What makes virtual leadership so challenging?
I have been immersed in this question with leaders across many sectors; what is different about leading a team virtually and why does it feel so challenging? I was facilitating a session on virtual leadership yesterday and these are some of the observations and solutions that were co-created with that group.
Preparation and Organization
When we are leading virtual meetings or planning workstreams, a level of preparation is required by the manager if the meeting is going to be engaging and invite everyone into the conversation. Planning your online gathering using breakout rooms to stimulate conversations, engagement tools like Mentimeter.com or even simple Polls in Zoom requires some advance thought and structure. Online planning tools like Asana, Trello or Monday.com will help everyone stay organized with projects and workflow and could still prove useful even if you head back into the office again.
Connection
We are missing the face-to-face human connection and as leaders we need to be mindful of this. We need to make the time and space to connect with people without an agenda, task, or purpose. I would suggest that an old-fashioned phone call might be a great way to stay connected and give you a break from the screen. My favourite is to go for a walk and talk – both of you are walking, getting away from the screen and connecting with your voice. I anticipate that as we can start to be with people physically again in our personal lives, this will create some balance in our human need for connection, however we will always value one-on-one time in a meaningful conversation with our boss or our colleagues, and that can be accomplished beautifully in a phone call.
Energy and Positivity
We know that leaders set the tone in a team and they drive the culture messages that everyone else picks up on. This can be challenging for leaders who may be introverts by nature, now being asked to host virtual meetings and I can say from experience that you need to dial up the energy when you are hosting online sessions so that people can feel it on the other side of that screen. Exuding positive energy, modeling the level of engagement you want to see from others and navigating the technology bumps all in the same hour (after hour, after hour), can leave you feeling exhausted at the end of the day. Acknowledging this reality can be helpful and sharing the load of “hosting” the meeting with other team members or asking someone to manage the technology components will build capacity within the team as well as some empathy for the challenges of hosting an online meeting!
These are just a few highlights to get you thinking about your role as the leader of a virtual team. It will be interesting to see where organizations land with the expectations of in-person and remote working, and I would expect that virtual leadership will continue to exist for us in some form or another. These are the tools, structures, and mindset we need to embrace for this new context of leadership. While that can feel overwhelming some days, what I have witnessed is an incredible capacity for adaptation and a willingness to learn, experiment and keep on showing up for each other. Bravo leaders – you can do this!
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