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Introduction: The Virtual Revolution
At the start, we were all operating on adrenaline.
When the COVID-19 global pandemic broke in early 2020, millions of organizations and hundreds of millions of employees shifted on a dime to working remotely. A can-do spirit set in individually and collectively, fueled by the once-in-a-generation sense of shared humanity, driving people around the world to adapt and perform at unimaginably high levels of productivity. Employee engagement scores increased as CEOs and corporate leaders stepped up and communicated with much greater frequency, transparency, and authenticity than they had felt appropriate before the crisis set in. And a great many office workers, powered by Zoom, Teams, WebEx, and BlueJeans, quickly found joys in working from home and eliminating the grind of the daily commute and business travel.
A year later, much of this novelty had washed away.
This is not only about Zoom burnout. Fear and uncertainty about the virus and the resulting global economic collapse, concerns about the well-being of loved ones, and job insecurity were further exacerbated by the many other afflictions of Annus Horribilis 2020. The all-too-well-known list includes historic levels of political polarization, nationwide protests over racial injustice ignited by the killing of George Floyd, and record-destructive wildfires throughout the West Coast of the United States, just to name a few. And the work-from-home (WFH) trend, which was a part of many professionals’ working lives pre-COVID-19 but dramatically accelerated when companies closed offices due to the pandemic, will remain both a privilege and source of ongoing stress, taxing mental health, putting pressure on personal relationships, and uncovering new challenges for employees and their leaders alike.
Someday the COVID-19 pandemic will end – and we hope you are reading this book from that vantage point. But even as we write this, at a time when “social distancing” remains an imperative and few companies are encouraging or even letting workers return to offices (with masks on), this much is clear: we are in the early days of a dramatic, long-term shift in how work is done. In this emerging world, the work of leaders will less frequently occur face-to-face, and more of it will be done virtually, whether by means of audio, video, email, text, Slack, Teams, or whatever new technologies emerge. Our goal with Leading at a Distance is to share highly practical insights for how to be the best virtual leader you can be. Given that an important aspect of leadership is role modeling, it will also be important to share advice about how to be the most effective virtual employee you can be.
Our insights are based on deep academic and professional research on the topic of virtual leadership, coupled with our fieldwork from partnering with many of the most successful CEOs, business leaders, and organizations around the world. We have interviewed (virtually, of course) over 100 CEOs, CHROs, and top business leaders for this book, surveyed thousands of individuals and companies, and applied our own observations as practitioners advising boards and companies on leadership selection, executive assessment and development, CEO succession, and board governance.
Luckily, there are effective ways both to work and to lead at a distance. And in the coming years, we believe that leaders’ ability to master these skills of leadership will mean the difference between individual and organizational success and failure.
Accelerating an Existing Trend: Virtual Work Is Here to Stay
To set the stage, let us share some foundational data. Prior to COVID-19, our survey of HR and talent leaders from over 150 companies showed that virtual work was not a rare phenomenon – 13% of the workforce, on average, was considered fully remote. When we resurveyed CHROs and rewards and talent leaders over a span of two weeks in July and August 2020 in which leaders from 55 organizations participated, that percentage skyrocketed to over 60% at the end of March 2020 and reached well in excess of 80% as of August 2020.
Looking ahead, these same HR and talent leaders anticipate that nearly half of their employees will continue to work from home even when things have stabilized. Another study by Northeastern University's Experience magazine1 found that 80% of employees who were new to remote work reported that they wanted to continue to work remotely at least part time in the future (although only