Working from home (WFH) is now commonplace, and hybrid teams that move between offices and home are on the rise.
For this reason, there have been no stranger times to be a leader in the workplace.
With additional strains due to the effects of the pandemic and juggling an extensive workload, leaders are finding it challenging to work on developing the new skill set required to manage teams.
Below, Kingston Human Capital’s co-founder, Gerard Kerr shares 4 tactics leaders should take when it comes to leading WFH and Office based teams.
1. Facilitate Purposeful Collaboration.
In the office, it can happen naturally. We are all together, gathered around a central problem, nutting out something as a team on a whiteboard. Collaboration happens naturally. Plus, the added benefit of seeing each other in the same room means ideas flow easier and solutions can be found quicker. Fast-forward to current times; leaders are finding this natural collaboration is non-existent, simply because brain-storming doesn’t translate as well over Zoom, Skype or Microsoft Teams. As a result, leaders must now be more intentional about facilitating collaboration, acting as traffic controllers.
The best leaders in this new-age environment, don’t leave collaboration to chance.
As a leader, you also to work to better your collaboration leading questions during an online meeting, to further discussion.
For example: Let’s say you are in Zoom meeting having a group brainstorm. Your language needs to change from: “ok, does anyone else have anything to add to that?”. Instead, your language should be direct: “Nikki, let’s hear your take on this challenge”, or “Angela, what downstream impacts can you see”. Alternatively, you could use a statement like: “does anyone feel a burning sense that there is something we are not considering here?”. The point is to be the director and facilitator of conversation.
2. Know when to switch.
Working from home means we are often using Teams, Zoom, Hangouts and instant messaging services like Slack, regularly. But, as a leader, you need to know when to move a chat to non-text conversations. It is crucial to do this for more complicated discussions, where the tone needs to be observed and talks when you need to have a better understanding of where your other person is at or how they are feeling.
Remember much of what we mean is communicated in our tone. Leaders should teach their team to know when they need to move to non-text conversations. It’s vital that they too can judge the right time to switch a conversation from text to voice, or from voice-to-face to face.
Hot Tip: Got two team members who are butting heads? It may be that the tone they strike when they are using instant messaging isn’t conductive or warm. Coach them on knowing when to switch to non-text conversations, and you will see improved results.
3. Think outcomes, not hours.
The 40-hour working week is a hangover from the industrial revolution. It was introduced to protect workers’ rights. Now, some organisations are moving their focus and working to emphasise outcomes over hours.
Some leaders who are new to leading remote teams may be prone to fall into thinking that if they can’t see a team member, then they don’t know if that team member is working. And, more than ever, leaders are working to understand how to know employees are working without the ability to directly observe your team battling away. The solution is more straightforward than one might think. Instead of measuring hours consider measuring outcomes (number of projects finished, documents completed by the deadline, parcels of work completed by certain milestones).
You can watch the clock for your employees, or you can measure the outcomes they produce. But, the best leaders know that measuring outcomes is far more productive, and far easier to coach on.
4. Remember what you communicate is often what you get.
Leaders need to be more clear and concise when communicating what is needed to their teams. Without clarity, communications can be confusing and often will garner unintended results of outcomes from employees. The best leaders use a ‘destination statement’ to make known the requirements and clearly outline the task at hand. This is simply one sentence that clearly defines what needs to be accomplished.
Similarly, this same mindset should be employed when conducting meetings. All too often, leaders fail to start a meeting well. They just jumpstart the session and hit the agenda without a direction or thinking about where they need to arrive at the end of the meeting. When this happens, translation of what is needed can be lost. Thus, it is crucial to take the time, think about what you want to achieve from the meeting, and then make sure you can communicate it one clear sentence. You should work to start your meetings by stating your expectations, and by using a destination statement. This will set the intention for the meeting and make all communications precise, working toward the required outcome.
Not only this, but by providing your team with a destination statement you are educating them as to what success looks like for this meeting.
They better equipped to know where the meeting should lead to, and they will be more likely to work with you toward that destination statement. While this sounds simple, it takes practice.
Observe this: In the meetings you attend, observe your leaders. How many start their meetings with a destination statement? How would you rate the effectiveness of those meetings? Teach your team leaders to start their meetings with a destination statement.
Example destination statements:
- Ok team, today, by the end of this meeting I want us to have mapped the first draft of our strategic plan.
- I am looking forward to our discussion today, by the end of this meeting, I want us to have decided on the framework for how we will address [insert the issue at hand].
