This is a difficult time for leaders, particularly new or emerging leaders. It’s hard when you can’t interact with your team face to face. It’s hard when you know that their personal lives, as well as their professional lives, have been turned upside down. It’s tough when your personal and professional life has been turned upside down as well, but as a leader there are high expectations that you continue to lead and lead successfully. Others, your team, your bosses, your colleagues look to you for direction, support and performance.
What can you do to keep your team engaged, keep them motivated, keep them wanting to stay and be led by you? After all, by the time our workplaces emerge from this crisis, some of our best employees may have moved on and decided to change their way of life. As their leader, you want to maintain a high level of participation, you want your team to emerge stronger and more complete.
A key leadership role is that of facilitator of change. And boy, is this current situation an example of change, a significant change? Normally, when we are faced with a change in the workplace, it is as a result of some break in our normal routine or a challenge to our beliefs and attitudes. But this change is about making all different, moving away from our normal routines, both at work and at home. The big difference compared to most changes in the workplace is that none of us can resist change. It’s here and we need to figure out the best ways to live and grow from the change.
Some principles you can apply to help you mitigate the challenge of keeping your team motivated and engaged, while helping you continue to grow as a leader.
keep them close
The comunication is the key. Use video as much as possible. This helps teams feel like they are interacting face to face. If you can, do daily check-ins that help you and team members have that necessary social interaction that used to be in the office.
Let’s take an example of remote communication. You may think that you can continue to connect with your team the same way you did before, only now using technology. Technology, while great for connecting remotely, can’t always meet the needs of every member of your team. Some may feel the need to connect more often, on an individual basis. This may require phone conversations, emails, or text messages about your individual needs and challenges. It’s critical to note that holding a weekly video conference or conference call with your team won’t meet everyone’s needs. Communicate with each of them individually, schedule regular checkups using the technology that works best for each of them. This can be time consuming, but it is necessary to keep them motivated and engaged.
Set goals for these daily check-ins and weekly meetings, and follow up with team members on progress. Make sure you have an agenda and stick to it. Provide personal development opportunities, delegation, to team members, agenda creation and meeting management, as well as post progress updates. This will lessen the burden on you while improving the abilities of others.
Don’t forget the value and challenge of active listening, especially when using online video tools, as with most of these tools, only one person can speak and be heard at a time. Do you need to implement a process to ensure everyone has a turn to contribute? How do you make sure no one dominates the conversation? During these calls, listen to the tone of voice, the words used, and what is being said. Without the advantage of body language, listening skills are highlighted.
Take care of yourself
One of the best ways to strengthen your leadership is to use Stephen Covey’s Circles of Concern, Influence, and Control. Ask yourself what keeps you up at night (other than Covid-19 if you can), which of these things can you influence, can you change? For those things that you can influence, can positively affect, focus on what you can control. Thinking about your situation in this way helps you become more self-aware, aware of your feelings. Being self-aware helps you better understand and appreciate your emotions and those of others. Increased self-awareness improves self-confidence, allowing you to better tune in to subtle feelings.
You can’t do it all. As mentioned earlier in this article, delegate. Give team members a chance to try out new skills or tasks, new ways they can contribute. You may want to consider devoting one of your daily check-ins or weekly meetings to training, with one of your team members leading a short training session. Since many employees have not had the experience of working remotely in the past, time management training may be the right skill to help them manage their workload at home.
lead from the heart
Kouzes and Posner in their book, The leadership challenge, talk about the need for leaders to encourage the heart. Leaders do this by recognizing contributions and celebrating achievements. Encourage your team to build a list of ideas to recognize the effort that each one shows. Then put them into practice as often as possible.
Be an inclusive leader, make sure team members speak up and are heard, empower them to make decisions, encourage them to give you input and feedback on how you are leading during this difficult time, Create opportunities for them to coach and be mentor each other and share credit for successes.
Bloggers from the UK’s Hot Spots Movement, a group focused on the future of work, advise leaders to “build a narrative”. “A narrative provides a way to make sense of events and communicate experiences, insights, and emotions. Creating a strong narrative does not depend on leaders having all the answers (now more than ever, this is clearly impossible). However , it does depend on creating a continuous thread of communication that acknowledges deep uncertainty while envisioning the future, to help people connect with a sense of direction and purpose.” Creating this narrative can be cathartic for your team, especially if they are encouraged to share their personal stories. As Aisha Zafar of Mohawk College Enterprise says, “stories evoke emotion and build human connections.”
