A friend of mine mentioned the other day that this isolation has only been 100 days.  It seems like 100 days of anything should be generally easy to do. And yet, when he said that I thought, “That’s all? It feels like soooooo much longer.”

While some colleagues have gone back to the office in real life, many others of us are still working remotely as we have been for the past 14 weeks. The thing about isolation is that it feels isolating.  I’ve talked to a few people this past week who are beginning to lean toward paranoia.  Maybe you know these feelings like: everyone else is in the office making plans while you’re excluded; the boss is keeping your colleagues in the communication loop and you’re in the dark; or, everyone else is doing fine, while you’re still trying to balance home-work-life in the current reality.    

Some organizations are going through another round of layoffs. People are on edge. No one feels like their best self right now. As a leader, how do you keep your team going? How do you buoy their spirits? How do you continue to navigate these rocky waters—remotely? Here are some ideas.

Embrace the new definition of leadership.

You’re right—this is not what you signed up for. You may be stretching beyond your skillset and finding all these videoconferences exhausting.  Have you noticed how it’s almost impossible to multi-task when on video? When you’re on that meeting, you have to be even more present—looking right into the camera so people feel like you are looking at them. 

I was recently on an interview committee for a leadership position and witnessed candidates’ varied comfort or ability to emote while online. Portraying emotion in a virtual environment takes intention, focus and practice.  Never had I put too much thought into “ability to emote in remote environments” as an important quality for leadership…until now. 

There are skills and competencies needed to successfully facilitate teams in a virtual environment like independence needed to manage your own schedule and boundaries as well as interdependence needed to synchronize your work with colleagues working remotely. But generally, you have the ability to create what leadership looks like for you in your remote work environment.  You have an opportunity to listen more, talk less and truly facilitate change.

Step one is to accept that you are not a virtual leader.  There is no such thing as virtual leadership.  The word virtual is used to describe something that exists in essence but not in actuality. You exist in actuality. Your team exists in actuality. Your leadership is real. You’re simply leading in a virtual environment.  How you do this is what you need to continue to define. 

Express your gratitude.

In her Letter to My Daughter, Maya Angelou shares a story about feeling overwhelmed and incapable of doing anything. (As an aside, Maya Angelou wrote to a virtual daughter, the essence of a daughter. She actually had only one child—a son.)

She describes how she was “going crazy” and talked to her mentor who said, “Sit down right here at this table, here is a yellow pad and here is a ballpoint pen. I want you to write down your blessings.” He instructed her to write every possible thing: “I can see this yellow pad…I can hear a choir, a symphony, babies crying…I can read the news of the day, I can read a letter from home…”

When she reached the last line of the page, “the agent of madness was routed.” Maya Angelou used this strategy throughout her lifetime to thwart her feelings of insecurity, times when she was sure people would figure out she was a charlatan who had no idea how to write. She says, “I am almost undone, then I pull out a new yellow pad and as I approach the clean page, I think of how blessed I am” (p.66). 

How can you start your day with your own gratitude list? Clearing your path from your own “agents of madness” allows you to better support your team. Getting into the practice of authentically expressing gratitude can be a game-changer for you, your colleagues and your team. You probably do this in regular, in-person life, but how have you been expressing gratitude during these remote times?

If you have relied on ending each email with a “Thanks!”, I urge you to do more. Since you are not having in-person interactions with your team, they can’t pick up on your energy as they may have in the past.  You cannot hug or pat on the back a colleague who is grieving or struggling. Your wonderful smile and sparkling eyes don’t translate as well through the webcam. 

You already know that an exclamation point via email or text just doesn’t quite hit the level of personal connection you may have intended.   Maybe you’re feeling scattered, trying to get too many things done at once; Maybe you are feeling low or overwhelmed; Maybe you simply haven’t prioritized this yet.  So take a minute, write a handwritten note to each person on your team and send it in the mail.  Be sure to offer clear and specific ways they contribute positively to your team community.  Your real handwriting on actual paper in an envelope with a stamp.  Nothing virtual about that.  

Ramp up the quality of your team communication.

Once you read our post Managing Teams Remotely-ASAP! at the start of the pandemic, you probably started communication practices that you never had instituted previously like more video conferences, instant messaging or virtual happy hours. Now that you have some basic structures in place, it’s time to up the level of quality for your communication. 

When you host your weekly team meeting, you’ll follow a tight and clear agenda but also be sure to include some stronger connection points like beginning each meeting with a ritual or even a fun physical gesture to welcome each other to the meeting. We love the strategies offered in Bring Feminist Practices into Your Online Meetings like placing your hand on your heart to indicate depth of feeling or doing a hand signal to show you agree.

And, if your team is beginning to experience conflict or tension, be prepared to navigate that by using strategies like those offered in 4 Ways to Work Through Conflict on Remote Teams including:

• Take preventative action

• Ask questions

• Confirm understanding

• Prioritize respect

And, if you have not yet opened the dialogue about race and racism in our work, workplace, field and world, do that with your team.  The Remote DEI Toolkit offers a ton of support and strategies to help you navigate these conversations and processes with your team.  For example, to start a DEI Internal Change Team remotely with your staff may mean having more frequent (but shorter) touchpoint with the group and explicitly ensuring that voices of all colleagues, especially those who may have less power in the organization, are represented in the group.

All of these strategies will continue to support you as you lead in this virtual environment and beyond. Keep up the great work. You’ve got this.