Prepare Your Leadership: Remote Leadership

Hello Cadre Crew. Happy Monday and almost forgot. Hi Becky. Welcome. Happy Monday. Hope you're having a great day. Rainy here in Minnesota. Just had a huge storm. Probably get some more this afternoon. We'll give it about one minute here. Wait for folks to join us before we get started. Hope everyone had a great weekend and a good start to their morning. Welcome, welcome. Happy Monday. Last Monday of April craziness. Okay, let's get started with the practice. We'll get started with which is the three things of three.

So you can either throw in the comments or just kind of think to yourselves, what are three things that you're feeling right now? So it could be feelings, emotions, sensations. What are three things that you are currently experiencing right now? Just kind of get yourself grounded halfway through the Monday, put yourself where your feet are. What are three things that you may be carrying with you right now? Then from that, what are three intentions that you have for the rest of your day? So what are three things that you want to either get done or come across as?

So maybe if you have a meeting later on during the day and you want to come across as friendly, or maybe you have to be more stern, what are three intentions that you have for the rest of the day? Could just be to do list. So just going to get something to eat for lunch. Three intentions. Becky. Proud of my children. Good to hear. And then the last thing is what are three things you're grateful for right now currently? So we kind of grounded ourselves, get ourselves looking for the future. And then what are three things that we can kind of uplift ourselves with?

Three things that we are grateful for. Could be from the weekend, could be coming up this week, or maybe from this morning. What are three things that we can look at and be grateful for that we have right now? So those are the three things, the three. You can continue thinking about it. It's the three things that you're experiencing right now. Feelings, emotions, sensations. Three intentions that you have for the rest of the day and then three things you're grateful for. A lot of positive psychology built in behind that.

So the article that I want to bring to you today, it has to do with Remote Leadership, as the title of this live, you know, that makes sense. So the article that I brought is from a European source. It's called Employee well Being and the Remote Leader, which is a systematic literature review, meaning they just comb through all the past research on remote leadership. And what are the key takeaways from that? This is from Judith Smith Schmidt, a professor over I think in Czech Republic, but not for sure.

Some European source which brought this to you from. So what they wanted to answer was what leadership behaviors promote employee well being in remote work conditions? So ever since COVID obviously remote work has increased, but also the research on remote leadership has increased. So now that we're. This was a 2024 article. So now that they're four years from there, what research has been done and what is it saying about the behaviors that leaders can do to promote employee well being and remote work conditions?

So the number one finding that they had was remote work's ambivalent effects on employee well being. So there's kind of some positive and negative. The positive is that greater organizational commitment, job satisfaction, enthusiasm and work engagement. So with this flexibility, employees are more likely committed to their organization because they allow that flexibility and autonomy in their work. It increases their job satisfaction. And so a lot of positive that you might expect. But then there's also the negative effects as well.

Higher workload, since there's, you know, you're less time, maybe conversating, so you have more time to do work and you're getting more done increasing the workload, extended working hours. So we work from home. So there's really no on and off switch like leaving the office. When you work from home. There's, it's kind of a constant. You're kind of in your constant office throughout the day. Even if you're in during working hours or not in working hours. That kind of mental switch doesn't happen as easily.

And then loneliness as well. You're not seeing as many people. You know, even if you are kind of an introvert, you still need to have some socialization to kind of fill that bucket. And that doesn't happen as much with remote work. So what are the three leadership behaviors? They, they brought in kind of three buckets and three areas for these leadership behaviors. The first one is boundaries between work and private life. So remote work often blurs the lines between work and home, as I just talked.

But there's no on and off switch between, you know, from leaving the office or leaving where you work and going home. So this kind of leads to longer hours, constant availability. So that inability to switch off. So the recommendations they make for leaders and they make it to leaders. But you could use this yourself too. If you're a remote worker, you can just start implementing these as well. But monitor workload and prevent overburdening employees communicate clear expectations about working hours and availability.

So just make it clear we're 8 to 5 or 8 to 4 kind of whenever you work, make those hours clear. Set team norms for when it's acceptable to contact employees. Limit after hours communication. Seen some research even done on emailing or even like there's a setting on emails where you can say send during working hours and then I'll send it the next day during their working hours. And kind of sending that email can help with employee kind of stress. Being able to not have be always on support job autonomy, flexible schedules, letting the employees to manage their work life balance.

So setting like the boundaries and the norms but then still allowing that flexibility for when they want to work and then use technology strategically to reinforce boundaries. So kind of like you could either turn off emails, notifications outside of work hours, sending others emails only within their work hours. I know I've seen some research suggest not putting emails on your phone because when you. Because we always are using our phone, you know whether we're working or off the clock. So kind of disabling the emails outside of working hours can help with that overwork that can be found with remote work because that turn not turning off.

The second area they highlighted was supportive relationships. So with distance and technology it kind of weakens interpersonal connections. So remote workers often feel isolated and personal and even encounter hostility in virtual interaction. So we don't get to really understand each other as well. Sometimes working remotely we leading to more some conflict either through you know that email that gets misinterpreted between one person and another. So that doesn't happen as much when you're in person.

But with remote work that might be more common. So what can leaders do? Develop more trust based relationships. So use open transparent communication, more communication letting employees know what is going on. Engage in team building activities even virtually. And then they suggest video calls over emails when possible. However, everybody knows the kind of common saying where like the meeting, the one hour meeting that could have been an email. So that could maybe lead to that kind of that conflict in virtual interactions but still favoring some sort of communication more often.

And then the third area they highlight is adequate use of technology. So tech overload and a lack of training can raise stress levels and lower well being. So with all these new tech coming out and new software about how to do project management and zoom calls and all these new technologies coming out but give employees the proper training on how to use them. So poor inappropriate technology as well. So like just adding technology for the sake of having more technology without having really a need for the.

That new, that new system can increase frustration. So provide necessary equipment and training to support rather than burden the employee and then consider yeah so just choose the communication platforms wisely. Don't overuse them. So at the end of the day the three things they tell you about is clear work, life, boundaries, trust and supportive relationships. So building that relationship, communicating transparently and then mindful use of technology. So not just adding technology for the sake of technology.

Becky threw in a comment. My former boss was clicky and only contacted her group after hours. The rest of us never knew she'd claim, oh I can't bother you after hours. Yeah, well that's, that's a. The opposite. You know we. That's just kind of friend groups forming it sounds like too so maybe just when it's communication about the whole whole group and about business to keep that included and send it during during hours. Well that's all I've got for you today. I hope you have a great rest of your day and your week.

I'll catch you next Monday at noon. I hope everybody has a great rest of their time by.