If You’re New at Leading from Home, Always Know What’s Most Important

So many of us have been plunged into a new role of leading or coordinating people working at home while adjusting to working from home ourselves. Before the Coronavirus crisis, you may have been used to working and meeting at your office. And you didn’t have time to plan a smooth transition and adopt the best tools and processes to make it easier. But now you’ve been doing it for several weeks. You may have adopted new tools or company apps for group communication and accountability and added in your ad hoc ideas and unique touches that express your own style and team culture. The new mix of practices and tools may be working well, but you may find that the work isn’t flowing as well as you had hoped and that some players you count on aren’t adapting as well as others.

Pat yourself on the back for making this huge shift And feel connected to a world of other leaders struggling through a similar set of challenges in their own parallel universes. Because of the nature of this shift—in the face of a crisis—many co-workers and leaders are experiencing trauma and don’t even realize it, so you can expect the unexpected. You and others may also have the challenges of childcare and homeschooling and the need to support your spouse or partner also working from home. You are doing it. Somehow. And that deserves acknowledgement!

Honor your own style while adding in a steady rhythm people can count on All eyes are on you, because you are the one everyone is looking to for answers, consistency and a sense of the future from you. You have to do what’s necessary to fuel your personal ability to provide those things, day to day and week to week.

So keep being your quirky self as long as it supports actions that will help you stay connected. Okay, some quirkiness won’t support connection. Like starting your available “office hours” at a different time every day, and not setting meeting times in advance will derail the steady rhythm you need to set in order to maintain trust.

Host conversations with the group and individual calls MORE often than before This is a point that I and other executive business coaches have probably repeated more often than any other tip. When face-to-face communication decreases, there’s a huge drop off in understanding. You absolutely must increase the meeting frequency to boost clarity, context, trust, connection, commonality of goals, and so much more.

Have fun with it, turn up your favorite music when you can and take little breaks to just breathe!

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— Mark Holzbach, Creative and Tech Community Connector, Co-Founder, Zebra Imaging