Leading remotely – How to effectively lead a team virtually
The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many companies in Denmark and across the world to ask their employees to work from home, in efforts to reduce the spread of the virus. This creates an unfamiliar situation for many and especially for managers and business leaders who all of the sudden need to manage their team remotely.
It is crucial for organizations to find new ways in which business leaders can manage their team and keep them motivated and engaged. Setting clear goals, communicating regularly and having productive meetings is becoming more important than ever before.
There are however, 3 key points that you as a leader can implement today, in order to virtually manage your team effectively.
1. Clarity
Setting up clear guidelines and expectations is crucial in times like these. Knowing when your employees will be working and what times can they be reached. How a work-life balance is kept. It is important to assist your employees and set up boundaries, in order to ensure that the ambitious workers do not burn out. Setting up guidelines also includes setting up new metrics on how to measure an employee’s performance. It is not longer based on how many hours the employees stay at the office, but rather on what is being accomplished. This is an opportunity for the manager to align the team on the objective of the tasks, what roles they have and how each member contributes to the outcome.
2. Communication
Trust and connections with your team, are two parameters that play an important role when leading your team remotely (according to HBR). Make sure you continuously check in on your employees, where taking 5×10 minutes is better than 1×50 minutes. This could be asking the following questions: What have you done? What are you working on? Where do you need help?
3.Connection
In times like these, where social distancing is what we all are doing, it becomes very important to foster and promote team morale, otherwise employees can easily feel isolated, disconnected and lonely. This can be done through various means. Make use of video conferences, instead of just audio. Take 5 minutes in the beginning of the conference to talk about non-work related things.
Read the entire Forbes article here, on how to effectively lead your remote team.
