Complexity is the defining business and leadership challenge of our time. But it has never felt more urgent than this moment, with the coronavirus upending life and business as we know it. Since March of 2020, we’ve been talking to leaders about what it takes to lead through the most complex and confounding problems, including the pandemic. Today we speak with Tsedal Neeley, author of Remote Work Revolution: Succeeding from Anywhere. Neeley is the Naylor Fitzhugh Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Her work focuses on how leaders can scale their organizations by developing and implementing global and digital strategies. She regularly advises top leaders who are embarking on virtual work and large scale-change that involves global expansion, digital transformation, and becoming more agile. She serves on the Board of Directors of Brightcove, Brown Capital Management, Harvard Business Publishing and the Partnership Inc. and was named to Thinkers50 2018 On the Radar list.
David Benjamin and David Komlos: Given that you were already an expert in virtual and global work long before Covid-19, did the pandemic change your understanding of what it takes for teams to succeed when working remotely?
Tsedal Neeley: Never in my lifetime did I imagine that knowledge workers would be forced to migrate to remote work at the scale and magnitude that we witnessed in March 2020. But the reality is that these working models have been well-tested for decades. Cisco’s been doing remote work since 1993, and the research on digital tools goes back to 1976. There’s no need to be scared that the pre-pandemic workplace is no more; we know a lot, and we just need to apply that knowledge now, as we create the future of work.
Benjamin and Komlos: The pandemic forced teams to launch into remote work without warning. But when launching remote teams under normal circumstances, what norms must be established?
Neeley: You must explicitly articulate what your constraints are and what contributions you can make (for example, before attending meetings in the morning, I need to make sure my kids are set up and ready to go for remote learning). It’s also really important for groups to establish how and how often they will communicate with each other, connect with each other professionally and personally, ensure equity and psychological safety in their conversations, and whether each person has sufficient technology infrastructure.
Everyone must also agree on how present the leaders should be and in what way the group wants to connect with them.
These norms will not emerge organically, so you’ve got to be explicit about everything and co-create the norms as a team.
Benjamin and Komlos: What does trust look like in the world of remote work?
Neeley: You need to pay attention to two kinds of trust when working remotely. The first is called “swift trust,” which is a cognitive form of trust that develops when you have evidence that others are competent and reliable. That’s enough for you to work effectively within a group and accomplish tasks together for months. Swift trust works like magic and liberates people from worrying about what others are thinking, whether they like them, and so on. It’s: “Are they competent and reliable? Boom! Let’s go”. People have performed really well with swift trust.
Leaders, though, need more for their relationships with their teams. They need what's called “emotional trust,” which is grounded in the belief that others care about us, what concerns us, and what interests us. Leaders must earn emotional trust in a remote environment, so that their people believe they care and feel free to share their thoughts with them. And leaders must reflect emotional trust back to their team. Without that two-way emotional trust, people become preoccupied with worries like, “Did he forget me?”, or “Am I important to her?”
Benjamin and Komlos: How did companies fare in building trust during the pandemic? And is that trust now at risk as some people return to the office and others continue to work remotely?
Neeley: Some companies get high grades, and others failed. A Gartner survey last year discovered that four to six months into the pandemic, 40% of respondents said that their manager hadn’t once asked them how they were doing. That's an F. It’s not hard to do things like covering the cost of a virtual lunch together and using that time to ask, “How are you? What's going on? Is everything okay?” With remote work, even in the absence of a crisis, people need to hear from you. In the middle of a pandemic, the need for your leadership presence is even more amplified.
And yes, trust is at risk with some people working together in the office and others remotely. A common problem in this scenario is that leaders play favorites with those in the room. And research has shown that those who are in the same physical location as the leader feel closer to power and begin to ignore the contributions of those who are not present.
Leaders have to resist the temptation to give more information, more attention, and more access to those who are around them physically. If you are a great leader, your team members won’t worry about these things because you've talked about this openly with them, and you've given everyone confidence that you value them equally and won’t engage in preferential treatment.
Benjamin and Komlos: What is “psychological distance” and what does it have to do with dysfunction in remote and/or global teams?
Neeley: “Psychological distance” is the extent to which people feel mental or emotional connection with others. From early MIT studies, we know that if I am in building A together with a colleague, and that colleague moves to building B - not even across the street - psychological distance begins to form.
Faultlines form when you get alignment around demographic characteristics – like female engineers from Boston, or software developers in Kenya, or people working remotely and others in the office – and the “in group” becomes “us” and everyone else becomes “them.”
Benjamin and Komlos: Can you give us an example of how strong leadership can overcome fault lines within teams?
Neeley: Leaders can shrink psychological distance through processes and good design. To make sure you don't fall prey to fault lines along natural divisions within groups and teams, you have to do a lot of cross cutting and work extremely hard to pull people together.
When your team communicates digitally, certain groups will dominate. For example, research says that men will tend to dominate in groups when there are women present, and Americans will tend to dominate in groups with global representation.
If a group is solving a problem together, leaders must give numerical minorities and more junior voices the opportunity to disagree with those they perceive to be either superior or dominant. A great manager knows how to do that. When a dominant voice says, “I think we should do X”, the great manager says, “Thanks for that idea, now let’s come up with 10 other ideas”, or “Let’s play devil’s advocate - what are 3 things that will prevent this from working?” They know how to open things up for others to overcome their natural inhibitions and contribute their great ideas that might otherwise be held back.
Benjamin and Komlos: Is remote work more or less productive than co-located work?
Neeley: 30 years’ worth of data says, unequivocally, that remote work increases productivity globally. It does so because people have higher job satisfaction, psychological self-control and autonomy, and the ability to manage their time flexibly. The lack of a commute gives people more time in their day and eases friction between family and work lives. Research also shows that people’s commitment and loyalty to their organization increases with remote work
That said, that productivity can be severely impacted by working conditions. During the pandemic, many struggled with showing their living conditions on video or have been distracted by the ambient noise around them – kids, pets, construction outside, and so on.
Productivity can also be impacted by a micromanaging leader. Trust is key to remote work , and the worst thing a leader can do is deploy what’s called “awareness technologies” to keep an eye on remote workers and make sure they’re being productive. People may tolerate monitoring of their keyboards (for example) during a crisis, but the moment they can leave, they will. Micromanaging goes against the secret sauce for remote work: you give away trust, you equip, you empower, and you let people preserve their autonomy.
If you want evidence of people’s productivity, look at deliverables, outcomes, team cohesion and individual growth and satisfaction.
Benjamin and Komlos: Do you have any other specific advice leaders should heed today? Any parting thoughts?
Neeley: Everyone is asking about the future of work and the hybrid workforce, and I want to reiterate that the pre-pandemic workplace is a thing of the past. We must take the best of what we've learned and create the future of work that can accommodate the wants and needs of our various workforces and our organizational needs. Lead with needs and not fears. You cannot create the future of work without taking into account the level of flexibility that people are seeking, because they have now experienced it.
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April 30, 2021 at 05:00PM
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