Essential 'hygiene factors' for a great virtual leader!

It's been over a year since most of us began working from home. Yes- a few were working from home before that, but they were a minority. The predominant work arrangement before the pandemic was still face-to-face, in an office setting. Most leaders did not bother adjusting their leadership style to those who were remote. It was the responsibility of the remote employee to adapt themselves to working remotely, never the leader, since in most cases, working remotely from home was a choice they made, not the leader.?

When everybody went virtual due to the pandemic, things changed. It was the leaders who now needed to adapt. Leading virtually is different from leading face to face. It is like now driving the car on the wrong side of the road, and it takes some time adjusting to the new cues, controls, and signals. And yet reach the same destination as before.?

In my research on effective virtual leadership, I uncovered some of the lessons of leading remote employees, and today I present a few of these below. There may be others, but I have picked three for this newsletter. Let's start with hygiene factors- those factors that are demotivators to employees.

Lesson Number 1:?Be present. One of the most severe and consistent issues I heard during is that remote employees found their leaders 'missing in action,' often going without connecting and talking to their employees for weeks. In their world, their leader is 'absent.' Missing. Some employees may couch it gently as,' he is so busy, that he has no time for me'; or, 'she is always in meetings.' Others are not so gentle- they could label such a boss as 'not being as committed'; or as one person said, 'my boss is AWOL (absent without official leave)!" In a physical office situation, the boss can be seen or heard through the glass window or as they stroll by, but a virtual leader needs to make a conscious attempt to be seen, available, and connect with the team members.?Connecting with the leader makes the employees feel they matter.?A sense of mattering is one of the most powerful retention tools. Keep in mind that the virtual leader is often the main, maybe even the only connection to the organization when employees are working virtually. If the leader is 'absent,' the relationship with the organization dramatically goes down. One participant in my research said that his leader would not connect with the team for two to three months, and during that time, the entire team would flounder. Some leaders may feel and even justify their lack of connecting to not micromanaging. Micromanaging is about tasks, not the person. Connecting with the individual frequently is about care, not micromanagement.?

Here are some tips to address this issue:

• Have a regular check-in rhythm, as a group and 1:1. One leader had a best practice. Every morning, she would call her team members and ask them how they were doing and if she could do anything for them. Just that predictable act of knowing that the leader will call and check on the employee kept employees motivated. They felt that they were important, their work was essential to the leader and the organization.?
• Have an operating rhythm to troubleshoot issues s- the issues the individual or the team is confronting, the resources they need, and to anticipate problems. One employee conveyed to me that his boss has stand-in Friday calls to check on actions for the week and prepare for the coming week. He would tell the team to report out their critical accomplishments for the past week and goals for the upcoming week, along with the help and support they needed from each other and the boss. This rhythm provided a clear structure.?

Lesson Number 2:?Beware of work-life interference. When organizations, leaders, and employees switched over to working remotely for the first time last year, it was OK to have 6:00 am or 9:00 pm calls. If you are still doing that, you need to know that your employees do not appreciate it. Or, for that matter, requesting an urgent turnaround at 6:00 pm on a Friday. Clear no-nos. Working from home, especially during the pandemic, has amplified the demands of life. We need to keep in mind that we have appropriated people's living space as workspaces. Often, it may be the kitchen table or the bedroom converted into the office for the day. Plus, employees are playing multiple roles now- parents, caregivers, educators, playmates, plus! Anything above the regular working hours where people have to drop other priorities is interference.?

Here are some tips to address this issue:

• Make sure that you do not have calls before 8:00 am and after 6:00 pm. If you have people in different time zones, rotate the inconvenience. One employee told me that early morning and late-night calls made her feel that life was nothing but an endless toggle between calls and sleep!
• Do not pack work on weekends. Sounds simple, but keep in mind, your employees are carrying work mentally during the weekend if you send something on a Friday afternoon. You need them to switch off so that they can be fresh for the next week. One leader had a great best practice. Every Friday afternoon, she would send out a note to thank her employees for their hard work that week and wish them a great weekend with their families. It gave people a sense of closure and made them appreciate their manager for her sensitivity.
• An occasional fire drill is OK, but a repeated one is a sign of bad management. One employee told me that when she recently joined her organization, her new boss warned of the weekends she would need to work in advance and advised her to prepare herself for that surge accordingly. That is fair enough. It is the repeated, unexpected requests that are irritating.

Lesson Number 3:?Useless meetings.?Of all the things that exasperate employees, useless meetings top the list. Over the last year, I have realized that the way different people frame 'meetings' are vastly different. Bosses often consider the meetings initiated by them as 'work,' while many employees may not think it is?their work. For most employees, work is performed?outside the meetings! Also, different leaders have different objectives for their meetings. Some leaders like meetings to gather information to make decisions. Other leaders think meetings are a way to collaborate, yet others believe meetings help in driving consensus. But if the purpose of the meeting is not clear, and the role of every participant is not clear, people groan when they see a meeting request, primarily because they know it will either add to their work or take them away from completing some other work! So, while a meeting may serve to fulfill a boss's objective, it is a drain on the employees' time.?

Also, meetings that only result in more meetings, meetings that go nowhere, meetings that extend beyond the time set all drain energy. In the beginning, the Friday evening happy hour made sense, but now it is an irritant. One employee called it wryly "fake engagement."?

One good indicator of how many people are 'present' in a meeting is to check the proportion of the attendees on camera instead of only on audio. Worse still- the boss is on audio only! Crisp meetings with a clear purpose, clear outcome, and with the right people is an art. And most of us suck at this art. At least in a face-to-face setting, the donuts and side gossip helps! Seriously, virtual meetings are worse than physical meetings- because at least in physical meetings, there is much sense-making going on- people read the dynamics, the non-verbals, and the unstated, and that is often stored away for later use. No such flexibility exists when people are virtual, when half of them are on audio, and one does not know if they are watching Netflix or folding laundry!

Here are some tips to address this issue:

• Set up an operating rhythm clearly spelling out the purpose of each meeting, time, who needs to be involved, and how it will be run.
• Get the meeting basics right- an agenda, a timekeeper, and action plan/ decision being recorded
• Ensure that you provide flexibility. One lady told me that her boss allowed her to send substitutes to the meetings if she could not attend or recorded the meeting to listen to it if she could not make it.
• The boss should be on camera- at least during the beginning and the end (when summarizing), and anytime they are speaking so that the team can see them, not just hear them. Likewise, encourage any speaker or any question to be on camera rather than audio-only. This gesture shows respect to the others in the meeting.?

In a virtual setting, a leader has to be far more disciplined. Their shortcomings are amplified. Also, when the world moves to a hybrid environment, keep in mind that many employees may be working from home. It is easy for us to default to a face-to-face leadership context which will not be great for working remotely. So the default on leadership behaviors should be as though the employees are all virtual, even if some of them are in an office- that way, you will make sure that you are taking care of those who are virtual.?

Do you agree??