I’m going to take a guess here that managing your team’s performance is not one of your favourite things about being a leader. Add to that directing your team orchestra from behind a computer screen, and it can pretty quickly feel like a mammoth task. 

And you’re not just dealing with teams moving from the office to a home office. 

You’re likely dealing with people feeling isolated, disconnected from friends and family, overwhelmed with homeschooling responsibilities, recovering from protest, riots or earthquake (if they’re in Melbourne) shocks, and in general fatigue from almost two years of living a very disrupted reality. 

So does that mean it’s impossible to manage team performance when faced with so many challenges?

I don’t think so. 

I think there are some deceptively simple ‘rules’ (for lack of a better word) to follow. That’s not to say it’s simple to do though…

Here are a few ideas I’ve seen put into practice by the leaders I work with.

Be clear about goals
This is all about communicating clearly. The reality is the communication goal posts have moved considerably in this environment. You might find that clarity takes a little more effort to achieve than in an office environment, that your communication has to be even more intentional. 

We’ll talk about communication in more detail another time, but for now I just want to emphasise that getting communication right is about much more than just making sure that people know exactly what to do. Communicating the big picture and their role in it is also a very effective engagement tool. So it is definitely worth investing time and energy in doing it as well as possible.