Why all employees need leadership skills as they work from home

By Dr Penny Pullan 

Looking back in history, leaders were the ones who directed everyone else. In the past, they were the ones with the ideas. Team members followed their lead, implementing what they had been told to do. This outdated, command-and-control way of leading was still lurking in many corners of the working world at the start of 2020. But COVID19 soon saw to that.

With lockdown, teams became virtual as people dispersed to their homes. No-one was left in the office. Beyond lockdown, hybrid teams are now beginning to emerge too, as some return to offices while most continue to work from home. In both cases, teams are now dispersed networks of people.

Command-and-control no longer works. The leader can’t see what everyone is doing, although some are still trying to micromanage everyone in their teams. Instead, what’s needed is virtual leadership, both from the leader and also, importantly, from everyone else.

The best sort of virtual leadership is facilitative: instead of directing, commanding or controlling, the leader makes it as easy as possible for each person in their team to do a great job, supporting them when they ask for help.

Why leadership skills matter when working from home

This provides team members with autonomy as they do their work, which is a strong motivator, as is the feeling of being trusted to deliver. Of course, those who are new to the workforce or in new roles will still need extra support and guidance, and employees will need to report regularly on progress.

In virtual and hybrid teams, though, it is not just the leader who needs these facilitative leadership skills. Every employee needs them. Each member of a team can facilitate and support others to do a great job. In a geographically dispersed team, the official leader is not as easily available as with everyone in the office.

High performing teams find that individuals other than the official leader will step up when they are in the best place to lead. If everyone takes on the attitude of facilitating others and of servant leadership, then the team is likely to flourish, even in lockdown and hybrid situations.

Let’s look at what virtual leadership might look like for each employee:

Leadership of self is where it all starts. In virtual teams, each member needs to step up to leadership of self, committing to be the best they can be and to do the best work they can. They need to understand their own preferences, strengths, weaknesses, biases and more, and work with these too.

The next leadership step is working with others. It means building relationships with other team members, developing trust and common ground, using knowledge of individual preferences, strengths, weaknesses, biases and skills of everyone in the team. This means agreeing team norms for how teams will communicate and how they will meet up, virtually, taking into account each team member.

Each employee needs to develop their technology skills to be able to get the most out of the virtual technologies that need to do their jobs, both for meetings and for collaborative working at other times.

Virtual meeting skills are key. Most virtual meetings are, not to put too fine a point on it, boring and last far too long. Each employee should have the skills to lead virtual meetings with clarity and agreement: of purpose, of objectives, of the time plan, of roles and responsibilities, of ground rules and of actions.

Leading virtual work between meetings and working effectively with others through different-time (asynchronous) collaboration tools to deliver is often overlooked. Instead too many people spend long hours in front of their screens in endless virtual meetings.

In the ‘new normal’, we all need to get better at virtual leadership. Using it, we can transform our virtual and hybrid teams and learn how to work in a way where leadership facilitates, serves and comes from the best person to provide it at any point in time.

Once we have a vaccine and being together is possible again, I hope that we will bring back these new ways of working and leading, for all employees to bring the best of themselves to work and to find autonomy, trust and motivation in their roles, and to support their colleagues too.

Dr Penny Pullan, virtual leadership expert at Making Projects Work Ltd, and the author of Virtual Leadership: Practical strategies for getting the best out of virtual work and virtual teams, available for £19.99

Bio Dr Penny Pullan was forced to go virtual nearly 19 years ago when 9/11 stopped her from travelling for months. Since then, she’s worked virtually and trains others to learn the skills to do so effectively through her company Making Projects Work Ltd. Her book: ‘Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Getting the Best Out of Virtual Work and Virtual Teams’ has become a bestseller in the pandemic and is available at https://www.koganpage.com/product/virtual-leadership-9780749475963

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