Episode 54 - Why Leaders are Failing their Remote Teams
Speaker 1:
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Lou Quinto:
Hi, welcome to Q&A on Breakthrough Leadership. I'm Lou Quinto.
Craig P. Anderson:
And I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
In today's episode, Craig and I are going to cover why leaders are failing their remote teams. Craig, as you know, this has been a learning experience over the last seven or eight months right now, where leaders have had to lead remotely. And some have been very successful. We've heard a lot of great success stories. We've heard about the way that leaders have been able to be very agile, they've turned on a dime. They've been able to do it. But even in those instances, I think that we all have heard stories about those employees that feel that their leaders are failing them when it comes to that remote environment. And I know you do a lot of coaching with your executives. Have you heard anything different, Craig?
Craig P. Anderson:
No, I think it's a challenge for everybody. Honestly, it was a challenge even before COVID. Now it's just scaled up to find that right balance.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. So let's go ahead and unpack this a little bit, Craig, when it comes to how leaders are going ahead and letting down their employees in a remote environment. But the first thing we're going to talk about is the lack of clear goals or direction that leaders are providing their virtual teams. The second area that we're going to talk about today is going to be about that feedback. And that seems to be one of those themes, Craig, that for the last eight months we've been talking a lot about, but it's that nonexistent, sometimes inconsistent feedback that leaders really need to provide to their remote teams.
Lou Quinto:
And then the last area we're going to talk about, and again, it seems like it's a repeat, it's the lack of engagement. Leaders are letting down their virtual teams when it comes to engagement. So Craig, why don't you kick us off with the very first [inaudible 00:02:05], and talk to us, again, about lack of clear goals.
Craig P. Anderson:
Sure. It's so interesting because I remember early on we talked about this, and companies who had bad processes in place already just amplified them when we went to remote work. And this I think is a system symptom of that same problem. They were never good at giving clear goals in the first place, and now there's not even kind of the sideway chats, the hallway chats, that happen just in the normal course of the workplace because these managers are probably also bad about just picking up the phone and calling or jumping on a Zoom call with them. So there's just a lack of clarity on goals right now, and that's so important because goals are shifting a lot. Where we thought we might be is not where we are, so we've had to adjust the goals or change them up or down. And if you're not a good manager about clarifying that, you are failing your team because they don't know where to set their time and their priorities. Don't you think?
Lou Quinto:
Absolutely. And with that, obviously it's direction. I mean, you're going to, with your goals, provide your employees with that direction. And as you said, I mean, direction is so important, but goals are shifting, they're changing constantly. And if you're not a good communicator when it comes to your goals that have changed, people are still heading in one direction, where meanwhile the rest of the group is going in another direction because they heard the communication or they were in on the communication, and so they've lost that direction entirely.
Lou Quinto:
But I think the point that you bring up is important, and that's the prioritization. Because when you're working remotely, one of the things that's so important, because you're all by yourself, is how am I prioritizing, or even better yet, what's most important for me to do today. And those definitely have to be based upon the goals or the objectives for whether it's the project that we're working on, whether if it's the system that we're reorganizing or renovating. We need to have those goals, and we need to have it for direction and priority. No question about that.
Craig P. Anderson:
Absolutely. Okay, well let's talk about the next piece of this, which is nonexistent, inconsistent, or just bad feedback. You love to talk about it. I immediately think of your seagull management.
Lou Quinto:
Oh, yeah. Unfortunately I can't take credit for that. But it's a great analogy, where in many instances, managers practice seagull management. And if you missed that episode or episodes, where I talked about it, that's where a manager comes into a room, makes a lot of noise, flaps his arms or her arms, and poops on everybody, and leaves. And for many managers, that's what they truly believe feedback is. But Craig, I feel like we're beating our listeners over their head every time we talk about coaching and feedback. And you and I, we've discussed it, it's never on a job description that people have to coach their employees. And part of coaching is feedback.
Lou Quinto:
So you said it right, nonexistent, or inconsistent, or unconstructive feedback happens all the time. We tend to always catch people when they're doing something wrong. And when that happens, that's total unconstructive feedback. We need to get into the habit, and I think we said it from probably our very first episode last year. We got to catch people doing things right. We've got to reinforce good behavior, and we've got to give that feedback and recognize people immediately. And we're still in the virtual environment, it's become even more difficult because we can't see people when they are successful. We can't see it right away. And we have to be on top of that to be able to give that good feedback.
Craig P. Anderson:
Right. The tendency is when you see something wrong, as a manager or leader you're like, oh, we got to fix that because we can't have that consistently go on. And so it becomes this urgent priority to go fix a problem because I think that's the way our brains are wired, is just to say, oh, we got a problem, let's go fix it. Or at least for some [inaudible 00:06:14].
Lou Quinto:
Well, not only are our brains wired that way, but our eyes are wired to see negative things.
Craig P. Anderson:
Yeah.
Lou Quinto:
That's the shiny object that we always catch a glimpse of first.
Craig P. Anderson:
Right. So it's, and again, difficult in these circumstances because now it's not only I have to catch somebody doing something good, I have to pick up the phone consciously and call them and tell them that. So if I might say, you have to be incredibly intentional about trying to give that positive feedback and have the same heightened awareness you have for seeing a problem and wanting to fix it. You need to turn your brain around to say, as soon as I hear a good word, maybe the person's manager says, "Oh, Susie did whatever today, did a great job with a customer on a call," jump on, shoot an e-mail, pick up the phone and call, send them a text. Take that same urgency you would have if you a saw a flaw, and apply it to I have to have that same urgency when I see something good going on.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And going back to the title of this episode on how leaders are failing remote employees, feedback is so important. And it's got to be a priority for every leader, with every team member, that they are constantly focused on giving consistent feedback, both negative to redirect behavior, but at the same time, we want to reinforce good behavior, and so we need to give the feedback there.
Lou Quinto:
And that's going to lead us to the next area, Craig, because if we get good feedback and people are feeling good, they know what they're doing well, they know what they need to change because we've redirected them, it goes back to that engagement. But today, a lot of leaders are letting their remote teams down because lack of engagement. So Craig, what are you recommending to your clients that keep that engagement amongst their remote teams?
Craig P. Anderson:
Part of it's what we were just talking about, reaching out, contacting people, scheduling time. You can't do the drop by, you can't do the hallway chatter, you've got to think about how can I interact with employees and just check in, and touch base, and make sure they're engaged. The other way, it goes back to the very first point, be really clear about what it is we're trying to do. What are the goals? What are the objectives? People want to focus their goals and priorities on the things that are tied to the company's goals and priorities. But you have to be clear about what those things are. And I actually read, we interviewed recently Adam Weber and his book, Lead Like A Human, he actually had a great idea in there where they talk about setting objectives for people, where when they tell people what the goals and objectives are, they have them tie that to something in their personal life that they'll be able to do if that objective is achieved.
Craig P. Anderson:
So now it's not about hitting the company's objectives, it's if I hit the company's objective, I get to take my family to Disney World, or go buy a boat, or whatever it is. And that way everything becomes much more real and you become engaged, not only because it's personal for them, but now you have an understanding of what's driving them as well. And that's some of the ways you can really get engaged with your teams.
Lou Quinto:
Yeah. And I think the other thing too for a leader is very important is there's got to be some way to constantly to be able to measure or determine the engagement. And so some simple questions that as a leader you can ask is, first of all, are all of the team members contributing to the conversations that we're having about the project? Are they attending and are they actively participating in all of our team meetings? Are they motivated to take on new work, or are they feeling overwhelmed? And additionally, are they working well together? Is there frequent and unproductive team conflict, or do we find a lot of harmony going on amongst the team that really shows that they're engaged? Because if you don't have that harmony and there's a lot of that frequent and unproductive team conflict, then chances are there's not a lot of engagement.
Lou Quinto:
So those are just four questions that I would recommend to any leader to ask themselves on a regular basis on whether or not my team members are staying engaged. And those answers will lead you to whether or not you've got an engaged team, or if you need to work with some individuals one-on-one to keep them engaged. But again, the whole goal is, how are you letting down your remote teams, and engagement is number one. So Craig, key takeaways. Do you have a key takeaway from today?
Craig P. Anderson:
It's so funny, Lou, because maybe we have to just say this stuff 15 times for people to hear it. But the key takeaway is the key takeaway [inaudible 00:10:55].
Lou Quinto:
It's like raising children, isn't it?
Craig P. Anderson:
That's right.
Lou Quinto:
You got to say things [inaudible 00:10:59].
Craig P. Anderson:
Our work is never done, Lou. I would say the key takeaway is getting engaged in coaching your employees, giving the feedback, paying attention to the good stuff. Those are the key takeaways that I think we always bring from these conversations. But it's so important, especially as we still have companies out there saying they're not going to come back to the office till next summer.
Lou Quinto:
Right.
Craig P. Anderson:
So it's really important that you are cognizant of the need to coach and provide feedback and clarity to your teams. How about you, Lou?
Lou Quinto:
Yeah, no. Definitely I agree with you a hundred percent on that one. I truly believe that at every meeting there needs to be a recitation of what our goal or what the objective is that we are chasing after. Because as we've said it before, when it comes to communication, if you think you've said it too many times, say it another 10 times, because chances are, people are just hearing it for the very first time. And so that's why at the beginning of every meeting, make sure that you're putting that goal or objective at the very beginning and then constantly giving them feedback on how are we doing as we're traveling down this journey to accomplish our goals. So that's my key takeaway.
Craig P. Anderson:
Perfect. I love it. Excellent. Well, thank you everybody for joining us on today's episode where we talked about ways leaders are failing their remote teams. If you liked what you heard or you know a leader who's failing their team right now, share, subscribe, so you don't miss our episodes as they pop up. You can catch all of our prior episodes as well as this episode on qaleadership.com. And we're also available on all your favorite podcasting platforms. So, until next time, I'm Craig Anderson.
Lou Quinto:
And keep your hands washed. Keep your distance. I'm Lou Quinto.