How to build and manage remote teams during the COVID19 pandemic? Start with a reality check: this is the new normal! Time to make a fresh start!
No more rush hour traffic, lower gas prices, no more office-attire constraints. No more trying to look busy while watching the clock! Woohoo! Yippee-NOT!
For millions of people, the luxury of not having to go to the office is actually a misery. Being on lockdown and working from home is causing as much stress as pressing through gridlocked traffic and shlepping to work did back in the pre-CCOVID19 days.
Many are clamoring to get out and get their old lives back—jogging, partying, beachcombing, bar-hopping, barber shopping, theater-going, gym-jamming, mani-pedicuring—living life on their own terms without fear!
And the billions in lost revenue to companies large and small makes it really tempting to break free in order for people to recover their sanity and for businesses to recoup lost profits.
Unfortunately for those of us who are holding our breaths waiting for the good old days to return, we’ll probably turn blue and blackout before that happens. According to medical experts, social distancing saves lives. So remote entrepreneurship and team building are the new normal—at least for now.
How to build and manage remote teams—own the new normal
So instead of “waiting to exhale,” let’s take a deep breath and regroup.
Decentralized, office-less work-life is not new to everyone. Before COVID19 nearly 4 million workers telecommuted at least half of the time each week. As of 2017, as many as 8 million employees worked remotely fulltime.
The fact is that from boutique companies to behemoth corporations, telecommuting saves corporate America billions of dollars every year, to the tune of $11,000 per worker. How? By reducing or eliminating costs from absenteeism, electricity, water, building maintenance, janitorial services, on-site security, furniture, parking, office supplies, and other expenses. In many ways, telecommuting is better for the environment and the economy.
Nevertheless, getting used to it is still going to be a challenge for newcomers to the scheme. After all, most of us don’t have to think about, equipment availability and liability, or internet bandwidth, and cybersecurity—in our homes!
How to build and manage remote teams—reboot your leadership style
The great irony of this conflagration is that social distancing and sheltering in place are driving leaders to reboot their leadership styles.
Communication and collaboration look and feel differently now. Assessing employee productivity must be measured differently as well. Remote team building and management will require leaders to focus more on employees as people than as cogs in a company machine.
DiSC personality training may be the most powerful tool you can have in your arsenal as you help each of your team members navigate through this strange season.
DiSC stands for the 4 basic personality types: Dominant, Influential, Steadfast/Supportive, and Conscientious. Understanding these personality types can help you recalibrate your leadership approach based on the temperaments of your staff. Each has a dominant personality profile and DiSC personality training will teach you how to recognize it.
How to build and manage remote teams—humanize your leadership style
Developing “soft skills” is a hard concept for some Type-A managers to embrace, but they’re crucial to leading remote teams.
For some workers, the solitude will be paradise because they like working alone more than on teams. For others, the solitude will be numbing and the silence will be deafening. They need the noise and social contact to stimulate their grey cells—so for them being on lockdown will feel like a cell-a jail cell!
DiSC training will help you assess each employee’s work environment, and any needs for support—technical, workflow, emotional, or otherwise.
And DiSC can heighten your own level of self-awareness by identifying your personality profile. This insight can help you determine which of your personal attributes to draw on as you deal with individual staff members. And indeed, you will have to individualize your leadership in order to maintain team culture—yet another irony in the COVID19 era.
DiSC training will help you learn how to listen and actually hear more fully what each staffer is saying…as well as what they’re not saying. You’ll learn how to recognize grief and loneliness in some of your workers, and most importantly, you’ll be able to encourage them.
Remote team building and management require compassion, sensitivity, and patience. These are foreign concepts in the traditional workplace. But the pandemic has turned tradition on its head. DiSC personality profile training will help everyone adjust to this brave new world.