​​If you spend a large proportion of your time working from home, how will this affect your ability to manage people, lead a team and ultimately, further your career?

of course, we have a million ways of collaborating remotely now. Teams, Zoom, Slack, WhatsApp, Trello, Loom, Skype… the list is endless.

But is your lack of in-person collaboration and interaction ultimately going to hinder your skills development for leading teams?

Now I know what push-back I’m going to get. There are thousands of managers and leaders all over the world who are managing just that by utilising the tools I’ve mentioned, and you’d be correct. But these are people who have developed a management style and then adapted it to remote workforces.

Next pushback? Not everyone who is leading now were doing it before the big shift to remote working and they’re doing ok. Correct. But they were probably managed by people who were. And after all, pre-Covid much of our learning was done through micro-interactions that took place thousands of times a day when we were all in the office.

Of course, the goalposts are moving for everyone, so ultimately, it’s unlikely to impact your career development too much because standards would be dropping for everyone. But do you really want to achieve success because the bar is being set lower, or would you rather be more pro-active?

Yes, leadership is about nurturing talent, coaching, inspiring, organising,… but it’s also about challenging people, confronting issues, managing performance and also resolving conflict. And these skills don’t just help with internal management but also stand you in good stead in the wider commercial environment.

I’m not saying this can’t be achieved remotely, but it’s a damn site harder to hone these skills when you’re not in person, and it’s a hell of a lot easier to hide behind emails and voice notes when you’re remote.

Yes, it’s undoubtable that the world of work will adapt, but could you give your career a kickstart by meeting these challenges head on and getting yourself back in the office?

Unpopular opinion, I know, but not everything in life worth having is easy.