THE CASE FOR REMOTE LEADERSHIP
The Covid pandemic took a lot from us. It also gave us a massive blessing in disguise: the possibility to work flexibly and to lead anything and anyone anytime and from anywhere.
For us, women in leadership, leading remotely well means that:
- We can enjoy more life-work integration – thanks to flexible work schedules we have more time for meaningful work, for our families, AND for ourselves.
- By joining a global marketplace, we get to choose our own employer.
- We can make more money by working for global companies with fully distributed teams.
- We don’t have to deal with office bullies, horrible office politics, inconsiderate colleagues, constant interruptions, and other microaggressions that exhaust us and make us wonder if we are good enough or the right people for the job.
- We can take quantum leaps in our careers and accelerate our way into the C-Suite by applying for more regional and global leadership roles.
- We don’t have to relocate and uproot our families anymore to enjoy a global leadership role.
- Thanks to a flexible work schedule we can find more time for strategic, focused work, for learning and for nurturing our purpose, vision, and exceptional thought leadership ideas.
- We can feel safer at work.
- We can experience more diversity of language, race, culture, etc.
- We can finally feel that we belong.
- We can save time and money by avoiding unnecessary commuting, shopping, and stress.
- By saving fuel, we can reduce our impact on the Planet.
- If we want, we can move to locations dear to our hearts, closer to the people we love or to the activities that support our wellbeing.
AND SO MUCH MORE.
All these goodies have a caveat though.
WE, WOMEN, ARE STANDING AT A MASSIVE CROSSROAD…
In order to enjoy the full benefits of the new, post-pandemic work environment, we need to learn how to lead ourselves, other people, projects, teams, and organizations remotely and in a hybrid environment.
Make no mistake: we, women in the workplace, are standing at a massive crossroad.
If we get remote and hybrid leadership right, we can take quantum leaps in our careers and lives. We can finally close the gender pay gap and we can slowly, but surely eliminate the mediocre female representation in top corporate, political, and societal leadership.
Thanks to our upbringing and socialization, we, women, are also in pole position to succeed in this new work environment because we know how to lead with emotional intelligence, which is THE KEY to success in remote and hybrid leadership.
Yet - are we taking full advantage of this opportunity?
Here is what can happen if we get remote and hybrid leadership wrong:
- We can become even more invisible. While we are busy juggling work and chores remotely, the office can become a “white boys’ club” where new policies and the future of our projects, teams, and organizations will be decided for us without us.
- Because of unaddressed unconscious biases already present in organizations, our ideas and work can become even more invisible and thus perceived as irrelevant.
- We may end up being paid even less because we work from home, so why should we be paid equally with those who commute to the office (even though our work results are the same or better)?
- We risk being overlooked for future promotions.
- Because of the above we might start experiencing even less self-confidence and more hesitations about applying for senior leadership positions.
- Because of feeling invisible, ignored, unrewarded, and in doubt, more and more women might decide to leave their organizations, thus blowing away diversity efforts and the companies’ chance at real transformation.
Getting remote and hybrid work wrong can throw us, women, back decades.
IT’S THAT SERIOUS.
By getting remote and hybrid leadership wrong, we risk losing the advances that our predecessors built for us with so much effort and sacrifice over the last 50 years.
By the contrary, when we get remote and hybrid leadership right, we can accelerate women leadership advances and our chance at WORK AND HAPPINESS by 50 years.
Getting remote and hybrid leadership right CAN AND WILL throw us, women in leadership, in pole position for massive global influence, essential corporate transformation, and substantial leadership.
Getting remote and hybrid leadership right will make life so much easier for our daughters, granddaughters, and the generations coming after us.
Getting remote and hybrid leadership right will make our daughters and granddaughters look at us with love and pride – like Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s daughter was looking at her during her hearings.
Getting remote and hybrid leadership right will make us, women in leadership, good ancestors.
WHICH WAY DO YOU CHOOSE TO TAKE AT THIS CROSSROAD?
JOIN OUR SIGNATURE CAREER ACCELERATION AND LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT PROGRAM PEARL - PRESENT, EFFECTIVE, AUTHENTIC REMOTE LEADERSHIP FOR OUR NEXT LIVE COHORT.
