“Good” or “bad” leadership qualities become even more pronounced online. A magnifying glass effect applies here: “Bad” leadership becomes significantly more visible and, unfortunately, more impactful in virtual collaboration. And a negative atmosphere in a team also becomes much more noticeable than usual.
Trainers repeatedly experience that when it comes to “Remote Leadership” or “Virtual Leadership“, executives ask how they can monitor their employees when they are no longer present on-site. The question is, of course, revealing, as there is obviously a lack of trust. Presumably, the relationship between the executive and employees was already poor before, quite independent of the topic of virtual collaboration.
Employee Monitoring in the Home Office?
“Trust Leads – What Really Matters in the Company,” is what Dr. Reinhard Sprenger, one of Germany’s best-known management authors, titled one of his books (Campus Verlag, 2002). Nothing has changed to this day. Trust is particularly important in “Remote Work.” Studies show that team success in remote collaboration depends even more strongly on mutual trust.
The relationship between executives and employees is of paramount importance. Some are already demanding that executives should now act more like influencers. This may be an extreme view, but one thing seems clear: what matters now is to operate confidently on digital channels. Yet especially in top positions, there are still people who print out emails.
During the COVID-19 period, one could see quite a few embarrassing videos, sometimes even from politicians, such as the Czech Prime Minister, who delivered his video messages from a desk overflowing with papers. He could hardly have demonstrated his digital incompetence more clearly.
15 “Digital Leadership Hacks” for Executives
Our recommendation, if you are an executive: First and foremost, take care of your digital fitness and do not delegate everything to your assistants, if you have any. Remaining technologically connected is a challenge, especially for older executives. You should face this challenge if it applies to you. Remain authentic and be open about your learning mistakes. In this way, you can be a positive role model for many who also need a modernization boost in terms of digitalization and virtual collaboration. To make leadership easier for managers in 2021, we have compiled 15 “Digital Leadership Hacks” for executives:
Be Aware of Your New Role
Virtual leadership has not been a niche topic since 2020 at the latest, but rather a standard competency for all executives. You simply must master this. Complaining does not help. From the frequently used triad “Mindset, Skillset, Toolset” it follows: attitude is most important. So be aware of your new role.
The “new normal” affects executives in particular. Depending on which generation you belong to, how digitally fit you are, how you have worked so far, how long you have been an executive, the topic of “Digital Leadership” will have a different meaning for you. One thing is clear: your new identity as an executive is hybrid. You operate in both worlds and will accordingly be perceived differently. If you have an extremely close connection to your people, like to be close by, have a chat here and there, then you need to consider how to continue this digitally. It is quite likely that you will initially need to plan more time to fulfill your proven role in the digital world. “Digital Leadership” must be learned.
Appear Sympathetic and Professional Online
Do you come to the office in the morning in wrinkled clothes and unwashed? Is your office so chaotic that you can barely find your keyboard on your desk? Certainly not. You pay attention to your appearance. The same applies to your appearance in virtual meetings and conversations with your employees. Your employees do not want to see the grumpy boss with a furrowed brow in a storage room, but exactly the leader they would also want to see live in the office. That means, rather in a good mood, well-lit, appropriately dressed, with the right background.
There is a debate about whether executives should be role models. Our opinion: executives are always role models. This means that your employees will, of course, measure the standards for appearing in live online meetings against your appearance.
Clarify the Expectations of You
Do you know how your employees want to be led remotely or digitally? You may not have even asked. Then you should make up for that. People are different. Some are happy when you occasionally show up at a live online meeting to have a one-on-one conversation. Others find this rather intrusive. Mature executives develop mature employees by asking, among other things: How do you want to be led? This also applies online.
Plan More Time for One-on-One Conversations
How much time do you spend overall on leading your employees? Please be honest. Operational meetings about projects unfortunately do not count as leadership. Most executives are heavily involved operationally, even more so in online times. Many do not spend more than 10 to 20 percent of their time purely on leadership. For leadership in the digital age, you should plan more time, especially for one-on-one conversations. If your span of control allows it, that is, the number of employees you directly lead, you should ideally speak with each individual for a few minutes every week. Speaking does not mean that you always have to have a live online meeting. If in doubt, a phone call is sufficient. One thing is clear: you must really speak with everyone, at least every two weeks. You should schedule this time firmly, otherwise the conversations will never take place.
Check the Competencies in Your Team and Lead Situationally
You probably know the model of situational leadership. A skill matrix with two axes is used for this. The Y-axis describes the topic of one’s own motivation, related to a specific task, and the X-axis describes the skills, related to this task. Depending on the combination, a recommended leadership style emerges. The idea “I lead everyone the same way” has long been outdated. This has nothing to do with real or digital. The topic of “Remote Work” is a new competency. You can now apply the model precisely to this, and then decide which employees, in relation to the new situation of home office or “Remote Work,” require which type of leadership.
One thing is clear: without coaching training and coaching support, it will not work.
In most companies in Germany, three or four generations work together. Especially on the topic of “Remote Work”, the older generations understandably have more of a challenge. You need to get them up to speed and support them.
But remember: if you keep overloading those who can keep up well with more projects, you are driving these valued employees, possibly without even noticing it in the slightest, directly into burnout. So take your time and analyze your team carefully – also for the completely new situation of “Remote Work”.
Take Care of the Lonely and Workaholics
If you apply the skill matrix (from point 5), you may find: there are a few people on your team who cope extremely well with “Remote Work.” But that could also become dangerous, keyword: burnout. And there are some others who suffer particularly because they need personal contact with colleagues. You need to take special care of these employees.
Review Communication Channels and Tools
You have introduced the tool “Teams“. However, some employees still use “Slack”. There may even be secret WhatsApp channels. It is best to review in a joint meeting with your team which digital communication channels were used in the past, which have now been added, and which should possibly be shut down. The latter point is often forgotten.
Then you have redundant communication. Digital does not automatically mean efficient, but sometimes exactly the opposite. Therefore, it is necessary to subject the communication channels and the tools used to a strict review and jointly determine according to which rules which tools should be used for communication.
Agree on Communication Rules
The rules are not only about the use of tools, but also, for example, about the question of whether the camera should always be on. Our recommendation: definitely yes. At least during your own contributions and at the beginning and end of the meeting. Do not forget: what you have not properly agreed upon cannot be enforced. In this respect, agreeing on rules for communication in the online world is particularly important.
Ensure a Central Document Repository
Collaborative work sounds attractive. Tools are quickly introduced and are soon used by everyone. The teams also usually quickly find a reasonable working behavior. But if you have not agreed on clear rules, for example, some important documents suddenly end up in a chat that you may no longer be able to access in the worst case. Or in a cloud to which not everyone has access. In this respect, it should be clarified where exactly documents are stored and how you work together on these documents.
Be Careful with Written Communication
In remote work, written communication plays a greater role than ever before. One of the major dangers: we sometimes give feedback unintentionally. Here is a current example: a trainer wants to arrange a client meeting and writes in the email that the last training unfortunately did not go so well, and therefore she would like to talk on the phone. The reference that the last training did not go so well is possibly already a mistake. It would have been better if she had only written: “Thank you for the training, let’s arrange an appointment to evaluate the training.”
Written communication has a high potential for interpretation and thus also for conflict. There are now also tips for the topic of remote feedback. But anyone who has dealt intensively with the topic of communication knows that written communication is always ambiguous. This means for you: impulsive posts and emails are taboo for you as an executive.
Give Plenty of Feedback and Actively Seek It Out
Feedback is the be-all and end-all of communication. This naturally also applies online. The good old annual review may still be important to thoroughly reflect on the work of employees and the collaboration, make agreements, etc. In daily work, however, continuous feedback counts, and even more so in remote work.
Do not only give feedback, but also “feedforward.” That means: feedback with concrete requests in shorter time intervals. Above all, you should get feedback from your team. Are you doing a good job as a digital leader and in remote work? Those who do not ask do not win.
Introduce a Daily (Daily Status, Short and Concise)
If your company is already working in an agile manner, you know the so-called “Daily Stand-up“. If you do not know it yet, you should introduce it digitally now. The basic idea of this good routine, which originally comes from an agile project management method called Scrum, is to hold a short meeting of a maximum of 15 minutes duration daily in a project group. Everyone on the team briefly says what they are currently working on. This often happens in combination with another tool, the so-called Kanban Board. This method comes from Toyota from 1947 and originally concerned inventory management. In the modern working world, this usually means that tasks are sorted by status: which are currently being worked on, which are still pending, which are behind schedule?
The whole thing is displayed visually, either physically on a whiteboard, the Kanban Board, with moderation cards or Post-its. Or digitally, for example with a tool like Trello. If you have not worked this way before because you are not from IT, you should at least introduce the daily stand-up: well moderated, ideally with a digital Kanban Board.
Possible questions could be:
- What did you do yesterday?
- What do you want to do today?
- And what is currently hindering you in your current work?
You can, of course, adjust the questions.
What is crucial is that you hold a ritual meeting of short duration in the morning in which everyone says what they are currently doing. This ensures transparency and a positive collateral benefit. Everyone sees each other and everyone knows what the other is doing.
Conduct Regular Retrospectives
Our times are becoming increasingly fast-paced. Conducting a workshop every six months to ask what is going well and what is not is no longer sufficient today. A helpful tool, also from the agile working world, is the so-called retrospective. Almost self-explanatory. At least once a month, ideally weekly, you should ask yourself: Does what we are currently doing actually fit? What is going well, what is going badly? What should we stop doing, what should we continue, and who has a new idea? This is exactly what the classic retrospective looks like.
Create Space for Informal Communication
Do you remember? At the beginning of the COVID-19 period, it was widespread for people to post pictures of their informal live online meetings on social channels. Coffee together, lunch, after-work beer – all online. After a few months, not only did the pictures on Facebook and Instagram become rarer. These meetings were also no longer held in companies. A real shame. Promote networking and informal exchange online as well. How you do this is up to you and the creativity of your employees. What is important is that you view informal communication as a necessity and create appropriate formats for it.
Also Pay Attention to Available Resources
Remote work is demanding. Unfortunately, in 2020 it became common practice for many to completely disregard the good old rules of time management. Live online meetings are set up so that one follows directly after another. You may be familiar with the odd phrase “I have a hard stop and have to leave now.”
Quite absurd, not only the phrase, which sounds more like a terrorist act, but also the practice of disappearing as such. You should have a few minutes break between each meeting. Considering everything as equally important and urgent is a mistake.
For many years, the Eisenhower Method has taught us: you must set priorities. As an executive, you should pay attention to your resources. Working eight or more hours every day without a break is unhealthy. In times of crisis, this may be appropriate, but it must not become a permanent state. In this respect, take care not only of your employees, but also of yourself. The modern tools mentioned in this article, which enable online collaboration in the first place, must ultimately be learned by all executives through constant practice.
It becomes even more demanding when the next technical change is imminent. In the area of live online communication, this will be augmented reality and virtual reality.
It will take a few more years before we wear VR headsets and online communication thereby becomes even closer to physical communication in real space. Then elements such as body language will play a much greater role.
The exciting question, however, is ultimately how a boss masters the transition between remote work and collaboration in the traditional office.
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