Most people would agree that a chief revenue officer is a pretty significant hire, but I have yet to meet mine in person. Right now, our only face-to-face interaction is over video. In fact, that’s how our relationship began — like many business leaders during this pandemic, I had to hire Todd through a series of video calls.
The pandemic has caused me to question and reevaluate many of my own assumptions. This not only led me to hire our CRO remotely, but it is ultimately why I also decided to allow employees to work from home until 2021.
While it’s tempting to call this a pivot, those who have worked with me would probably describe it more accurately as a flip-flop. I used to believe that you could build an in-person culture or a remote work culture, but that a hybrid of the two was destined to fail.
The realities of COVID-19 have not just changed my outlook, but transformed the way I think about how work should get done —and how leaders need to show up for their team, even if they can’t “show up” in any physical sense.
The remote work debate changed in an instant
Before the pandemic, the debate over remote work revolved around its perceived impact on productivity, collaboration, employee engagement and culture.
I say “perceived” because it was pretty easy to find research studies that supported either the “pro” or the “con” sides of remote work. Some surveys have suggested remote workers feel more autonomous and empowered. Others warned that remote workers feel isolated and disconnected from the team.
Until COVID-19, allowing or disallowing remote work was more of a policy decision based on the message that leaders wanted to send. In my case, requiring an in-office culture meant that our team members would have a consistent employee experience that we could easily measure and enhance.
The question of whether employees feel safe returning to the office changes the debate entirely.
The ability to work without fear for your health should be treated as a fundamental human right. We have a duty as business leaders to ensure we make the best use of the technologies and strategies to uphold that right.
Fortunately, the technologies have been available for a long time. The more difficult piece is the strategy part. If safety means that remote work should be an option, how do leaders master the style of management it demands for the long term, especially in a hybrid environment? While I don’t pretend to have this all figured out, these are a few of the things I suggest keeping in mind:
1. Practice omnichannel management
For many years, marketers adopted an omnichannel approach. This is the idea of ensuring you not only allow customers to reach out by phone or email, but through any of the channels they might prefer like chat, instant message or social media. We talk about “meeting customers where they are,” because we owe them that. We owe employees the same thing, especially now.
That means business leaders who were accustomed to hosting large in-person employee gatherings need to become better versed in Slack, video and other messaging services. Remote workers need to know that they can approach you there as easily as they might once have talked to you in an elevator.
Similarly, we must be as compelling, inspiring and persuasive with what lands in a team member’s inbox as we would delivering a keynote speech.
Successful remote work leadership entails not only making yourself available in all these channels but also becoming fluent in the unique tone and etiquette they demand.
2. “Real life” doesn’t just happen in-person
When employees work at their desks, you expect them to be focused on their jobs. But you also know that there can be a lot going on beyond the office walls that matters to them. Their kids could be struggling in school. They might have an ailing parent to care for.
One of the big risks of remote work is that it becomes too easy to overlook and ignore the totality of an employee’s life. There can be an adjustment for remote workers as well — especially if they would have preferred an in-office experience before COVID-19 — to ensure the lines between working and living don’t blur too much. Because while many assume that it’s easier to balance work and life when you’re remote, in reality it can lead to longer hours and less separation between home and work.
Recently I made another decision: to close our office on a Friday and take two extra days around the July Fourth weekend, purely to ensure our team focuses on their mental health.
3. Move from facilitation to orchestration
When teams meet in person, leaders have to act as great facilitators — running meetings where everyone has a chance to speak and contribute to the corporate direction or solve a problem.
Leading a remote workforce is similar, but different. While the definition of “facilitate” is to make an action or process easier, what’s needed now is an ability to orchestrate.
In other words, just like an orchestra is arranged to bring out the best possible performance of a piece of music, business leaders need to orchestrate their team members so that no one feels like a second-class citizen, and that the kind of hallway conversations and casual interactions that help in-person culture thrive online.
This will not happen overnight. In fact, it will likely require you to train and hire people with interpersonal skills that can adapt to primarily digital communication. In the meantime, more time will need to be spent onboarding employees and training existing team members on ways to bond, even online.
Remote work isn’t either/or: It’s improv
It’s not just that I no longer see remote work and in-office culture as a yes-or-no decision: I now realize the reality we’re living in requires a leadership skill that’s akin to improv.
If you’ve ever seen improv, you may know that it often starts with one actor setting up a scene or situation, and then a second actor joins in by saying “Yes, and … .” You can never say “No” in improv because the point is to develop the sketch based on what’s already being performed.
Should companies welcome team members back to the office? Yes, and they should offer remote work as an option. Should remote work be allowed to continue long term? Yes, and it will mean that the team needs different things from you as a leader. Can you really build a successful culture and welcome new people into it when you work remotely?
Yes, and you can too.