What are we learning about the NEW competencies of a virtual leader?

Most of our leadership practices assume face-to-face leadership interactions. When we recollect great leadership examples, our minds often fall back on a few enduring movie clips. We visualize an Al Pacino (Movie: Any Given Sunday) or a Denzel Washington (Movie: Remember the Titans) in front of a struggling sports team, giving a rousing speech. Now imagine Pacino or Denzel doing the same speech via Zoom or Microsoft Teams. Difficult to do visualize it the same way, right? It somehow does not have the same ''ra-ra'' effect, does it? In a virtual setting, Leaders must learn to operate with fewer tools to inspire, engage, and get work done.

 A survey, done in 2018, a year preceding the pandemic, shows that only 15% of the surveyed leaders considered themselves ''very-effective'' in leading virtually, with less than 20% receiving training to lead virtual teams. Yet, by March 2020, prepared or not, trained or not, most leaders had moved over to leading their employees virtually as many employees (and leaders) shifted to working from home. No wonder we are learning now that the stress and burnout levels among leaders are higher than those of individual contributors. Leading in a virtual context is not an extrapolation of leading in a face-to-face context- there are inherent differences which many of our leaders are unprepared for. 

 In my research on the shift to Working from Home due to the pandemic, I see four disadvantages for leaders in a virtual context than face-to-face leadership:

a) a lack of physical interaction- which means a loss of face-to-face synergies. Study after study shows that only 30% (some argue even a lower percentage) of all communications happen verbally, rest happens non-verbally. This would convey that communicating over the computer is only 30% of what a face-to-face environment offers.

b) no time to engender trust since trust will need to build from a distance, without natural human connection. One study claims that it takes 3-9 months to establish confidence and trust in a virtual environment- and that is provided there is a conscious effort to do so. Of course, high levels of trust in teams established before the pandemic really helps. In my research, I found younger age and lower tenure (irrespective of age) employees are struggling more both ways- to trust and be trusted than those who went into working from home on an already established platform of trust.

c) significant predictability and reliability issues, as the coordination is not spontaneous, it must be deliberate and focused. While productivity has not gone down (since employees save on commute time, meeting time, travel restrictions, etc.), many leaders are unsure about effectiveness in long term projects, requiring creativity and collaboration.

d) lack of social relationships and interaction. When we use Zoom or its equivalent, we are stripped of much of the richness available only in face-to-face settings. A certain social and human ‘osmosis’ is essential for people to feel a sense of community and belonging. In its absence, interactions become more transactional. And it isn't easy to do anything transformational.

It is not just how work gets done that has changed now; even how leaders discharge their roles changed. Some of what leaders used to do are taken over by technology, including being a gatekeeper, a recorder, a process manager, a reviewer, and maybe even a motivator. So, leaders must adjust to a whole new role- new tools, new ways of working, directing, and engaging their teams. Unless leaders realize and change with the different dynamics, they will like the proverbial boiling frog- unable to survive in a new context!

 So, what kind of adjustments do leaders need to make in a virtual setting? I suspect when we look back to these times a few years from now, we will uncover many. I focus on two major areas of change that I have had some time to study: one in task-related, and the other is to do with trust.

 Task-related:  There are three things for a leader to do in driving results in a virtual team. The virtual leader must take a helicopter view to continuously scan and interpret the tasks, the team, the environment to make real-time goal adjustments. In other words, the leader needs to know, organize, and work the entire gameboard. Like a football game coach seeing the game from the sidelines, they need to see the game in its totality and constantly adjust moves among the players (team members) that ensure a win. Next, the leader needs to be the direction setter- so that all activities, individually and collectively, have a focus and a purpose aligned to overall goals. It is like the coach strategizing the day before the match or through half-time- positioning the players, working through the strategy, knowing how to move on competition, etc. One leader I know consciously spends his evenings thinking through and plotting the tasks that need to be done the next day, and in the next morning’s team call, he shares his thoughts and moves. The leader needs to break the tasks into their elements and to manage their movement to a conclusion. Tech teams, hospitality industry teams often do this naturally- we need to make this a mainstream habit. Finally, the leader needs to be an operational orchestrator. It involves identifying resources needed, clarifying, and coordinating, reviewing, and rewarding as appropriate. More than ever, the leader must be an obstacle buster.

None of the above would appear too different from traditional leader settings, but keep in mind these now must be done in a virtual context and are hence amplified substantially. Further, this work organizing, adjusting, and discharging need to be carried out using a heightened awareness of four factors, which would have happened naturally in a face-to-face environment. These four ‘understanding’ factors are:

 a)    activity understanding- who is doing what and how they get it done. At any point in time, the leader should know if their ‘players’ are furthering the game or holding it back! As they can no longer physically ‘see’ this, they need to ask, monitor consciously, and be sensitive to this.

b)    Availability understanding- who can do what, when. Employees are working from home and may need to operate on different schedules given their home constraints. Knowing the intricacies of what is happening in the lives of the team members without being intrusive is an art. Keep in mind that when people are working from home, work interferes with life, not the other way around.

c)    process understanding- what needs to be done, when, and how. Knowing how to organize the work and the team members to produce the results on time requires strong process discipline. Preemptively managing the sequence of tasks to be done requires great project management skills. The leader must stay on top of issues personally and ensure his team members do so. One person or one activity out of kelter could throw the whole thing to disarray. 

d)    social understanding- knowing the context in which the team members are carrying out their work. Here is where empathy and compassion become important. As many employees feel stressed due to the pandemic, their engagement levels could be at risk. Leaders need to show an understanding of their employee's circumstances to keep them engaged at work.

I am also noticing an increasing number of leaders viewing themselves as performance supporters instead of performance managers. In a virtual context, vertical boundaries of hierarchy dissolve, and horizontal boundaries are pronounced. Silos get amplified, resources are unevenly distributed, task clarity needs to be more explicit. Leaders should not appear as performance managers- sitting over their team as reviewers. Instead, they need to be there for a team as a resource. This needs a shift in orientation from being there as performance managers as opposed to performance supporters. One leader, I know senses, addresses proactively and coaches his team members every week. This way, he can pivot and adjust in real-time.

 Trust-related: In a virtual setting, trust-building is a conscious effort- with a different set of tools than what is available in a face-to-face context. There are no water-cooler conversations, no side-conversations during conferences, no 'can-I-have-a-quick-word-with-you' possibilities. Trust is perhaps the most critical dimension in a virtual setting. Since employees see their leaders as a proxy for the organization, they will not trust their organization if they cannot trust their leaders. Leaders must slot separate times and put in the effort to create those relationships and engender trust.

 Leaders need to be proficient with three stages of trust-building in a virtual setting:

a) calculus-based trust- that each person will play the part and do whatever it takes to cross the finish line. A leader must assume this as a given...else they would control and micro-manage to the extent where employees feel that their leaders are intrusive than trusting. Unfortunately, we know that employee surveillance software sales have shot up during the pandemic, clearly demonstrating to employees that their leaders do not trust them. If so, how can employees trust their leaders? 

b) the second level is knowledge-based trust. Knowledge here implies two things: knowing your team members' competencies and knowing their unique circumstances. Employee competencies are a leader's resources to organize, align and get to output. Knowing what their employees are capable of and the level to which they can push them will be essential to get things done. Further insight into learning every team member's personal and home situation will also help manage the result. For instance, knowing not to over-burden a competent young mother or father who has a sick child is vital in a work from home context. If you can understand and discern that, you will engender trust and be considered a good leader.  

c) Finally, identification-based trust, i.e., pride in belonging to and identifying oneself with the group. When team members feel trusted and trust their leaders, have a sense of autonomy, a sense of purpose, a sense of values, and feel a sense of success, they identify with each other and with the team. That is a ‘resource’ to the leader, and they need to deliberately create and capitalize on this psychological resource. Identity-based trust happens over time- but does not happen by chance. Leaders need to develop interventions that specifically build this over time.

 Many leaders openly argue for returning to the good old days when they can see and 'control' their teams face-to-face. That is the old and familiar playbook. Organizations make the mistake of assuming that leadership dynamics do not change for virtual settings and do not prepare their leaders. Old leadership in a new virtual context is like old wine in a new bottle- it does not taste right. 

 Here lies the rub- that likely post the pandemic, many employees will choose to work remotely at least 2-3 days a week. If we do not prepare our leaders for this change, we would not have adjusted our leaders to a new context. They would be obsolete.

 Do you agree?