Leading Remote Teams and Organizational Culture
While the COVID-19 pandemic certainly created global hardships, it also created openings for organizations to rethink what enables them to be successful. In the not too distant past, sprawling corporate campuses and downtown highrises represented the places where work got done as well as a tangible measure of success of the outputs created at those worksites. As organizations were forced to rethink physical office environments during periods of “safer at home” restrictions, to slow the spread of the coronavirus and to insure employee safety, many realized what others had already begun to understand: A successful organization is not tied to its employees working in the same physical space, however, it does depend on an intentional culture of collaboration.
Leadership and Culture
The relationship between leadership and culture is symbiotic and codependent. Think of the relationship as Edgar Schein described it, as two sides of the same coin. Leadership shapes culture and, overtime, culture shapes leadership. While hard to see (even in an onsite work environment), culture shapes the beliefs, norms, experiences and the mindset of current and potential employees and customers.
Think of culture as a shadow of an organization. Everyone in the organization casts shadows. Top leaders cast large shadows and shape culture more broadly across the organization. However, leaders in the middle and below (such as VPs, directors, and first line managers) cast more acute shadows, having direct impact on employees, shaping culture more intensely.
This is true regardless of whether organizations share physical co-located space, or if they are distributed globally, or now as most are working from home. However, having a largely remote workforce imposes on leaders to be increasingly intentional in how they create time and space to connect with employees at all levels of the organization.
Culture and Behavior
William Schneider, Ph.D., defined culture as “how we do things around here to succeed”. But where is “here” in relation to remote working? It is not a physical place to gather, desks to arrange, conference tables to sit around, kitchens and break rooms to discuss last night’s game, nor the buzz of fluorescent lights overhead. Zoom meetings might feel as connective and enjoyable as drinking a great wine from a plastic cup. Ugh. Virtual Happy Hour? Yet another virtual meeting with virtual people in virtual backgrounds!
As leaders, how we think and how we approach our work and our employees shapes culture. That’s because how we think impacts every aspect of our work including what we focus on, how we measure success, who we hire, how we engage with others, the policies and structures we develop, and so on. In other words, how we think shapes what we do, and what we do shapes our culture.
Why should leaders care about culture when many of our teams are remote? From the perspective of agility, culture has been identified as the top barrier to agile ways of working for over 14 years[1]. If we want our teams to adopt agile values and act in accordance with agile principles - if we really want to embrace and benefit from agile ways of working, we have to start with culture.
The fact that many employees may be working from home does not change any of this. What we say, what we do, and how we demonstrate our commitment to our organizational values is abundantly clear to employees whether we meet them in the conference room or via a webconference.
Shaping Culture with Remote Teams
Kim Cameron and Robert Quinn define culture as a set of four competing values, each in its own corner vying for attention. Collaborative values drawing connection and togetherness like a team or family. Creative values inspiring freedom and autonomy to take risks and try new things. Competitive values driving quick decisions and actions to deliver value. And control values keeping everything and everyone in their place for reliable results. They call this the Competing Values Framework.
No value set is better than another and organizations are only as effective as their weakest dimension. Thus, effective leaders balance their people and policies across the competing value sets to improve. While your culture had strengths and weaknesses before COVID, likely COVID along with its accompanying shift toward more remote teams, has strained your strengths and ripped holes in your weaknesses.
Leaders must be intentional about shaping culture, especially during times of stress.[1] While giving more space in working from home, engaging teams in virtual happy hours, and providing employees with a home office budget will help - they only touch the surface. To go deeper, identify your most significant value set impacted and seek to address it.
Shaping Remote Team Example: ALJ Guide Jam Challenges
We at the Agile Leadership Journey are not immune to COVID and remote engagement. While our guide community has always been global, pre-COVID we would gather in person twice a year in the US and Europe to build community, foster collaboration, spark creativity, focus forward and align on goals. Virtual retreats are no better than your plastic wine glass so we knew we needed to take a more creative approach.
To compensate, we built quarterly Guide Jam Team Challenges. Forming teams across our guide community, we challenge them to focus on key goals (learning, marketing, sales, etc.) with prizes for the challenge winners each quarter. In one example we challenged teams to create a parody video of a part of our program to spark creativity, teamwork, and humor in a fun learning competition. Next, we are challenging teams to build a 1-minute promotional video. Teams work “off-line” throughout the quarter and share their results in our global Jam Party with celebrations and rewards.
Conclusion
While we don’t yet know if the shift to increasingly remote work is permanent, we do know that the need to focus on organizational culture is. We need to be aware that every individual can shape culture regardless of position or situation, even amidst a public health crisis when employees may not be interacting face-to-face. Leadership’s responsibility to demonstrate and encourage behaviors that align with the desired culture and to re-evaluate the structures that foster or impede our people are critical. Whether our remote teams return in whole, in part or not at all to common workspaces in the future, our organizations will be healthier and better oriented to achieve their goals by leadership focusing on culture now.
About the Author
Tracey Wilson has over 20 years of experience in operational leadership in organizations ranging from small startups and service providers to large financial institutions. Tracey lives in the Joshua Tree, California area with her partner, Dave, and a small menagerie of four-legged and feathered critters. Her background is in sociology and education, which she draws from in her work at Agile Leadership Journey and in the local youth development program she co-founded and co-chairs, the Yucca Valley Antlers. When she's away from the office, she can be found camping, hiking, tending her garden, reading a book, or spending time with family and friends.
