With remote working looking likely for the foreseeable future.

It has never been a better time to improve on your remote leadership skills. Management has never been an easy job, and this is challenged further with team members working from home.

If you have found struggles with keeping track of your team. Or, you simply want to better your remote leadership style, then look no further… we have you covered!

Creating an Online Work Culture

How people interact at work is still very important, if not more important than ever before.

Pre Covid office dynamics were easy to regulate and understand. We all knew exactly where we stood and how we all mingled between the hours of 9am and 5pm.

When all of a sudden we no longer left our respective homes and we had to acclimate to a new style of working. Therefore, we had to understand everyone else’s way of working too!

The transition came easy to some, and less so to others. It was certainly a time to be gentle to your staff, as we all underwent a huge shift in our lives.

Hopefully, by now things have settled down for you.

Although we’re sure many will still face teething problems with being so separated from their team. We understand and feel it to, it isn’t always straight forward!

Everyone will have a slight variant on how they prefer to work. Some may be couch surfers or PJ lounges. Others may enjoy a home office set up.

How do your team prefer to communicate? Zoom? Facetime? Email? Calls? Teams? I’m sure everyone has their own preference.

Are you flexible with how you communicate with each other? Bearing in mind the obstacles we now face at home. Such as bad home internet and rambunctious children.

Now is the perfect time to perfect your remote leadership skills and understand how to better all of these points.

You need to open positive communication channels between your team. Ensure they are all in contact regularly. This will boost morale and set a good precedence for the future.

It is also good to think about how your office culture was before Covid. How might that be transferrable to work from home life?

Use all the Communication Tools at Your Disposal

 

As a leader you must utilise all communication tools at your disposal. Refraining from relying on one alone.

Find out how your team prefers to communicate too. Do you find everyone becomes very animated on Webinars? Or, much more comfortable on a phone call than on zoom?

We don’t always have the luxury to cater to every whim of every staff member. But, we can be kind and understanding.

It is so important we stay connected and don’t simply resort to email 24/7. That 1 on 1 time is crucial, as well as encouraging 1 on 1 time between team members.

As manager you have to be the advocate for this communication between yourself and everyone else. Make sure you take that responsibility and have the leadership skills to check on how people are talking amongst themselves.

Communication types

Webinars

• Excellent for training or presenting. This isn’t interactive amongst people. Simply a show and tell from the presenter. Inclusion with many team members is great as it simply keeps people motivated.

Teams

• Let off steam! Great for casually chatting throughout the work day.

Zoom

• Group calls should not be missed. Make sure you bring people together regularly to keep everyone updated. You may only do this with upper management, but bringing in support staff will raise morale and motivation!

Phone Calls

• Don’t underestimate the power of phone calls. It conveys a message much better than email or text. 10 emails could be whittled down to a 2 minute phone call. Again you should advocate other team members do the same.

Email

• Very bottom of the communication priority list! This should of course be used throughout the day, but to send documents and have in writing. Most agendas should always be discussed in a personal manner first. It’s all about having that personable touch!

Bring People Together

 

We are kind of driving this message hard. It’s your role to bring the team together from afar. It is an important element of developing your leadership skills.

Some team members will have no trouble doing this themselves. If you have ever trained in understanding personality types you will understand what we mean. You will know some people will not actively seek out interaction by themselves and will require your help.

To digress, you have the Myers Briggs Personalities (INFJ, ENTP, ISTP etc), read more on this here. On a professional scale you can use DISC. A worth while tool to understand your colleagues and staff better. Knowing where your team sits can help you to adjust your management style to get the best out each them.

We could do a whole post on personality types alone, but we recommend clicking the links provided to learn more.

Certain individuals aren’t designed to be outspoken and outgoing. By recognising this, you will be able to nurture your own leadership skills to a style that will help them to connect.

Regularly weekly, fortnightly or monthly meetings are advised to stay in touch. Ensuring attendance across the board. Sometimes, it may seem un-useful for certain team members, but staying in touch is incredibly important.

We aren’t advocating time wasting but simply opening up as many communication channels for people.

Allow people to talk freely and to air grievance in the right way. If this is made difficult you run the risk of them withdrawing. The last thing you would want in a remote working environment.

Additionally, can you bring people together outside of work?

This can be done digitally or face to face. But, many are looking at alternative options to keep up company culture.

Losing company culture due to a pandemic would be a very sad reality.

Many companies have brought their team members together for interactive online quizzes and games out of hours.

Or, can you get team members together for outdoors activities in smaller groups? Every company is different.

Reading this, you may have an idea of what would work for your particular business.

Perhaps bringing some into the office every second week may be an option. Whatever keeps that very important human connection.

Training and Courses

 

Training and courses for leaderships skills, this is a great time to boost any skills you wish.

There are many great option available online. Here are some we found after a quick internet search that may be of interest to you;

Leadership Skills Training

KSL Training

CIPD

Offering training and development courses to your team will also boost morale.

Enquire with your staff what areas they would like to improve in. You may already have an idea for many of them.

Now could be a useful time to get them partaking in training. It will also show that the company values their career growth.

Here are a few ideas of areas of growth

Presentation Skills

Negotiation Skills

Management Skills

Some may not cost the earth, you can often find incredibly money savvy courses. For example, here is a Management and Leadership course through Reed for only £10!

Creativity

 

You may have some creative ideas of your own of how to bring your team together, do them!

Maybe you can introduce 1 on 1 virtual coffee dates? Or, pet hang out calls?

Many inspiring and creative ideas have come out remote working bosses and we can utilise them all ourselves!

Ideas can often be simple, like making sure you recognise good work. It may be easy to become complacent in this area. If your work is fast paced and you’re separated, these things can easily slip.

If budget allows, gifts and letters sent to home address is a lovely touch. Granted not feasible for large teams. But perhaps a nice touch for an outstanding member of staff.

Our last thought on this ‘creativity’ section is your own passion! So, possibly the hardest one yet. Drive and motivation are contagious. You can’t help but feel excited when the people around you are excited.

Try to evoke emotion and excitement in the team, even when you don’t necessarily feel like it yourself!

Be Flexible

 

Working from home can be great. Tea and coffee whenever you like. Stretch your legs whenever you like. Or, even work in your pyjamas if you feel like it. Not to mention home cooked meals.

However, with this said, it can still be difficult to work from home. Especially when you have to exercise your leadership skills to their fullest.

Staff may slack off or try and take it easy. You have to be their motivator in uncertain times!

So, you need to remember the way you work will have to be flexible. Also, to make your life that much easier, get yourself up to speed with all of the technologies we have discussed.

So, that when people undoubtedly come to you with an issue, you can help resolve these quickly and efficiently.

Stay open minded and ready to roll with the punches! That’s what people will need from you right now.

Trust

 

Here is the big one. You MUST trust your staff. They’re left to their own devices most of the working day now. Although we have stressed the importance of communication. There is a difference between communication and breathing down people’s neck.

To have someone’s trust and to not be micromanaged can make a world of difference to somebody’s work life quality.

Take the pressure off yourself!

Be in touch, but trust in your staff and know they will and are doing a good job! They may just need a little extra attention from time to time.

Thank you for reading this post, and we hope that you have found it beneficial. Sometimes we have to hear what we already know!

To see a little more about us, head over to our ‘about us’ section of the website. Find out how we can help you in times of recruitment need!

Good luck in your journey to improve your leadership skills.