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March 5, 2021 By cs

Inclusive leadership in a digital-first workplace

The rapid transition to remote work – especially during a global pandemic – wasn’t easy.

Over the past year, organizations across all industries have shown immense resilience, successfully pivoting their workflows and workforce into a digital-first environment.

While this digital transformation was critical for growth and stability, it also created challenges and opportunities for making remote work more diverse and inclusive.

From embracing new and unfamiliar technologies to balancing job responsibilities while caring for children, elders, or relatives, this new virtual world has impacted generations, genders, and ethnic groups in different – and often inequitable – ways.

While organizations must take the initial step to continue to strengthen their diversity and build inclusive cultures, research has found that a leader’s behavior has a direct link to an employee’s experience of inclusion.

Effective and inclusive leadership in a virtual workplace takes self-awareness, vulnerability, empathy, and often – agility. When these leadership skills and behaviors are applied effectively, inclusive teams routinely make better decisions and more quickly achieve better results.

Here are three ways you can embrace accelerating change and lead your remote team with inclusivity.

Recognize and challenge your implicit biases

When you take on the role and responsibility of leading a team, you’re charged with fostering a culture of collaboration, engagement, and growth while leveraging the differences of your employees. As individuals, we all have implicit biases – influenced by our environments, experiences, and those around us – that lead us to form unconscious judgments about others.

Further, research shows that when we’re stressed, we often default to mental shortcuts and gut instincts, rather than making deliberate and goal-oriented decisions. Thus, potentially perpetuating inequalities in the virtual workplace and reinforcing the phenomenon of homophily, or the tendency to seek out those similar to yourself. If left uncurbed, the effects of unconscious biases can be detrimental to remote teams, causing corrosion of relationships and impacting your capacity as a leader, compelling you to make choices outside of The U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) mandates, company values, established best practices, or general ethics.

“As a leader, it is vital to routinely assess your team and look for opportunities to transform dynamics,” says Sonia Alvarez-Robinson, executive director at Georgia Tech Strategic Consulting and the host of the Georgia Tech Organizational Effectiveness Conference. “Think about everyone on your team. Do you hear ideas from each of them regularly? When in meetings, are there voices that get overrun? Very often, things that create discord are subtle nuances that can easily be missed.”

Leaders should be intentional about leveraging the varied strengths and talents of all their employees. To combat implicit biases, Harvard Business Review suggests making a list of the current core and extended team members, with their photos, and keep it in front of you while you’re working each day to help you make more conscious decisions about allocating responsibilities and information.

In doing so, inclusive team leaders can create a deliberate space that values differences, ensures all voices are heard, and harnesses the power of diverse perspectives.

Create a strong sense of belonging

When people feel like they belong at work, they are more productive, motivated, and more likely to contribute to their fullest potential, according to research from BetterUp.

Being physically separated from colleagues can impact team communication, and over time, stifle opportunities for engagement, impede diverse perspectives, and perpetuate systemic inequalities. By taking extra steps to make your remote team feel valued, connected, and respected, you are creating psychological safety while improving morale, motivation, productivity, and retention.

An inclusive workplace is one in which employees feel safe, comfortable, and respected. “It’s about establishing those relationships within your organization and establishing that sense of, ‘Yes, I belong there. I matter,'” notes Sonia Garcia, senior director of Access and Inclusions at Texas A&M’s College of Engineering. Without the blanket of inclusivity, there is no opportunity for equity.

On a peer-to-peer level, establishing more opportunities for coworkers to check in with one another will help to make inclusivity tangible and allow teammates to feel seen and connected, regardless of their backgrounds. One easy way to do this is to create a virtual water cooler – such as a group chat on Microsoft Teams – for colleagues to share resources, tips, life hacks, words of encouragement, or non-work-related chatter.

In addition to virtual connections among distributed colleagues, it’s also important as an inclusive leader to develop individual personal relationships to foster a culture of open dialogue and mutual respect. According to a study by Gallup, employees who meet with their managers regularly are three times more likely to be engaged than those who don’t.

To ensure these valuable conversations routinely take place, establish a standing weekly or biweekly check-in and take advantage of audio and visual technology to mimic face-to-face interactions. Leave time at the beginning or end of the meeting to connect socially and listen for any challenges, feelings of isolation, or privacy concerns while proactively sourcing or empowering team members to crowdsource solutions.

Enhance your communication skills and approach

For leaders, communication isn’t just part of the job – it is the job. Studies from McKinsey Global Institute have found that leaders spend about 80% of their workdays communicating, and even more so in a virtual setting.

Take the time to think about the varying viewpoints and backgrounds of your team members, and adapt your communication skills and approach according to their interests and demographic makeup.

For example, using “guys” to address a multi-gendered team could insinuate that men are the preferred gender at the organization. Instead, use gender-inclusive alternatives, such as “team” or “colleagues.”

Additionally, your actions will speak louder than your words. Interactions aren’t just limited to verbal or written communication, your visual behaviors, such as posture, facial expressions, or eye contact, are also an effective component of your communication style.

“Whether listening attentively when another person is voicing their point of view or preventing miscommunication by double-checking tone, inclusive leaders must be skilled at delivering authentic, clear, and supportive messages to build trust and credibility with their remote team,” says Nisha Botchwey, assistant dean of academic programs, Georgia Tech Professional Education.

The future of work requires inclusion

While cultivating and managing an inclusive workforce was already a major challenge across industries, the Covid-19 pandemic elevated systemic racial and economic inequities while disrupting the professional workforce. The uprising for racial justice has amplified the need for organizations to reassess priorities, values, and dynamics – confirming that previous, more passive strategies have not been effective.

To create a workplace where every employee feels included, leaders must embrace these changes and take action now. These approaches will be crucial, not only to help remote teams build new habits and social connections, but also to allow for a more cohesive and inclusive culture better equipped for an equitable society and the future of work.

Source: https://pe.gatech.edu/blog/future-of-work/inclusive-virtual-leadership

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: communication, Georgia Tech, inclusion, pandemic, professional education, remote learning, remote work, telework

July 7, 2020 By cs

Contractor confidence in government market less certain amid pandemic

Before the coronavirus outbreak, the contracting community expressed “high confidence” in public sector sales for 2020, expressing optimism in steady government buying following 2019’s lengthy government shutdown that set many companies back.
Click on image above to download report.

Now, amid a pandemic with no end in sight, a largely remote workforce and other contractor challenges, the contracting forecast for 2020 and beyond is much less certain.

“We saw a strong performance across the board in 2019, and as we entered 2020, the outlook was rosy,” said Amy Champigny, senior product marketing manager at Deltek. “Now, to some degree, that has happened, but not in the way people expected. The COVID-19 pandemic is going to force a lot of contractors to think carefully about how they come out of this.”

Champigny spoke with Nextgov about Deltek’s Clarity Government Contracting Industry Study, a wide-scale survey of hundreds of government contractors regarding issues, trends and opportunities impacting the market. At the time the survey was fielded—between Jan. 6 and March 2—70% of contractors expected government sales to be higher in 2020 than 2019. Now, “consensus expectations call for significant negative growth in the second half of 2020, and there is not yet a clear path to recovery,” the authors state.

Keep reading this article at: https://www.nextgov.com/cio-briefing/2020/06/contractor-confidence-government-market-less-certain-amid-pandemic/166406/

Filed Under: Government Contracting News Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, industrial base, industry partners, market conditions, market research, pandemic, remote work, uncertainty

April 14, 2020 By cs

Expert tips for succeeding as a remote learner

Remote and distance learning have been a part of higher education for decades. What began as courses delivered on videotape and satellite feed has evolved into expertly produced online degree programs that offer both superior learning outcomes and flexibility.
Listen to tips for a successful transition into the remote learning environment in the video clip above.

That combination, alongside an industry-relevant credential, is often well-suited for professionals balancing their education with work and family.

With COVID-19 forcing massive disruption in the workplace as millions of professionals transition to remote work, amidst the added pressures of homeschooling and childcare, adaptability is more essential than ever.

The recent pandemic has also uprooted residential education programs across the country, and university campuses are now looking to remote delivery as the essential path forward for the remainder of the spring semester.

The ability to make a transition of this scale at such a rapid pace is a testament to the advances and success in innovative educational delivery. However, the breakneck speed and unprecedented nature of the circumstances has forced a reset of expectations around online delivery, as well as an opportunity to discover creative solutions.

“None of us has experienced anything like this before,” says Yakut Gazi, associate dean of learning systems for Georgia Tech Professional Education. “We’re trying to transition what we’ve learned into the realities of today.”

As experts in the field of learning design, Gazi and her team of instructional designers have discovered a lot about how learning works best in an online environment. The current reality dictates an assessment of your approach for any learner – whether new or experienced in this setting. Here are their top five suggestions to consider:

  1. Make a plan for studying.
    Whether it is digital or paper-based, create a written plan that delineates how you plan to accomplish your weekly work and upcoming assessments or assignments over the course or semester.
  2. Identify a time and place to work.
    Once you have your plan in place, identify where you can establish the concentrated time you need for your learning and create a calendar. This can be especially challenging in the current environment, but work as much as you can protect the time and space you need.
  3. Recognize that you need support for your learning.
    Proactively look for creative resources that can help complement your usual support system, like study or homework groups. Even when done digitally, make a commitment to stay connected and use them often and wisely.
  4. Become comfortable seeking help.
    Everyone will encounter difficulties or have questions, yourself included. You will be well served by reaching out to educators, fellow students, and support staff for assistance or clarification. Seek out additional services as needed if you run into larger problems.
  5. Be kind to yourself.
    It is essential to make mental health a priority and take care of yourself as much as possible. Remember that your peers are experiencing the same challenges, and look for opportunities to provide reassurance and grace to others and yourself.
Set Yourself Up for Success

While the present circumstances can often feel overwhelming, don’t be discouraged. It takes a tremendous amount of dedication and hard work to pursue online education, and even more during these difficult and unsettling circumstances.

“These are challenging times and it’s OK to be confused,” reminds Gazi. “You’re in charge of your learning and you have what it takes to persevere.”

Source: https://pe.gatech.edu/blog/working-learning/remote-learning-tips

 

Filed Under: Georgia Tech News Tagged With: coronavirus, COVID-19, distance learning, pandemic, remote learning, remote work, telework

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