Watch out. Has your primary sense changed?

What did a typical week from any point in the last 10 years prior to 2020 look like?

Perhaps a couple of days working from home and day or so traveling during or after core hours to either London or a major city in Europe. Throw in a couple of days with team members, colleagues and clients so productive in many ways.

Fast forward to 2020 and what we basically have is 5 days working from home, period. As my friends over the pond would say.

Lots of challenges but what is the biggest single impact, to me and my team?

I don’t get to see anyone anymore. In some cases, I’ve literally not had a visual sign of life on some team members in 9 months, even on Web Conferences.

I joked with one team member who joined in April 2020 (I'm sure he'll comment below ;-)) that I didn't even know if he had legs. Whilst this is brilliant as it show that disability doesn't matter in the work place, it's shocking that I've never met this person for real and only ever from behind his desk on a web conference.

(Nearly) all visual input has gone. Whether it’s sitting in the office discussing a client situation, moving a technical workshop forward, career conversations face to face, bumping into friend at the coffee bar, putting the world to rights outside the National Theatre over a pint or a coke, consoling a colleague, offering advice all no longer there.

There isn’t a direct replacement for this, all the technology in the world cannot replace human contact. I used to meet at least 2 people from my team every week when we could travel. Whether our conversation was formal or informal I could always read their body language. I could always get a sense of how they were; they could always see my empathy and open up if they wanted, the possibility of trying to spot that help was needed without it being explicitly asked for was there for me to grasp.

My primary sense for doing my job well was my vision.

I thought I was doing okay leading a team remotely and to be fair I’m probably doing alright. What hit home to me this week was whilst 80% if all good and that I’m hearing everything the team is saying, I may be not listening for what’s absent.

Never before have we had so many group meetings over WebEx with everyone checking in. The team chewing the fat, talking about the weather or the never-ending sagas occurring in the world but not everyone tunes into them, either physically or mentally and I started to ask myself, why is that?

Now, in some cases it’s easy. Groups sessions are either at the beginning or the end of the day, a busy time in people’s lives, or they’re just tired. But what about the people who habitually don’t dial in or they do join but never contribute or contribute once then never again.

Again, there are some simple explanations, but for others it’s more complicated.

Your team is possibly more diverse than you think. Some differences are clear, others not so much and you relay on being in the presence of someone to spot.

Things like experience (and I don’t mean age), outlook, belief, views, pain, emotions, tolerance levels, introversion and situational events all make the team diverse as well the obvious creed, colour, gender etc.

People go quite if they don’t think the group represents them or they feel their voice is not heard. In some cases, an individual can feel on the outside or even not needed but on the face of it you wouldn’t have a clue. It’s not uncommon for someone to be offended but not say anything and there isn’t any body language to read. The option taken is they backway from the group because that is really easy to do all we do is sit at a desk.

So, what’s my new primary sense? It’s my hearing. I’m listening for what I can’t hear. Reaching out more than before, trying to actively include, change my go to people, watch out and check my bias, even choose my language more carefully. Be a better leader. It’s harder work, but boy it’s worth it.