Last week I gave a keynote about high-performance leadership in a virtual setting.
While preparing the talk I realized that the virtual space increases focus, yet sacrifices context.
Think of reading an email-a virtual communication-which is textually clear, but is still confusing about meaning.
A few sentences with missing context can be enough to create doubt and uncertainty: We use context to derive true meaning.
As a virtual leader and professional it’s therefore more important than ever to create context wherever possible.
Here are eight keys to drive context and stand-out in a virtual setting:
- Start every meeting with the same question: What does success of this meeting look like?
- Explicitly test for understanding when explaining a course of action.
- Reiterate the most important team goals at every opportunity.
- Be specific in actions and deadlines.
- End every conversation with the question: Who needs to know what based on this conversation.
- Check in on people’s moods with metaphors: “If you would be a car right now, what it would it be, and why?”
- Focus especially on defining activities together which can be stopped.
- Increase the frequency of communication, decrease its duration.
Which of these items would be your biggest opportunity for improvement?