Remote Leadership … The Leadership Style Reminder

As we all continue to be inundated with news headlines and broadcast updates on television and radio, large numbers of people have been ‘punished’ by the coronavirus outbreak. I have been unlucky enough to be one of those who are forced to work from home every day. Thinking back years, I would have loved the opportunity to work from my home office. However, my leadership style and motivation have evolved over the last 10 years. It has significantly reminded me of how my leadership style has changed as I sit on the inside for the third day in a row. The stay-at-home order for Wisconsin is scheduled to last at least a month, so I guess I have a long way to go.

During the last 5-6 years of my leadership career, I have increasingly found myself in expanded and regional roles where my only personal contributions are not the determinants of success; it takes the entire team I lead to determine success. A few years ago, I realized that if I was to be successful I had to lead my team effectively from a distance. Before this Covid-19 adventure, I was able to visit one of my hospitals 3-4 times a week and visit my leaders. That sounds connected, right? Not really. I have approximately 30 leaders in my region; reaching them once a month is a struggle. Clearly, my style of presence is my style of preference; to the point where I feel guilty if I have to take a sick day (knock on wood, there will be no sick days in a few years!).

And now that? I find myself in my office at my desk at home with little more connection to the world than an internet connection for email, my iPad with CNN by my side, answering emails all day, meeting reporting requirements, and working on projects. emerging. . However, there are ways of leading from a distance that I have employed with greater focus. My leadership teams are facing significantly challenging times in healthcare through personnel, supply, and operational volume challenges.

In order to address these daily stresses and demands, I initiated a daily conference call to bring my site leaders together to discuss required reporting items, but also a forum to share concerns, opportunities to support each other, as well as insights and learnings. from my perspective to share as the outbreak evolves, literally minute by minute. Also, when in a leadership position from this, leaders must be fully available and constantly open. During the course of closing, I have received more calls from members of my leadership team than I normally would. In some cases, it is related to Covid-19, while in other cases they only go online to share unrelated information that occurs in the field.

What does fully available and constantly open mean? First supporting this, knowing that my team needs me in the blink of an eye more than ever for the ‘just in case’ situation, including what training is needed, supplies needed and / or a general question arises. During the current pandemic, I spend several hours a day on Covid-19-related calls, patient care, supplies, and incident response. However, when I’m on those calls, if one of my leaders rings, I don’t (rarely, at least) send him to voicemail to answer him later. Rather, I switch lines and take care of your needs. Sometimes they know I’m on another call, sometimes not. Neither one matters. The important thing is that they know that I am there for them whatever happens.

And what about constant openness? I often describe to my leaders that “we have to be the leaders our staff needs us to be.” That means you are always in the limelight and you can’t let your guard down. As a previous leader, he had said, ‘never let them see you sweat’. That is powerful. Essentially, when we have the most difficult days, we still have to be the leader that the situation and our staff demand of us. So when I say ‘constantly open’, I mean answering the phone at 5 a.m. like you’re wide awake, I mean use comfortable nicknames and common communication cues. Those who report to me know that I am a laid-back leader, although responsibility is clearly known and understood. Socially, however, I like to keep things pretty loose; There is enough seriousness in our world every day that we don’t need to take ourselves too seriously to be effective leaders. As such, my common response to an incoming call can be, ‘Hello my friend / brother / nickname, how are you’ today and what can I do for you ‘. It’s about being the necessary, comfortable, reassuring, open, and trustworthy leader.

Apart from these components used to finally maintain a level of culture, I show empathy and share workloads, burdens and needs. At the same time, there are times when you have to ‘level’ the situation. In healthcare, we are all exhausted from dealing with the normal lawsuits + lawsuits of Covid. When the team starts to drift, I bring them together expressing a shared mission and shared burden. Any of us can feel isolated and alone, frustrated and on an island, even when we are all in the same boat. That’s where commonality comes into play, presence, openness, connection, teamwork, and burden sharing. Every now and then you have to grab someone by their shirt collar and shove them back into the boat while the rest of the team works to build bigger oars and sails to get through the storm we’re in.