Hype or Core Competence of Modern Leadership
Brave New (Digital) World
With Industry 4.0, we are in the midst of a changing world. Driven by networking, mobility, Big Data, cloud computing, smart industry, robotics, and artificial intelligence. All of this has comprehensive implications on both the way we do business and the way we live and work. The result is new value chains and a changed work and consumption behavior. More and more people are buying goods and services online. Companies that have not yet mastered their digitization, both externally and internally, could soon fall behind.
Home Office is here to stay – Business trips will decrease
During the time of the Corona lockdown, working from home is being done to an unprecedented extent. Labor market experts expect that home office and mobile work will remain firmly established as complementary work environments in companies even after this period. Employees will no longer see the need to struggle through rush hour traffic every morning just to sit in an office. Recruitment will be done regionally, as the shortage of skilled workers persists and not everyone wants to move immediately - why would they, when they can work remotely. In addition, home office, video conferences, reduced travel, and reduced vehicle fleets are cost-effective, allow for work-life balance, and are environmentally friendly. A clear advantage in terms of employer branding not only for Generations Y and Z. Communication and collaboration become more digital to bridge distances and potentially time zones. But digital work also requires digital leadership: it requires effective and motivating leadership of distributed teams. This competency of leaders becomes a key factor in the successful implementation of the digital workplace. Those who excel at this will have an edge.
Digital Tools, Apps, and Software do not lead – People lead
The most important aspect of remote leadership is that the leader leads, and leads well! Leadership behavior with conscious actions and inactions has an even greater impact when working remotely than in face-to-face leadership. Technology, in the form of suitable digital tools for communication, cooperation, and coordination, then helps bridge the distances so that effective leadership can take place.
10 Reasons Why Remote Leadership Fails in Practice
- The leader does not lead as a digital role model, has inadequate knowledge of digital tools, finds even the most clever workarounds, and practices everything but walking the talk.
- Trying to fit old structures into a changed model and failing to create new structures (roles, tasks, responsibilities, processes).
- Lack of clear behavioral rules and conditions for digital collaboration (which tools to use, how, in what form, for what purpose).
- Remote leadership also requires control: digital leadership needs clear agreements on necessary work results and status checks.
- There are not enough resources available to learn the new technology while handling daily tasks and projects simultaneously.
- Digital meetings are poorly prepared, monotonous, take too long, and results are not documented in writing.
- Too many tools are used simultaneously instead of focusing on a few with significant impact on collaboration.
- Digitalization does not mean simplification, but becomes an additional burden to be managed alongside existing work.
- Information is not shared promptly, leading to a failure to build trust.
- The balance between openness, freedom, and self-organization as well as clarity, discipline, and results orientation is not achieved.
Remote Leadership Requires Motivation and Performance in the Home Office
Remote leading also means working in the home office, both as a leader and as a team member. For a leader operating remotely, it is therefore of double interest to master the challenges in the home office, such as social isolation or inner resistance. It is about maintaining one's own motivation and performance consistently, while also supporting the team in doing so.
Three Steps to Becoming a Successful Remote Leader
As the digital world of Industry 4.0 is strongly characterized by individualization, traditional leadership models, especially the way of leadership communication, have lost their effectiveness. The traditional principle of command-and-control often falls short with distributed teams. The superior as a commander is outdated. It is now more about coordinating, moderating, motivating, energizing, and communicating dialogically on an equal footing, without losing the hierarchy. At the beginning of building competence in remote leadership is an update of the understanding of the role as a leader: Many leaders wonder how they can effectively lead without regular physical presence. What must follow now is the shift from Management by Walking Around to Leadership by Remote Control: agile, open, connected, and at the same time results-oriented; in a constant balance between directive and participative leadership, between guidance and self-organization. Furthermore, the use of new management tools such as Google's "recipe for success" OKR (Objectives and Key Results) is needed. Although developed and successfully used by Intel co-founder Andy Grove in the 1970s, this method is becoming increasingly popular in the dynamic VUCA world, as well as in special times like these. But also SCRUM, PATboard, and Design Thinking are key to success as new management tools in the context of remote leadership. Finally, in the third step, it is important to use the appropriate digital tools. The challenge lies in the fact that there is an almost overwhelming number of instruments and offers for digital communication, collaboration, and coordination. This ranges from tools that focus specifically on a communication/collaboration/coordination task (e.g. chat, web conferencing, digital whiteboard, cloud, task and schedule management, etc.) to entire collaboration platforms. The appropriate selection always depends on the situation, with the rule of thumb being: Use as few tools as possible and as many as necessary! Less is more here too! Focus on a few digital tools with significant impact on collaboration and simplify processes and workflows through digitalization. The type of digital tools used in the context of remote leadership is not the deciding factor for the success of digital leadership! What is crucial is that everyone on the team can use the tools (access), feels competent to use them (competence), and does not resist using them. Of course, competence building in remote leadership ideally takes place through remote seminars online: either as webinars or as video learning nuggets, each supplemented by online coaching. Dr. Michael Ullmann's new book REMOTE LEADERSHIP Digital Leadership - Leading Distributed Teams in the Home Office Motivationally from Afar will be published soon as an eBook by bookboon Verlag.