Are you wondering what soft skills you might need to be a successful remote leader?
Remote working differs greatly from in-person working and requires a different approach. With different requirements and demands than an office environment, it’s crucial for leaders to employ soft skills on top of hard skills.
Soft skills are non-technical skills related to how you work. It’s a combination of different attributes that enhance your emotional intelligence and help you better understand others.
When you work remotely, you do most things differently compared to working in an office. You now have to communicate through video conferences, can’t meet with colleagues in person, and have to work from home or any place with internet access.
As the leader of a remote company, it’s your responsibility to ensure that you have the qualities to tend to your business and its employees adequately. In this article, we’re going to go over the 4 soft skills you need to be a remote leader. Let’s get started.
Empathy
One of the primary reasons that many companies turned into remote businesses is because of COVID-19. The pandemic forced many people out of the physical workplace and into their homes to get work done.
On top of the normal challenges that come with remote working, employees now have to adjust to a different way of living. The pandemic has kept loved ones away from each other and restricted major travel. Needless to say, it’s been difficult to deal with.
Now more than ever, employers need to develop empathy to build relationships at work. People are dealing with more stress and chaos than usual, and empathizing with your team will take you a long way.
Active Listening
How often do you actively listen to your team and hear what they have to say? Do you value their opinions when you have to make crucial decisions about your business? Half of a conversation involves listening to the other person.
It’s important that you trust your team enough to listen to their feedback and apply it to your strategies and processes. You can demonstrate that you’re actively listening to your colleagues by asking meaningful questions and regularly gaining their feedback.
Self-Awareness
To improve on your existing soft skills, you need to practice self-awareness so you can apply what you learn to the workplace. Self-awareness involves being mindful of your behaviors, thoughts, and feelings.
You need self-awareness to run a remote company because it’s more difficult to gauge everyone’s feelings. Running communications through screens requires you to tune into others more frequently and ensure you’re on the same page.
Practicing self-awareness can help you understand your weaknesses and how your colleagues might relate to the same things. It can also give you insight into how your colleagues perform their tasks while working from home.
Flexibility
There are many responsibilities that come with being at home. You might find yourself with kids running around or a pet that needs to go for a walk. Your employees experience the same day-to-day distractions, and as such, should be afforded flexibility where possible.
It’s easier for your remote team to finish tasks and check off their to-do lists when they know they have flexibility. This means that, as their leader, you’ve created an environment that fosters ease, understanding, and support. This makes it easier to adjust to remote working and adapt to the changes quicker.
Over to You
Remote work requires these specific skills to succeed while working from home. Leaders of remote companies need to employ extra empathy, self-awareness, flexibility, and listening skills. That way, they can create an environment that makes it easy to work away from an office. What soft skills do you think leaders of remote businesses need?