Developing superior remote leaders

"… [M]ore than 200 years ago, the 1st Industrial Revolution began and with it the shift of commercial value-added processes from home-based craft businesses to factories… As with previous industrial upheavals, the transition to a digitalized Industry 4.0 has resulted in a disruption of previous social, economic, and societal structures. Accordingly, the role of commercial work at home as part of the value creation process is also changing into a demanding activity in the digitalized home office of today."¹  Surprisingly, the shift of value-adding work from the workplace (back) to the home has registered far lower on the Richter scale for work organization than the home to factory flow when the Industrial revolution started. 

Even more astonishing has been the casualness with which the concomitant change in team leadership demands been received. The face-to-face nature of team leadership was perfected over tens of thousands of years. Yet, there was scarcely a stir, leave aside a concerted effort to find a new model, when in-person leadership became increasingly challenging with the advent of telecommuting remote teams and then (in many cases) impossible because of COVID and new forms of business organization. 

There are some good (at explaining – not justifying) reasons for the relative neglect of this momentous change in leadership demands at the grassroots. The stratospheric top leadership levels about which it is remunerative to research and write have operated remotely from their minions for millennia. First-level supervision (where the remote working transformation has been most significant) occupies no more than a minute’s attention compared to the lifetimes spent in learning the leadership lessons of Lee (Iacocca or Byung-chul, depending on your country preference). Moreover, grassroots leadership effectiveness that is lost by sub-optimal styles is not so noticeable from the apex, which has always had to cope with ordering from a distance. The consequential efficiency loss is often made up by increases in working hours to the detriment of work-life balance and health. Since there is neither an evolutionary nor a market mechanism that weeds out less efficient work teams, few organizations find it worthwhile to embark on systematic programmes for making remote team working efficiency into a source of competitive advantage.

In the absence of thought or corporate leadership to drive change, managers simply adapted, as best they could, what worked in face-to-face situations. Francesca Flood explains the handicaps of doing so. "Though some managers may assume that remote and on-site employees can be managed the same way, there is a great difference between the two… Without visual cues, body language, and face-to-face communications developed with day-to-day contact, there are less team cohesion, trust, camaraderie, and satisfaction with the team. Without a sense of belonging, it is difficult for remote workers to understand the role they play and build a shared sense of purpose."² 

Organizations wishing to excel at remote leadership of teams will have to start with getting supervisors to unlearn some skills that were highly effective in face-to-face situations. Other behaviours will have to be retained with a degree of adaptation. Most importantly, a third set of leadership styles will have to be acquired virtually afresh. This last category can prove to be particularly advantageous for corporates that get it right.

At least since the time Tom Peters and Robert Waterman popularized it in the early 1980s, Management By Walking Around (MBWA) has become enshrined in the precept (if not always the practice) of effective leadership.³  Though the examples they had chosen of America’s best-run companies brought them ridicule when those firms floundered, most of the tools and techniques they described were eminently usable. Not anymore. With the entire team located outside the premises, wandering around in the office doesn’t bring quite the same returns as it used to.

Open-door policies and informality were equally indispensable parts of the style great leaders demonstrated. Peters and Waterman (though they were certainly not alone) recommended informal communication. "At 3M there are endless meetings, though few are scheduled. Most are characterized by people casually gathering together – from different disciplines – to talk about problems."⁴  Many are the solutions I have co-created, sitting across (and sometime on the corner of) a team member’s table. There is, sadly, no obvious equivalent to the MBSAOT (Management By Sitting At Others’ Tables) in the world of remote supervision.

If sitting on the edge of a colleague’s table generated new ideas, there was no end to the flood of fresh thoughts undammed on a bar stool or the comfort of a home with one’s hand firmly holding a glass of whatever minimized inhibitions and maximized creativity most cost-effectively. Another team socializing aid for which the virtual world provides no immediate substitute. 

We now turn to leadership behaviours that cannot be jettisoned even when working remotely. We could choose among several leadership models to make this point but the Transformational Leadership schema proves to be particularly helpful here. According to Bass there are four major components to a Transformational Leader’s profile:

While the list is not unfamiliar to readers of this column, it holds implications for what HR needs to do for building three remote com-capabilities:

Can we turn the remote working threat into an opportunity? What are the leadership and team behaviours that are far easier under remote working conditions? These benefits can arise from autonomous working, creation of a team identity and extracting benefits from diversity. The following paragraphs explain why remote working is particularly conducive to each of these. 

It is with good reason that Ryan and Deci put autonomy first in their compendium of psychological needs. "There are three basic psychological needs, the satisfaction of which is essential to optimal development, integrity, and well-being. These are the needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. Failure to satisfy any of these needs will be manifested in diminished growth, integrity, and wellness."⁹  Much as a supervisor may try to cultivate a 'hands-off' style, there are obvious limits to how successful s/he can be within the confines of a common physical workspace. Not only does this have direct consequences for whatever intrinsic pleasure that might be available within that job but also throws icy cold water on the urge to experiment (even at the cost of time or some other resource being squandered in the process). The reverse holds in the remote working situation, the autonomy making both motivation and innovation gains possible. An empirical study conducted by Kelley Watson confirmed the importance remote teams attached to freedom. "Ninety percent or more [of Remote Employees with High Satisfaction with Supervision and High Affective Commitment] indicated their manager frequently exhibited… Tolerance of Freedom." ¹⁰ Bell and Kozlowski reinforce the gains from autonomy in virtual teams. "The challenge for virtual team leadership is that [development and mentoring of team members] must be accomplished by substitutes and by distributing the functions to the team itself…, in effect, making it more of a self-managing team. Leaders will need to implement a system in which team members will be able to regulate their own performance as a team." ¹¹

Commitment flourishes when organizations have strong corporate personalities that resonate with their people. Similarly, effective work-groups need to carve out distinct sub-identities and make them a source of distinction and pride for team members. "It is more difficult for leaders to create a well-orchestrated team when individuals do not share similar values or possess a common set of work procedures. To overcome these problems and to facilitate coherence among team members, … [team] leaders need to implement a leadership structure that builds a unique or 'third' culture. At the core of this leadership structure is a network of working relationships based on strong bonds of mutual respect, trust, and obligation between individuals at all levels. The goal is to empower all employees and link them together so that they are 'insiders' in the team."¹²  Try as hard as they might, team leaders embedded within the physical confines of a corporate behemoth struggle to create sub-identities for their own teams. Remote work can here deliver its second benefit. This gain can be realized if the corporate permits and supports such identity creation with (virtual) team branding elements nested within or adapted from corporate identity markers. These can include but not be limited to virtual backgrounds, stylized on-screen name tags, team-brand overlays, watermarks and branded virtual rooms for sub-group working or informal interaction.

It is received wisdom that "remote work offers an important opportunity to level the gender playing field."¹³  The other benefits it brings to diversity may not be so obvious. By permitting people in disadvantaged sections of society to operate from familiar surroundings, they are saved the stress of a straitjacketed, closed and sometimes downright hostile physical environment. From home surroundings they are more likely to deliver to their full potential, thereby enhancing overall team effectiveness. An important secondary benefit of diversity (the primary one remains social justice) points to another way remotely distributed workforces can prove advantageous. This benefit "… is the diversity of culture and mindset we gain from people belonging to the very communities where we seek to extend our marketing reach and among whom we operate our factories and other operating sites."¹⁴  To exploit this rich lode of otherwise inaccessible insights, progressive organizations regularly debrief their field sales force. It is also why top teams immerse themselves periodically into their current and prospective customer milieus. With remote teams we have the possibility of bringing the outside in, whenever we choose. 

Don’t get me wrong. I still believe face-to-face work organization is the most natural and productive way to organize complex tasks and I have devoted an entire column to explaining why.  However, just as the directors of the East India Company had no choice but to manage their India operations from a distance, grassroot teams today may be forced by circumstances, technologies and people (both customers and employees) to operate remotely. This column has hopefully guided them about what to jettison, what to modify and what can help them capitalize on their virtual situation. 

Even remote teams gain immensely from replications of devices face-to-face teams use for bonding, letting off steam and non-work help. "Everyone needs mindless breaks throughout the day. The chitchat that used to happen at the water cooler or the office kitchen area was a good way to reset one’s mind and quickly connect with coworkers over nonwork chat. So many remote teams, and wholly remote companies, have sought to re-create that virtual water cooler with a team chat room that’s always available for people to drop in and out of as they please… [T]he key seems to be that each team member should feel their presence is never required but always welcome."¹⁶  Then again, there are occasions when one-to-one informal chats are needed. "The Swedish [Fika] tradition.… is a ritual meetup between two people taking a break from work and socializing…. Many remote companies have experimented with their own digital fikas and found them to be a vital tool for building connection."¹⁷ 

Even if it means resiling somewhat from the remote advantage thrust of this column I have to emphasize the importance of the periodic 'retreat'. It is vital to know the in-the-flesh person behind the video persona and to renew that contiguity periodically. Few communications have been as powerful as the letter Dr Martin Luther King wrote 'from a Birmingham Jail' yet it is impossible to imagine that the struggle for black civil rights in the US could have been won without the speeches, marches and sit-ins he organized in person. I know there will be people who will disagree with my blue prints for making remote work more effective than the conventional variety or my insistence that the latter still has a role to play. To them I can only quote the opening lines from that same letter written from the Birminham jail. "Seldom do I pause to answer criticism of my work and ideas. If I sought to answer all the criticisms that cross my desk, my secretaries would have little time for anything other than such correspondence in the course of the day, and I would have no time for constructive work."¹⁸ 

Notes: