Our coun­try — and the world at large — is oper­at­ing in unprece­dent­ed times. With more peo­ple work­ing from home than ever, orga­ni­za­tions need to learn how to con­duct busi­ness and train their work­forces to be effec­tive in a vir­tu­al land­scape. While some of us have had expe­ri­ence doing this already, many are learn­ing how to work and inter­act with one anoth­er vir­tu­al­ly for the first time. 

So, what does it even mean to work vir­tu­al­ly? We’re not just com­ing into an envi­ron­ment that’s already plugged in and ready to run — it requires much more from us as indi­vid­u­als. We need dis­ci­pline as well as the abil­i­ty to hold our­selves account­able, learn new skills, ask for sup­port, and engage with oth­ers in an unfa­mil­iar landscape. 

In the past few weeks, we’ve seen a lot of tips and tricks on how to be more effi­cient while work­ing from home. We’re sure you’ve seen these pop up on your social feeds, too. What we are notic­ing to be less avail­able, how­ev­er, are best prac­tices for lead­er­ship in a vir­tu­al world. In our expe­ri­ence, lead­ing in a vir­tu­al land­scape requires a dif­fer­ent set of tools. It is our hope that this arti­cle will pro­vide you with some tips and tricks to get you started.

Tool­box for Vir­tu­al Leadership 

Effec­tive vir­tu­al lead­er­ship is built on the same foun­da­tion that great lead­er­ship has always been built on — a clear sense of pur­pose. That said, lead­ing a vir­tu­al team not only requires an immense lev­el of trust, but also kind­ness, com­pas­sion, and patience. These are often less-devel­oped skills — but don’t wor­ry, they’re learn­able. By effec­tive­ly deploy­ing time-test­ed tech­niques, you’ll quick­ly find that you’ll cre­ate an envi­ron­ment of trust. There are four key areas we focus on when prac­tic­ing vir­tu­al lead­er­ship: respect, punc­tu­al­i­ty, hard work, and creativity.

Respect Sets the Tone in a Vir­tu­al Landscape 

First and fore­most, as a leader, you need to respect home-life chal­lenges. Even vet­er­an work-from-home employ­ees are oper­at­ing under a dif­fer­ent set of cir­cum­stances now. For some, they’re not the only ones hav­ing to now work from home; they are shar­ing space with their fam­i­ly, their room­mates, or sig­nif­i­cant oth­ers. And in some cas­es, they’ve now tak­en on the role of teacher or care­giv­er. Let’s not for­get our favorite pets, who have their own sets of needs and pro­vide ample distractions. 

Make it a point to under­stand each employee’s oblig­a­tions, and work with them to devel­op a flex­i­ble work sched­ule. Be sure to under­stand what addi­tion­al sup­port you can pro­vide, and always be kind. Devel­op­ing a flex­i­ble work envi­ron­ment can be chal­leng­ing, espe­cial­ly across large teams with geo­graph­ic diver­si­ty. We found that intro­duc­ing and main­tain­ing a team avail­abil­i­ty cal­en­dar (TAC) is an indis­pens­able tool. The TAC con­tains the name, con­tact num­ber, alter­na­tive email, and time zone of each employ­ee, in addi­tion to their avail­abil­i­ty sta­tus for each day. This is a great tool to help keep every­one on the same page. 

It also is impor­tant to ensure that each employ­ee feels heard and respect­ed by their col­leagues. A leader plays a sig­nif­i­cant role in set­ting the tone by step­ping in if and when employ­ees are not being accom­mo­dat­ing or under­stand­ing of each oth­er. It is impor­tant to address con­flicts quick­ly and take con­ver­sa­tions offline as required. 

Set the Exam­ple for Punctuality

Com­plet­ing work on time and thor­ough­ly is very impor­tant, espe­cial­ly as we adjust to new sched­ules and pri­or­i­ties. If you antic­i­pate any kind of delay, it’s vital to com­mu­ni­cate this to all stake­hold­ers, includ­ing lead­ers and fel­low team members. 

Punc­tu­al­i­ty also plays an impor­tant role in devel­op­ing a cul­ture of trust. A lot of us are hav­ing to jump into vir­tu­al meet­ings to keep com­mu­ni­ca­tion flow­ing more than we had to when we were all in the office. Show up to the meet­ing on time. Being prompt and present is essen­tial in dri­ving con­ti­nu­ity. It’s your job to estab­lish expec­ta­tions ear­ly on. Here is a list of what we found most help­ful dur­ing vir­tu­al meetings:

• Begin meet­ings on time and aim to end a few min­utes ear­ly to allow employ­ees time to dial into the next meet­ing or have a small break in between. This can be accom­plished by book­ing 50-minute meetings.
• Each meet­ing should have a set agen­da with an iden­ti­fied facil­i­ta­tor or lead. The facil­i­ta­tor can­not effec­tive­ly take com­pre­hen­sive notes and action items, so hav­ing a des­ig­nat­ed note tak­er is help­ful. Call notes should be shared with the group, and note-tak­ing respon­si­bil­i­ties should rotate among employ­ees, espe­cial­ly for recur­ring meetings.
• While set­ting the expec­ta­tion that miss­ing or being late to meet­ings is dis­cour­aged, it will inevitably hap­pen. When this occurs, advanced notice should be pro­vid­ed to the meet­ing facil­i­ta­tor or lead as ear­ly as pos­si­ble. As the leader, it is impor­tant to touch base with employ­ees who missed meet­ings to make sure any deci­sions or action items have been appro­pri­ate­ly communicated.

Acknowl­edge Hard Work When You See It 

Great lead­ers not only notice, but also reward con­sis­tent hard work when they see it hap­pen­ing. It is crit­i­cal to con­tin­ue that recog­ni­tion while lead­ing vir­tu­al­ly. A quick call or email will be appre­ci­at­ed and will go a long way in moti­vat­ing employ­ees. We find that great col­lab­o­ra­tors work even smarter vir­tu­al­ly by tak­ing own­er­ship of their work and keep­ing every­one updat­ed on their progress. We must, how­ev­er, pro­vide all employ­ees an oppor­tu­ni­ty to thrive in a vir­tu­al work­ing envi­ron­ment with­out the coun­ter­pro­duc­tive prac­tice of micromanaging. 

Some of our teams use track­ers and host agile-like dai­ly standup or scrum meet­ings, while oth­ers choose to work vir­tu­al­ly togeth­er in the form of sched­uled work­ing sprints. Here’s how a sprint works:

• Set up a vir­tu­al meet­ing for 80 minutes.
• At the top of the meet­ing, each attendee acti­vates their video con­fer­enc­ing capa­bil­i­ties, and for the first few min­utes every­one shares what they will work on dur­ing the sprint (approx­i­mate­ly 10 minutes).
• Then every­one mutes them­selves and begins their work.
• After an hour, the leader calls time. Each attendee shares their progress, and the team cel­e­brates their col­lec­tive accom­plish­ments (approx­i­mate­ly 10 minutes).

Regard­less of the method or the length of the meet­ing, the goal is to keep your team moti­vat­ed, to deliv­er con­sis­tent and high-qual­i­ty results, and to cel­e­brate the wins, even if they seem small. After all, small and con­sis­tent actions lead to big outcomes.

Get Cre­ative to Keep Things Going 

Things quick­ly get bor­ing and rou­tine when your pri­ma­ry modes of com­mu­ni­ca­tion are vir­tu­al meet­ings, emails, and short mes­sages. As a leader, it is impor­tant to cre­ate the con­di­tions for cre­ativ­i­ty to flour­ish and to step in when the team seems to be in a rut. There are a lot of sim­ple and fun ideas that we are using with our teams. Here are a few of our favorites:

• Moti­va­tion Mon­day: Each Mon­day morn­ing, lead­ers send out an Insta­gram-like moti­va­tion­al quote image with no expla­na­tion or commentary.
• Remote Work­ing Tip of the Week: Each Fri­day morn­ing, lead­ers send out a brief but infor­ma­tive list of tips and tricks on a top­ic rel­e­vant to improv­ing the remote or work-from-home expe­ri­ence. Ideas range from how to blur your back­ground in Microsoft Teams, to improv­ing sound qual­i­ty on con­fer­ence calls and mak­ing a com­fort­able home workstation.
• Host a Fun Roll Call: Start a vir­tu­al meet­ing with a fun roll call that includes not only stat­ing your name, but also answer­ing a fun ques­tion like, ​“What is your favorite ice cream?”; ​“Do you like cake or pie, and which is your favorite?”; or ​“If you could have a pri­vate con­cert, who would you want to jam for you?”
• Host a Dai­ly Quiz: The web­site On this Day takes the guess­work out of it and makes it easy to incor­po­rate a fun triv­ia point into your dai­ly meetings. 
• Lever­age Tech­nol­o­gy: Set up a team site or group chat to help main­tain employ­ee engage­ment and increase the social­iza­tion that the team is miss­ing from not being co-locat­ed. Sev­er­al times a week we will pro­mote the team with con­ver­sa­tion starters such as, ​“share the fun­ni­est work-from-home meme you’ve seen,” ​“show us your home work­space,” and ​“Mug Mon­day — show us your go-to cof­fee mug.”

To be hon­est, a lot can go unno­ticed in the vir­tu­al work­ing world. Our job as lead­ers of vir­tu­al teams is to take enough con­trol that our teams trust us, but not too much that it dimin­ish­es our cred­i­bil­i­ty or hin­ders the over­all out­put of the team. Cre­at­ing a cul­ture of trust hap­pens when we have a dis­ci­plined approach to time and deliv­er­ables man­age­ment, com­mu­ni­cate with clar­i­ty and con­sis­ten­cy, man­age con­flict quick­ly, main­tain integri­ty while being flex­i­ble, and keep a pos­i­tive atti­tude. Above all else, give praise and recog­ni­tion often — this a dif­fi­cult time for our teams both pro­fes­sion­al­ly and personally.

Reg­is­ter for one of the ASUG Think Tank online ses­sions tak­ing place and stay tuned for a fol­low-up series of the ASUG Exec­u­tive Exchange online ses­sions. You can also explore options from ASUG for train­ing your SAP teams.

Kim­ber­ly Sharp will host a Women Con­nect web­cast dis­cussing, ​“Life Lessons Learned on the Jour­ney to Find­ing Pur­pose at Work,” on July 23, 2020.Reg­is­ter today to save your seat at the table.