With the increasing and high percentage of remote virtual work in business organizations, EI is critical to achieving the best productivity within virtual work teams. While working remotely, as a management leader and future manager, leverage your emotional intelligence in a virtual work to tackle challenges that arise while working. And it gets even more difficult, especially if your team is new to the field of remote virtual work. Or has entered the world of virtual work all of a sudden. The challenge is that most of our social interactions are absent from the workday. Such as the simple interactions that help us connect on a socio-emotional level.
Within virtual teams, there is also a tension between the need to integrate at work and the need to take extra time for meaningful social contact among employees who feel isolated and disconnected from social relationships.
The Importance of EI in a Virtual Work Environment
EI is our ability to understand, use, and manage emotions in positive ways to relieve stress, communicate effectively, empathize with others, overcome challenges, and manage organizational conflict and conflict. It also helps to recognize, understand and influence the feelings of others.
If you have high EI, you tend to be less stressed. And communicate better than your peers with low emotional intelligence. Because you empathize with others and manage your reactions to other people’s feelings.
In the virtual work environment, how we use EI must change while the goals of recognizing and managing emotions remain the same. Although it is challenging to communicate our feelings and our colleagues’ feelings in a virtual work environment, the consequences of ignoring EI are too significant to ignore.
When leaders and managers in a remote virtual environment assume that everyone is okay. Our employees’ sense of teamwork can erode. It is why we must be keen to update our EI to deal with the dynamics of remote virtual work to prevent and overcome these potentially harmful outcomes.
How you can benefit from EI during remote virtual work
1. Practice self-management
When you work virtually remotely, self-management becomes essential. For example, when you put on your business attire and go to your typical workplace every day, you know that you go to that place and are there to do your job. If you’re virtually working remotely from home, you don’t have the same environmental and spatial cues that drive productivity. Therefore, it is necessary to find methods to cultivate this same purposeful orientation from a distance to continue showing initiative and motivating your work.
2. Focus on relationship management and social awareness
In a remote virtual work environment, we must pay special attention to social awareness and relationship management. Part of the fun of working with others is developing relationships and getting to know people outside the context of their job role. During our working career, we gain many friendships. Therefore important not to give up on building relationships because it is difficult to achieve in a virtual work environment. A lack of relationship management and social awareness lowers our team’s productivity and prevents us from enjoying the social benefits.
Remote virtual teams must constantly strive to maintain a sense of connection. To be successful, this may mean honing your listening, observing, and following skills. So you don’t miss out on connecting with others. We need to pay more attention and take the time to get to know the exact cues our team members give us.
Tips to practically develop your EI during remote virtual work
1) Be clear and specific in your email communication
While working remotely, take the time to explain your ideas well while writing the email. In our typical workplace, we often send out quick emails that we know we’ll be able to clear up later in the face. But with virtual teams, some issues that need clarification can remain stuck for a long time. Be specific and clear, especially when expecting a particular response from the other party. If it’s a complicated or delicate conversation, consider calling by phone rather than communicating everything via email.
2) Establish new procedures to ensure communication
Make contact time and communication with your team a permanent item on your meeting agenda, setting aside the first five to 10 minutes to learn how your business team is doing. Have your team members arrive five or 10 minutes early to allow some time for unplanned socializing. You should also be aware that some people may be uncomfortable talking over online platforms or conference calls. And may request a direct name invitation before they participate.
A tremendous and vital plus of maintaining communication is encouraging the team to keep a private communication channel or chat open at a specific time during the day. Another encouragement for your team members to reach out is when they know their feedback and response are valued.
3) Call to find out what your team needs
Being an effective leader for your employees working virtually remotely, you need to make proactive calls to employees at several functional levels just for reassurance and support. Ask your employees what they need, and continue to equip and prepare them as best you can for success while working virtually remotely.
4) Send expressions of care and concern
Ensure to send messages of care and concern to your employees, whether it is about simple business or personal matters. There is nothing like expressions of care and respect from you as a leader and manager to make a virtual remote team member feel visible and valued. Without exaggeration, the message of care and concern itself indicates that you are thinking of your team.
5) Remind your team to take care of themselves
Help your virtual teamwork reduce stress by embedding the idea of taking time for self-care. It happens by mimicking this behavior yourself, setting specific times for your daily work to end, and encouraging others to do the same.
6) Appreciate your team’s efforts through written letters
Many employees in a virtual work environment may lack appreciation for their efforts. Take the time to write emails and even personal notes when your team’s tasks are well done. And send a direct thank you letter to your team members who accomplished their tasks well and distinguished. Some words of appreciation and thanks significantly affect the employee and his performance in the long run.
7) Celebrate the achievements with your team via online platforms
Keep the typical work traditions that you used to do in the regular work during the virtual remote work. Among these traditions are celebrations of achievements and other activities. It is possible to celebrate via electronic platforms as well, send gifts to the guest of honor, party favors, and rewards to guests. Then use technology to gather as a group to celebrate the occasion.
8) Ask for feedback
After in-person meetings, teams often debrief informally while returning to their regular office business. After a cross-platform call, this natural process doesn’t happen unless you decide to call or email someone to discuss feedback and ideas.
Even if you have encouraged and trained employees to develop their EI in the past. Do it again with them, considering your new work arrangements or recent challenges as they are virtually working remotely. Work hard to ensure that communication remains a priority because you want to continue to have a high-performing team.
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