How to Keep Your Culture Alive while Working Remotely
How do you get teams working as well as they used to? How do you deal with issues that are being amplified by virtual distance?
Your culture depends heavily on connection and collaboration. However, the COVID-19 health crisis has forced most people to work remotely without the right preparation. Business as usual is a death sentence; keeping the culture alive while working remotely requires a new approach.
1. Start by Assessing Morale And Emotions
Make it okay for your team members to express how they feel. That people continue doing their jobs doesn’t mean that they are not struggling deep inside.
It’s okay for people to feel anxious, sad, lost, afraid of uncertainty, worried about losing their jobs, or a loved one. The list goes on and on. In the past few weeks, I facilitated tens of online sessions with teams and I observed a common theme: people are grieving.
As David Kessler tells Harvard Business Review, everyone is grieving on a micro and a macro level. Anticipatory grief is the feeling about what the future holds. As the co-author of On Grief and Grieving explains, anticipatory grief is the mind going to the future and imagining the worst.
