Development of skills for Telework
Although many people spoke of teleworking as their job dream, nowadays and facing the current reality, it is already a necessity. With it has come the opportunity to raise awareness about what this implies and in this process it is important to welcome in our home, the tasks that have allowed us to express our talents. Now is also the opportunity to raise awareness about different and perhaps new talents that adapting to this new reality implies. Receive these business coaching techniques to manage work stress at home.
It is also important to recognize that teleworking requires different skills or perhaps adapting certain skills to the reality of the change that teleworking requires.
Many of the situations or manifestations of work stress at home that we have seen during these times are due to the lack of skills necessary for teleworking.
Let’s look at some important skills for teleworking and some alternatives for developing skills for teleworking.
- Self-regulation: This skill includes the most subtle things, such as recognizing emotional states and consciously doing what is necessary to move from your different moods, to achieve serenity and emotional calm, and with it mental calm. However, self-regulation also refers to the ability to regulate the pace of work, managing time to have the variety of activities necessary to take care of the balance of your life. Aspects such as time for exercise, time for your family and social activities, work, spiritual connection, studying and professional development.
- How can we practice self-regulation?:First of all, I recommend you have a permanent meditation and self-reflection practice, and while in a state of serene emotion, plan your week and your day to day, seek to include in your PLANNING the different activities that allow you comprehensive development. Now comes a second, very important skill that has to do with discipline to accomplish what you set out to do.
- Self-discipline: this is one of the most important skills for teleworking, because it implies setting goals within the timeframes that you set for your activities, it implies being constant in complying with the times that you establish and avoiding procrastination, since the amount of stimuli that surround us at home can become permanent distractors and the constant invitation to procrastination.
- How can we practice self-discipline?: I suggest the creation of recurring routines, in the beginning it is important not to overdo activities for your agenda and as you are accomplishing the fulfillment of your agenda, you can increase achievable goals within the fulfillment times. Another important aspect that helps with self-discipline is to organize a stimulating workspace for your work time and find a way to isolate the distractors that most tend to interfere with your work.
- Self-motivation: This is also one of the most important skills for teleworking, since you do not have the company of leading professionals or perhaps the stimulation of conversations or work environments that are usually the settings that have motivated us to do what we do and that inspires us to generate new ideas for our work.
- How to raise self-motivation?: It is very important to recognize what are the things that raise our energy and creativity. For some people music is important, so at home you can have moments to listen to the music that you like, or if it helps you with work, have a musical background that helps you maintain a high vibration. If your stimuli are related to a good reading that inspires new ideas or a good conversation with relevant people in your work, take time for those stimulating readings or take the initiative to call and talk to those people who stimulate your new ideas.
- Relational skills and communication: A very strong trend in teleworking is being locked up in work activities and forgetting that, although you are at home, you are still part of a work team, in addition to the fact that communication channels change in most of the cases, however, this does not mean that the communication no longer exists. So it is important to make sure when you interact that what you are communicating is being received as you want or need it to be interpreted.
- How to elevate your relational skills?: The first recommendation that I want to make is that you do not take for granted that what you communicate in an email or by chat has already been interpreted as you are saying it and do not expect that if you make a request or give an instruction by any of these means, the things will happen just as you expect. The other person may not read your email on time, or may not have space in their agenda to attend to your request according to your expectation of time, then it is important to validate with your interlocutor both interpretation and ability to commit to you in the requests made. Another risk in virtual communications is that we easily forget that on the other side there is a human being with his own emotional charges and many times our conversations are limited only to the work issue without taking into account the person, so take time also for some personal conversations, to build trust and understand the reality of your work team, this facilitates knowing what to expect from the other person, understanding some differences that can naturally occur, and building the connectivity necessary for the work to flow much better, even optimizing the team’s time, since many rework is avoided. You can learn more about this topic by reading our article “Remote Team Leadership.”
It is important to build trust with your leader or boss, to express to him if at any time you do not have the resources to deliver a quality service; or also build trust with colleagues and friends to find strategies that foster better results, this allows us to realize that we are not alone.
We invite you then, to make this time an opportunity to develop new skills for teleworking. We now have a learning challenge to develop our abilities, without neglecting the activities that we like to do outside of our work area.
MEDITATE, read a book, play games, watch movies, do the garden, get together with friends, and share with the family through video calls; these among many others activities will lower stress levels. Complement it with a healthy diet, the type of diet that you know is good for you and raises your energy. This is also a time to take care of ourselves by learning and seeking advice when we need it. Having a restful sleep will also be of great help and essential to give a solution to those situations that may be altering our natural flow.
Omaira Giraldo Soto
Clinical Psychologist
Business Coach
