Remote Leadership Tips: Developing Power Skills and Your Career

STEVE HENDERSHOT

If you want to be an effective project leader in today’s world of work, your toolkit can’t be limited to desk-side chats or pulling everyone into the same room for a quick conference. That’s because hybrid and fully remote teams are here to stay, and to succeed, you’ve got to know how to lead them. Fortunately, that’s what today’s show is all about.

NARRATOR

The world is changing fast. And every day, project professionals are turning ideas into reality—delivering value to their organizations and society as a whole. On Projectified^®, we’ll help you stay on top of the trends and see what’s ahead for The Project Economy—and your career.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

This is Projectified^®. I’m Steve Hendershot.

Teams across the globe are getting work done no matter their location. And while some organizations are encouraging employees to boost in-office attendance, others continue to offer hybrid and remote work models. Gartner forecasts that by the end of 2023, 39% of global knowledge workers will work hybrid, with about 9% working fully remotely. That means the impetus is on project managers to lead effectively in these dynamics, adapting their leadership styles as well as developing power skills such as problem-solving, communication and collaborative leadership.

So how do you build these skills and continue to develop your career when you’re not in an office full time? Projectified^®’s Hannah LaBelle and I spoke with two project managers who have experience leading in remote and hybrid environments. Adriana Pavón Navarrete works remotely as a project manager at data infrastructure and analytics company Hitachi Vantara in México City. And at the time of our conversation, Meena Nandelli was working in a hybrid environment as a project manager at Microsoft in Hyderabad, India. Now she’s pursuing her master’s degree at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in the U.S. Let’s go to our conversation now.

MUSICAL TRANSITION

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Meena, Adriana, thanks for joining us today for this discussion. With the growth of remote work over the past few years, how have you adapted your leadership approach? What strategies have you found most effective?

MEENA NANDELLI

When I started off in this profession, I worked as a remote project manager, where my teams were located outside India and across the globe. I love to use this line that I’ve worked on projects from as far east as Melbourne, Australia, to as far west as San Francisco, USA. So this experience came in handy when I moved to handling large teams, which were initially co-located but had to move to remote or hybrid working models post-COVID. So working with people from different cultures, working styles [and] languages in my first role helped me build empathy.

It helped me become cognizant of the diversity, the value add that each individual brings to the table, and to create an environment for people to do their best work. It taught me to build connections with individual team members so that I could understand their work styles, the timings, any personal responsibilities or commitments they have, so that I’ll be able to adapt according to this and provide them required support.

HANNAH LABELLE

Adriana, how about you?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

I made that switch from working onsite face to face with customers. So that was really a different experience. And now I’m working with fully remote global projects. That means all the teams are located in different countries. I’m always working from home. That’s something that I really enjoy, but at the same time, it has different challenges. Previously also when I was on-site with the customers, I had some remote resources. I think that helped me a lot to understand how remote work can be different from the on-site perspective, including people with different time zones, different cultures. You need to be sensitive, you need to be empathic with that. COVID made a change for a lot of companies across the world, and that’s enabled project management to be remote, to be hybrid. I think it was a huge improvement. I think also that can bring benefits to the [employees’] work-life balance.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

What’s the one thing that you have found was most useful once you switched into that second role, sort of the main skill that had been less relevant earlier in the customer-facing on-site situation that suddenly you had to either get better at or just use more often in order to lead well?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

Be open—open to learn, open to grow, even open to fail and learn from [the] mistakes that you made. Be open-minded to embrace different approaches and adapt quickly. Open to change and be flexible. Open to hear and attend what the project team needs, and especially the communication styles, because that’s really diverse across the teams, but also across the different countries.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Meena, do you have anything on that? Is there one skill that stands out that you feel like is especially relevant to the remote piece specifically?

MEENA NANDELLI 

Absolutely, Steve. Yes. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s definitely empathy for me. That helps you recognize the unique challenges that each of your team members [are] facing while working remotely, and how they’re balancing both their personal and professional life or dealing with any issues. By understanding their situations, their emotions, you can provide better support and show you genuinely care for their well-being, which in turn has helped me build self-governing teams, I would say.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How do you practice that? Or how do you sort of handle the relational stuff in that environment in order to get to that place where you’re able to be empathetic?

MEENA NANDELLI

In a traditional office environment, people can often connect with each other through casual chats, lunch breaks, and spontaneous discussions. It is really harder in a remote environment to have these natural interactions. So it is important that we are deliberate about how we communicate and what we want to achieve from the conversations because the length of the conversations has become shorter and more time-bound, I would say, than the natural conversations that we have. Being deliberate and intentional about what you want to achieve helps you in the virtual environment.

HANNAH LABELLE

That’s a great lead-in to our next topic. A big part of project leadership is interpersonal skills, or what PMI calls power skills, like communication, problem-solving, collaborative leadership and strategic thinking. Tell me how you tap into these skills and which one you think is the most essential in a remote environment. Adriana, let’s start with you.

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

I will go for communication. Communication in an effective manner is key to a project’s success, especially working remotely. Finding the right balance between the frequency and the channel you use with your teams, and also finding the right mix between synchronous and asynchronous communication, I think that’s key. You need to find what’s the right approach considering the team structure, what’s their personality, how they approach the situations. You need to be really good with communication but also to be flexible and adapt.

MEENA NANDELLI

I absolutely agree with Adriana on communication, and also collaborative leadership. If you’re able to navigate through that collaborative leadership properly, you’ll be able to tap into how you’ll communicate. Sometimes we say how much communication is too much communication as well, right? So to allow people their time while also communicating effectively, while doing the conflict resolution, problem-solving, all of these, I think will come under an overarching umbrella of the collaborative leadership. So to allow your teams [to] function effectively, communicate effectively and not work in silos, I think collaborative leadership comes in handy there.

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

And if I can add something, Hannah, strategic thinking, it’s really important for the project managers. You should always be ahead of the team on the planning, what are the next steps. You need to be always organized. When you are working remotely, I think you need to be more organized and to anticipate even more. The team needs to feel that you are prepared for the role and what is coming next, especially when you are not face to face.

HANNAH LABELLE

Another part of this is building power skills, and that might be different in an in-person environment versus remote or even a hybrid environment. What are some ways project professionals can build these skills while working remotely? And do you have an example from your own career that you can share, looking at either successes or challenges in building these skills?

MEENA NANDELLI

There are a lot of open trainings available, free resources, which do offer those development of interpersonal skills. But I think one of the best ways that you can learn is via self-reflection in each and every project that you work on, and continuously improve yourself to move to that next task or project.

I can give you an example from my own project where I was onboarded onto a high-paced delivery project where we had to start off the delivery on day one. We had different players involved, the customers, partners, leadership and various other stakeholders. After a month, everything seemed perfect, and we were meeting the targets as well. But over time, I think we realized that the team members were actually getting burnt out. So looking a little deeper into it, I understood that it was lack of communication that happened during this past month, which led to these burnouts where teams were actually working in silos and they were not communicating effectively. It is always better to be proactive from the beginning to understand how effective[ly] you can collaborate. I think I would consider that as a success because over time I was able to identify what the issue is and start building better communication strategies later on. One is definitely being proactive. Two is always self-reflecting and improving and moving on to the next task.

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

First of all, I agree with Meena. Facing challenging experiences and assignments, it’s the best way to learn every day. Learn, fail and keep going. And also, I think coaching, formal learning, taking courses online. In my experience, I have one project where we had different countries involved, different geos. For me, that was quite challenging because there was one geo that I wasn’t receiving any feedback [from]. So I was really stressed, really freaking out because I wasn’t sure if they were on board or not. For me, that’s one of the key challenges. You need to understand what’s the cultural approach and try to find out more information. Go with the stakeholders. If you need, set a different meeting. What I did was just to call some of the key stakeholders to understand their position. And at the end, it was challenging because I wasn’t sure if the project was going well, but they were happy because, in their perspective it’s, “If I’m not making an issue, that means you are fine.”

STEVE HENDERSHOT

Can I cut in with one question there? I’m thinking of mentorship. Have either of you asked others in similar situations how other people have handled this and used that to inform your own approach and kind of adaptability in the shift to remote?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

That’s something that I really recommend. To be really honest, I [was] really lucky because I have one of my colleagues, they have the same team working in another project, but who are the same stakeholders. So at that point, her mentorship was key for me because she was giving me some advice on what activities should I do, what’s the best approach for some stakeholders, how to manage the conversation, maybe setting an additional one-to-one call. I think that’s a great way to go and continue and learn because someone can provide you a different point of view. Maybe you are too worried and you cannot see the full view. Or maybe you are doing things in the right way, but at the same time, you don’t feel you are executing properly. So I think mentorship offers that experience, that advanced view or [a] different point of view.

MEENA NANDELLI

I agree with Adriana. During this project, too, I reached out to a program director in a different country, and he was a seasoned pro. He had 35-plus years of experience. While I was working with him on a different project, I was able to build a relationship with him and go on with that mentorship sessions over time. So I took this as a point to actually reach out to him and try and understand what is going wrong here and how can I get this fixed. The call that I had with him actually helped me realize what the issues were and how can I handle it better to improve. So over time, following [a] few of the strategies that he had provided and tapping into that experience helped me move forward quickly and resolve the issue.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

How do you handle conflict resolution and approach problem-solving while working remotely? Also, I’d love your perspectives on whether conflicts arise more often, less often or the same amount in a remote work environment. Do they take on any different dynamics versus in an in-person project or workplace environment?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

I think there are huge differences between the on-site work and also the remote. The conflict resolution should be different also. When people are working together in a project full time, in the same meeting room, that could be really stressing, but also you can develop bonding between the team. One of the challenges on the remote environment is that people are not communicating always in a synchronous way. So that means this communication could be misinterpreted. Something that I do in both environments, if I’m working on-site but also remotely, is in the first call, set the ground rules for the team: What are our rules of engagement? What are the expectations of the team members’ behavior and how to address some issues?

For me, it’s really important that all team members have a voice, even those that are quite introverted. With that, you need to be really careful, but also to play that role to facilitate the conversation, especially when you are working on the decision-making process. You need to reinforce the expected behaviors with the team across all the conversations. If you think or you feel that something is going not the right way, wait a minute, see how the situation progress[es]. But always be a facilitator. Try [so] that the situation [doesn’t] escalate. Slow things down.

Never argue by chat and email. I think that’s really, really important in the remote environment. You never know who can read that, and you shouldn’t be angry when you are writing something. So take a minute, set up a call. If the conflict is between specific team members, schedule a separate call with each of them and try to understand what’s behind the conflict. And with that, decide what’s the best way to address it. Maybe there is no conflict, it’s just your perception, or maybe they can handle by their selves. So you need to play that role. You guide, but at the same time, you need to intervene and don’t let things escalate.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

You said something really interesting about don’t argue by chat. In traditional in-person environments, there’s like, “Hey, let’s get everybody together. Let’s get them out of the conference room.” So there are some avenues or remedies that are not necessarily available to you with a global remote team. If you have something a little bit more intractable, what can you do to make sure that the temperature is as low as possible and that you sort of stay away from some of those channels where it can be hard to get a breakthrough?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

Always keep in mind that you need to be professional. So whatever you are doing, you need to keep the conversation professional. And also, it’s the same rule for your team members. You need to make sure that they keep the conversation professional. I know we are maybe in different time zones, [and] this is something really important that we need to address as fast as possible. But at the same time, I think there are moments where you need to take more time to address the situation properly.

HANNAH LABELLE

Meena, we haven’t heard from you yet on the conflict resolution part. How are you adapting what you would do, say in a hybrid environment—I know you have some experience with hybrid—if like you’re in person, but then you’re working with remote team members.

MEENA NANDELLI

I think the major challenge in a remote or a hybrid setting is more of identifying what or where the problem is rather than actually trying to resolve [it]. Because each of the team members will be working with relatively less communication, lower collaboration, as compared to the traditional environment, right? So in the first place, it gets difficult to get to the root cause of the problem. I would focus on enhancing communication channels and encouraging those regular check-ins with the team members. By promoting this open dialogue, team members are more likely to share any issues they’re facing, allowing me to understand the challenges better. But to prevent them in the first place, feedback is definitely important, where the team members can actually continuously learn and improve themselves, and also establishing those clear guidelines and expectations for teamwork. [Knowing] who will be taking on what responsibilities reduces the likelihood of these misunderstandings and conflicts, I would say.

But when multiple parties are involved, conflicts are bound to happen. So when a conflict arises as similar to Adriana, I take up the mediator role, work closely with the parties, individually and bring them together in a forum where they can discuss openly. And also, documenting these agreements can help for future situations. In our team, we maintain a central repository for documenting all of the information or agreements so that people can refer back when required. I think this will not only resolve the problem but having that agreement set up will also prevent future conflicts on similar issues.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

We just hit a couple of challenges related to interpersonal dynamics in teams. Is there one challenge that you feel is most significant to building the skills necessary to lead effectively from a soft or power skills dynamic? And then if so, what steps have you taken to address that?

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

One of the top challenges when you are working remotely is that you don’t receive the amount of feedback as if you are working in person. And probably you are not sure if you are working as expected or not. So for me, the way to go is always [to] ask for feedback. And one way is set up one-on-one catch-up calls with key stakeholders. Send an anonymous survey for the team. If you are going with a predictive way, you can go and execute the lessons learned session and always ask for help if you are not sure how you are doing. For one project in particular that I’m managing, as mentioned before, I am working with another colleague that has the same team. So for me, that’s really important to have that feedback. What’s her perception on how I’m executing, how I’m leading, but at the same time, how to request that feedback from my key stakeholders?

MEENA NANDELLI

So absolutely agree with Adriana that feedback is necessary. For me, the top challenge was actually building those strong relationships. The conversations that we have regularly over chats or over email or [in] meetings were always with work. But to actually build that strong relationship with your team members or anybody that you’re in fact talking to, [it] should go a little beyond work to know what their aspirations are, what challenges they are facing, et cetera, so that you can be there for that person. And that’s how you build relationships of trust. It’s really important to build that in a team, and it’s a little challenging to do it over [a] remote setup.

So what I do for that is, as Adriana said, have those feedback sessions to talk to one of your team members. Say, “How have I been doing in this meeting? Are there areas of improvement?” Which will actually show that person that I’m open to improvement and change. And that’s how you actually go above and beyond your work conversations. Second, also what I did as a part of my team is build those career development sessions where each team member would talk about their challenges and successes of how they have moved forward in this career so that other team members would be open to know more about how and what they’ve been working on. And other than that, having those face-to-face videoconferencing, virtual coffee chats, all of these do help build those relationships.

HANNAH LABELLE

Speaking of relationships, that kind of also comes into play with networking. Networking is very different in an in-person or a hybrid environment versus a remote environment. Thinking especially to maybe people who are new to project management, how can they best network and connect with others while working remotely? What are some ways that you have found work best in your own time working in a remote environment?

MEENA NANDELLI

Project management communities [are] something that I really found to be helpful. That’ll help people come together and talk about what projects they’re doing and the opportunities that are available in the organization, right? This has actually helped me to talk to people in different levels of their project management careers within the organization. Also while working with vendors or partners as well. I started going beyond just my [role’s] responsibilities to understand the project management practices in their organizations, which allowed me to put things in perspective.

But one of the things that I would emphasize is the importance of cold emails or cold messages. Initially, I was hesitant to reach out to people on LinkedIn because I thought they wouldn’t respond. But when remote work became more common, I gathered the courage to start reaching out. And it actually made a huge difference. I had conversations with people from different industries, including program directors and managers in nonprofits, and from various other industries as well. I learned that people are usually open to helping and talking about their careers. So it’s actually up to us to take advantage of those networking opportunities on these different platforms that are available.

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

I agree with Meena. Project management communities are really important. I think for me, one of the best networking I can make and that I really enjoy is being [a] volunteer at the Project Management Institute. I think it’s a great way to connect with other professionals, but at the same time, you are contributing to the profession.

STEVE HENDERSHOT

I feel great about this conversation. Thanks to both of you.

ADRIANA PAVÓN NAVARRETE

Thank you, Steve, thank you, Hannah, and thank you, Meena.

MEENA NANDELLI

Thank you so much, Steve and Hannah, you’ve been wonderful hosts for today. And thank you, Adriana, for sharing your experiences. It’s really helped me learn from what you’ve shared as well. Thank you so much.

NARRATOR

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