Being a Leader, Remotely
By Heidi Sadecky, MA,PCC – Executive Coach & Director, Townsend Leadership Program
Can you really be an effective leader without face-to-face contact? Yes, you can! Whether your team is all remote or hybrid office, the core principles of great executive leadership remain the same.
The switch to remote working left many executives scrambling to figure out how to lead effectively from afar. Even once the right communication platforms were in place, some leaders felt like they could not guide their teams properly. Communicating with your team when everyone is remote can feel like talking into a void, but it doesn’t have to be this way. As leading remote teams continues to be the new normal, it’s high time to clarify your remote leadership strategies.
The good news is that the foundational tenets of quality executive leadership are still just as true now as they always have been. It is still a leader’s job to empower, coach, and motivate their employees through personal communication and establishing a corporate culture. Leaders should always help their teams understand where they are and where they need to go, then help craft a solution that bridges the divide between the two points.
However, some other aspects of executive leadership have changed in the hybrid office environment. There are new challenges facing employees and leaders alike.
A lack of situational awareness
Feeling isolated from team members
Reduced knowledge about the status of your team members
A lack of social relationship building
One simple solution can help overcome each of these hurdles. For hybrid offices, casual communication is more critical than ever. There are just as many formal emails sent now as there ever have been, but many people miss out on the informal talk they used to share with their coworkers at adjacent desks. This type of personal communication is so crucial for relationship building, and it’s the primary way peers and teammates get to know one another on a personal level. Without it, it’s easy to see how people feel isolated and cut off from the office culture.
When you’re face to face, open and flowing channels of communication can occur naturally. As an executive leader, it falls to you to make sure those channels exist digitally as well as in the office. Take the time to invest in your team’s communication and make sure your employees have an easy, simple, and casual way to speak to one another.
Now here’s the tricky part, if you want your team to have open communication, then that means you have to buy in too. You can get the ball rolling by modeling what you want communication to look like. You can empower your coworkers to participate on equal terms, with everyone trying out the new avenue of communication together. There are dozens of programs available now that can help make communication easier, but the truth is that it doesn’t matter which software package you purchase if the team doesn’t buy-in from the top down. The essential part of good personal communication starts with leadership.
Heidi Sadecky is a highly-trained executive coach with over 30 years of combined corporate and coaching experience. She helps her clients operate at a higher level, overcome workplace challenges and achieve measurable results.
She is an in-demand facilitator of the only Townsend Leadership Program, a unique and highly effective group coaching program located in the North East United States.
In-person, virtual and hybrid leadership groups are now forming.