Wrong.
I’ve been working with my clients this month exploring the consequence of being efficient versus being effective as leaders and influencers at work. Yes, I’m efficient if I can respond immediately to emails and finish my day with an empty inbox; however I’m effective if I can persuade others to support my ideas, give me their time, people or budget to support my priorities because they see the value of it.
The rituals of building relationships are strained in the remote environment because our calendars are over booked, we move from meeting to meeting with barely a break, we’ve been talking about ‘dodgy internet connections’ for over a year or more now and so can get away with not being on camera. Result!!!
No, it’s not.
In the remote environment we need to work harder than ever to build our impact and strengthen our relationships; otherwise we will become less effective over time.
Here are five, highly effective habits which help strengthen our relationships in the remote environment and which need to be part of our operational rhythm, if we are to be influential in our roles and successful with our professional relationships:
- Regularly review the effectiveness and enjoyment around how we spend our time. Where are we less effective? What is not a good use of our time? Where can we add more value? Or, remove the activity from our calendar? All of us should regularly scrutinize and adjust our diaries to maximize the value we contribute to the business. Don’t ‘wait’ until things get less busy. Here’s a prediction – they won’t.
- Shorten all your meetings by 15 minutes so that that start and finish times allow for a short break between meetings. Ask those who invite you to meetings to do the same. We all need a break, state change and chance to clear those blessed emails so that we can focus on the remote conversation.
- Turn your camera on for all remote meetings. The ‘my wifi connection is poor’ argument is no longer tenable. We’ve all been working remotely for at least a year and should be getting to grips with some of the fundamentals. Buy a ‘booster’ to improve connection, plug in our ethernet cable directly to the router….if we don’t do this, we can convey an impression of out of touch, disinterested and lacking the agility and energy to be more virtually literate. Ask for help; get it; and demonstrate more credibility as a result.
- Dial in a minute early….reliability is conveyed by being on time…or even early. It also allows you to connect with colleagues ahead of the meeting start. The use of the word ‘connect’ is deliberate; we can change our relationship with others through mere moments of small talk, and we ignore this at our peril.
- Be generous; with your attention, questions, ideas, resources, contacts to colleagues and clients alike. I’m not talking about acquiring lots of actions; I’m talking about offering a rich array of practical help progress priorities, projects and performance.
