4 tips to leading a team virtually

In conversation with Yala's Managing Partner Barry Prost, we asked him the following 4 questions:

1) What are the benefits of leading a team virtually?

Can control the interactions – less interruptions! We have an open-door policy in our office where we encourage people to approach management with issues and problems. However thanks to remote working – one unintended positive consequence is that there are less people coming into your office so it is easier to get things done!        

2) What are the challenges of leading a team virtually?

“Management by walking around” is completely gone – I think, as a manager, you miss as the ability to walk around the office and catch up with the team informally to gauge things like motivation and get a sense generally of the mood in the team.

 3) How can leaders in companies lead effectively virtually and any hints?

In our webinar in June on “Employee Resilience Leadership in a crisis” – Dr Patrick Flood Professor of Organizational Behaviour at DCU in DCU spoke about ‘checking in’ on staff rather than ‘checking on’ them.

In addition to reinforcing the importance of communication – I think Patrick was making the point around this idea of ‘servant leadership’ and as managers checking in on what we can offer staff to enable them perform better.

Q4 : What's the most important thing we can do to help employees work remotely and more successfully?

 We conducted a company survey over the summer to get a sense of how people were doing.  While over 80% of our team felt supported by management during the current crisis and 90% are happy to be remote working, a key area that we needed to address was providing more communication and feedback around both individual and company performance.

Barry Prost is Managing Partner of Yala, a recruitment and employer branding consultant. Tel: 01 693 3357 Email: [email protected].