How are your teams doing? Really?!

As we move further past the one-year mark since the pandemic landed, we see the pressures and challenges mounting for leaders and their remote teams. In this time of uncertainly and sudden adaptations, it has become more important than ever to understand how leaders can continue to influence their workforce positively. This blog explores how leaders affect the way teams respond and move through a period of crisis. It will also introduce an easy-to-use free self-diagnostic tool for leaders to immediately begin identifying and solving the key issues facing their remote teams.  How is your team doing? Really?!

This McKinsey Graph* shows how leaders influence the way teams respond and emerge from a crisis. This research focusses primarily on the COVID-19 crisis that has gripped the globe.  In the graph, you will see the various stages of a team or community’s crisis response. After one whole year we have moved through the impact, heroic response, honeymoon period well into to disillusionment as we round the anniversary of the crisis. Now more than ever, team leaders must re-energize their workforce as vaccines rollout and the threat of variants continue to make headlines in the news. During the disillusionment period, two new trend lines have emerged. These distinct lines represent the impact leaders can have on their workforce during this time. The blue line shows leaders responding to disillusionment with bounded optimism, resilience and managing the morale and relationships of those they lead. The red line highlights leaders that respond with overconfidence and failure to address the underlying issues and needs of their workforce.  At Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.™ (VLM) we help ensure leadership choices and actions align more with the blue curve by equipping you with the strategies and tools to meet the needs of your remote teams.

Build Awareness

The first step in this process is becoming acutely aware of the pressure points or stressors manifesting within your remote teams.  As the months progressed you have undoubtedly encountered stress points in your remote teams that continue to impact performance and morale.  Pretty well every team has! Like other leaders, perhaps you or employees, still find personal productivity a challenge when working from home. Some employees may be overburdened while others hide from extra tasks when working from home. You may feel that team members are not “on the same page” due to a lack of clarity regarding each other’s roles and responsibilities. Or maybe you still find yourself in too many unproductive zoom meetings. Often there is not one but multiple stress points hindering performance. For a list of potential stress points that we have aided our clients with over recent months, click HERE.

Virtual Leadership Matters has spent the past year identifying and helping solve the problems facing leaders in today’s new normal. Some issues were obvious while others required more attention and investigation to identify and resolve. For each item listed HERE, VLM has the expertise to save you time and energy in achieving better outcomes for your organization. As Leaders, it is our responsibility to take steps in identifying and addressing the areas in which our remote team can improve. This why filling out the self-evaluation is such an essential first step for relief.  After you identify your unique stress points by filling out our self-evaluation HERE, take action by scheduling a complementary consulting call with one of our expert consultants to seek practical solutions.

Key insights

As the future continues to remain uncertain, leaders must take action to address the needs of their remote teams and overall workforce. After a year of working through the pandemic, multiple stress points will have started to emerge in your remote team limiting productivity and performance. Begin the process of identifying these stress points by filling out our self-evaluation HERE. Save yourself valuable time and energy by utilizing the experience and expertise of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc.™   in a complimentary consulting call.

The Author

David Smith, BComm, CMC, ACC, RPM has over 30 years of experience as an organizational leader and a decade as certified executive coach, facilitator and management consultant. He has served as a corporate executive (CEO), business owner and entrepreneur in multiple start-ups in different industries including one of Canada’s ‘50 Best Managed Companies’ and is Co-Founder of Virtual Leadership Matters Inc. 

*Source:  https://www.mckinsey.com/business-functions/organization/our-insights/overcoming-pandemic-fatigue-how-to-reenergize-organizations-for-the-long-run?cid=eml-web