You’ve started a new job in a new organization.
You can’t go to your workplace.
Every interaction with your peers and your leaders is online.
What are you missing?
You are a sales representative who’s job is to convince customers to buy your company’s products.
You can’t visit them face to face.
What are you missing?
You are the leader of a new team with important objectives.
You can’t meet them face to face in the office.
What are you missing?
A revolution in office work has occurred in the last 2 years.
Remote Working has become widespread and accepted.
Probably faster than any tech adoption since email.
But leadership styles have yet to adapt.
Like any unplanned change it deserves thoughtful response by leaders all around the globe.
Not automatic acceptance.
Definitely not naive “wow this is 100% great with no downside”.
Whether you like remote work or not, as a leader you will have to adjust to it.
So will your team.
Remote work also gives you a chance to reflect on your own leadership style.
And maybe even improve it..
Don’t start by looking at the positives like less commuting or more family flexibility.
They’re important but also should make us cautious.
Convenience can blind us to downsides and cause us to rationalize what maybe a selfish choice.
Start by understanding what remote work threatens.
And then consider whether that matters to you.
And what that says about you as a leader.
If you don’t feel something is missing when you lead remotely, maybe there is something missing when you lead face to face?
When we work in isolation we lose connection with our colleagues, our bosses, our teams. Our collective identity is not complete.
We lose context and social signals.
Does this matter?
People are social animals.
We respond to and learn from social signals not just words.
Remote working interrupts those social signals and can just leave us with words.
Which is why it can lead to misunderstanding and frustration and inefficiency.
The trend for decades has been to create open plan offices without barriers or walls.
For good reason.
Now it’s suddenly ok to isolate us with physical separation?
Both trends can’t be right.
Should we throw decades of improvements in connections and communication and team context in the trash can because we don’t like commuting to work?
“If you don’t feel something is missing when you lead remotely, maybe there is something missing when you lead face to face… “
Have you thought about what your team is missing when you’re in an online meeting?
Have you considered what they’re missing between meetings, when they’re remote working?
Do you do something extra during your meeting time to make up for what they miss out on?
Are you more visible and more vocal during an online meeting?
Do you pay attention or do you multitask?
Do you message other attendees?
In-meeting messaging is a good thing actually as it acts as a social signal (though only to a select few).
Does your team know how you feel?
They need to know. They know better when you’re in the room.
If social signals are important for remote work they’re also important face to face.
What signals do your team get from you when you’re together?
Are you a leader or a remote leader?
.
.
I might be wrong, but at least I’ve thought about it.