Virtual leadership: Why emotion, authenticity, compassion and respect matter

When season two of the EG Future Female Leaders programme began, the world was in an entirely different place. Coronavirus was not dominating every news service. It flashed up once or twice a day as we looked to China and the early onset of the virus. The second cohort of future leaders gathered with the trainers from Ginger Public Speaking to start their journey to become standout public speakers, to learn more from each other and to establish a bond that would secure them on their path to become not just future leaders, but leaders today. Not long after that first session, the world changed. The aim of programme, however, has not. With Ginger, EG and its partners are pushing forward and, like all good leaders, have adapted to the new order of the world. EG caught up with a trio of Future Female Leaders – Zoe Sharpe, development manager at Dandara; Amanda Lim, head of flexible office solutions at Knight Frank; and Natasha Trathen, senior associate, global product & solutions at Nuveen Real Estate – to find out what they have learnt so far and how lockdown is affecting their leadership journeys. For Dandara’s Sharpe, the coronavirus crisis has made her think about what leadership really is. “Leadership shouldn’t just be about what happens in a crisis,” she says. “It should be happening long before that. Leadership is about being presented with, and having to deal with, situations you’re not expecting on numerous occasions and it should be doing that without compromising your values and ethics.” For her, the current situation is providing an opportunity for all leaders to promote and support new ways of working across real estate that engender collaboration, trust, respect, compassion and empathy and that do that 100% of the time, not just during a crisis. Leaders, she says, have to be tested to show their strength, depth and resilience. The same rings true for Knight Frank’s Lim, who is trying to put human emotion at the centre of her leadership style. She says the switch to virtual meetings has forced her to over-communicate in a bid to make up for the lack of physical and emotional cues we take from each other in real life. “I have found that communication has been more difficult purely because body language is always helpful in giving context to a situation. When you’re in the office next to each other, you can see when someone’s stressed or having a bad day,” she says. “There was one day where I felt very overwhelmed with how to be the right leader for my team so I just laid on the floor for an hour. That was my way of coping with it. But you don’t see that. And then I got really stressed with everybody. At the end of the day, I thought I needed to explain why I was being so difficult. We’re all humans and while we tend to be able to see it in person, when we’re not all together it’s difficult.” Being a leader who is able to tell your team that you struggled, that you had to lie on the floor and that’s why you might not have been as good a leader as you wanted to be, is a scary thing to do and probably not very traditionally real estate, but that is exactly what these future female leaders want to change. “We all have to adapt and change the way we are at work and how we judge each other,” says Lim. “It’s got to be key that people understand that affects how you are as a leader and how you treat people.” “It’s really important for future leaders to drive forward innovation and change,” adds Nuveen’s Trathen, “and there’s no time more appropriate to be doing that than when something really big happens where we actually need to adapt and change.” For Trathen, that adaptation also comes in the ability of leaders and businesses to change the discussions they are having to more human conversations. “It’s time to speak out and say it’s OK to not be OK and to try and work through things in a way that might be better for people,” says Trathen. “It is really important to speak out and say ‘I’m not dealing with this’ and try to inspire people to know that it’s OK to be vulnerable at this time and to adapt as best they can.” And it is adaptation that makes for the very best leaders, after all. “Leadership is never fully formed,” concludes Sharpe. “It’s organic. You’re always going to be learning… but always at the heart of [doing it well] is holding on to your values and ethics.” To send feedback, e-mail samantha.mcclary@egi.co.uk or tweet @samanthamcclary or @estatesgazette