“Nobody cares how much you know until they know how much you care”
President of the United States, Theodore Roosevelt
In this blog we’ll cover:
1. Why it’s important you know where your team is emotionally, particularly when working remotely.
2. How to discover where your people are on the Emotional Guidance Scale.
Right now, in this very challenging time we find ourselves in, many businesses are now leading remote teams – teams physically isolated from their leader and team members. This presents a vast array of new challenges the team needs to address and overcome with deliberate strategies and deliberate behaviours and this blog series, “How to Effectively Lead Remote Teams”, is dedicated to sharing strategies for many of these.
In this blog, I want to highlight the critical importance of not only knowing but actually caring where your people are on the Emotional Guidance Scale (Abraham and Hicks), particularly when they’re now working remotely, in isolation.
As you know, to influence your people to follow you as the leader and follow you with their whole heart, you must first prove to them that they’re not simply a cog in a wheel or a name on an organisational chart that’s easily replaced tomorrow. You’re only a leader when you have people following you, and you need people working beside you to do anything great in this world. A simple and effective tool for ascertaining how your people are truly feeling is the Emotional Guidance Scale by Abraham and Hicks.
Leadership is a responsibility. You’re called a leader because you’re leading people and your (remote) people, are a bundle of different emotions, and every day your team members can move up and down on the Emotional Guidance Scale because it’s called life. The COVID19 pandemic has certainly sent us all sideways.
There are 22 different levels of emotions on the guidance scale (see diagram below) starting with fear/grief/desperation/despair at the bottom and then the scale moves up through a range of lessening negative emotions – hatred, anger, worry, overwhelmed into more positive emotions – hopefulness, positive expectation, passion, and joy.
Right now, in the grave challenges that 2020 has thrust upon us so far, your remote people are moving up and down the Emotional Guidance scale due to living in isolation, locked down. If you have a team member in the wrong area of the Emotional Guidance Scale, it leads to disharmony and disunity. This can then lead to a serious breakdown of communication and trust due to the issues they are dealing with on a daily basis in isolation, so you need to know this and know why they are where they are. This enables you to care for that team member, and if possible, help lead them through it or address the problem causing them grief – particularly if it’s something or someone inside your own business, organisation or team.
Just showing you care how they are will have a powerful effect on your team member and your working relationship with them and the team – it will build trust, and this will ultimately lead to a greater sense of loyalty to you.
Effective leaders leave no doubt with the team they lead that they are sold out to them and genuinely care about each individual and where they are on the Emotional Guidance Scale.
What level are you at on the Emotional Guidance Scale?
What level are your key people on the Emotional Guidance Scale?
Discovering where your people are on the Emotional Guidance Scale
The way you discover where your remote people are on the scale is by you spending one on one time with them via Zoom. Nothing beats face-to-face communication so you can read them properly and, thankfully we have the technology to assist us right now.
This has to be a deliberate behaviour of the leader, particularly at this time when team members are removed from one another and you don’t have the benefit of picking up on the “vibe” of a person, in an in-office environment.
Most people won’t readily volunteer the information that they’re not in a good place or having a hard time – they present a happy, shiny and rosy veneer on the outside, while inside they’re crumbling.
This is not good for them and it’s not good for the team. It leads to ineffectiveness and weak links, which affect the rest of the team.
I want to challenge you to really ask yourself, do you truly know where your team is emotionally and what can you do to empower them so they can rise on the Emotional Guidance Scale.
To build a successful organisation, you build it one on one, and there’s never been a more important time in recent history to connect one on one with your remote people.
Who do you need to schedule one on one time with?
I trust this blog has stimulated your thinking. If you have any questions, please email me at [email protected] or join our Facebook Page and message me or post a question to the group.
I hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy.
Take care and keep climbing.
Peter.
Here are the links to the other blogs in this “How to Effectively Lead Your Remote Team” series:
Part 1: How to Ensure Your People Stay Focussed on the Vision
Part 2: Setting Clear Expectations and Driving Accountability to Them
Part 3: Growing and Transferring Trust
If you’d like to follow the Leadership Dynamics Facebook Page, my team and I are organising some online events to thrash out issues like leading your teams remotely, in more detail. Stay tuned. Click here for the link to my Leadership Dynamics Page.
I’ve been leading remote teams globally since 1994. In one of my businesses, I now have remote teams in 28 countries, with a sales force of 15,000, in 12 languages. I’m also the Founder of Leadership Dynamics Australia which provides leadership strategies for SME’s and professional sporting organisations in Australia since 2003. I’ve implemented the strategies outlined in this blog series, ‘How to Successfully Lead Remote Teams”, since 1994 to great effect.
