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Coaching For Remote Teams
When your team are spread far and wide, your Leadership needs to adapt
Coaching For Remote Teams
The landscape of working routines has seen huge evolution through the 2020s: the Covid pandemic might seem like a long time ago now (and time seems to have lost all connection to reality!) but there’s no denying that the lockdowns it brought threw business and leadership into a frenzy. Overnight, leaders and managers were forced to find ways of adapting work routines, to re-shape how their teams worked, collaborated and communicated. Though things have, in many ways, “gone back to normal” we’ve seen that how and where people want to work continues to change.
The huge increase in remote and virtual working shows that a lot of the work we do – particularly those who are in office or corporate roles – can be done remotely. That remote, or flexible, working gives far more freedom, flexibility and work/life balance that a lot of people found preferable. When the call came, post pandemic, to return to the office we saw a huge shift in the workforce – and if their employers demanded that return, and rejected any requests for flexible work, tens of thousands of people voted with their feet. The phrase “The Great Resignation” filled our news feeds, and recruitment experts were swamped with people looking for roles that had that flexibility.
A global event as significant as the pandemic, and the economic fallout that followed it, meant that people were re-assessing their lives. Their work. Their future, and the way they want to live. The way they want to work. Priorities shifted, and employers who didn’t respond quickly, or who stubbornly refused to embrace these changes, lost talented and experienced people to environments that would.
Successful Leadership Means Evolution – and really Listening to Your People!
How has your working model changed, since the peculiar days of Covid?
Did your Leaders and Managers adapt? Did you find new ways to communicate? To collaborate, and oversee what your people are achieving – or did you pull back to a more traditional model of “how it’s done” when the lockdowns lifted?
The buzz online has definitely settled into a more subtle background noise since 2021, when “the great resignation” filled so much of our newsfeeds, swiftly feeding into so-called “quiet quitting” but no matter what ‘back to normal’ the traditionalists of Leadership demand, there has been a huge and undeniable shift in what people are seeking from their careers – and from their employers.
What is the best way to lead your teams in this changed landscape? If your best people work remotely, how do your Leaders and Managers oversee their work, and ensure that your teams are hitting their targets?
Coaching For Remote Leaders
Whether it’s for remote teams or in-house, Coaching is an excellent investment for your senior leaders. It’s hard to change ‘the way we work’ on a wide scale – great Coaching gives your Leaders the skills and tools they need to communicate well, to support your people, and to embed a culture of success in the whole workforce. The essential skills of great Leadership remain the same, but for those who are anxious about the changing landscape there are specific ways to lead remotely with confidence, compassion and integrity.
We know that 2020 was a very strange time; businesses forced to build systems that support remote working, making sure that their teams had the technology they needed to work from rapidly-created home offices. In a lot of cases, despite such a short turnaround, people settled very well into this new working model – and the quality, and quantity, of work they carried out was as good as ever!
We’ve spoken with a lot of senior leaders since then who want to demand that everyone returns to the office – who say that they just can’t monitor the work done by remote workers, and worry that the communication and oversight they need can only work if their people are all in the office…
We’ve also heard from the people they lead – and those who are refused the option of flexible, hybrid or remote work often feel insulted by the reasons they’re given.
Insulted? Why is that? Because leaders who refuse flexible working show a lack of trust in their people.
The autonomy, independence and confidence that people feel they’ve earned breaks down, because their Leaders clearly don’t believe that the people they manage will actually do the work if they aren’t hovering over their shoulders to see it…
Remote and Flexible working aren't going away
Communication, Trust and Respect are the key to a well supported, productive team.
But how do you lead remote teams?
Some leaders, despite the evidence before them, maintain the view that people working from home are merely ‘pretending to work’…but can any leader who needs eyes on people at all times get the best from them?
Micromanagement, and a lack of autonomy or trust, is a surefire way to guarantee that your people have a very negative view of – and relationship with – your leaders.
Of course we know that employers need to have a thorough overview of what people are doing – whether they’re in-house or remote. In some cases, out of sight does leave space for ‘presenteeism’ – where they appear to be logged in but there’s no guarantee they are working…but those same people are likely to be guilty of the same ‘busy work’ approach in the office! It’s not so much a ‘where’ problem as you might think.
For any environment the way you Lead, how you communicate with your people, and the culture of your organisation needs to balance the needs of the business with those of your people.
Remote work, or any hybrid model that offers flexibility for the where and when people work, requires trust from your Leaders and Managers.
Trust comes from great communication, and from setting clear expectations. Giving people the autonomy to achieve their workload in their own way, with the confidence that their experience brings, and with the support of a Leader who knows they are capable.
If you aren’t used to working in this way it can be hard to change – but it’s vital for any Leader to adapt, for organisations to evolve, and that all of us meet the needs of our employees.
Confident, competent Leaders know that remote or flexible working is a positive change; that the work still gets done, and it’s done by people who are happier, healthier and more financially comfortable!
Whether it’s adapting to a more flexible working model, or embracing other changes in the way you work and lead, the support of a professional Coach will help your Leaders and Managers – and every person they lead – to succeed.
Coaching partners you with professionals who understand the challenges you’re facing, the changes that benefit the way you work, and meets the needs of all your people.
Our highly qualified Coaches are experienced in all the most vital areas of business, and from a wide range of professional backgrounds – so we can partner you with the person who best understands your needs. Every Coaching programme we run starts by looking at who you are, and what you need, to guarantee the best outcomes.
For more information on Coaching you can visit our Coaching Solutions page, which details different specialised options. You can also download our Coaching brochures, which give detailed overviews of the process and some example bios of Expert Coaches we could pair you with.