Learning To Prioritise Value Over Attendance As We Pivot To Remote Working

Let’s be honest – we are social creatures and whilst I have advocated and encouraged remote working for as long as I can remember, this imposed shift will be challenging for many. One of the biggest challenges of remote working and especially now is trust and anxiety in equal measure. 

We’ve evolved and actually thrive best when we are in our tribes. We like social behavior and those unspoken cues. Now as we all shift the way we are working and living and companies scramble to mobilise technology it’s important that we do not lose sight of the human aspect of leadership and rethink the way we manage teams and keep everyone focused on the challenges ahead.

The reality is remote working needs extremely high levels of TRUST! And a monumental shift from attendance mindset to a value mindset.

Leaders across the world need to be asking... "What am I doing to reduce the anxiety in my team?"

The lack of water cooler conversations is a double-edged sword. I’ve seen teams achieve more in less time working from home without the usual distractions and I have also seen the reverse - where the lack of social interaction actually hampers creativity and decision making.  There are remote teams right now who think that as long as you have constant communication and technology in place for virtual meetings they are doing a good job – the problem is they are not communicating the right things or empowering teams to be productive.

Managers who have never managed a remote team end up over-communicating and everyone else follows suit and team then do not taking ownership of their work. High functioning remote teams remove layers of decision making and empower each individual team member. Ask yourself - have you eliminated layers of bureaucracy and decision making in the last two weeks? 

Communication with a remote team needs to be about providing people with the information that they need to do their jobs before they need it. 

If the current situation is not a recipe for high anxiety than I don’t know what is. It is therefore vital that leaders and members of remote teams actively work to perform one of the most basic of human behaviors: showing those who work with and for you that YOU CARE ABOUT THEM ON A HUMAN LEVEL

Showing that you trust, really trust, the people you work with goes a long way to show that you value someone. If your organisation like many around the world are going to face tough times, leadership must be the first group of people willing to make a sacrifice. Leadership needs to demonstrate and take ultimate responsibility for both the good and the bad things that a company will inevitably experience.

 I am also seeing many managers and leaders spending too little time reinforcing and rewarding the things their team is getting right.  The reality is stopping and reflecting on the many things that are going right and acknowledging those as they happen goes a long way to reducing anxiety. Failure of a leader to provide timely feedback and positive reinforcement will lead to very behaviors they are trying to avoid.

Your employees need to understand what they are doing well on a weekly, if not daily basis. They need to know what specific behaviors are working and understand what specific behaviors are not. They need to know this in as close to real-time as possible. As your team adapts its also good to do a "stop - start - continue" conversation with all of your team. "What should I stop doing, start doing and continue to do to support you right now?"

It’s really easy to pass off the responsibility of managing an employee’s anxiety to HR or someone else. Managing emotions is the most important job any leader has. It is going to be vital for those hoping to lead high performing teams to dedicate substantial resources to managing the emotional health of their teams. People perform better when they are not anxious. Leaders must work to make sure the members of their team are reasurred, supported and guided. The ability to navigate this crisis depends on it.

We are seeing more and more clients rolling out our WeThrive tool to measure engagement during this huge pivot. The ability to have live online reports of how each manager’s team really feels in real-time is helping companies shift, adapt and respond. Our new dashboard pulls everything a manager needs onto one screen – the first screen they see when they log into WeThrive. It shows them: How participation in the survey in their team compared with the rest of the organisation – this in itself is a measure of engagement. The engagement score for their area compared to everyone else – this helps them answer the “How am I doing?” question. How many actions they have created as a result of the survey results – because the number one goal of our platform is to get managers to do something useful post-survey. The number of actions completed – a gentle reminder to roll up the shirt sleeves and get the actions done that they committed to.

And that’s just for starters….

Our platform learning resources for line managers help to improve leadership skills and build happier more productive teams. Our curated learning content helps build on the insights obtained from the listening survey and coaching recommendations by providing access to support and learning resources for both line managers and employees. These resources align directly with issues highlighted in the listening survey.

The world is changing and the way we lead and manage team needs to change too. Let’s rethink how we are engaging and communicating with our teams. Let's take responsibility as leaders to reduce anxiety and steer our companies through the challenges ahead with purpose, insights and compassion. 

The Storey Group - Enabling sustainable business transformation and performance.

https://www.thestoreygroup.com