Leading Your New WFH Team

Amid COVID-19 caution, if your company has decided it’s safer for those who can, to work from home (WFH), or offsite, I hope you can temporarily celebrate losing the commute. As a consultant with my own practice, I have been WFH for almost 20 years. I mostly love it but I had to learn some new habits to make it work.
 
Last year I went back on a client site for about nine months. I was curious when I started what that would be like. The commute added to the length of my day and I had to adjust to the fact that there were back-to-back meetings all day long. I mostly didn’t mind this that much. The biggest adjustment was becoming reacquainted with how unbelievably social workplaces are and how much less productive I felt. I got to experience firsthand what most of my client’s deal with every day. 
 
Corporations are, by very nature, very social entities. The social part matters a lot! You need it to work with teams, build relationships, influence and accomplish large initiatives. The interactions, formal and informal, are also often the spark for greater creativity and innovation. When you WFH, you miss all that and it has an impact. I also believe some folks struggle being productive from home because for them it is a place for their life outside of work. Even if they often work evenings and weekends, it’s not all day. 
 
Of course, there are many teams already working mostly virtually. For them the current situation will have little impact. But if your team is temporarily WFH full-time, I thought some pointers might be helpful for those leaders with a newly minted WFH team:
 

• Let your team know what you expect of them. If you expect them be available during certain hours, let them know that ahead of time. If you company has some good “WFH” ground rules, remind them of those. If you don’t, set some reasonable ground rules so there are no surprises and you don’t feel disappointed in anyone. 
• Start your day as much as possible like you start it at work. If you check in with your team on Slack or text, or set your goals for the day first thing, do that. Keeping your normal routines as much as possible, is a good idea.
• Try to make all communications that you might have in person or in a meeting, as alive and engaging as possible. Treat all meetings as if you are showing up in person and have them on Zoom, WebEx, or whatever platform your company uses. Phone meetings, especially with your team, are not as engaging for you or for them. The connection that happens during meetings where we can physically see people provides so many more cues that help us navigate messages and meaning. Don’t skimp on this.
• Add “social time” to all meetings. This happens naturally at work because some folks show up early or walk to a meeting together and catch up a bit. Try to replicate that as much as possible via your web-enabled meetings. If the WFH extends beyond a week or two, make sure you keep doing all the “affiliative” team stuff you do: celebrate birthdays, other milestones and important goals met. Though remote, at least half your team still need this.
• Work harder than usual to not use e-mail for something that you should be talking about in person. Schedule a web-enabled meeting where you can see each other. 

 
Finally, be more careful than ever about e-mail and text etiquette. Adding an extra dose of “please” and ‘thank you” goes a long way. It’s tempting to go into our shell, especially for those more introverted folks among us. Resist this urge. Your team needs your presence more than ever.
 
Moira Clarke founded Leadership Consulting Partners 20 years ago to help companies advance their leadership and people systems. If you are reading this to the end, and you find value, please say so and share with others on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thank you!