John Eades* says reiteration of an organisation’s working culture has never been more important while its members are widely separated.
Culture has always mattered. It impacts performance, engagement, retention, and employee satisfaction.
However, culture has never been more critical than it is right now.
The idea of culture has been misused and misrepresented, so let’s see what the word really means.
Culture comes from the Latin word colere, meaning ‘to cultivate’.
I define company culture as the shared beliefs and values that guide thinking and behaviour.
A leader’s job is to ensure this culture promotes effective thinking and positive behaviour regardless of the circumstances.
Right now, a vast majority of organisations and teams are working remotely.
The list of those who say they are running a fully remote workforce for the rest of the year is long.
It includes tech giants like Zillow, Apple, Google, Dropbox, and Twitter.
Staying remote makes the cultural alignment even more challenging.
Here are just a few of the reasons why.
Distance between team members; limited opportunities for effective communication; distracting priorities and conflicting attention.
Like most challenges, the payoff of success is great.
If you want to build and develop a thriving culture while leading a remote team, lean into these four strategies.
Safety first
Before anyone can perform at their best while working remotely, they first need to feel safe and protected.
Since COVID-19 puts a wrench right into physical safety that previously existed, we are going to focus on safety in two critical areas.
These are job security and psychological safety.
First, while no job is 100 per cent secure, it’s tough to create a thriving culture if people are worried about their job.
At best, you can define the reality of the current economic impact on the organisation to provide transparency and candour.
Second, employees need to feel psychologically safe enough to share ideas and feelings without fear of any repercussions.
Unity even while physically apart
Feeling like you’re part of something bigger than yourself feeds productivity and innovation.
The hardest part of remote work is the natural siloes, loneliness, and general separation it creates.
While Zoom and other technologies help the cause, it’s not the same as sitting shoulder-to-shoulder with someone and rolling up your sleeves together.
While there is no magic pill, nothing creates unity like achievement or working through a conflict.
All the virtual coffee breaks or virtual happy hours in the world won’t help a team come together like the achievement of a common goal or overcoming a struggle.
Your job as a leader is to create clear short-term team goals and make every remote team member aware of their role in helping achieve that objective.
Positive beliefs and reinforced values
Beliefs drive your actions, and actions drive results.
If your team’s beliefs are optimistic and positive, good things will continue to happen.
Positivity is inspired from the top-down, and it’s contagious.
Once you have the positive beliefs reinforced on a day-in-day-out basis, remind yourself and the team often about your shared values (the fundamental beliefs you hold to be true).
If you haven’t reminded your remote team of your values, set up a culture meeting to reinforce them.
If you don’t have your shared values defined, that meeting is a great time to do so.
Elevate the energy
Energy keeps your team going and impacts the intensity and speed at which people perform.
High energy yields high performance.
Since you have probably already been on three or more video calls today, you have seen your people’s body language and facial expressions.
Were they excited and ready to attack the problems they are responsible for solving or were they lethargic?
Leaders set the team’s energy and are responsible for elevating energy when it drops.
Use strategies like a maximising mantra or a reward the team would care about to help elevate the energy.
Building and strengthening culture is part of your job as a leader.
Since remote work is here and here to stay, it’s time to get serious by evaluating the safety, unity, positivity and energy that exists today.
*John Eades is the Chief Executive of LearnLoft a leadership development company. He can be contacted at johneades.com.
This article first appeared on John’s LearnLoft blog.
