Moral Support and Working Remotely
The Top 4 Reasons why Leaders aren’t doing enough Remote Stroking and Moral Support
Another occasional casualty of our new remote-working that I’m hearing more about is the need for stroking and moral support.
Different people call this different terms: “recognition”, “connection”, “praise” and “stroking”.
Each of these actually means slightly different things, but that’s not the important point – which is for leaders to not miss out on doing the human touch while their teams are remote from them.
Why is that so? Why aren’t leaders doing enough remote stroking and moral support for their people?
I’ve been collecting some of the reasons that clients mention and, in my limited samples, here’s the reasons I think come up the most:
1. Transactional Stuff Gets in the Way
Co-ordinating and leading the work of others when you’re rarely in the same room as them takes a different mindset. It’s not difficult to lead remotely, but in the need to get all the nitty gritty of the work stuff done, it is perhaps easier when working remotely for the human side to get forgotten.
Ask how people are feeling. Be open and honest about how you’re feeling – this gives permission for others to do the same. “How are you doing, in yourself?”, “I notice I’m feeling a little more stressed these days; how about you?” Just really simple things like that will do it. There’s a fundamental need (for most of us) to be fully seen as human beings, for others to “get” our condition. Leaders need to let people know that they’re ready, willing and able to ‘see’ their people fully in this way.
2. They don’t need it themselves
There’s some research to suggest that only about 40% of people absolutely ‘need’ to get recognition from others at work. If you’re in that 40% and you’ve got a boss who doesn’t need any external recognition themselves, and who also doesn’t understand that other people DO need it, then you can really feel the lack.
Leaders – tell people how they’re doing. Again, it isn’t difficult. Just find a quality that someone has displayed and play it back to them: “The way you handled that project really showed what a tenacious person you are; thank you for all your effort.”
3. They Mistakenly Believe that you can’t Stroke and Criticise at the same time
A few years a go there was a trend for leaders to be taught to give feedback in sandwich-form – one positive thing, one negative thing and then finish on another positive thing. I hated that approach then and I still hate it now and I think it just showed how HR people are often not natural leaders themselves. If you’ve got something to say to me, say it straight, whether it’s good or bad. I reckon that the unnaturalness of the sandwich approach put leaders off from giving straight feedback and had the unfortunate side-effect of teaching them to believe that you can’t tell people positive and negative stuff together – which is rubbish.
Say it straight please leaders, and make sure that you’ve generally got something genuinely good to say about others. Again, it’s not difficult: “It’s great how you always find a new angle on things or a new project to get started with. And, I need you to finish this priority work too.”
And if you as a leader can’t generally find something genuinely good about each of the people in your team, you’ve surely got to go and have a stiff talk in the mirror with the person responsible for that team!
4. They Resent Doing It
Previously, I think this reason would have been lower down the list. Perhaps it’s because we’re all running on slightly empty tanks these days. I write this at the start of autumn, as the days are shortening and the weather worsening and a second covid19 wave looks increasingly likely. Instead of getting ‘back to normal’, or even finding some normalisation in how we’ve set things up over the last six months, it looks like we’re going to need to adapt and adapt again.
It’s rare for leaders to say things to me like, “Why do I have to reach out and stroke them; it’s not all plain-sailing for me you know!”, but it’s not unknown. This is understandable.
If there’s any leaders reading this who notice they might not be reaching out and supplying the human touch to their remote teams, please make sure that you’re also taking care of yourself enough. Do what it takes for you to feel healthy, balanced and whole yourself. Don’t resent other people for their needs – take care of your own.
Let me know if you’ve noticed any of this too please – or what you’re discovering about the remote human touch these days.
Please leave a comment below if they’re still open at the time of reading, or tweet me @nickrobcoach
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