpose that have the greatest impact on human performance.  Pink found that as a collective, we are motivated far more by our connection to our work and how it contributes some way to the greater good, than by extrinsic rewards such as salary, bonuses, and recognition awards – although we must clearly feel we are compensated fairly and equitably for this to be the case.  The confidence to effectively exercise our own skills in the team environment, our sense of autonomy, is also directly related to the levels of trust between team members and with the leader.  

In these complex and ever uncertain times, the role of the leader in creating clarity for the team regarding strategy, direction and priorities cannot be underestimated.  But even more important is the leader’s role in connecting team members, building rapport, interdependency, and trust.  Especially when team members cannot connect physically in natural and organic ways as perhaps previously taken for granted.  The current work context requires leaders to role model the behaviours which engender trust: authenticity, consistency, empathy, honesty – and personal vulnerability.  This is the bedrock for establishing a psychologically safe team culture where people can generate ideas together and truly perform to their highest levels. ​

Updated from the original post in 2014
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At its heart, good teaming is about creating the space for a bunch of different people to build rapport – to get to know each other; their likes, dislikes, where they’ve worked before, what excites them, their personality.  All of these factors, if explored will provide your team with a level of connection that will build rapport and contribute to more effective team work.  After all, building rapport is about establishing sameness, and reducing differences.  If you can achieve this, then you will go some way to having a connected team; but you won’t have a team that has achieved a level of closeness required to perform above and beyond expectations – both for themselves and for each other.  ​

​Effective teaming goes beyond this and allows the group to connect on a values level around their reason for being. If you can create the opportunity for this to occur then you are setting both the team, and the team members up for long-term success.

​So how do you do this, especially in an era of remote working when the opportunities for coming together are limited?  Well, here's the key.  

I’ve worked with many teams and groups struggling to be effective in all sorts of situations; in matrix organisations, joint ventures, projects, leadership groups and teams spread across many countries.  And the one thing they often have in common is a lack of alignment on their purpose - their reason for being.  

What they hadn’t done when forming the team, was that critical piece of work that ultimately sets the team up for success.  They hadn’t taken the time to ask themselves the questions that help define purpose… "why are we here – what is the specific purpose of our team?"  This question is an opportunity for the team to be fully aligned around what this group has been brought together to achieve, and to be clear on the expectations that may exist of their team from other groups, such as the leadership levels above or other stakeholder groups.   ​More importantly, when working remotely if you ensure your team has a crystal clear understanding of their collective purpose, and how their roles contribute to achieving the team purpose, then you are providing some of the most fundamental aspects of employee engagement. Clear direction. Role clarity. Sense of Purpose.  In a face to face environment these are important.  In a remote environment they are critical.  

Language is symbolic, and it helps to define who we are.  When different people come together to a team, they bring with them their own language defined by who they are.  This can be defined by factors such as their race, gender, their life experiences, their knowledge and their skills.  When you bring two groups together, like a joint venture, or multiple groups in a project consortium then the variables are increased and the issue of common language extends far beyond their mother tongue or the use of technical or organisational jargon – that is merely the tip of the iceberg.

One of the greatest inhibitors to sustainable teaming are the beliefs held by individuals that they have to hold on to who they are and what defines them.  We see this more often in matrix structures, joint ventures and consortiums where more energy is invested in defending their patch rather than relaxing the boundaries and collaborating. Creating a common language is about defining how the group can work and succeed together without having to give up who they are.  This means your process needs to provide a safe way of exploring this despite the virtual environment; and this will come back to how you frame the process up front, and the demeanour and style of the process facilitator.  My suggestion is that as the leader of the team about to undertake a process of virtual teaming, that you connect with your team individually to share the intent, and your desire that they contribute as fully as they feel comfortable.  Also encourage questions on the process, the intent or the content on your team sharing platform so that there is a level of transparency and demonstrated safety that it's ok to be curious and contribute without retribution.  This of course means that you as the leader also need to be up for a bit of vulnerability and openness.

An extension of this in the 'new normal' is agreeing the best platforms that will support effective communication.  In the past it was assumed that we could just come together or have spontaneous water cooler chats.  Thought needs to go into a group commitment around the best platforms to enable their new commitment to each other.

We’ve been supporting the development of geographically spread teams for years; global project teams, functional teams spread throughout a region, and teams located in one office whilst the manager is in a different city.  And now we have the enforced remote working team; the team that signed up for jobs in an office, with plenty of human interaction and opportunities for spontaneous connections, and who now find themselves working remotely.  And not through choice.

Between our experiences pre-Covid 19 and what we've been through in these past 6 months, we are seeing that there are teams who are really struggling with the shift to remote working, some who are hit and miss, and around a third who are really getting it right and thriving.  Below are the five things the thriving remote teams have in common, and do really well that we can all be learning from.

1. Get aligned on your new operating principles 
The successful remote teams we've worked with understand that how your team will be working together remotely is going to be different to face to face. So how we collaborate, communicate and resolve conflict will all need to be done differently.  The risk is that we each have our own ways of perceiving how those elements should happen, so the role of the charter is to do the one single thing that can set your team up for success the most.  Make sure the team is aligned in a very clear and explicit way on how they think they should be working together in this ‘new normal’.   All teams should go through this process – from the C-suite down.  And the good news is that we have continued to work with teams and functions across many industries who understand this, and have been proactive with resetting the ways of working.  The ones who are thriving have completed this step, and are doing a combination of the following steps.

2. Optimise how you work between teams
Work still needs to get done between teams – and for companies who have struggled, this is one of the forgotten aspects of converting a face to face business to a virtual business as the focus has tended to be more on how ‘a’ team works.  So there is a piece of work that successful virtual teams have been doing that simply mirrors the principles of the first point, and provides a means for the leaders of teams to connect, share and be clear on expectations regarding priorities, eg; what business objectives are more important or how shared resources should be deployed.  It also allows the team leaders to create some rules of engagement for how collaboration, communication and conflict resolution happens between teams.  This is underpinned by the team charter, and the common feedback we get is that it allows guesswork to be replaced by real work!

3. Train and be coached for working in a virtual team
One team we have worked with in particular identified early on that working and leading in a virtual team would require a different set of skills and mindset.  Their ability to understand and work with uncertainty and ambiguity, manage stakeholders remotely, build and maintain relationships and collaborate all require different development to that in face to face structures.  There's no point training to ride a bicycle when you will be riding a motorbike!  And this applies to everyone.  Good remote working training combines behavioural skills with a focus on connection at a values and relational level.  But we also know that on a deeper level, there are other factors that enhance or reduce our ability to be effective in a remote team; our confidence, need for recognition, cultural background and personality (eg; rigid vs flexible).  Our rate of coaching has remained steady as there are leaders who have self-identified (or the company has identified for them!) that working  and/or leading remotely doesn't fit who they are (yet!).  But teams who have leveraged the capability development provided by their organisations, or those who have taken it upon themselves to get development for their teams, are doing well.  And it is usually combined with the next point.

4. Things Change - so talk, review and make change if needed
This point comes into its own in these times of rapid change.  The really good virtual teams look for opportunities to reinforce a culture of collaboration by using this as an opportunity to come together and to work on the team, and continually update their preferred ways of working.  And when things are changing so quickly, you can’t afford not to be reviewing the way you work together.  We are working with a handful of leadership teams, who are using this step as a an opportunity to pull out of the day to day management stuff, to take a helicopter view of their teams and functions and to make smarter and more strategic decisions.  If you don't have an Agile mindset in you company, this is a nice step to implement that will help you move in that direction.  The best thing about this step?  It enables proactive conversations, that enable a more controlled response to change in a highly volatile and uncertain business environment.  We are working with one leadership team who is working in an extremely volatile environment - on top of Covid-19 factors - and it is the ritual of regular team catch ups, in person, that is allowing them to extract themselves on a fortnightly basis to focus on themselves, the business and their people, in a more objective manner.

5. Culture Matters. 
Successful remote teams are recalibrating their team culture to reflect the remote working environment. The really effective remote teams that I’ve seen acknowledge that the culture that got them here, may not get them there.  A simple example of this is the shared thinking around how open and approachable we should be.  In a face to face environment it may be ok that a new team member needs to work a little harder show how they fit in and being slightly more closed between teams may be acceptable.  But in a remote setting that unspoken way of thinking won’t fly.  One function we have worked with recently has decided to make their culture more explicit, and part of that was through the creation of a new team charter. But this function, also understood that culture is needed to drive the execution of strategy which is a critical point when we consider that plenty of strategies and plans have been revised and in some cases completely re-written.  So, it makes sense that even at the level of the virtual team, a conversation be had around how the culture may need to be shifted to help them execute a little differently on their team objectives.   

In January I wrote about the importance of taking the time to engage with your people.  And that was just before our world was tipped upside down by Covid-19!

Upon reflection, the suggestions for taking the time to engage with your people are probably more relevant today, even though it feels as though one hand is tied behind your back in terms of freedom to connect.  But it is still very possible to maintain the quality of your relationships despite the enforced distance; in fact ask any leader who has successfully led a high performing virtual team and they will gladly tell you it's possible.

Now, we know that not everyone signed up for being a remote leader, and I'm sure there are some who find it difficult enough being a leader of people when you are in the same place!  We've all been there at some point, so you aren't alone.  But the reality is you're not alone now either, because we are here, only a phone call or email away for a chat and the opportunity to pick our brains.  You have the experience of the Ponte Valle team at your fingertips to help guide you through this interesting leadership time.

But there are some things you can be doing right now that are reflective of that article I wrote back in January.  They are:

Value your 1:1’s with your team and what they represent.  You can still have meaningful 1:1's with your team even though there is distance.  In fact right now, your ability to maintain your 1:1's and to have meaningful conversations may be a lifesaver for your team members as much as it is for you.

Be interested in your team members.  Not everyone will be coping well with social-isolation, and we know that for some people the ability to connect with others is critical; not just because they may be a 'people-person' and more extroverted, but because they may also be prone to depression when they are cut off from social connection.  At our very core all of us like to be acknowledged for for 'who' we are and not just 'what' we are doing.  So make your 1:1's or team member touch points frequent, and really do check in on them - ask how they are doing - don't just ask what they are doing.

Create opportunities for connection in the team.  This point remains the same.  Create those opportunities that allow the team to come together and share on a values level. Most people are comfortable sharing about the things that give them enjoyment; and this is the level of sharing that removes the superficial layers and boundaries and opens the door to genuine connection. 

If you’d like to know more about the ways in which you can build a more engaging 'remote' leadership style, view our Engaging Leadership Resources, or join our next Lead 2 'Remotely' Engage leadership course.  

​The second step in building a successful project team for matrix environments is engaging the rest of the project team on the output of what the leadership group agreed in the above step.  If there is a project team charter workshop or a kick off meeting taking place that involves the wider project team, this is the ideal place to create this alignment.  This process is about presenting the key behaviours and mindset that the leadership group identified and asking the wider team to define what this means in ‘real world’ terms.  Below is an extract from a recent project team charter that had a session focusing on behaviours and mindset:

Collaboration Example: