How to Manage Your Team While Social Distancing
Without face-to-face human interaction and a typical day organization, it’s quite challenging to manage your team. And an overwhelming sense of dislocation makes it even more complicated. The best way out is to adapt your management style to a new context.
Manage your team with optimism
To manage your team with optimism might sound pretty tough. But not for PROBEGIN. COVID-19 virus is contagious, but you know what is even more contagious? This is your smile and optimism which you should use to outshine fear. Our managers show confidence in the future. As a result, they are much better capable of helping the team members. They give assistance to them to make their work more meaningful. Nobody is interested in tied up creativity and frozen initiative. Remind your team that there’s a silver lining to all of this time alone. Nothing is predictable anymore. As a matter of fact, this is a key for creativity which is absolutely unstructured. And at the end of the day, this sparks new ideas for innovation.
Manage your team and Reset your expectations
Most teams are usually located in one office. And they work together under the same conditions. Nowadays the picture is totally different. Everyone is working in his or her own kind of home office. Therefore, synchronous work has swapped into asynchronous. As a result, we should readjust expectations for how work gets done. As a matter of fact, let people carry out their responsibilities on their own terms. This involves more flexibility with focusing on results.
Tone of voice instead of body language
Under current circumstances of self-isolation, it’s much harder to read non-verbal data. Emotional cues are becoming weaker and weaker. This is happening because the only way of possible communication at the present time is via video calls. That is pretty different from being in the same room. That’s why we should pay more attention to other indicators such as volume, tempo and tone of voice. Those can be good indicators of any changes that a team member may deal with.
Boost team spirit
Working from home might be quite tiresome. There is an effective strategy to fight this off. It’s called Buddy System. This system hits the ground running. Moreover, it can become an unstructured knowledge share. The team should be divided into pairs, so called fellow buddies and peer coaches. They check in on a daily basis and estimate overall engagement and well-being. This kind of shared leadership system creates mutual support. In turn, it prevents emotional isolation of team members while working from home and social distancing.