Virtual leadership isn’t simply a matter of putting smart technology in place. It has to be backed up with a fresh mindset that trusts the character and abilities of the individuals employed while being willing to listen intently and direct intelligently, says Jessica Nordlander
The world’s workforce has been sent home. With lockdowns across towns, states and countries, even the world’s biggest tech behemoths – Facebook, Google, Microsoft – are all now run by remote workers.
Stubborn prejudices surrounding work are rubbing up against this new reality. The truth is, remote work has never been taken wholly seriously in the mainstream of global business. Leaders have been quick to write off mass-scale virtual teams as unworkable in the real world. Revolutions don’t tend to come with an invite; major changes like these have an uncanny way of imposing themselves. However, with the mass exodus of the world’s employees, a whole new ‘workplace of the future’ has arrived with a bang and blown to pieces some of these comfortable assumptions.
With the onset of remote work, leaders have been thrown the gauntlet to learn a new set of tricks, techniques and systems in order to become high functioning virtual versions of themselves. Don’t fool yourself however – the differences in these roles are not merely technological.
A virtual leader, by definition, thinks and acts differently to a conventional office boss. He or she becomes comfortable with enabling a greater degree of autonomy amongst their team, allowing them to solve problems organically. With dispersed teams, Virtual Leaders must allow for individuals under their direction to figure out new ways of getting work done, while being aware of a steady hand there to assist when it’s needed.
The question is, will leaders rise to this virtual challenge in the short term and have the foresight to maintain it in the long?
Virtual teams: the facts
It’s beyond debate: remote workers are effective and productive. Back in 2014, Stanford professor Nicholas Bloom concluded a two-year study on remote working. Bloom set out with negative expectations but the results were unmistakable: telecommuters displayed a notable increase in productivity, with homebound employees pushing their shifts to greater lengths in absence of commutes and distractions. Moreover, employee attrition went down by 50%. Telecommuters were less distracted, took fewer breaks and sick days. To round out the benefits, office rents went down by nearly $2,000 USD per staff member.
Similar results have been replicated elsewhere. In a very recent survey by Airtasker which polled over a thousand US employees, half of which worked remotely, it was found that remote workers tend to be more productive to the tune of an extra 16.8 days on average every year.
Clearly the data is strong enough to assuage any fear that remote work will lead to a workforce of disparate slackers.
Culture shock
But even with a bucket of evidence supporting the value of remote work, opinion hasn’t wanted to budge – at least not quickly and with a majority.
It seems our collective gut had, up until very recently, not been persuaded but as we’re all acutely aware, things change quickly.
Leaders all over the world are currently getting a crash course in the practice of managing remote teams and in doing so being confronted with a realization that a lack of flexibility in their previous working practices were down to a lack of imagination in many cases rather than any insurmountable obstacles.
So, with an appreciation that not all leaders are running businesses where they’d be able – or wise – to throw open the doors of their offices and have all their employees work in coffee shop corners, for those where newly remote teams appear to offer the possibility as a sustainable future model, what are the secrets to great virtual leadership?
Not just another day at the office
Successful remote organisations are not accidental. Strong Virtual Leaders make intentional decisions in terms of how they communicate, collaborate and connect with those in their organisations. Remote working isn’t as simple as sending everyone home to spend eight hours a day on a dial-in conference line. This would quickly lead to pervasive feelings of isolation and lower levels of creativity and engagement.
The shift to remote work must be accompanied by a new mentality. This comes in the form of what I like to call ‘system trustworthiness.’ Leaders must have confidence in their teams to undertake their traditional responsibilities, whilst also extending trust to the technology they rely on for their work and their professional relationships. The system takes on a persona, and thus becomes an object of trust. A degree of faith must be invested by leaders in the technological systems that sustain their teams. To ensure system trustworthiness, leaders will need to pick these technologies carefully to ensure they optimally suit their remote work set-up.
Leaders wanting to create a successful remote model will inevitably need to lean heavily on the right technologies. Combining the powers of a select stack of well-engineered platforms will enable employees to feel engaged and motivated and leaders to navigate the majority of complicated and complex issues they and their teams will face in day to day business.
An example of three tools that have been the keys to our success:
Zoom – for ‘camera on’ face to face meetings and breakout sessions
Slack – for instant messaging and posting of both work and non-work-related content
Thoughtexchange – for crowdsourced collaboration, prioritisation and ideation
Virtual leadership isn’t however simply a matter of putting smart technology in place. It ultimately has to be backed up with a fresh mindset, one that trusts the character and abilities of the individuals employed while being willing to listen intently and direct intelligently. Hands off, ears and eyes open.
As with any new endeavour, it will involve a leap of faith. So with the ‘way’ proven, all that’s left to be seen is whether the ‘will’ will have changed when normal business is able to resume. Who will take remote control?
Jessica Nordlander is Chief Operations Officer at Thoughtexchange, one of Canada’s fastest-growing tech companies. She is a technology executive with an MSc in Applied IT, an XGoogler and was recently awarded The Most Innovative Leader in one of the most innovative countries in the world, her native Sweden.
Prior to this, Jessica led impressive change and growth in multinational companies, as Chief Digital Officer for global travel group STS Education; Head of Business Development at Google and Managing Director in Stockholm, Dubai and Vancouver for SaaS growth wonder Meltwater.
Thoughtexchange helps leaders crowdsource answers to open-ended questions with groups of 10-100,000 people. Simple software ensures everyone is heard, everyone learns and important ideas emerge. Thoughtexchange uses patented data analysis and AI to provide deep insights to decision leaders so they can take actions that have buy-in. Headquartered in Rossland, British Columbia, Thoughtexchange has a workforce of 160 people and is growing rapidly.
For more information, please visit www.thoughtexchange.com
