The regional manager wasn’t happy.
She had been calling my client—let’s call him Todd—for two days, leaving a handful of urgent voicemails. “We need to talk about Heather,” one of the messages began. “Nothing’s getting done. We need to figure this out ASAP,” went another.
Heather was her VP of sales. Up until March of 2020, Heather had been a star employee at the company, an auto parts manufacturer whose revenue exceeded $2 billion annually. She was dependable, performance-driven, and well-liked. Then the pandemic struck, sending all but a handful of the company’s management home to work—and Heather into a performance slump that seemed inexplicable.
Unlock Your True Potential With Virtual Leadership Training
Build top leaders who can foster relationships and drive business performance in hybrid workplaces.
Heather reassured the regional manager she had everything under control, but the signs that something was off were impossible to miss. Frontline salespeople had begun receiving desperate complaints from auto parts retailers and garages. Orders were arriving incorrect and late, frustrating customers who assumed, justifiably, that replacing a worn taillight or cabin air filter would be a cinch.
It wasn’t just Heather, either—reports indicated that she was one of several employees whose performance had taken a nosedive since being sent to their home offices. It seemed there were many team members who were struggling to adapt to the hybrid era.
Todd was the COO and the regional manager’s boss. When he came to me, he admitted he was at a loss. In a “normal” world he would’ve called the regional manager and Heather into his office to hash out what was going wrong and how to fix it. With this no longer a possibility, he had to think more strategically.
My guess is that many of you can relate to Todd’s story. Whatever your industry, the rise of remote work has created a new set of challenges for managing team members. It’s little surprise, then, that managing virtual teams calls for virtual leadership.
Reimagine the Scope of Your (Virtual) Team Leadership
With so many different variables in play in the Covid-19 era, getting to the bottom of a new performance problem has become a lot more complicated. Before the pandemic, most leaders would simply go to the person who’s struggling and figure out what was going on (much like Todd had always done).
The presumption was that any problem was the result of insufficient skills, a lack of initiative or commitment, and/or a poor attitude. The underperformer was the focus of the analysis, not necessarily the factors contributing to their underperformance.
In the era of remote workers, however, it may be far more fruitful to expand your investigation to the underperformance itself. After all, so many different factors could be contributing to the issue. Some may be unknown to you—or even the person who’s underperforming.
With that in mind, here’s a set of questions to ask and steps to take to figure out what those factors might be.
What’s Different Now?
When you’re dealing with team members whose performance has dropped off, begin by identifying the variables that could be interfering with their work. Have there been any recent organizational shifts (apart from physical separation from team members)? Difficulties in their personal life?
For many remote employees, working from home has created a host of technical and time-management challenges, especially if they’ve had to share their working hours with childcare duties. But tread carefully here; isolating the factors that may be affecting a remote employee’s job will obviously require sensitivity and discretion on your part.
What’s Gotten Worse?
Working virtually, as so many of us are, will undoubtedly amplify weak areas of your organization. Clunky processes may feel more cumbersome. If your organization fostered a culture of secrecy and territorialism, getting accurate information may now feel impossible. And any workarounds people have adopted to cope with outmoded technologies will likely break down.
To get past this, leaders must identify what broader organizational issues may be contributing to an employee’s performance issue before talking tough with them. Context is crucial.
What’s Fact and What’s Feeling?
In a crisis, anxiety, anger, and fear can lead to blame, defensiveness, and irrationality, all of which only worsens when we’re isolated. That being the case, it’s even more critical to separate emotions from facts as you look for answers.
Leaders who are frustrated by an underperformer should acknowledge their emotions, honor them—and then set them aside. Cooler heads are far more equipped to figure out what’s really going on. Patience and level-headedness are the essences of effective virtual leadership.
What’s Mine and What’s Theirs?
Healthy accountability starts with a leader acknowledging they may play a role in someone’s underperformance. Have you been clear about what you expect from your newly remote teams? Have you provided needed resources, executive coaching, online training, and feedback? Is there a gap in your leadership contributing to the problem?
The regional manager assumed Heather’s stressful new setting was causing her work from home issues—and it became the perfect justification for not speaking to her directly. But this passing of the buck only made the problem worse. Likewise, Heather’s failure to reach out as she struggled didn’t make the problem disappear.
Be Understanding Without Lowering the Bar
“Who do I throw under the bus?” Todd asked me. “My customers, who need my products to stay in business, or one of my top leaders, who’s struggling to balance her work duties with her family ones?”
I gently explained that this was a false binary; he was asking the wrong question. What he should have asked was, “How do I help my leader succeed?” Ultimately, he was confusing empathy with lowered expectations. His fear of making Heather “feel bad” wasn’t compassionate—it was cowardice.
Work From Home Tip for Managers
If your pivot to a hybrid workplace is getting you down, remember that the challenges of managing remote employees aren’t insurmountable. Treat them as simply another problem to be solved with deliberation and follow-through, not an open-ended puzzle. While it’s a small thing, this shift in mindset can help you reframe the unique challenges you face in a more productive, realistic way.
A far better way to demonstrate your concern for an employee’s struggles is to acknowledge their hardship and redouble your efforts to help them succeed. That’s when it’s time to pick up the phone and call—or, more accurately, boot up your laptop. In a hybrid context, I strongly recommend using video calls so you can read one another’s tone and expressions.
When you start the discussion, remember that the behavior is new for your employee too, and they probably already feel plenty bad about their performance. “Check in” before you “check on,” as the adage goes. Ask how they are doing to gauge their well-being. Then, clarify that your goal for the conversation is to help resolve the problem at hand.
Todd followed this advice when he spoke to Heather. He explained that the path to better results might need to shift, and it was his job, as the leader, to help her discover that path.
Lead From Behind When it Comes to Problem-Solving
In my experience, performance shortfalls, especially sudden ones, are best resolved by asking the person in question to be responsible for solving the problem. Once you’ve identified what the issue is, ask “What would you change if you could?” or “What can we all learn from this?” to open their imagination and signal that you trust their ability to improve.
Best practices in virtual leadership development are no different than those for regular leadership development: resist telling them what to do or being overly prescriptive about how to do it. You don’t want to dilute their ownership and commitment.
Remember that working in isolation, with few social interactions, can make people more anxious about their mistakes. Reassuring your employee that you are OK with missteps as long they are corrected and learned from. At the same time, you should remain available to provide guidance when needed.
George Penn, VP, Gartner
“Success in a hybrid work environment requires employers to move beyond viewing remote or hybrid environments as a temporary or short-term strategy and to treat it as an opportunity.”
Strengthen Connections Across Virtual Teams and Team Members
The toughest question I asked Todd was, “Why do you think your sales manager felt it was appropriate to call you instead of going to Heather and saying, ‘We can see you’re struggling. How can we help?’” Todd was stumped.
I told him these events could have exposed another problem: his team’s excessive reliance on him. No doubt this dependency had only increased during the hybrid environment as he was recruited to solve more and more work from home problems among team members.
With this in mind, I suggested that he go back to his regional manager and ask what it would have taken for her to reach out directly to Heather.
In your next meeting, try asking every person to identify how they rely on each of their coworkers, then compare answers. If it’s glaringly obvious that they rely on each other only minimally, preferring to just go to you instead, it’s probably time to rethink how everyone interacts.
But as team members develop new commitments to one another, make sure you remain uninvolved. As in virtual coaching and in life, sometimes the best thing you can do is stand back.