By the time we are still leading with the pandemic Covid-19, remote workers need to keep the pace of working. Although many are struggling with organizing themselves between home and work activities, companies must have different leadership styles for remote work.
Meanwhile, they developed new leaders to have great abilities to lead their teams at home. And knowing some kind of new gear will help your company differentiate what type of leadership style for remote work you have.
Everyone has a different way of working. With GitScrum features, it is easy to identify a professional’s style by simply observing their behavior. However, working remotely can be difficult to understand the styles of each member of the team.
In addition to the psychological challenges, there are structural problems such as the lack of an ergonomic and quiet workplace, the absence of good equipment with quality internet, and children at home demanding attention.
In this sense, you will find out after reading this article what are the best leadership styles to apply in remote work using GitScrum features!
The role of a leadership style in remote work for the team
With this new scenario, workers need, among other things, to learn how to manage their time. While in companies it seems to be easier to maintain concentration, produce and feel part of the team, in remote work this management is a little more difficult due to the presence of family members. Remote workers, beyond these points, require leadership to motivate, support and manage their team.
Management must be different from what is meant by overseeing. Depending on the tools that employees use, it is possible to check the time when they logged in or if they delivered the activities they needed to perform.
However, worrying about the environment that this person has at home, whether they have easy access to the telephone and the internet, becomes part of the leader’s routine.
Some companies have continuous monitoring of employee development and maintaining this practice is an attitude that can motivate you. Using GitScrum features, like Mind Mapping, will be a perfect fit for identifying the employers’ needs that can be a good strategy to help them. This tool gives you a wide clearance of what are your next steps and goals and doesn’t lose the path to increase productivity.
Direct your team
The team needs to know the purpose of their service. When employees are clear on how their role is applied to the final product or service, they are more motivated and their productivity tends to increase.
Therefore, the leader must use the company’s values, so that the team remains adequate as a whole. In addition to having targeted communication with everyone, it is also important to hold meetings with everyone, as a team.
This interaction should not be carried out only through offline messages. The person can see what was sent at any time. In other words, the conversation should also take place online, live, so that everyone feels close.
To give a good ride for your team, you must use GitScrum’s Boards. This feature helps you define tasks for the week/month and control every demand or task they must deliver.
Lead your team, regardless of the situation
The so-called situational leadership styles for remote work are essential for this moment. Because it allows the leader to adapt according to the particularities of each leader. In other words, while one person is proactive, collaborates, and works well without supervision even in the face of problems, the other person needs direction and is less collectivist.
Leaders must identify which profiles of followers fit and adapt their style, which is yet another motivational point for the situation.
If the team is large, you can compromise with weekly video conferences to keep up with everyone’s work. However, individual feedback must happen quickly, even through offline messaging.
Show how your leadership is growing with GitScrum’s Sprints. This tool will definitely be a working process for better tasks deliveries on time. Also, it shows you exactly how your team is developing through a burndown chart and asks them about new developments.
Value training remote work sessions
For the development of the team members, providing training is a form of incentive. For educational institutions that did not have a distance course or discipline, offer training so that teachers can make good use of this model.
Companies can take advantage of courses relevant to the performance of the employee during the period in which he/she would be moving to the workplace. In this way, the training adds and does not interfere with the separate activities for that day.
How do you want to train your team adequately? GitScrum has a great tool for it: Discussions. This feature finds the best alternatives for sharing new thoughts and ideas about good training. It brings out the team’s collaboration and efforts to create a great environment for training.
Motivate even if the benefits don’t come now
In addition to all the actions mentioned that can motivate the team member, the leadership can show good expectations about the future.
Keeping this message clear to employees is critical. Another aspect is to motivate for justice, in which the leader encourages each one to do their part, ethically, through remote work and collective thinking.
GitScrum’s Rock Star Team is a gamified tool for motivation. You can create healthy competition among your employers and reward them afterward.
The best leadership styles for remote work
1. Autocratic leadership
In autocratic leadership, all decision-making is in one way. This style is one the most traditional and you commonly find it in companies with a more conservative profile.
The autocratic style is about the lack of space for employees to contribute. And it tends to have negative results. There is the withdrawal of autonomy from subordinates in their roles. It is a factor that can influence the harmonic destabilization of the environment.
Furthermore, the performance of tasks can also be directly affected. Employees will work under intense pressure and will only intensify their activities in the presence of the autocratic boss. The truth is that, in autocratic leadership environments, activities are carried out for the mere accomplishment of a task.
In fact, using GitScrum’s Task Checklist is very useful for autocratic leaders. They will require more rigid procedures, such as in the health sector or in organizations that work with the law, for example.
You will be able to have a list of what your employers are doing. Also, demand them what they must deliver. Also, this feature is a powerful asset to teams that are inexperienced and require a high concentration of supervision.
2. Liberal leadership
It is currently among the most popular types of leadership for its innovative features that open dialogue with market changes.
The essence of this style of leadership is the employee’s total autonomy before the organization. The liberal leader chooses not to interfere in the decision-making process, delegating the decision to team members.
The truth is that a liberal leadership style, whose focus and direction gear towards the led ones, can be of great help to some companies.
With GitScrum’s Time Tracking, teams that have a high level of experience, training, and emotional intelligence can be a strong ally with this leadership. This feature provides teams to track their tasks and schedule what time they must start or finish a job. Your team will have the right direction to not feel pressured to deliver a task ASAP.
However, for companies with professionals who need constant motivation and guidance for good performance, it is not a good option.
3. Democratic Leadership
It is democratic leadership, which has a force of balance, that exerts its emphasis simultaneously on the leader and the led.
In democratic leadership, employees are constantly encouraged to participate in decision-making. With GitScrum’s Wiki, it is very important in maintaining employee motivation, as it allows the professionals involved to exercise their presence in the organizational environment.
This feature is a collaborative tool that gives employers the chance to share ideas, strengths and improve new content for the company. The democratic leader will see them evolve and get new insights into the company’s development.
In democratic leadership, the leader is open and participatory. Then, he will listen to the employees’ suggestions and will also dialogue about his own positions and suggestions. In addition, he will act as a kind of mentor, through feedback and guidance from team members.
4. Leadership Coaching
The coaching leader will focus on the individuality of each team member. He will analyze their strengths and weaknesses within the organizational environment. Then, he/she will act as a kind of encourager, helping professionals to release all the potential they hold in them.
The job of a professional with a coaching leadership profile is to align the individual potential of employees with the company’s expectations and goals.
With GitScrum’s Task Effort, it provides self-assessment tools and its own opinion (feedback), making good performance its main strategy. This feature helps you increase the precision of your employer and apply a different estimate model of a single project. Also, it makes employers make decisions that will benefit the whole team.