By Dave Bushy, PCC
Leadership doesn’t change with distance. And it isn’t enhanced by technology.
Many of us, when thinking about leadership, may visualize a military officer marching at the head of troops – inspiring and challenging them; and, though often unspoken, also controlling their actions.
The concept of remote leadership provides less opportunity for that same kind of clear visualization. When we think of remoteness – which may involve distance and even time – it is harder to imagine someone marching ahead or to sense personal inspiration that may emerge as a result. And then there is that aspect of control.
I believe that remote work – distant work, if you will – has been evolving forever. So too, with leading those who work remotely. Native Americans used signal fires to communicate long-distances. The people building the fires were far away and still knew what to do. Signal mirrors replaced smoke and were soon replaced with the telegraph. With the telegraph, a worker could be hundreds of miles away and collaborate with another without travelling to their location.
Soon the telephone came on the scene. Alexander Graham Bell first spoke to a person in another room and soon we were exchanging information, tasks and ideas all around the planet. Radio communications broadened the idea of remoteness. Of course, then came television with its resultant changes for the world. And somewhere in between we established mechanisms like conference calls and military communication networks. I even remember teletype machines and the early days of faxes.
Then came the computer. That pesky thing for some, that wonderful device for others, that pernicious tool that upended how we do everything. Add in efficient video conferencing and a worldwide pandemic, and things changed rapidly in just days.
Bottom line, though technology continues to get more and more complex, the fundamentals of leadership have not:
- As leaders we still need to inspire.
- We still need to challenge.
- And there are inevitably times that we still need to exert some type of control and to hold ourselves and others accountable.
All of these things are necessary, whether we are in the same room or on different continents.
In the newest iteration of remote work, anyone can pretend to be engaged with others when actually multi-tasking or texting someone else. We can join a remote meeting with AI and not even be there physically or we can join half distracted, not present intellectually or emotionally.
As leaders, it is more important than ever that we model a behavior that is focused on our people and not continually pulled away by technology. We need to ask ourselves whether we are demonstrating a behavior that is engaged and engaging all at once, or are we attempting to do the impossible of multi-tasking, thinking that we are somehow capable of it, deluding ourselves that technology has somehow given us superpowers?
Technology can make you pretty tone-deaf.
Looking through the lens of effective leadership, one needs to recognize our own motivations:
- Do we really inspire our teams? Do they know how much they are valued and how much their work means to our goals and mission? And how important is it to do this in person or on-line?
- Do we challenge teams to be better, to learn more and to benefit from the collaboration that can occur in any endeavor? Can we know when innovation might require in-person collaboration and the breaking of bread together?
- And can we accept the fact that control is less about telling people what and how to do their jobs, than to teach them and ultimately trust their actions – whether they are at the end of a video link or a smoke signal?
Remote vs. In-Person? Either way, leaders are still (and I think even more so) responsible to inspire, to challenge and sometimes even control. And it seems that we all need to hold ourselves accountable. All the remote technology in the world won’t change that.
Dave Bushy of Boston Executive Coaches – bostonexecutivecoaches.com – is a an ICF-certified coach who was trained at the Gestalt International Study Center (GISC). Dave is a former U.S. Army officer and senior airline executive who works with leaders throughout the world.
Image by Peggy und Marco Lachmann-Anke from Pixabay