What Leaders Need to Do to Create a Resilient Remote Team

I’ve written previously about the importance of leaders ‘walking their talk’. Meaning if your team are experiencing stress and have a tendency to push the idea of ‘work/life’ balance to the side, then you need to first ensure that, as a leader, you are living by example.

It’s demonstrating to your team that you take time away from work, that you switch off at a reasonable hour. That you take a mental health day and that you prioritize sustainability in what you do.

Yesterday I worked with an amazing leader who was truly living by example but was still concerned about preventing burnout on his team.

So, I wanted to share some simple strategies that you can implement immediately on your team, that can help you get a pulse as to where your team are at.

Let me first tell you the reasons WHY this leader was super clued in to his team:

• He understands that his team were newly formed. Coming together in those first couple of months, they are all VERY excited by the work they do, BUT he knows that can easily lead to problems of overworking.
• He understands that he works with multiple generations of wonderful human beings and some of them live alone and use their work as a creative outlet. He wanted to help them explore other sustainable habits.
• He understands that his team have been in a pandemic restricted environment for 12 months. He wants to get ahead of the potential risk of team burnout

The easiest way to do this is to introduce and work on, work/life balance, through coaching your team members in your 1–1 conversations.

Start with open-ended questions that require your team to dig deeper, think and reflect on their own situations.

With work/life balance and sustainability, we can’t ‘tell’ people what to do, they have to explore the WHY for themselves.

Here are some open-ended questions that can help start and explore this conversation:

• What does work/life balance mean to you?
• What’s working, what’s not working?
• How can you do more of what’s working for you? Who can hold you accountable?
• What are some ways you can overcome what’s not working? What could you try first?

If work/life balance is something that doesn’t mean much to them right now, you can explore these questions:

1. What’s the impact of not considering work/life balance important?
2. Tell me about a time when you delivered something you were really proud of. How were you looking after yourself during that time?
3. Where’s one place you could start?

Now, while I’ve given you some structure, you should never dismiss the power of your authentic approach as a leader. Meaning, do you have a powerful experience or story about work/life balance? What were the lessons you learned along the way?

Sharing this with your team can be just as powerful as a coaching question and can help you both build upon a trusting relationship.

Let’s continue to reduce burnout and create emotionally-health teams together.

Let me know, how are you building resilience within yourself and your team?

P.S. On March 23rd, we’re launching our first ever THE REMOTE LEADER HOT SEAT COACHING EXPERIENCE. Get feedback. Get your next steps. Get valuable insight from watching me solve and coach remote leaders to new heights!

Sign up for our hot seat coaching and submit your most burning questions around leading remote teams. 5 submitters will be chosen to get their questions answered on the day.

Save your seat to catch the action + get the prompts to submit your question!

You can register HERE