For the first time in recent history, thanks to the pandemic, leaders of the world over are sharing the same impacts on the way they lead.  Dealing with the volatility of change, feeling largely the same way (exhausted), and being forced to embrace different ways of leading to drive engagement and at the same time remain relevant.  The Global Financial Crisis (GFC) was probably the last time we came close to this, but even then, we could still maintain social and business norms, and know that (if you still had a job) you could still head into the office.  But not every country was impacted by the GFC in the same way that all countries have been impacted by Covid. 

This is what makes this such a unique time in the world of leadership development right now.
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When I think of the soft skills that will be necessary for leaders to be effective this year as we transition to living and working alongside Covid, there are three that stand out for me. Depending on where you are reading this article you may need to make s​ome nuanced changes to what I’m sharing, but by and large, I do think these leadership skills should be making their way into the playbook of any corporate leadership development programs around the globe this year.
 

We need to be in touch with what’s going on inside of us and understand how our mindset and emotions may be impacting our decision-making and behaviours.  

Why is this important?  
The last two years have not been easy, and right now we are heading into 2022 leading the fatigued, when we ourselves can be counted amongst the fatigued and battle-weary.  It’s common knowledge that we don’t make the best decisions when we are tired, stressed or just not in the right headspace.  It’s up to us as leaders to firstly acknowledge that it’s ok to be feeling a bit tired (even the most self-aware leaders would be coming into 2022 with some residual fatigue!).  By making this acknowledgment internally, we are also making room for the same acknowledgment to be made amongst our team.  This is a conversation that probably needs to be had sooner rather than later…is your team doing ok?
 
Being in touch with our mental and physical well-being also means we can do something about it so we can be setting ourselves up for success.  There’s nothing selfish about this.  How can we be fully present for our people if we are running low on fuel and barely making it to the end of the day or week?  We can get in our own way on this front and inhibit our efforts to look after ourselves.  Sometimes it’s pride, other times we can be unnecessarily self-sacrificing or just poor at delegating.  Perhaps we just put ourselves second, whether that’s due to lower self-esteem, self-confidence, or other factors.  Whatever the reason, own it and be brave; do something about it.  Otherwise, the other factors below won’t be so easy to address.
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The last two years could be considered practice for this capability; and this year could be considered ‘game day’!  Before we transitioned to virtual and then hybrid ways of working it was taken for granted that we could more easily connect with our peers and team members and build relationships spontaneously and organically.  That doesn’t mean we were consistently good at it, but that was our norm.  

Now, we need to think about how we build relationships in a virtual world, where it is still normal not to have met your own manager, peers, or direct reports in person after many months.  It would be nice to think that building relationships virtually has become easier, maybe even natural for some, but we can’t assume that we have nailed it.  Because I can guarantee you that we haven’t.  This year we need to get good at creating rituals with each of our individual team members that allow them to feel recognised despite the physical distance.  (Have you checked out our Lead2Remotely Engage program?)

Rituals tailored to your individual team members creates the opportunity for trust to be built, and the space for genuine conversations and sharing.  Equally important are rituals for the whole team; moments when you come together to connect and share.  Rituals have always been important for building engaging relationships however it was seen as a ‘nice to have’…getting the job done always tended to be more important, especially in Anglo or Germanic cultures.   We can’t afford to keep this mindset; not if we want a genuinely engaged workforce in a virtual or hybrid world.  Creating rituals allows your people to feel connected with and to feel acknowledged.  And when it becomes a ‘business as usual’ practice, it creates a natural momentum in your relationship that leads to trust and a reduction in the psychological distance that we are always aiming for. 
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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.   

This closing paragraph was written in the original article, and it is truer today, than it was when it was written:

​Over the past couple of weeks, despite the Covid-19 impact on our world, many organisations are still going ahead with plans to build engaged and winning teams using virtual means rather than face to face.
 
And that is great news!  What this means is that there is still a mindset in organisations and amongst leaders that getting your team on the same page, connected and engaged is still a priority.
 
In fact, I’d go one step further and suggest that these activities are more important today for the most obvious reason that we are forced to be physically distant.  But just because you can’t be physically in the same space doesn’t mean you can’t go a good way down the track to building an engaged team. The quality of online sharing technology is such that there is almost no excuse for not being able to check-in on each other or share and create rituals that are good for you and the team.
 
However if you are looking for something that operates at a deeper level, that you would normally get from an in-person event where there is the ability to be in the same place to workshop your rules of engagement and shared values over a couple of days, you may come up a little short.  The reality is that part of our decision making when it comes to building trust and closeness is driven by our ability to see, hear and experience each other in a group context.  We only get part of that picture when we are seeking to do this virtually; we get it in snapshots from the waist up and in individual contexts without being able to see and experience the interplay and dynamic between people.  As we know it’s the dynamic that we are working with to create the foundation for resilient and sustainable relationships.
 
So, what can we do to build engaging teams in this era of remote working?
 
The good news is that we can still build fantastic rapport in the team.  We can still lay the groundwork for resilient relationships and an engaged team.  And if your team has been together for a while before having to work remotely, then there’s a pretty good chance with the right guidance that you can maintain the momentum and levels of engagement that exist in your team.
 
Below are three principles to apply when thinking about your next virtual teaming event.  They are principles I apply and that I’ve seen others apply to good effect:
 
Accept that it’s just going to look and feel different.
-This may be more targeted towards facilitators and those who lean towards being perfectionists, who love an event that looks and feels a certain way and delivers a known outcome.  Accepting that it will be virtual and still yield good outcomes is a perceptual hurdle to get over, but once you do you will be glad you continued down this path.
 
Put time into your planning and communications for the event.
-You will need to plan more than you do for a face to face event.  Contrary to popular belief, virtual does not mean less effort.  Put the time aside to thoroughly plan your event and to rethink your event through a virtual lens. Once you have your agenda and the activities, a great idea is to visualise how you see the event playing out.  Run through the agenda and activities with a colleague – test them out – do they work in a virtual sense?  Do they deliver what they are designed to achieve?
 
-You will also need to communicate more than usual.  For many people, teaming events can be uncomfortable under normal circumstances, coupled with the fact that you are doing this in a different way which represents change.  Think through how you communicate this event, how you engage your participants before, during and after the event.  You may even need to apply some of the principles of change communication given that we are not only asking people to do something they may not be comfortable with, but they may also be resistant towards as well.
 
Apply the Formula:  2 Days F2F = 2 Months PTT
-As mentioned above, we don’t expect that a virtual activity will deliver the depth of connection that a day or two in person will.  But it can if you reframe it and apply the following formula:
 
1 day F2F = 1 months PTT (Planned Teaming Touchpoints). 
 
For every day you would spend in a face to face teaming event, plan one month of team touch points beyond your virtual teaming activity. Design them so they link back to the initial teaming event, and so they build on from each other. 
 
 
I hope this has been a useful piece of guidance for those who are designing or facilitating virtual teaming events for the first time.  I will also leave you with a personal mantra of my own that I find very useful in these circumstances:

1. Be realistic about what you hope to achieve.
2. Be optimistic that you can achieve more than what you realistically think you will achieve.
3. Be disciplined in keeping your commitments to yourself and to others.

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.