Leadership in a Distributed Environment – Being There When You Are Not There

The recent pandemic has definitely taught us what VUCA means – Volatile, Uncertain, Complex,  Ambiguous. But many of us also learnt that it stands for Vision, Understanding, Clarity and Agility. 

While working & conducting my studies on future of work and competencies required by leaders in  future, thinking about how the pandemic has impacted us and will bring what kinds of challenges I  started delving deeper into the topic of leadership in a distributed environment. 

In an environment when many areas were under lockdown, people were at home but still needed to  support and run the business, since most of the operations went from centralized to distributed  managed. Leaders were not present with teams but had to lead them, guide them, provide direction  and support them to deliver results. 

Distributed means dispersed over time and space. The businesses operate in different parts of the  globe in physical space and at different times. 

In future this will become a very critical competency for Leaders to learn to engage with people who  are geographically and organizationally distributed; medium of meetings may change from in-person  to virtual to holographic – Being There when You are Not There 

The concept of Meeting will change in future. The in-person meeting will have to be redefined basis  different context. The different context would be – 

1. Same Place – Same Time 
2. Same Place – Different Time 
3. Different Place – Same Time 
4. Different Place – Different Time 
5. Any Place – Any Time 

Leadership presence will be exhibited by wide mix of media and in person meetings in varied  combinations. Cultures will have to be created which will be amplified through the usage of mix  media reality that will emerge over the next few years.

Nowadays kids are very apt in handling this kind of complexity. How do they do it – it’s through  Gaming. They use Artificial Reality (AR), Virtual Reality (VR) and Mixed Reality (MR) to play games  and they are able to adapt to it flawlessly. We adults will have to learn from kids on how to operate  in a Blended Reality and leverage Mix Media. 

Leaders will have to make their presence felt, even if they are not there. AR, VR and MR will create  Blended Reality. Leaders who do not have their Multi-Media presence, this is something they will  have to build to be present everywhere even if they are not present. 

Systems which provide an alternate to in-person meetings are designed with an assumption that the  in-person meeting can be replicated by providing closer virtual meeting. Whereas the aim should be  of being better than in person. Irrespective of the medium of interaction, the leaders should be able  to make a bigger and effective impact than being in person. A Leadership style coming from the  

perspective of Strength & Humility as competencies will help exuberate the impact. 

Leaders will have to evolve personal communication strategy and style to match the different  options of distance/space and time. With this they will have to have a skill development plan. The  Human Resource division will have to understand this and build in the leadership development plan accordingly. 

This will help the leaders to communicate better the Vision, provide better Understanding & Clarity  and help teams to operate with Agility. 

About the Author 

Avishkar has 22+ years of business experience working with #1 Fortune and World’s Most Admired  companies. He has held many leadership roles all through his career including being a Board  Member, the current being the Senior Vice President and Chief People Officer. He leads the Business  mandate of leveraging Talent for a large distributed 8000+ workforce. His focus is on the Future in  terms of work, leadership competency, and digital transformation. He has worked across large multi cultural global teams and has a significant experience & exposure managing global stakeholders  through strong relationship, influencing and coaching skills. 

Program Attended with CTT: ICF Coach Certification Program Level 1 

Reason for taking this program: Building the Coaching Skill and leveraging it to Make a Difference in  the World 

What worked for you: The experiential learning 

What benefits you got: Considerably help in developing my active listening and quality of questions  being asked competencies 

Picture Credit: Avishkar Mehrotra

Disclaimer

The views and opinions expressed in this blog are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Coach-To-Transformation or its parent company.