Forging an Effective Virtual Leadership Style in Times of Crisis

You may have already noticed that there’s a different vibe on video calls than in real-life meetings. If you haven’t, it’s time to pay attention to those differences and step into new aspects of your leadership role. Take a slight risk in showing the lighter side of yourself to your team, to banish barriers and show your more human side. In our coronavirus world, our team is going through emotional turmoil, due to uncertainty and perceived threats. A part of your job is to try to ease that for them.

We are evolutionarily programmed to be on the lookout for threats: bodily, emotionally, status and others. This is for our own protection, but the result is that our brains can often be negative-focused. Even if we’re two months into this crisis in Western countries, we are still adapting and figuring things out.

A new world has opened up to us. We are seeing the insides of celebrity homes and the homes of our team members. This automatically gives us a new opportunity to show up as our real selves. We share sacrifices and disappointments and can therefore show a deeper level of humanity than in the past, as we are living the same crisis. We have a new interrelatedness that makes shared experiences such as anxiety and vulnerability completely understandable and ‘normal.’

As leaders, we need to understand that trust impacts performance and can wane as teams are separated. Creating some positive emotions during the distance meeting will go far to help team members feel connected. People also need to feel valued and this may become less apparent to them from a distance.

If you have agreed team norms, implicit or explicit, now is the time for you to embody them for the team, to remind them of a common thread. In an IPSOS study, 44% of French employees surveyed said teleworking represents a psychologically distressing situation for them. In another study, 62% of team members generally say they feel they get the best results with an intact team and leader present.

Here are a few ideas to help ‘shake up’ your video calls, which may have started to become routine and lose your team members’ interest, as well as building trust during interactions to carry them through feelings of isolation:

1/Carve out a little time for people to express what they’re experiencing. It could be an anonymous ‘brain dump’ on a whiteboard on a variety of subjects: a mood board, difficulties encountered, personal successes, techniques for handling home office, favorite moments of the day, etc. Use one theme per whiteboard. This can help them develop empathy for others as well as realizing they are not the only one having to manage difficulties. It also fosters feelings of psychological safety and a message that they can bring their true, full selves to work.

2/Alternate presenters to spread the feeling of belonging. Additionally, it is suggested that limiting participants to six meaningful contributors during each meeting is a good rule of thumb.

3/Let people learn with and through each other. We process much richer and complex information when we do this, as the new data is spread out over a wider network in our brains, which helps retain information.

4/ Draw on your team’s diversity and resourcefulness for new ideas. New insights allow people to build neural connections, which stimulate visions and new opportunities.

5/ Lack of trust and feelings of threat can quash creativity. Consider using breakout rooms for smaller discussion groups. These groups can then bring the ideas they find back to the larger group. The smaller format can provide opportunities to suggest ideas and even ask for help, even if indirectly.

5/Keep things moving by breaking up the meeting into different formats: small group discussion, plenary sharing, polls, lighter sharing activities, etc.

6/A good expression I heard recently is that “The future rewards clarity and punishes certainty.” Help your team see clearly through the covid fog, to something independent of it: company values and vision, for example. However, resist the temptation to reassure with promises you can’t make.