Effective management is all about successfully achieving long and short-term goals while guiding everyone towards the vision of your business or organisation. However, it is easier said than done – especially if you have always worked face-to-face and now find yourself increasingly communicating remotely. Here Amy Savage, Co-Founder of This is Glow, explains how you can dial up specific leadership skills to compliment the shifting landscape
Traditionally, managers would be responsible for monitoring productivity, evaluating performance, working collaboratively, providing relevant feedback while upholding values and behaviours for the team to emulate.
However, the role of the manager has evolved in the pandemic, and many are now required to step up and play a key part in the successful transition to hybrid working.
It goes without saying that on top of this, managers remain a significant factor in whether employees are motivated to want to show up for work.
But relationships between some team members and their leaders have become increasingly difficult following a succession of lockdowns that has pushed the working from home phenomenon and created a physical distance.
So how can a manager adapt their skill set to meet the new needs of their team, while maintaining productivity and morale?
Understanding relationship dynamics
Relationships between employees and their managers have moved to be more emotional and supportive and, at the same time, planned meetings have become more transactional.
This makes the dynamics within a team slightly more complex as leaders try to find their footing.
In order to care for people in crisis and set the stage for business recovery, global management consultancy McKinsey and Company outline four qualities that are critical for business leaders – Awareness, Vulnerability, Empathy and Compassion.
Awareness starts by creating space to attain a keener knowledge of what is going on around you. This includes turning to your own feelings and emotions and recognising your own human, natural responses to the situation.
Being in touch with your own vulnerability then allows you to lower your guard and confront what is unfolding. The ability to show vulnerability allows for more openness, honesty and trust in day-to-day conversations.
Demonstrating empathy helps you to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and this can lead to people feeling recognised and valued.
And finally, compassion ensures you make individuals and groups feel genuinely cared for.
I take these four elements forward as a coach to managers struggling to adapt.
In practice
I encourage people to bring their whole selves to work – and this means more than just getting the work done.
Understandably, this has become harder in a virtual world for many because the lack of physical presence really impacts their ability to truly feel present.
But whether your team is working in the office or from home, your job as their manager is to not only understand what the employee is doing but also how they are feeling.
This allows you to build relationships and maintain trust.
Since Covid reared its ugly head in March 2020, we have come across several managers who feel they have lost their way here, often because they struggle with the concept of remote working.
Managers are also coping with their own personal and professional challenges: increased pressure, fragmented teams and heavy workloads.
In order to feel in control, many managers believe they need to oversee their teams in person, or they need some sort of power over the working day that can only be found in an office environment.
But times have changed. Embracing and adapting to change is a key skill of any successful manager. Not least because of the example it sets to the rest of the team.
Managing at a distance
On average in 2019, 27% of the workforce worked from home at some point according to Annual Population Survey (APS) data. This increased to an average of 37% in 2020, following government guidance to work from home where possible.
Data collected from the Office of National Statistics shows the proportion of individuals working remotely has been declining since March 2021, but the latest Business Insights and Conditions Survey (BICS) suggests individuals and workplaces are now embracing increased levels of hybrid models that are set to stay.
Of course, there will be some roles where people will be expected to be in the physical space much more than others.
But the savvy businesses are realising that in most cases there is opportunity for a more flexible approach – even if this is only achieved through pooling, rotating or a systems approach.
So, what does this mean for you?
Sure, this isn’t something many managers will have dealt with before. It opens up potential problems, introduces new obstacles and hurdles and understandably creates some division – is it open to everyone? Is it even appealing to everyone? How do you make it fair?
But simply ruling it out, or worse – accepting it but not adapting to meet the new needs of your team who are working remotely – just screams a need for control and lack of trust. Not the best foundation for any relationship.
This then breeds resentment in the employee who may feel they are not being heard, not being treated fairly or are being completely overlooked in preference to those in-house.
And this brings us to a whole set of new skills needed in the armoury of the manager for 2022 onwards.
Your skills for the new normal
Essentially, managers today need to rethink how they evaluate performance and how they communicate with their team in a world where that team might be more physically disjointed.
To start with, this means giving your team the right balance of autonomy and support.
You can do this by improving or developing and cultivating team cohesion and by understanding how to hold conversations and meetings that are inclusive. Use this as an opportunity to revisit shared goals to ensure everyone is aligned and agree how you’re going to work together most effectively.
You can also explore coaching to help you empower your teams to own and be accountable for their work. If this not your natural style, start by asking more open questions like what are your priorities and how can I support you?
Cognitive swift trust (CST) – developed by Meyerson, Weick, and Kramer in 1996 – is one way to explore ways to build trust into a relationship and therefore improve performance.
CST is grounded in the understanding that all employees – management or not – are reliable and competent.
If you can accept both these things, then you should automatically confer trust and collaboration and workflow will be successful.
Another area to explore is emotional trust, grounded in the belief that others care about us as people – what we like and dislike, what our interests might be or where we have difficulty.
In many cases emotional trust develops when you share yourself with others – often in social situations – which allows space for empathy.
