175. Leading Remote Teams: Compassion with Results

Are you finding it tough to lead remote teams with both compassion and efficiency? In this episode of Strong Leaders Serve, Teri Schmidt dives into the challenges leaders face in remote and hybrid environments, discussing the balance between driving results and maintaining empathetic connections. 

Explore the neuroscience that influences our approach to leadership and gather actionable strategies to enhance team cohesion from afar. Get tips to make meaningful connections while fostering productivity, leaving your team engaged and thriving!

Connect on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/teri-m-schmidt/

Get 1-on-1 leadership support from Teri here: https://www.strongleadersserve.com/coaching

Set up an intro call with Teri: https://calendly.com/terischmidt/discoverycall

Transcript

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Hey, have you struggled to drive both connection and results in your remote and hybrid teams? You're not alone. Today's episode is for you. I'm Terry Schmidt, executive and leadership coach at Strong Leaders Serve, where we support leaders in holding the tension of caring about the humans they work with while driving positive business results. And this is the Strong Leader Serve Podcast. All right, so today we're diving into something that I think a lot of us are wrestling with right now. How do you effectively lead in a remote or hybrid work environment? How do you balance compassion and results when you're not in the same room and stress is running high? I wanna start with a couple of my personal experiences. I've worked on two very different kinds of remote teams. One was incredibly close knit. We had a strong sense of belonging, shared values, and we really knew each other. If you listen to last week's episode with Henrik Pressman, we were really good at forming that cohesive team, although we probably could have used a little work in what he calls going out. For us. Compassion came naturally. We checked in on each other. We celebrated small wins. Even though we weren't physically together, the emotional presence was strong, and that made it easy to stay engaged and motivated. But then I joined another team, also remote. But this one felt different, just like Henrik and I talked about last week. The boundaries were much fuzzier. It wasn't really clear who my team was. Almost immediately, I found myself shifting into a more task oriented mindset. I focused on results. I got things done, but my sense of engagement dropped. I wasn't as invested. I didn't feel as seen, and I noticed how much harder it was to bring my full self to the work. That shift I experienced wasn't just a mood swing. It is actually something neuroscience can explain. See, when we lead and work, our brains toggle between two major networks. The Task Positive Network, which I'll just call TPN and the Default Mode network, or DMN, the TPN kicks in when we're focused on execution, analyzing, solving problems, checking off to-do lists. It's what we rely on when we're in productivity mode. The DMN on the other hand is activated. When we're engaging in empathy, reflection, and long-term thinking, it's the network that helps us connect with people and imagine what they might be experiencing. Here's the catch. These two networks are kind of like a seesaw. They actually suppress each other. When one goes up, the other one goes down. And in remote environments, especially during the uncertain times that we're going through right now, and really that we've been going through probably since remote work had its heyday. During covid, most of us default to the TPN, the task Positive Network. Why? Because results feel safe. They're tangible, they're measurable. We want to prove our value. We want to stay visible, and in some cases we're just trying to avoid being laid off. I've heard this described as productivity paranoia. We have to show people that we're busy by the work that we get done. Now I know for me, this focus on results not only changed how I viewed the virtual meetings on my calendar, it also changed how I viewed the people in those meetings. As much as I hate to admit it, I started to view the people as a means to an end. That end being the completion of whatever project I was working on, the faster we could get through the agenda items, the better. So I had little patience for taking time out to connect, especially when the activities felt forced. Based on my conversations with clients, I don't think I'm alone. There are several forces pulling us towards viewing others as cogs in a machine in the remote work environment. It. We already talked about productivity, paranoia, and the need to make your work visible, which in a remote work environment is often limited to the presentation of your completed project as opposed to people seeing you thinking about and working on the project. There's also the fact that in the online world, the social norms to talk about things other than the project aren't as strong. Without intention, virtual meetings become very transactional and we see the players in them either as a means to an end OR as objects that are there to entertain us. Since if you think about it and you think about the other screens in your life, that really is the case and most of the time that we interact with screens, we are just being entertained. So it makes sense that we would transfer that to our expectations of people in meetings. So it's really understandable that we get into these states and that we fall into the trap of having our virtual calls just being very transactional, very much about getting the work done. But what happens when we stay in that mode for too long? What happens when our task positive network is always on? We're always focused on productivity, getting things done, driving results. Well, when we over rely on results, the fact is we burn out. Our teams disconnect. We miss opportunities for creativity and collaboration. We make short term decisions that hurt us long term and we lose the human element that makes leadership feel purposeful. I know if you're listening to this podcast, just by the nature of the name of the podcast, strong Leaders Serve. You probably got into leadership, not just to get things done, even if that is extremely important to you. As it is to me, but you got into leadership to make a positive difference, both for the organization and for the people that you lead. I've seen this firsthand, this focus on tasks driving people to burnout. I've coached leaders who in the absence of hallway chats or shared lunches. Stopped reaching out to their teams to check in. They stopped asking how people were doing and focused only on what was getting done. Their teams became quieter, less innovative, more transactional. But here's the thing. We've talked a lot and we will continue to talk about the dance of leading with compassion while driving results. So you probably know this truth, compassion isn't a nice to have. It, in fact is a performance driver. When people feel safe. Valued and connected. They're more likely to take initiatives, support each other and stick around. I know this from my personal experience, compassionate, in fact, builds the foundation for the very results we're chasing. So how do we do this well? How do we lead remotely in a way that imbalance activates both the task positive and default mode networks, so that we're getting things done, but not at the expense of connection. Well, here are a few strategies. First. You probably have heard a lot of remote work experts talk about the importance of having at least occasional in-person meetings. I've seen this work wonders for leaders that I work with. If they can even just get a couple of hours together with their team in person, that just accelerates the connection building in all their virtual calls. After that. But even if that's not possible, here are some other things that you can do or some strategies you can use in conjunction with those occasional in-person meetings. First, take a look at how you're measuring success and see if you might need to reframe it. Yes, results matter, but so do human indicators. When you care about the human indicators like we just talked about, you'll see that your business results in fact improve. So make space in your team check-ins to talk about how people are feeling. Not just what they're producing. Now, this is gonna vary for every team about how you do this, but it could really be as simple as a one word check-in. Perhaps you have a question that everyone feels comfortable answering or you mix those questions up questions that help you get to know just a little bit about the other people on your team. Also, as we talk about in the R in the care model that I mentioned a few episodes ago, reinforce moments of collaboration and support. You're probably really good at celebrating and reinforcing deadlines that have been met. And projects that have been completed, but also take time to reinforce those results that are related to compassion. Those times when your team worked particularly well together to help get to a goal or when someone jumped in to help someone else on your team. Second, create the structure for connection. Like I said, maybe you start all your meetings with a 92nd human check-in. Now again, you're gonna have to play with this with your team to figure out what feels natural and doesn't feel forced, but actually helps people to connect as opposed to having them dread some question that they feel isn't related to their work. But the important thing is, is that you create a structure around it. It's something that you do regularly. You create a team habit of sorts, and you use it for as long as it's working. Maybe after a while you need to shift that habit a bit and create a different structure. But the important thing is that there is a structure, even if it's just like I said, a 92nd habit that you go through at the beginning of each meeting. Next, don't confuse checking in with checking up. Build psychological safety by making it clear that your one-on-ones aren't just about performance. You care about your team members' growth, and they are about helping them to develop, finding out what support they need from you and from others, and finding ways to connect with your team member in a way that generates belonging. Finally, think about yourself and use reflective leadership prompts for yourself. You might start your day by asking, what does my team need more of today? Should my focus really be on driving results? Or on driving a greater sense of belonging. Maybe midway through your day while you're eating your lunch, you take a quick pause to reflect, am I currently leading with compassion or from a focus on results? And how does that line up with what the team needs today? And finally, at the end of the day, take time to celebrate. Maybe even just by writing it down, one result. And one relationship moment that you're proud of that happened that day. It could be small, but knowing that you have that focus at the end of the day is going to keep you aligned with your efforts of leading with compassion and driving results. So remember, leadership and particularly remote leadership, is not about picking between results and relationships in remote environments. It is so much harder to not just default to going toward task completion. But it's your job as a leader in a remote or hybrid work environment to make the invisible visible, to find a way to both honor and celebrate not just the results that people are delivering, but the people who are delivering those results. It is about noticing when you've slipped too far into productivity mode and pulling yourself back into presence. Because when we lead with both drive and compassion, our teams don't just perform better. They thrive.