Practically overnight, the pandemic has ushered in a new era of remote work. Leaders must now reinvent themselves in this new place-less workplace. Many are turning to leadership coaches to improve their personal performance, which is fine until you realize it’s not just the leaders who have ‘gone virtual’ — the coaches have as well.
Just one year ago, leaders would be having face-to-face coaching sessions. Goals, strategy and progress under discussion, the coach as sounding board, guiding the leader with a suggestion or two in the right direction. But if that leader wanted to become truly proficient, he or she had to apply the coaching into practice with a more hands-on way, and the coach would likely not witness the leader’s actions. With virtual coaching, that’s no longer true.
How can you make sure remote leadership coaching is successful? A few things I found useful:
1. Transform the sessions
It is a mistake to try and reproduce a traditional meeting onto a screen. Attention spans are shorter with video calls and the notion of time is not the same. It’s better for the leader to have a greater number of meetings with shorter intervals in between, more bite-sized and highly targeted. The same applies to coaching sessions, which should be shorter and tied to a specific skill or moment.
Keep the attention level up by adding interactive elements to virtual meetings. For example, sharing slides or quizzes during video conferencing can elicit greater discussion. There are now many tools to help with scheduling, holding conferences, sharing information and tracking progress. Leaders can get creative with such tools to gain attention, and coaches can support leaders to grow their virtual leadership abilities the same way; using personalised, interactive support from their coach.
2. Build a culture of trust and inclusion
In last month’s article, I discussed how the loss of informal controls (corridor catch-ups, water cooler moments) in a virtual workplace can cause leaders to be less trusting of their workforce and manage presence rather than performance. I see some leaders slipping into micromanagement in a virtual environment, so it’s more essential now they find time for one-on-one conversations or small group discussions where rapport is established, where everyone feels trusted and included.
That means encouraging leaders to be open and vulnerable by sharing their personal views with the team. Random chats help teams connect and build trust. These water cooler moments can be replicated by creating non-work channels in Teams or Slack where employees can share jokes, memes or cat videos.
The need for informal connections and conversations led, Tim Malone of MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a graduate student to develop Minglr, an experimental software system developed to support informal interactions. Malone points out that Minglr or Zoom may not replicate coffee chats or water cooler conversations, but reminds us that these spur of the moment conversations should not be lost to the pandemic.
While some leaders maybe reluctant to participate in these channels the moments to laugh, chat and be together support the social connections and builds culture, more so during these trying times. This same advice applies to coaches. Good coaches are supple and smart enough to adapt their style of coaching to a situation and individual learning objectives. I try to overcome the remote barrier by sharing my ideas and real-life experiences, which has kept me in good stead of forging and maintaining trust.
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