The Future of Work is Hybrid ( Remote Series 11/11)

March 21, 2023 Regina Zafonte

While some companies have opted for a full remote experience, others are still figuring it out and thinking through a hybrid setup. Since covid has blown up the traditional work model, it has allowed companies to think about a more improved format that will allow people to rearrange their lives and work preferences for greater fulfillment and productivity.

One complexity that companies are dealing with is how much time people should be in the office. In a linked interview, David Rock from the NeuroLeadership Institute mentioned how split worker preferences are:

· 1/3 of people love to be in the office because they are most productive and happier and do not have distractions or a lack of structure, which they can experience at home. It is also energizing for extroverts to be around people who get their energy from all the interactions.

· 1/3 of people prefer to be at home, especially caretakers, who tend to be mostly women, and some racial groups who talked about experiencing greater comfort working from home. They can organize their schedule that supports their parental and lifestyle preferences. It is also less depleting for introverts who can get quickly drained by being around people constantly.

· 1/3 of people are happy to mix it up, go into the office part of the time to be around people and collaborate, and stay home part of the time for deep work and more flexibility.

Executives are also split on this topic, which some believe is more emotionally charged than layoffs. Tim Cook of Apple, Elon Musk of Tesla, Jamie Dimon of JP Morgan, Reed Hastings of Netflix, and David Solomon of Goldman Sachs are just some Fortune 500 CEOs who have loudly demanded their employees return to the worksite. They view physical attendance as paramount, especially given their real estate investment. Mark Zuckerberg of Meta, David Ek of Spotify, Parag Agrawal of Twitter, Jack Dorsey of Square, and Mark Benioff of Salesforce have endorsed more of a work-from-anywhere policy. And some trust their teams to make the best decisions. Amazon’s CEO Andy Jassy told employees, “instead of specifying that people work a baseline of three days a week in the office, we're going to leave this decision up to individual teams." Sundar Pichai of Google said, "I think people and teams are going to figure this out.” They take more of a local approach empowering teams to do what makes the most sense for accomplishing business objectives and satisfying individual preferences.

The Future Of Work Is A Hybrid Setup

A McKinsey article highlight’s that many organizations will be seeking to combine the benefits of remote and onsite working, but many currently lack a strategy for the future of work. The key is figuring out the right model that will work for your culture, having a definite strategy and not trying to be all things to everyone. When you define your culture, and tell others who you are and what it means to work here, people can make informed decisions that best suit their needs.

Companies are in this rare moment to reimagine how work can be done better. Before determining your hybrid strategy, here are some points you may want to consider:

1. Define the kind of company and culture you want to have. People are still thinking about the right way to do hybrid and there is no one correct answer as it depends on the needs of the people and the company. How is your organization being regenerative, where it invests in its people so that every year, they get even better, rather than exploitative, where they try to extract as much as they can from people as they drive toward profits.

2. Set your goals linked to the business outcomes and then give flexibility. Once you know the company’s purpose and business outcomes, you can be flexible in achieving those ends. Rather than return to the old ways of doing things or bad habits that were not working, it is a real opportunity to explore what will be best for your team and company in this current period. Granting employees the flexibility they yearn, will allow the company to benefit from higher productivity, engagement, and loyalty. People benefit because they can organize their life according to what is important to them. At GitLab, they optimize for results rather than activities or the number of hours worked

3. Survey your people and co-create. What do your employees want? How are you using their voices to restructure the workday and week? How much flexibility do they have in deciding how they work, when, where, and who they work with? Where do their preferences and interests come into play? You can give an anonymous survey to truly understand their predilections, and then you can use that data to balance it with the organization’s needs. How can they be set up for success, do their job well, and simultaneously make sure the business is serving the stakeholders and customers? Once you know this, you can collectively create the best policy for the work and your people. This decision should not be made by one person or just the executive team in an office, and then it gets imposed onto others, there has to be an account for the diverse perspectives and a collaboration to determine the best course of action. You can run an innovation tournament and crowd-source the best ideas. They can submit various models to meet the conditions of promoting worker benefits, attracting top talent, and meeting the needs of the business and its many stakeholders.

4. View the office as a tool to advance teamwork. This will help you be more intentional about your in-person time. One of the keys to making this a success is to think about batching or arranging time together to maximize the team’s advantage in the office as face-to-face coordination helps.

In an interview with Adam Grant, CEO of Microsoft Satya Nadella said, “stop thinking about remote work like a switch but instead a dial to turn up or down on synchronous and asynchronous work depending on the type of team you have and the kinds of projects you are doing. If your project is more like a relay race, you need more time together like an assembly line with multiple people are involved or a media shop where one draft needs to be handled by many people…a writer, editor, and designer. The person passing the baton needs to be in sync with the person receiving it. When excellence depends on repeatedly passing the ball, you want to spend several days in the week together and coordinate your time.”

5. Designate Anchor & Deep Work Days. Some companies choose 2 or 3 days a week for anchor days. If you are going to the office, it is nice to spend time on intense collaboration and innovation. When people know they are coming in for ideation or creative work or working on a specific task or problem together where they are whiteboarding and solutioning, it can deepen cohesion and engender great feelings as people can feel good creating and connecting. It is also a buzzing energy to align around a goal. They can be used for important internal meetings, 2–3-year strategy planning work, or with key customers to give them facetime to build more trust rapidly. Finally, an opportunity to have lunch, connect, and foster great culture and build community. If an entire team has few dependencies, they can even decide to meet at WeWorks on the same day to work in community. When people are co-located, there is magic and spontaneity in the informal interactions where people of different expertise and experience exchange ideas for great creativity. Those casual collisions drive learning and innovation and can brighten people’s days and make them feel more connected.

The key is to devise a plan that will work for most. If you allow everybody to pick individually and are on different schedules from their immediate and cross-functional teams, you miss the benefits of hybrid. It is not as productive to come into the office and do things they can easily do from home such as staring at a screen all day when they would have been more productive at home. The people who have a 2-hour commute and are forced to come in to do independent work that they could have done better at home will become resultful.

Another format I’ve seen is when managers set a number such as 30% of your time per month in the office, or designate certain weeks out of the month, such as the 1st and 3rd. Or, some managers select a day for drop-in office hours or the HR Team encourages all employees to do their onboarding in the office for the first two weeks. You can use the rhythm that works for you, but the idea is to have some frequency with each other. It is also essential to make the experience compelling, so people want to come in, for example, if leadership makes themselves more accessible, that could incentivize people to come in.

5. Designate quiet time. For the non-anchor days, you can select part of the time for deep work and reflection. In these interruption-free zones where there are no meetings, you have protected time to put your head down and complete your analytical and critical work, so you are not working after hours. It is also an intentional space to step back from the screen and do more creative and focused work. Research suggests that limiting meetings to the afternoons can give people time to get stuff done in the morning, progress on their tasks, and be more likely to focus on the afternoon meetings because they’re not multitasking.

Make asynchronous communication hours clear. When people are working remotely, what are the general times they should be logged on, this will allow them to arrange their time freely to best serve them, and have better work-life harmony. The asynchronous times would be the meeting free times. At Warner Media, they have No Meetings Friday, you can communicate via slack, but no calendar invites will come through that day. Being clear about the different kinds of time helps people avoid the triple peak where they are active in the morning, during the day, and in the evening, which will lead to burnout. There should not be the expectation of being accessible on weekends and late nights. And if you are the type who likes to work on nights and send emails, be clear that you do not expect a response. If you are a senior leader and send many messages before the weekend, it’s a good way to destroy somebody’s off time. You can establish the norm or expectation that you do not need a response in your email signature by writing something like this: I value working flexibly. I’m sending this message at a time that best suits me, but I don’t expect that you will read, respond to, or act on it outside of your regular working hours.”

6. Declare time off. Having synchronized holidays is a nice feeling because people will not be returning to a pile of work when nobody else is working. Having that time off for rejuvenation is so vital to the health of the employees. At Salesforce, they have wellness days, time for you to journal and sense make, do yoga, meditate, or do other things, which provides another opportunity for replenishment.

7. Be intentional about your off-site, whether quarterly, biyearly, or yearly. Whatever format you choose, it is nice to have off-sites, getting away from the office with a focus on bonding, relationship-building, connecting, and doing great, focused work that will advance the business and ensure alignment.

8. Give people a choice and define flexibility. Flexibility is the number one request that employees make, but it’s too narrowly focused on remote and hybrid work. It’s not enough to discuss where we should work, we need a broader conversation about what flexibility means. Some would say it is the freedom to choose their place of work, their purpose, the people they work with, and their priorities. This helps contribute to a regenerative organization because people are motivated by many different things, and if some want to spend time with their family, they should be able to.

· Place– Outside the 2-3 anchor days where people have to be in the office to achieve objectives better, you can offer options for people to decide if they want to work from home or go to the office. People with young kids or with long commutes may choose the former, while those who prefer to have a space outside their home for work or get to flex their extroverted nature might choose the latter.

· People – Wherever possible, it is helpful for people to choose the team they want to be on and the people they get to collaborate with to do their best work because it is in service of the business.

· Purpose & Priorities – Where possible, it is helpful for people to have autonomy in their work - freedom to explore new ideas and work on projects they want to work on. Allow them to take healthy risks as long as the company is not jeopardized. When the business is at risk, they should reach out to make a collective decision and not make that alone.

Undergirding the freedom option, that flexibility is not blindly granted but earned. If you present as a reliable and credible coworker, a good communicator, and meet all their deadlines and outcomes, of course, you should have these privileges. But if it is apparent that work is slipping through the cracks and there is a negative strain on the team because critical projects cannot move forward, then the freedom option needs to be considered because it is freedom in service of hitting outcomes and personal and team happiness, but not at the expense of objectives.

However you decide to build your hybrid culture, you can always run an experiment and try something for a quarter or two to gather data, work out the kinks, include your people’s voices, and see what works best and what adjustments need to be made. These complex problems cannot be solved by anyone but must include a team working together.

Quote of the day: “We like to give people the freedom to work where they want, safe in the knowledge that they have the drive and expertise to perform excellently, whether they are at their desk or in their kitchen. Yours truly has never worked out of an office, and never will.” — Richard Branson

Q: What is your strategy for hybrid work? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

What Is Your Virtual Onboarding Strategy? (Remote Series 10/11)

March 7, 2023 Regina Zafonte

Many companies struggle to bring people into their organization so they feel welcomed, are quickly integrated into the work, connected to their teammates, and set up to contribute immediately. Virtual working has added another level of complexity to that long-standing challenge but, with intention, it can be a great experience.

According to a recent study by Gallup, “only 12% of employees strongly agree their organization does a great job of onboarding new employees.” The traditional in-person experience can usually be described as a firehose where they give you a ton of information they want you to know including the company history, the logistics of navigating the office space, computer setup, and necessary paperwork to complete. For big companies, the HR representative conducting the process can be routine since they have likely done it numerous times so the novelty has worn off. But for the person starting the new job, it is a one-time experience and a chance to make their company introduction special.

The goal of a good onboarding is to help newcomers get settled and have the confidence to jump in as quickly as possible. Here are some things you can do to have a memorable virtual onboarding experience:

Phase 1: Pre-day 1

1A. Strong welcome upon acceptance. Once the candidate accepts the offer, you want to send the candidate a grand welcome. Some companies would receive a general welcome video from the CEO about the purpose and vision and the role they can contribute. As the manager, you should send a welcome email or have a call mentioning how excited you are for the person to join your ranks. You can even have a teammate or two send a message so they feel included from the beginning. If a company offers no outreach from the acceptance to the first day, that’s a red flag as they may deemphasize the relationship piece.

1B. Paperwork & Checklist. Every job has the necessary paperwork to complete, but instead of wasting time on day one finishing it, you should send it in advance electronically so you can hit the ground running on day one and not be bogged down with this tedious work that can be handled on your time. It is also nice to have a checklist of everything you need to do to be fully onboarded so you can track your progress along the way. GitHub has a massive checklist for the new employees and the things managers and the company need to complete with estimated deadlines.

1C. Introductions. It would be great for the new hire to send a 1 min. video or a paragraph introducing themselves with their picture, some information about them, and some questions to get to know more about them, such as how they spend their weekends, some of their favorite things to do, or a top value. There can even be a dedicated slack channel for intros to connect with people more easily and find common interests.

Phase 2: Intense Initial Period.

Executive Consultant Amanda Davis talks about onboarding happening in an initial intensive phase, maybe every day for the first week, and then a slower, more sporadic phase because onboarding is an ongoing process and not a one-time event. In this initial intense period, here are some aspects to consider:

2A. Receive Company Overview. Day one should be special and aim to excite and delight. It should include a macro overview of the company’s culture, philosophy, and customer impact stories. It should answer why the company exists and the good work meant to be done. The captured feeling should be energizing and motivating and make the person proud to be part of something great and important.

2B. Get Briefed on Role Overview. While you have learned about the role during the interview, this information can be even more specific, which will help you succeed at your job. You should be briefed on the critical work to be done, a picture of what great looks like, and key processes and practices that will help you thrive.

2C. Have a buddy or guide. This is somebody on your team who can answer questions about the company or day-to-day necessities for you to do your work. The buddy can be somebody there for a while to impart institutional knowledge faster or a recent hire who can navigate the onboarding process more quickly since they just went through it. Upon hire, it would be nice for the buddy to reach out to connect, share what they love about the company, and make it easy for the person to contact them for anything.

2D. Create a cross-functional cohort. If it is a larger organization, you will have clusters of people coming in frequently. You can make sure they are put into a cohort and there are opportunities to connect so they can know more people outside of the team and know others are going through the same experience as you.

2E. Receive a 1-page network map from your manager. It is vital to set up a strategic meeting with your manager where they will provide a matrix of the organization so you can have a better understanding of the inner workings and information flow. The manager should also provide a list of key internal people to connect with, stakeholders and business partners. It should have their top priorities and needs, the best way to communicate with them, and anything else you find helpful on that page. Once you walk through the grid and describe the connections, you will want to broker an introduction with some key people to grant credibility early on. There is a big difference between an employee pursuing a push method, where they seek to make contact with their coworkers over a pull method, where you, as manager, make the connection and find ways to pull them into work quickly. Companies who opted for this pull over push system were 8x more likely to be successful versus lower performing organizations because they created the conditions where the new hire got connected to key relationships quicker, had access to information and expertise, and had an opportunity to get pulled into work and contribute immediately, which led to a shorter cycle of productivity.

2F. Meet & greets. Once you have that list, you should set up appointments and begin your listening and relationship-building tour. The quality and effectiveness of your internal relationships will separate successful and productive employees from unproductive ones. When relationships are developed early on, the speed of work increases, and you can feel more included and empowered to contribute early on. It can also lead to career success because you can develop a network of trusted experts. You can also meet people that will help you get on bigger and more visible assignments.

Be sure to make the most of meet-and-greets by asking some strategic questions. You can set the frame by saying, “I would love to start with introductions and then learn about your key priorities, major pain points, and the work that excites you.” You can also generate enthusiasm for working together by asking about their ways of working and how you can best support them and their success. Good opportunity to tell others what you do and build your brand from the beginning. You want to think about mutual value exchanges and not just create a one-way relationship. As you leave the meeting, you can ask who else they think it would be helpful for me to connect with so you can extend the conversation with other strategic partners.

Phase 3:Ongoing supports

3A. 1 Month Connect. Having gone through a month of work, there are likely many more questions that have come up so having a cohort of new hires connect for relationship building, continued excitement, and doing a deeper dive to answer questions to learn even more about the company so they can contribute more robustly to the organization. The goal is to continue to educate and build excitement, so the new employees see themselves as direct contributors. It is also a two-way street because hearing some of their perceptions can offer great value to the team leaders about the company and onboarding processes. The managers do a great job spreading the learnings and aim to repeat them. You can have exercises where people have to share their understanding of their role’s purpose aligned with the company’s purpose; these stories can build valuable connections. These meetings can continue monthly for the first quarter.

3B. Connecting to a mentor. If the organization has a formal mentor program, it would be great for the person to be connected to a seasoned leader who can serve as a mentor to advance their career development to build that long-term investment. This can happen bi-yearly or quarterly depending on the bandwidth and can increase in frequency over time. Still, it is soothing knowing they have a dedicated mentor to help them succeed in their career.

Some companies treat onboarding as a routine one-day event. However, the most successful companies treat the onboarding experience as memorable and put in the necessary support along the journey before they even start during their intensive period, and in an ongoing sustainable fashion. When you intend to make the experience valuable, you will open the doors for workers to contribute more easily.

Quote of the day: “I truly believe that onboarding is an art. Each new employee brings with them a potential to achieve and succeed. To lose the energy of a new hire through poor onboarding is an opportunity lost.” -Sarah Wetzel, Director of Human Resources at Engage:BDR

Q: What are the best tips you can share about onboarding effectively? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 11/11 will focus on hybrid work being the future.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How Do You Personally Thrive While Working Remotely (Remote Series 9/11)

February 21, 2023 Regina Zafonte

For some remote workers, their experience can include isolation and loneliness from their work community and overwhelm at home. It almost seems like you are working more than ever and cannot figure out why others are finding ways to manage and even thrive. There are things you can do differently and better to make the remote experience work for you.

Here are some tips for thriving at home while working remotely:

1. Build buffer time between meetings. You may want to end your meeting anytime from 5 -15 mins. before the top of the hour so you can have a moment to grab water, stretch, get up, and move around. At the office, we had those natural buffer times built in as we walked from one location to another. Going straight into another meeting can be disorienting. Take a few minutes to close the work from the previous meeting and be intentional about the next meeting. You may want to keep a notepad near your desk to capture all the action items.

2. Build in transition and reflection time. We had natural transitions during our commute where we could be alone with our thoughts. It was a prime opportunity at the beginning of the day to think about what we wanted to get from the day or how we wanted to contribute to the upcoming meeting or at the end of the day where we can process the many disparate thoughts to sense make and reflect on how the day went. That precious time served as excellent learning time as people could listen to a podcast or book or have time for entertainment where they can escape to another world with a great piece of fiction. If you and your family are working from the same spot and your alone time has shrunk, how are you building in transition time, especially for an introvert who needs that time to recharge? Where are you creating the white space in your day to process? Other than longer showers, some people find building in 15 min. walks to be a saving grace.

3. Build in connection time. Similarly, extroverts may have enjoyed those times in the office when they got to linger around after a meeting and chat with their friends. As external processes, that vital time to share your thoughts and hear others so you can better make sense of topics was crucial. Who do you do that with now? Do you have a designated buddy you can call to recreate that time after a meeting to debrief and satisfy one of your work needs? If you are using your family as your sounding board, but they also appreciate their alone time, they may feel exhausted from your sharing.

4. Set boundaries. It is essential to set boundaries at work and at home. One of my clients realized he and his wife had opposite styles, she was an introvert who needed alone time, and he was an extrovert who needed extra connect time. While working from home for the first time, they sat down to discuss what was not working. The wife noticed she used to have her coffee alone to think through her to-do list for the day but now that her husband was home, he would want to use that time to chat. So they talked about a better way to organize their time going forward to get both of their needs met and designate the right time for processing and the right time for connecting so they can be at their best and be even better prepared to contribute at work and to their relationship.

Thriving at home while working remotely takes the intention to rearrange your day to practice your values and fit in time for non-negotiables such as family, exercise, healthy eating, and solitude for learning and reflection. Otherwise, it can be easy to default to unhealthy habits of overworking and neglecting other essential needs naturally built into the routine of going to the office.

Quote of the day: “Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.”— Anne Lamott

Q: What practices help you be at your best when working remotely? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 10/11 will focus on onboarding virtually.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How To Get Noticed Remotely? (Remote series 8/11)

February 7, 2023 Regina Zafonte

One of the biggest challenges with remote work is reduced visibility. You may not get the same level of preferred interaction if you do not go into the office regularly. However, you can still do many things to advance your career and stand out as a great teammate.

Here are some tips to get noticed remotely:

1. Show engagement & visibility. Think about how you can show that you are invested in the team’s purpose and results, the company’s success, and each other. One way to show engagement is to participate often in the group’s collective wisdom but not dominate. When your cameras are on, and you offer verbal comments with those in the room and written ones in the chat, it shows your presence. You can be sure to ask questions to show you are listening and even volunteer for additional projects if you have the bandwidth. You can contribute to offline communication and post in Q and A forums, offer assistance, and share best practices. You can send congratulatory notes to acknowledge other people’s wins and be specific with your feedback other than just saying good job. Share what you have learned so that others may use that information to advance their work.

2. Be proactive. Do not just sit back and follow, step up and lead. You can raise potential challenges that you see on the horizon and offer possible solutions to show that you are being strategic and thinking long-term. Connect your work and that of the teams to the impact of the business, and keep in mind other cross-functional teams and dependents when sharing your initiatives, as it shows you as a thoughtful contributor. Be sure to procure a buddy who is in the room and can translate some of the nuances in the meeting. You can message each other during and after the meeting to ensure you have the essential pieces down. Be sure to make the most of your one-on-ones and seek out mentors as a prime opportunity to gain more visibility.

3. Create a friction-free experience. It can be easy to create unnecessary thrash in remote settings, and be the person who keeps things simple and easy. When sending emails, do not invite many back-and-forth interactions, rather, include the fewest steps possible. For example, if you want to request a meeting with your boss, do not keep it vague and say, I’d like to meet, and then you have to wait for them to ask about the topic and available times, and then you provide times and there all these extra emails when once could have sufficed. Instead, you can request to meet, state the topic, and offer several times that may work and if not, they can suggest 2-3 times during these available windows for the following week. They can confirm a time, and you can be all set. If you are looking for your boss to provide answers, instead of making it open-ended by asking what they think is the solution which can demand a lot of work, you can offer three avenues that you were thinking about and ask which one of these, if any, would they want to go forward with?

4. Build relationships. Since many organizations are matrixed where your work depends on the work of many others, it can be helpful to spend time intentionally building relationships and collecting goodwill. This is one of the most important things you can do to succeed in your career, yet it is never urgent for people. Your connections should not be transactional but more about building authentic connections. You can share information on your careers and roles and even think about how best you like to work with each other. Knowing more details about their work can help you better work together.

5. Be a good team member. Take part in team activities to get to know people outside their roles. Be a builder and acknowledger of others’ ideas, take time to recognize, praise, and elevate them, and do not diminish, embarrass, or engage in any cringe-worthy behaviors. Respond to emails timely and follow up on requests, so people are not wondering if you got their messages. Do not engage in gossip; when you have a challenge with a person, assume positive intent and always go to the person to explore what’s going on. It would help if you did not involve your manager unless it calls for an escalation because the two of you have gone back and forth a few times and cannot seem to settle the differences. If you do escalate it, do not send a private message to your boss to give your side, instead, you can tell the person, I think it is best if we bring this issue to the boss, and then you can send an email including the other person and your boss so no covert activities are occurring which can breed further distrust.

Working remotely does not mean you have to be invisible or reduce your value in any way. You can do many things to stand out and be a contributing force, it just may require a little more intentionality and planning.

Quote of the day: “Not finance, not strategy. Not technology. It is teamwork that remains the ultimate competitive advantage, both because it is so powerful and rare.” – Patrick Lencioni

Q: What are you doing to stand out remotely? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 9 /11 will focus on how to personally thrive while working remotely

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

The Secret To Making Virtual Meetings Successful (Remote Series 7/11)

January 17, 2023 Regina Zafonte

Why do some virtual team meetings feel like a waste of time while others feel essential and productive? When leading a team, it is crucial to be mindful of your meeting design to increase the chances that the meeting is a good use of everyone’s time.

Here are some steps to include that distinguish the most valuable virtual meetings from the rest:

1. Plan. Decide if a meeting is necessary. Most things do not require meetings – if you are giving information or have made a decision that does not involve others’ input — an email will do. But some things require human interaction and collaborative thinking, like problem-solving or addressing conflict not fully explored. If we need to take time to let creative solutions emerge, a meeting may be required. Adam Grant said that meetings should be for learning, doing, bonding, or deciding.

2. Determine Meeting Duration & Number. No rule says meetings need to be 30 mins. or 1 hour. Good meeting hygiene is to make meetings 15, 25, or 50 minutes because the shorter time will allow you to be more intentional about using your time wisely. Having that buffer before the next meeting can help replenish energy. It is also good to set the number of meetings suitable for the team, defining a healthy range for the week will allow people to plan time to do their best work.

3. Connect. Each meeting should have connection time dedicated to them. You can begin with a check-in question, such as what is something you have done this week that got you excited. If you could play any Olympic sport and be the best, which would it be? The goal is to get to know each other besides their role because people who know each other and can find commonalities usually work better together.

4. Clarify norms around meetings. What are the expectations around participation? Do you have a video camera rule where you want cameras on most of the time (say 90%) because it helps create a connection? What are the guidelines around when cameras are off? Do you want to grant professionalism to people and trust that when they have their cameras off, it is because of a good reason? Should they drop a note in the chat about why their cameras are off, such as they have not had a chance to eat and will turn it on after, or kids are in the background since they stayed home from school, so it is a bit noisier than usual. When cameras are off, how do you show you are still present? For the presenter, it can be hard to stare at a bunch of black zoom boxes and wonder if people are present or even paying attention. What is the behavior that you want to give and get? When you ask questions, do you expect to hear from everybody by adding their views in the chat? If you suspect people are disengaged because their camera is always off, and when you call on them, they do not respond or do not add to the chat, what is the process for addressing your observation? There are so many ways to do meetings well, and it starts with clarifying your expectations and inviting them to offer what would work best. Once you have an agreed system, any deviation should be discussed until you are on the same page and making the most of your time together.

5. Prep in advance. What are the 1-2 big questions you want to be answered in the meeting? What should people read, prepare, and be ready to contribute? Amazon has a narrative culture where at the beginning of the meeting, all people will read a document together for a few minutes and make comments and be ready to discuss ideas. This allows for the discussion to be much richer and meetings more efficient because people are caught up to speed faster.

6. Create an inclusive environment. There are things you can do to hear all voices. First, telling them their point of view matters so that when they weigh in, the best decisions can be made. Before the meeting, send any relevant info, an agenda, and questions in advance so you can give time for the introverts to think through problems/challenges. How do you ensure turn-taking is happening effectively and that some dominant voices are not crowding out the introverted voices? You can utilize the chat for more inclusivity and encourage people to put hashtags before their contribution to organize their ideas. Adam Grant offers these helpful hashtags to organize comments:

· #Question – you want to ask a question

· #Debate – you want to challenge what was said or share a different perspective

· #Aha - which indicates a new learning

· #On Fire - means the floor is yours because you have something burning and timely to share.

This helps to keep the flow and momentum of the conversation because it is related as opposed to going in order, and comments are not directly related. Remote work benefits us because it gives us this second communication channel.

7. Save time by starting with the agreement. If a meeting needs a critical decision, you can invite team members to send their responses in advance so you can review them and find the places of agreement. Then, during the meeting, instead of reviewing everything, you can dial into the point of disagreement by saying, I know we are all on the same page with deciding this project is a go and like A, B, and C elements, let’s talk about element D since there were many different perspectives. The ideal outcome would be deciding on the next step to advance this project. After that preamble, you can begin a rich discussion for a decision to occur and save a lot of time in the process.

8. Encourage disagreements. Productive disagreements can lead to the most innovative ideas, but sometimes they do not just naturally happen, so you can introduce some process to induce it. Here are a few things you can do:

· You can tell people you want to hear their disagreements and give them the space to offer any.

· After people raise an idea, you can ask if anyone can think of an alternative perspective.

· You can assign a devil’s advocate role to address any weaknesses of the idea.

· When somebody says I think we should do X, you can acknowledge their contribution and challenge them to brainstorm to come up with several different other ideas. When you get in the habit of saying, “great, what else is there,” you don’t get anchored to the first ideas leading to quality and innovation.

· You can focus the disagreements on the task or process and reinforce the idea that it is not personal and is in service of pursuing the best ideas.

9. Amplify others’ voices. You can set the stage and let people know in the beginning that you will call on all people, starting with those you have not heard from so you can be sure to get diverse perspectives and so it is not a surprise when you call on them. If somebody is not speaking up, you can call on them or send a private chat and preface your question with, “I’d love to hear your thoughts on this topic, what would you like to share? Also, as a facilitator, be mindful of those who are trying to talk but may be a little slow to get in, you can give them an opening by saying, “Danielle, it seems as if you want to share, I would love to hear from you.”

10. Give space for the introverts to share. Create time for people to write down their ideas privately before they verbally share or add to the chat channel to have that necessary processing time.

11. Facilitate turn-taking. Making sure people get their turn goes a long way to feeling validated and included. You can have people raise their hands so cue forms and each person can speak in order. When somebody speaks, you can have them call on others. When you get questions, you can allow others to answer before you do, so it is not just a ping-pong effect going from one participant to you and then another participant to you, rather it is more of a network approach where they are answering each other’s questions, and you are in the background. Watch out for interrupters, and be sure to jump in to prevent that behavior and allow people to finish their thoughts

12. Give praise. Reach out to at least one team member after the meeting to recognize them for sharing their different view during the conversation. When you reward the behavior you are trying to encourage, you will invite more of the same and create a great team meeting culture.

13. Reflect. Watch a recorded video of a team meeting and pay attention to who is talking, who is talked over, who is listened to, and who is ignored. You can see what the team is noticing and put any necessary changes in place to make meetings more inclusive.

Many people will tell you that meetings can be the worst part of their day and week, but when they are done right, they can be an energizing experience. Designing the right processes can help create effective meetings that are inclusive, innovative, and foster the best ideas.

Quote of the day: “Meetings should be like salt - a spice sprinkled carefully to enhance a dish, not poured recklessly over every forkful. Too much salt destroys a dish. Too many meetings destroy morale and motivation.” – Author Jason Fried

“When leaders know how to lead great meetings, there’s less time wasted and less frustration. We have more energy to do the work that matters, realize our full potential, and do great things. – Entrepreneur Justin Rosenstein

Q: What are your best remote meeting practices? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 8/11 will focus on getting noticed remotely.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you run inclusive remote meetings?

Optimize Your Remote 1:1s (Remote Series 6/11)

January 5, 2023 Regina Zafonte

It is common for people to feel a lack of support from their managers while working remotely if the right systems are not implemented. When you are intentional about organizing your 1:1s, you can ensure your direct reports are getting the most out of the sessions by feeling connected and supported to be set up for success.

Here are some helpful components to include in your remote 1:1s:

1. Connect. Spend some time connecting first before jumping into the work. Asking about non-related work such as how their weekend went, inquiring about their family, or asking about any exciting things they have been up to lately will build invaluable rapport.

2 Work Update & Supports. You can have your Directs briefly report on the work (what’s going well that they are proud of and what challenges they could use your support in). There can be space for what they tried, what they failed at, and what they are learning. There are various supports you can offer, whether it is answering their questions, providing documentation, and informing them of how the big picture of what they are doing fits into your projects and the larger company initiatives. You can also give them access to others by making introductions with your peers, providing any tech equipment to do their job more easily, or any other necessary assistance. As a manager, when you ask, “is there anything I can do to support you this week,” it sends a resounding message that you care. If you have limited capacity or have one area of strength that you are particularly good at that you want to leverage, you can specify your support. For example, “I have an extra 30 minutes this week, is there anything I can do to support you on this project with this part of the deck or anybody I can connect you with to facilitate the work?”

3. Skill progression. It is always nice to call out skills and capabilities that they are developing and how they fit into their career goals. Feedback on how they are doing can motivate and lead to greater engagement.

4. Solicit Feedback. This is important to optimize the working relationship. A common question that leaders can ask: "Is there anything you want me to start doing or stop doing to make things more effective?" One remote manager Rodolphe Dutel found that when he asked his remote employees what he could do to make their lives easier, he learned a lot of helpful answers ranging from more face time, mentoring, and written instructions instead of verbal ones, so there is more clarity. Little changes like moving a weekly meeting by one hour so the Direct Report can pick up his kids at school or scheduling time to have a quick sync before a big meeting to reduce nerves and stress, or having office hours for a brief check-in to provide help to get unstuck can all make a big difference.

5. Solicit ideas. It is instrumental in creating space for your team to share their voice and be heard. You can ask what ideas they have to improve the team or company. They have a unique vantage point, and tapping into that wisdom will help you do your job better and serve your team more productively. It can also increase engagement because they can feel included and know their input matters.

6. Invite them to create the agenda. Including the direct reports in crafting the 1:1s is essential. You can have them talk about a structure that would work for them, possibly borrowing from some of the components above or creating new aspects. The experience and buy-in will be significantly enhanced when they can include the factors that will meet their needs.

The key to effective 1:1s while working remotely is to be intentional about creating a great experience and not make the time transactional or routine. Neither side should show up with no plan because you would miss a prime opportunity to connect, grow together, and produce great work.

Quote of the day: “90 minutes of your time can enhance the quality of your subordinate’s work for two weeks or 80+ hours.” – Andy Grove, former CEO of Intel.

Q: How do you maximize your 1:1s to be an energizing experience? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 7/11 will focus on making virtual meetings successful.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Accountability Is Key For Remote Working (Remote Series 5/11 )

December 20, 2022 Regina Zafonte

For remote work to be successful, it is vital to ensure your team is aligned on accountability. Many people shy away from these conversations, but when you can bubble them up and are clear on how you want to handle the topic, you will save yourself a lot of headaches in the long run.

Here are some factors to consider with accountability:

1. Hire the right people. When you hire doers eager to get great work done, you are set up for success. Once you provide direction and guidance around important things to be executed, doers will make things happen. One of Zapier's core values is "default to action," and one of Amazon’s principles is “bias for action.” For these organizations, recruiting people with these tendencies who have a deep appreciation for getting things done is vital.

2. Focus on goals and outcomes over activities. It would help if you did not try to manage every aspect of your team’s work or focus on activities completed and hours logged, instead measuring your team’s effectiveness on their accomplishments and KPIs. If they are meeting their goals, great. If not, you can investigate further to learn why and realign expectations. Your job as a leader is to help define what the work is to be done and allow them to figure out how they plan to approach the project for success, and then follow up to discuss progress.

3. Offer flexibility and trust. The mentality of ROWE (Results Only Work Environment) allows workers flexibility to decide how they want to arrange their day for maximum output. If that means starting work later so they can take their kids to school or arranging a quick tennis match during their lunch break to get a 2nd wind to produce high-quality work, so be it. Give them the autonomy to decide how they want to get the job done that suits their needs and situation, especially if it is not negatively impacting the team.

4. Align expectations and promote self-accountability. At NASA, they use a fire-and-forget approach. Once somebody has shared the work to be done and had the conversation around expectations, they can dismiss the task from their mind because they know that they can rely on their teammate to manage and monitor themselves without reminders. It’s an enjoyable atmosphere to trust your coworkers that the work will get done without having to send constant follow-ups or check-ins on status. If unforeseen circumstances occur, you can trust that they will be proactive, bring the matter to your attention, and renegotiate the agreement because there is always the consideration of how the actions of one will impact the entire team.

5. Address incomplete work early on. Often, leaders dread hard conversations when deadlines are missed. Be sure to follow up early to understand what’s behind this behavior and have commitment-based actions and plans to move forward differently and more productively. If you do not say anything, you are offering a tacit agreement that their behavior works, and you are willing to put up with more of it. The responsibility is more on you to determine what you will and will not allow than on them pushing the envelope.

6. Do check-ins, not check-ups. As a manager, you can check in with your teammates to see how things are, and if they need support to unblock their path or help them think through their challenges. This is different from check-ups with a more monitoring feeling; where it seems like you are trying to catch them doing something wrong. Being clear about your check-ins from the outset and the reason why can build a trusting relationship. For example, if somebody does not have a lot of experience with a project, you can share that you will do more frequent early check-ins to make sure there is alignment and they are set up for success rather than them getting far in a project only to have some of it rolled back because it is not meeting the target. Once the work is moving along well, you can share that you plan to change the check-in cadence.

Getting accountability right will save your team a tremendous amount of time and energy. It begins by defining whom we want to be as a team and putting in the processes that support those goals. It also involves having the right conversations to raise awareness, and so people have ample opportunity to course correct. When accountability is done well, it is an extraordinary component of a successful team.

Quote of the day: “Creating a culture of integrity and accountability not only improves effectiveness, but it also generates a respectful, enjoyable, and life-giving setting in which to work.” -Tom Hanson

Q: What accountability approaches have you found work the best for remote working? What is the trickiest part? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 6/11 will focus on optimizing your remote 1:1s. For a deeper dive into accountability, you can also check out this 3-part series.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

How do you offer supportive accountability?

Make Recognition Routine (Remote series 4/11 )

December 6, 2022 Regina Zafonte

Recognition is a big part of building community and a culture of appreciation. It can help retain top talent because a prime reason why people leave their jobs is because of poor managers, usually ones that overlook the excellent work of others and fail to provide praise.

While it is a fundamental human need to receive recognition, it is not a universal practice. More than 80% of supervisors say they express appreciation to their employees, yet less than 20% of their employees say their supervisors give appreciation more than occasionally. There is a disconnect, and it is contributing to a hemorrhaging of great talent.

Some traditional recognition programs such as employee of the month or the annual banquet recognizing star performers have problems. To acknowledge only one employee for the month is not enough, it should be a daily and weekly practice. Another problem is that they are often not judged fairly, otherwise, your best employee would win every month, but it seems awkward to give it to the same person so you start concocting reasons to spread the benefit around to the point where everybody gets it. This means your best and average workers are treated equally, which is unfair if they provide different outputs. Worse yet, if 1-2 people on your team have not gotten it, that can become an issue.

Effective recognition makes the employee feel noticed for what they have done. Managers who say, “I saw what you did, and I appreciate it” means a lot. Both individual and team recognitions are essential, and they can range from formal to informal.

Here are some recognition practices you may want to consider:

1. Saying thank you in a public way. You can do this via slack channel or at a standup meeting for peers to see that you appreciate them. You can also send a physical note or card to tell them how much you value their work beyond the requirements. It can be helpful to keep track of those you recognize so you can challenge yourself to praise new people regularly if you feel it is genuine and well-deserved

2. Send an email to your teammate and CC others. You can be specific about what they did to do a great job and CC your boss and your boss’s boss to make their contributions more visible.

3. Create a kudos board or gratitude channel. Some companies have a dedicated spot where you can see all the thanks. There are programs like Assembly where you can give kudos to people and the ones that get the most every week will get rewards like gift cards, show tickets, or other benefits.

4. Spot bonuses. Some managers have a spot bonus budget that they can give an individual or a team for a specific behavior, action, or result for an extraordinary job. They can range from a couple of hundred to a few thousand, and it is nice to give a monetary reward when you can.

5. Have a forum to share your good work. Google’s “I Am Remarkable” initiative empowers women and other underrepresented groups to celebrate their achievements in the workplace and beyond. It is done because many people struggle to talk about their accomplishments due to culture, gender modesty norms, or imposter syndrome, so the goal is to challenge the social perception around self-promotion.

6. Make connections to mentors and sponsors. In addition to recognizing their good work, you can make connections to potential mentors or sponsors for them to receive support to further their excellent work.

It is essential to take time to shine a light on people’s good work, and the benefits extend to both the receiver and the giver. For the receiver, it can be a moment stamped in their memory for years. The boomerang effect for the giver is that it elevates their spirits because they create a positive experience for another.

Quote of the day: “Recognition is not a scarce resource. You can’t use it up or run out of it.” -Susan Heathfield, HR Expert

Q: How do you like to give and receive recognition? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 5/11 will focus on accountability in the remote environment.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Clear Expectations Are the Foundation for Remote Work Success (remote series 2/11)

November 1, 2022 Regina Zafonte

Clear expectations can make or break a remote team. Anytime there are changes to the work, or the context has shifted, there will always be an initial lack of clarity followed by unclear or unmet expectations. This can cause a lot of stress as people are not realizing what they have to do and may even be duplicating efforts. Clear expectations lead to greater confidence and trust in your work and less conflict, rework, wasted energy, and micromanagement; it is the fertile ground for successful remote work.

As a manager, you can do many things to create an incredible remote work environment for your team. Here are some categories to cover for setting clear expectations:

1. Define the team. If you’re starting a new team from the ground, or if you have inherited a team, be clear from the beginning about who is on the team and who is not, as well as the adjacent and dependent teams. All good teams have a purpose and vision so there is alignment and a compelling reason to unite and rally around. Additionally, you need to define the OKRs, goals, outcomes, tasks, the rationale for why the work matters, the big picture behind the work, and co-create team values that will guide the work. When team members can answer why they are here to do what they do and the impact they will have, they will be more engaged.

2. Define clear roles and responsibilities. Now that you’ve all agreed on your team’s purpose and vision, ensure you are all on the same page regarding everybody’s roles and responsibilities. For example, what specific tasks or perspectives do you expect each team member to contribute? Because team members may not understand why they’ve been chosen, schedule a meeting to share why each member was named to the team, each person’s unique background and valuable skillset, and clarify each member’s role. Share a game plan for how your team should interact with each other. Creating a team charter can help bring organization and introspection to your team, especially when geographically dispersed, so they always know the direction and can remain on track with their high performance.

3. Establish team norms or ways of working. In different companies and cultures, routine processes often differ widely, which confuses team members. How will you work together? What are the ways you will interact with each other? What are the values and behaviors that we all can expect? Team leaders should establish norms and provide training for best practices such as meeting formats, use of technologies and communication, and processes for decision-making and conflict.

4. Set Communication Norms. This is essential to make sure we are collaborating effectively and getting the work done. What is your communication strategy to keep everybody connected and doing great work? How many weekly formal or informal connections will you have? What are the guidelines around daily needs? How do team members set commitment-based deadlines so there is no need for follow-ups? What kinds of digital tools will you use and for what purposes? Teams often amass tools but no discussion on how those tools are used. Sometimes zoom becomes the de facto for everything, even when sharing an update can better be done over email. Remote working offers a great opportunity to co-create which tools will work best based on their purposes.

You can develop a communication charter and gain agreement on how communication will happen, what kind of messages will be exchanged, and what channels will be utilized with examples and non-examples After establishing those processes, you can gently remind the person who may be using the right tool in the right way based on the charter. So much conflict happens due to unclear expectations around communication.

Here is a list of tools with some possible purposes that might be helpful for your team for the communication component of the charter.

4A. Instant messenger. Slack is a popular remote tool, especially for direct messaging. This is best done for rapid communication and iteration without a glut of unwieldy threads like in email. Some channels can be set up to relate to specific topics or projects. There can also be non-work-related channels as a way to connect with others. For example, you can have a water cooler challenge to learn about when it is people’s birthdays or what they did over the weekend. You can have a channel for introductions for when new teams join, and they can offer a video intro so you can quickly learn people’s stories.

4B. Email. It can be used to provide more extensive information and have a record of the communication and share weekly updates or summaries of what everyone is working on to ensure alignment. Most teams do not talk about the guidelines around emails. For example, in the TO line will be those who need to respond, and in the CC line are those who need to be updated. Instruct others not to reply all when it is not necessary, so it keeps people focused on their productivity unless there are important exceptions like a decision needs to be made and you want all voices included. In that case, share that information and give them a window to weigh in before you move forward with the decision. When an email chain gets too long, start by summarizing critical points before weighing in and creating a new thread when the topic has evolved with a different focus. These may sound like trivial things, but being on the same page around communication norms and creating a frictionless experience will make the work much easier and faster.

4C. Video meetings. Zoom is a popular tool for getting people together in real-time to discuss projects and have a back-and-forth to hash out details. Other tools include Microsoft Team, Google Duo, and Webex. In your charter, you can specify how and when you use video and the guidelines for success, such as when the cameras are on and the best ways to interact. At GitHub, they do not have presentations in their meetings because they are only for interaction. When a new team member tries to present, another team member jumps in to enforce the norm, and that’s how their meeting purpose remains intact. If there is no discussion on these norms, you cannot expect people to be great team members.

4D. Phone calls. If there are a few back and forth on instant messenger or emailing and still more to hash out, it can be best to jump on the phone to discuss the issue in real-time.

4E. Document hub. Where do you store critical documents and project information? Who is responsible for keeping that information organized and updated? How can it be accessed outside the firewalls? This allows people to quickly complete their work when there is a centralized location to get what they need.

4F. Define synchronous and asynchronous work. Maybe you have organized your tools into broader categories of synchronous and asynchronous work based on the purpose. For example, some teams will use asynchronous tools when work needs to be done in real-time such as brainstorming and problem-solving. Using asynchronous work can be used for sharing info, giving status updates, adding ideas to a document, or chiming in on a proposal with a more extended deadline. The advantage of this approach is that you can catch those people who either cannot attend a meeting or do not have an invite. You can make it more inclusive and open it up to many voices to contribute their ideas and gain more visibility and possibly recognition. It also leverages flexibility for times that best serve them depending on their energy levels and personal commitments. The early risers can add comments at the beginning of the day when they do their best work, and the night owls can contribute at the end of the day for their ideal time.

5. Define response time and deadlines. What are the expectations around response times, should emails be answered within 24 hours or three days? Should people respond when they have received a message by saying, “messaged received, thanks,” or is no response necessary to reduce clutter? How about the word quickly, what does it mean? We could all have different ideas. It could mean 2 hours, 1 day, within a couple of days, or sometime this week, depending on who is interpreting the message and their position in the company. When you stay away from vague terms, it offers more clarity. A great way to do that is to include deadlines, “please respond by tomorrow 5 pm est. so the client can have their answer in the morning as promised.”

6. Define work availability and standard meeting hours. For some, the work-from-home experience has blurred boundaries between personal and professional obligations, so as a manager, it is essential to discuss work schedules with each team member to respect their time. If you know the morning time is for your family, and you will not be logging on until a specific time, share that upfront. If you know you do your best work in the evening and will be sending emails after 11:00 pm or on weekends, share that just because you are sending a message that is convenient for you, your expectation is that they do not respond until their work hours. These clear boundaries help maintain positive relationships and a healthy culture where people can comfortably focus on their work and not have to work around the clock, not have their performance measured by how quickly they respond, not get burned out, and not have to expend unnecessary energy thinking about their communication. Clear boundaries can help teams work together better and especially overcome time zone differences. For meetings, provide optimal times to overlap early and late time zones and have a predictable window. If there is no convenient time, you can have a rotation system, one month that favors one coast and another month that favors the other.

Great teams can be set up to thrive when there are clear expectations on the ways of work, including a communication strategy. It will enable people to spend more time on the work and less on figuring out the best approaches to navigate interpersonal dynamics. As a leader, the best thing you can do for your people is to take the time to set this foundation for masterful work to be built.

Quote of the day: “Treat a person as they are, and they will remain as is. Treat a person as they can and should be, and they will become as they can and should be.” -Author Stephen Covey

Q: How do you set clear and high expectations? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 3/11 will focus on building community remotely.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.

Successful Remote Work Hinges On Great Managers (remote series 1/11)

October 18, 2022 Regina Zafonte

The Pandemic has caused many people to shift their operations to hybrid and remote models for the first time. Some people successfully adjusted to remote work, while many have not. As an Executive Coach working with many leaders dealing with this issue, there are many lessons I’ve collected on how to improve the building and managing of remote and hybrid teams.

It is clear that not having a strategy to organize people around the globe to work together successfully and build something amazing will lead to failure. But being intentional about a placeless mindset – an integrated way of thinking, living, and working so we can work from anywhere can be a differentiator. And just because we have seen many early examples of remote work not being done right, does not mean it is a flawed model; it is constantly evolving and can be beneficial when leveraged correctly.

Here are some common challenges in thinking through remote work:

1. Low-performing managers. The managers who struggled in person have continued their challenges. Some leaders got the position because they were good at the technical parts of their job and not necessarily because they were extraordinary people managers. Being a manager is not simply a great individual contributor plus one additional skill in their familiar domain, it draws from a different bucket. You have to have a mindset of really caring for your team and aiming to make them better than they thought possible. The reality is some people pursue that route for the promotion and title, not because they love the people side of the job or are particularly good at it. So, you end up with a pool of people who dislike managing and do it anyway. Their poor performance was exacerbated when they had to do it remotely because the stakes were even higher to do this aspect of their job well and with enjoyment. Previously, some of these people leaders relied on an older management practice called “managing by walking around,” where they gathered information through their interactions, and some could rest on their presence and charisma. Now, that they have to be more intentional about building rapport and in some cases, modeling vulnerability, they feel challenged because it is different and harder.

2. Managers not adapting their approach. Leading a high-performing team can be hard work even in the best of circumstances. But when team members are working from home and scattered geographically and culturally, the task of managing remote employees is even greater. Managers trying to replicate the same approaches online as they did in person are struggling. For example, if you used to give status updates in your meetings and now do it on zoom, it may not have the same impact because of all the additional environmental distractions. There is a real opportunity to take advantage of the tech tools for a more significant impact and to enhance meetings, such as the breakout rooms to encourage small group discussion or the chat to include diverse perspectives. It is not exciting for people to show up, stare at a screen and passively hear somebody talk the whole time. Some of the zoom fatigue is that we are trying to make the online work feel like in-person work, but it is not. There can be copious benefits to remote work when managers appropriately leverage unique opportunities to better utilize the time together.

3. Managers who do not lead with trust and know how to hold others accountable. Some managers who do not trust their workers or fear losing control have turned to micromanaging or overmanaging. If they are not skilled enough to control work and performance, they look to increase surveillance, e.g programs that count your keystrokes; this is never a motivating or inspiring strategy, resulting in rebellion and disengagement from workers. With a lack of visibility, managers are struggling with how to keep accountability. Instead of co-creating the goals, metrics of success, checkpoints, and implications for missed work and allowing people the freedom and autonomy to do their job, they are skipping these steps and doing more telling and less collaborating. Employees who follow managers due to positional power is never a sustainable model, you want to manage where people choose to follow you because they find it to be a valuable, even inspiring experience.

4. Lack of clear expectations. Communicating clear expectations is something we are constantly working on, but with remote work, there is even more of a need to do this extraordinarily well. Do people know their roles, tasks, top 3 priorities, how they will be evaluated, and the specific ways they can excel? Do they know the best methods for interacting with each other? Using more intention in designing those processes will save a lot of time. While you were In person, you may have been able to go up to somebody and request a task, but with remote, you have to be more thoughtful in how you approach people. Email is a terrible way to communicate anything that involves a lot of back-and-forth discussion or emotional topics. If coordination is not effectively done, it will lead to poorly organized projects from start to finish.

5. Lack of intention in building team cohesion and culture. While some culture-building efforts could happen naturally in the office, especially before, during, and after team meetings, remote work requires more planning. Some overlook this essential step which contributes to the overall enjoyment and engagement that can make people feel included, connected, and recognized.

6. Lack of investment in employee career advancement and well-being. A big part of being a leader is to care for those you lead and work to make them successful. That entails having somewhat regular career conversations to ensure they are growing in the organization and investing in their well-being. It is responsibility #1 of a manager to care for and develop others; If you are not doing that you are failing as a manager, regardless of the results you might be getting.

Surely, there can be a lot of advantages with remote work when the model is designed well. Two enormous benefits include increases in productivity and job satisfaction, among others.

1. Increase in productivity. According to a survey from ConnectSolutions, 30% of workers say they accomplish more in less time. While remote work is new for some people, many have been doing it for a while. Cisco started with remote and hybrid work in 1993 and saw a rise in productivity. Sun Microsystems experimented with it early on and saw productivity increase and costs drop significantly; they ended up reducing $500 million in real estate. CEO of Meta Mark Zuckerberg said. “People are more productive working at home than people would have expected. Some people thought everything was just going to fall apart, and it hasn’t. And a lot of people are saying that they’re more productive now.” When done right, with a strategy in place, remote work can be a boon to business.

2. Increase in job satisfaction. Global Workplace Analytics shows that many people prefer to work at least part of the time remotely. People value their autonomy and flexibility, and when they’re empowered to segment their day in ways that make sense for their personal needs, they are happier. For many, stress levels can decrease when they can spend more time with their families and less time commuting.

The great resignation has been coined to capture the phenomenon of employees voluntarily resigning in mass, and the causes have been multifaceted. This period can also be known as the great reputation of the suboptimal work arrangements we have tolerated for far too long. Power has shifted from the employer to the workers who are demanding how they want to work and where they want to work. People want more from their jobs, they want good managers and will leave mediocre ones. Companies intentionally providing better cultures and offering more remote opportunities are winning.

Quote of the day: Micromanagement is the destroyer of momentum.” -Author Miles Anthony Smith

Q: What’s the biggest remote challenge you are facing right now? Comment and share below; we would love to hear from you!

The next blog in this series 2/11 will focus on setting clear expectations for remote work success.

As a leadership development and executive coach, I work with leaders to create enjoyable remote work experiences for themselves and their teams, contact me to explore this topic further.