February 2023 - The Long-Distance Worklife

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Month: February 2023

Ask Wayne Anything, Leadership, Working Remotely

What is Culture?

Marisa Eikenberry asks Wayne Turmel about culture from his new book with Kevin Eikenberry, The Long-Distance Team. They cover: What is culture? What's the difference between microculture and macroculture? Can culture happen in remote environments or do you have to bring people back to the office? And they define some starting steps that leaders can take to improve their culture.

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Remote leadership experts, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, help leaders navigate the new world of remote and hybrid teams to design the culture they desire for their teams and organizations in their new book!

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Guests, Hybrid Work, Technology

How to Make Hybrid Offices Work with Stan Meshkov

Stan Meshkov, CEO and Founder of Umbrella IT, UnSpot, and RomDo, joins Wayne to discuss what makes hybrid offices work. They discuss things like the importance of communicating when you're in or not in the office, hoteling, and what organizations are doing differently in order to make a hybrid situation work.

Featured Guest

Name: Stan Meshkov

What He Does: CEO & Founder of Umbrella IT, UnSpot, and RomDo

Notable: He's received awards such as: Executive of the Year - Computer Services, Stevie award: Bronze 2020, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Nominated 2020, Top 100 of The Global Outsourcing by IOAP version 2020\2021 for Umbrella IT Company. He's also been published in Forbes, Inc, and other IT related media.

Additional Resources

Pre-order The Long-Distance Team

Pre-order

The Long-Distance Team by Wayne Turmel and Kevin Eikenberry

Ask Wayne Anything, Guests, Leadership, Working Remotely

The Long-Distance Team with Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel

Marisa Eikenberry interviews Wayne Turmel and Kevin Eikenberry about their upcoming book The Long-Distance Team, releasing on Feb. 28th. They cover who the book is for, why they chose to define terms like 'team' and 'culture' in the beginning of the book, and how this book fits together with The Long-Distance Leader and The Long-Distance Teammate.

Featured Guest

Name: Kevin Eikenberry

What He Does: Leadership and Remote/Hybrid Work Expert, Speaker, Trainer, Author, Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group

Notable: Twice he has been named by Inc.com as one of the Top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World and 100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference. The American Management Association named him a “Leaders to Watch” and he is among the World's Top 30 Leadership Professionals by Global Gurus. Top Sales World has named him a Top Sales & Marketing Influencer several times, and his blog has been named on many “best of” lists.

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:22 - 00:00:19:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to Long Distance Worklife, where we help you lead work and drive through remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, fellow remote worker. And joining me today are the coauthors of The Long-Distance Team, Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel.

00:00:19:14 - 00:00:23:07
Wayne Turmel
Hello.

00:00:23:07 - 00:00:25:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Don’t everyone go at once.

00:00:25:23 - 00:00:29:02
Kevin Eikenberry
And you just told me this is your podcast. I'm just following along.

00:00:29:03 - 00:00:29:13
Marisa Eikenberry
All right.

00:00:29:17 - 00:00:32:16
Wayne Turmel
You know what? When it's just the two of us we do fine is all I'm saying.

00:00:33:12 - 00:00:49:14
Marisa Eikenberry
That's for those of you who've been listening to us for a while. You may have heard Kevin's episode with Wayne about returning to office. And today all of us together have the opportunity to chat about your new book that's coming out on February 28, The Long Distance Team. So can you guys tell us a little bit about what the book is about?

00:00:49:20 - 00:01:12:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, we didn't talk about who's going to talk about what, so how about I just do that? So the subtitle of the book is Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success, and I suppose that's part of what it's about. The book is really about in in the world of work that is continuing to change. How do we make sure that we're designing teams to get the results we want and creating the culture that we really want?

00:01:12:11 - 00:01:39:14
Kevin Eikenberry
So many people around culture want to think about what would we got one and what we want. And so many books are written about, Here's the culture you should have what you really are approach. Our approach is you should. You should determine the culture that you want. We would call that the aspirational culture, and then we try to help you think about how to create that and then how to move forward to develop and have it even from being a vision to being a reality.

00:01:40:05 - 00:02:07:01
Wayne Turmel
I think what one of the interesting things about the book is the timing, which is largely coincidental. Right? But, you know, it's better to be lucky than good. Sometimes we're at kind of a unique point where people are starting to return to the office from COVID. There's the great resignation, there's audio returned office, there's all this stuff going on.

00:02:07:01 - 00:02:34:19
Wayne Turmel
And what that does is it creates an inflection point, a moment in time where people can actually say, hey, let's think about where we go from here. You know, ordinarily when it comes to culture and making the team do whatever you want it to do, we're so busy doing it that we don't get a chance to stop and ask some questions and maybe make some choices.

00:02:34:23 - 00:02:36:18
Wayne Turmel
And that's what the book is about.

00:02:36:23 - 00:03:05:08
Kevin Eikenberry
And, you know, the interesting thing I would say is for every organization that Wayne is, Wayne is taking off his cranky hat for every organization that's saying, hey, we should step back and really look at this. And this inflection point gives us that time, which is correct. There are organizations that are didn't take that time and are floundering, flailing and frustrated and and this book, I think, can be the antidote to help solve some of that.

00:03:06:04 - 00:03:14:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So with that too, like what is the who is the long distance team really for? Is it for the leaders is a for the teammates or is it really a mix of both?

00:03:15:06 - 00:03:15:21
Kevin Eikenberry
Go ahead, Wayne.

00:03:17:12 - 00:03:44:19
Wayne Turmel
You know, it's it's for small l leaders and what I mean by small L leaders is there are big L leaders. Those are the ones with leader in their name tag. I am the VP of this, therefore I am a large l leader. But there are plenty of people in organizations with or without positional authority who desperately want to make their workplace better.

00:03:45:21 - 00:04:05:10
Wayne Turmel
And you know, you can be a teammate by definition if you're a great teammate, you are something of a leader. But this book is really for people who want to understand why their team is what it is and help lay out a plan to make it what it could be.

00:04:06:14 - 00:04:29:07
Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, one of the things we talk about in the book is, is there to get to cultures. There's the macro culture, the organizational culture that the capital L big L leader culture, if you will, as well as the micro culture or the culture of the intact work team, project team, etc.. And this book is speaking to those details.

00:04:29:07 - 00:04:43:10
Kevin Eikenberry
Right. But but on a big picture level, it can certainly help a big L leader think about this organizationally, but it really does to Wayne's point, get at how can we roll up our sleeves and do the work that's necessary to make this happen?

00:04:43:21 - 00:05:01:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Since we were talking about culture a little bit ago, so in the first couple of chapters of the book, you guys take some time to really define terms like team and culture. And some people listening might be like, These are obvious terms. We know what all of these mean. So why did you decide to spend part of the book defining what a team or what a culture really is?

00:05:02:01 - 00:05:13:21
Wayne Turmel
Oh, I'll take that one. It's because I get a rash when I hear some of those ten hour words. They become buzzwords. Cranky was back.

00:05:15:05 - 00:05:18:09
Marisa Eikenberry
On the show before.

00:05:18:09 - 00:05:25:00
Wayne Turmel
And that being said, culture is really as simple as this is how we do it here.

00:05:25:09 - 00:05:25:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:05:26:03 - 00:05:29:15
Wayne Turmel
Right. But that being said, what is it?

00:05:31:04 - 00:05:33:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And it's different for every organization.

00:05:33:12 - 00:05:57:15
Wayne Turmel
What is the thing that we do and how do we do it? And one of the thing I think one of the simple but very powerful things in the book is we break culture this big amorphous blob of a word into three pillars and say, if you think about what makes up a culture, how do you identify a culture?

00:05:58:07 - 00:06:20:14
Wayne Turmel
We call it the three C's. How do you communicate? How do you collaborate? How does the team come together? The word we use is cohesion so that there are three CS and makes it all lovely. But collaboration. Communication and culture. If you can identify those, then you've got a really good shot at defining your culture.

00:06:21:07 - 00:06:28:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. And we've talked about that in a previous episode too, and I'll make sure to link to those in the show notes. Kevin, do you have any thoughts on that?

00:06:28:09 - 00:07:01:19
Kevin Eikenberry
You know, just just. Well, I suppose I shouldn't say no and then start talking. I would just say that in part because culture is one of those words that, you know, people who write books talk about, or as is an R word, if you will, that that a lot of people there's misunderstandings around it. And one of the misunderstandings is that, well, we've got the one we've got, and it is or what happened a lot of the last couple of years is we need to get our culture back to where it once was.

00:07:02:03 - 00:07:27:02
Kevin Eikenberry
Right. And so and what we're saying is, why don't you why don't you come to a picture of an aspirational culture that you really want so we can be intentional about it? And again, to Wade's point, using the three C's to help figure out what that actually is like, you've got one, but it might not be the one that serves you best in terms of productivity, in terms of results, in terms of retention, in terms of accountability, in terms like we go around on the list.

00:07:27:11 - 00:07:36:00
Kevin Eikenberry
And so I think one of the big messages of the book is let's be intentional about the one we want rather than living with the one we've got.

00:07:36:13 - 00:07:54:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. And I think one of the things that I've also really enjoyed about not only this book, but the content that you guys have been doing for many, many years now is this idea that there is no one culture, there is no one way to do things. It's going to vary by organization. And this is a perfect example of that, which I love.

00:07:55:17 - 00:08:06:14
Marisa Eikenberry
So given all of this, like this is the third book in a series, you know, you've written a book about remote leaders. You've written a book about remote teammates. How do all of these books kind of fit together?

00:08:07:15 - 00:08:08:01
Wayne Turmel
Oh.

00:08:08:07 - 00:08:32:22
Kevin Eikenberry
I'll take that one. So first of all, you know, we we didn't use the word remote. And I know that you know that Marissa Wright, the long distance leader, the long distance teammate in the long distance team. And, you know, it ends up being a series. It wasn't it wasn't meant that way from the start necessarily. And yet the way they're they're hooked together because that's that's the picture of an organization, right?

00:08:33:04 - 00:08:57:11
Kevin Eikenberry
Like, I'm an individual contributor. I'm a leader and we're a team. And so putting the three books together, I think, makes a lot of sense. I think the sort of this sort of finishes the story, if you will, in many ways. I'll say one of the thing, all of them start with the words long distance. And yet we we struggled or we talked is probably better in all three as we wrote them about.

00:08:57:18 - 00:09:14:21
Kevin Eikenberry
And so much of this is the same as when we were all in the same room. And so while all three books certainly talk about the nuances of doing these things at a distance, the principles that under our underneath all three books apply regardless of where your team's located.

00:09:15:00 - 00:09:37:23
Wayne Turmel
I would add something on to what Kevin said, and that is that something has changed since we were a long distance leader. It used to be people were in the office or you had people who were remote and you tried to find a balance and you tried to make it worse work, not worse as you. Dr. going to the front desk.

00:09:37:23 - 00:09:38:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:09:39:09 - 00:09:53:23
Wayne Turmel
However, now at this moment in time, we are faced with this new option, which is hybrid work and hybrid work. The thing about a hybrid is it is neither of the parents, Right?

00:09:54:09 - 00:09:54:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:09:54:21 - 00:10:19:10
Wayne Turmel
It is actually its own new thing and hybrid work. The thing that makes hybrid work different than being in the office or everybody being remote is the flexibility of time. And when you think about when do we meet and when do we meet and when do we not, and when does it matter that we get people together and when can we do something else?

00:10:19:15 - 00:10:40:16
Wayne Turmel
You're adding this element of time which is going to require everybody to take a good, hard look at how they work right now and how they're going to work in the future. And I think that sense of urgency around figuring out time and when does it need to be synchronous and when can it be asynchronous Is a new wrinkle.

00:10:41:11 - 00:10:58:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it's definitely been something I've seen people talk about a lot. I do want to go back a little bit since, you know, I accidentally said, you know, remotely as remote teammates. I do know obviously that the books are long distance leader, a long distance debate. I wish one of you guys would have said something before I said that question, but that's okay.

00:10:58:12 - 00:11:37:00
Wayne Turmel
No, know what? That's important. That's an important distinction. Any time we are in the middle of a change, right, there's the language that we used at the time to do that a little inside baseball people don't care about how our organization works. But one of the things we're doing internally is we are changing the branding and the focus of some of our content to be long distance as opposed to remote because it includes the hybrid and everything in between.

00:11:37:08 - 00:11:59:16
Wayne Turmel
It's not just all remote. It's like at the beginning of COVID, the word was telework. That was the word. That's the word everybody used. And six months later, nobody was using that word. Doesn't mean that it didn't happen and it doesn't mean that people weren't doing the exact same thing we're doing when they were teleworking, But nobody called it that.

00:12:00:00 - 00:12:11:18
Wayne Turmel
And the culture and the language and the terminology is constantly changing. So the fact that you who live in this world all the time.

00:12:11:18 - 00:12:12:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:12:12:22 - 00:12:31:16
Wayne Turmel
Right. Are still kind of using certain terminology that can create confusion when you're trying to put a team together. That's why it's so important when you include everybody in the process and make sure everybody's solving the same problem and talking about the same thing in the same way.

00:12:31:22 - 00:12:40:00
Marisa Eikenberry
I know that we're coming up short on our time, but I do just want to ask, is there one takeaway that you hope that readers will take from reading the book?

00:12:40:10 - 00:13:00:23
Kevin Eikenberry
Building a team, Creating accountability, designing a culture are all things that we can do something about. We don't have to live with what we had. We are living in a time when when the world and the world of work is changing. And this is a perfect time for us to be intentional about how we want our organizations and our teams to work in the future.

00:13:01:14 - 00:13:19:01
Wayne Turmel
I think for me, I use a quote in the book, and I know that this is very consultant and very 1970s and it's kind of icky, but it's a great quote. Marshall McLuhan said, I don't know who discovered water, but it wasn't a fish.

00:13:19:01 - 00:13:19:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:13:19:15 - 00:13:48:02
Wayne Turmel
And by that, I mean we live where we live and we don't always see we assume that everything is always like this. And we assume that everybody sees the world the same way we do. And the point of the questions in the book, which are maybe the most powerful thing, is if you ask these questions, you will have a better understanding of what you actually do and how you work.

00:13:48:02 - 00:13:53:05
Wayne Turmel
And that allows you then to say, you know, if we change this, we can do this better.

00:13:53:16 - 00:14:06:19
Marisa Eikenberry
So given that, you know, as as this episode is going to come out in two weeks, you guys will have a book. Do you have any book launch plans or any like celebrations that you're planning on doing as this book comes out?

00:14:07:08 - 00:14:22:01
Kevin Eikenberry
Well, yes, we do. First of all, you've got it on that. You've got it on the on the field of Washington video, long distance team, Booking.com. You can go there, get all the information about bonuses and things we're doing at the launch and special offers and all that sort of stuff. And get your preorder, your copy now and all that.

00:14:22:09 - 00:14:41:00
Kevin Eikenberry
But the book comes out on the 28th of February. On the 27th of February, we're doing an event called Virtual Leader Con dot com. We've done a number of these before. This one is all around issues of teams, cultures in the future of work, which is largely it may well be long distance for you. And so Wayne will be joining me.

00:14:41:02 - 00:14:58:12
Kevin Eikenberry
We've got a number of other guests, experts, authors, etc. joining us throughout the course of the day, completely free to join us for the day. Lots of offers about how you can get the replays and get a bunch of other great stuff, some other bonuses around the book. But you can come join us and we'd love to have you do that.

00:14:58:19 - 00:15:00:19
Kevin Eikenberry
Virtual leader Khan dot com.

00:15:01:09 - 00:15:20:04
Marisa Eikenberry
I want to thank both of you so much for being here and talking with me about this book. I know that we've all been really excited about this book coming out. It's actually part of the reason why we started this podcast was because we knew this book was coming out. So I just and for those of you who are listening, thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources.

00:15:20:04 - 00:15:40:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Make sure to visit long distance work life dot com if you haven't yet. Subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes while you're there. Be sure to like and review. That helps our show reach more teammates and leaders just like you. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

00:15:41:07 - 00:16:12:16
Marisa Eikenberry
If you'd like to learn more about remote teams, preorder Wayne and Kevin's new book, The Long Distance Team. You can learn more about the book at log. It's a long distance team book. Dot com. Thank you for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.

Guests, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Creating Emotional Bonds: Remote Relationship Building Practices with Jacques Martiquet

Wayne meets with Jacques Martiquet, The Party Scientist, to discuss the importance of creating positive atmospheres for relationship building. Jacques emphasizes the things we need to do in order to create deeper relationships among remote teams. And by doing these steps, this creates psychological safety for everyone involved.

Featured Guest

Name: Jacques Martiquet

What He Does: Jacques W. Martiquet is a corporate event strategist who helps human-centered workplaces design shared experiences that create a lasting difference in mental health, psychological safety, and belonging.

Notable: Since 2017, Jacques has been earning his title as The Party Scientist by leading thousands of dance parties and shared experiences across 15 countries, and for companies like Accenture, LUSH, and Lululemon.

Jacques is on a public health mission to transform how the west socializes. From alcohol and shows... to human connection and fun. Everything he does is informed by one belief: human connection is the elixir of life.

Additional Resources

Pre-order The Long-Distance Team

Pre-order

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:00 - 00:00:35:22
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the long distance work life. This is the podcast where we try to make sense of remote work in hybrid teams and generally keeping the weasels at bay while working in this crazy modern world. My name is Wayne Turmel. I am not Joan. Joined by my co-host Marissa today because we have a guest and this is going to be a really fun conversation.

00:00:36:09 - 00:00:55:02
Wayne Turmel
My guest today is Jack Mark, who is coming to us from my old hometown of Vancouver. He is, in fact, the party scientist. And before I do anything, Jack, you'd best explain who are you and what is a party scientist?

00:00:55:17 - 00:01:42:01
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah. Thanks so much. I'm so excited to talk about team connectedness in this new age where, you know, we're we're constantly replying to messages and being inundated by Zoom meetings. I'm very serious about public health and for me, party scientists is a light hearted way of saying really the science of connection and connectedness. And this is a massive determinant of our quality of life and our health and of team performance, psychological safety, which is the fertile soil for connection, for relationships.

00:01:42:01 - 00:01:58:12
Jacques Martiquet
This has been shown by Google to be the greatest determinant of team performance. So when I'm excited to get into some of the alternative non-mainstream practices of building relationships that foster our high performance on teams.

00:01:58:22 - 00:02:24:05
Wayne Turmel
Well, we will get to the practical stuff because we pride ourselves on doing that. And I am a big context guy. I think we need context because a lot of the conversation around remote work centers, around task completion. Right. Can people do their work to a standard for which people will pay them? And kind of that's the definition of work.

00:02:26:01 - 00:02:43:21
Wayne Turmel
But working apart from each other does doesn't entirely cause disconnection. But it certainly can be a factor. Can you tell us a little bit what your research has shown about disconnection, disengagement in the remote workplace?

00:02:44:17 - 00:03:24:12
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, certainly. So there's a few reports that I can mention. The first is a report that came out by Betterup on the connection crisis at work. And this was done with about 3000 U.S. workers, 3000 likely average organizations. And they showed that low belonging, low connection scores are related to intentional to quit serious job searching, but also anxiety, loneliness, burnout and stress.

00:03:25:03 - 00:04:19:00
Jacques Martiquet
Um, they also showed that a lot of workers just don't look forward to work because they don't really like their coworkers or they don't even trust their coworkers. Um, if I were to look at the data more closely, it's something like 33% have quite limited trust in their coworkers. Now, how this applies to the remote and hybrid work setting, what I'm aware of just broadly from all the articles I've, I've, I've, I've written but also read about the return to office and yeah, one of the latest reports that I can dig up and include in the in the show notes Wayne is, you know, people are more willing to return to the office for that

00:04:19:00 - 00:04:48:06
Jacques Martiquet
social element. There is this this missing, this longing for these informal social connections that people have with their coworkers. And this is one of the reasons, motives for people wanting to return to the office. So, yeah, to summarize all of this, in a remote setting, it's harder to create these these emotional bonds. It's not just based on the intellect.

00:04:48:06 - 00:05:14:18
Jacques Martiquet
It's not just based on knowledge of someone's history. It's just some emotional feeling. Oh, I feel safe with this person. It's much more difficult to create this. It takes a lot more risks to create these emotional bonds with our coworkers, such that we actually look forward to our Zoom meetings versus what is happening right now is people are just that.

00:05:14:22 - 00:05:22:12
Jacques Martiquet
People are upset with how many meetings that they are attending and it's leading to to burnout.

00:05:23:07 - 00:05:57:23
Wayne Turmel
Now, I want to follow that up in a moment. But you said something about psychological safety. And this is a term that is starting to bubble up more and more. And it's kind of interesting that I mean, and is always in the early stages, the research is all over the board, but what do we mean? Let's compare and contrast psychological safety in a traditional in-person meeting versus psychological safety online.

00:06:00:00 - 00:06:35:09
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah. Yeah. So, I mean, my definition of psychological safety is just a fertile soil for social risk taking. I think there's a lot of parallels between a physical environment and a remote environment in a remote environment. It's it's more difficult to take social risks because there's less social cues. So when when a risk like a social risk, if I were to take a social risk and like, oh, like, look, I have this funny sign.

00:06:35:09 - 00:07:08:03
Jacques Martiquet
I'm excited we do. You know, I'm expressing myself. Maybe I'm revealing, like, something in my vicinity that's personal. Like, my excited son had that for five years. So that's a social risk. Now, in a remote environment, the social validation is more frictional. What I mean by social validation is praise recognition. It's it's acknowledging what someone has shared, acknowledging that someone has expressed themselves or taking a risk.

00:07:08:08 - 00:07:55:02
Jacques Martiquet
There's a lot more friction to that. So it's almost like we need to amp up the, the social validation and provide more cues, be more explicit with cues. So I think that fundamental to psychological safety is validation and encouragement, recognition of risks in a remote environment, a zoom meeting. It's more difficult to provide those cues because, I mean, a lot of people don't have this this kind of digital competence with with Zoom, like, there's so much we can do with Zoom to create that really fluid, non frictional communication and validation, such as.

00:07:55:14 - 00:08:20:10
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah. I mean, you can use the multi spotlight function. You can encourage people to speak up. You can nominate people to speak. You can use nonverbal cues with your hands. Right. Because we don't want to interrupt people. So there's there's all these alternatives to providing cues. I mean, one thing that I often do when I'm in a Zoom meeting is I'll request the person spotlight.

00:08:20:10 - 00:08:38:00
Jacques Martiquet
If we're for celebrating someone or for acknowledging someone, I request the person whose spotlight to go in a gallery mode and then they see everyone, right? So we want to make sure people aren't in gallery mode to see everyone's faces, to see that they're being accepted, that the risks are being celebrated.

00:08:39:03 - 00:09:15:12
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I, I want to just say something from Wayne standpoint, because it's my show, darn it. But but actually, this is important. There's a feeling that because of these challenges that you've mentioned, that in-person meetings are, by definition better. And it's not like there is no challenge to psychological safety in a meeting, as a matter of fact. Studies show very often women feel physical intimidation or visible.

00:09:15:12 - 00:09:28:21
Wayne Turmel
Minorities are less likely to speak out in a face to face meeting because Bob is staring daggers at them over the table and they have to go back and sit two desks away from Bob. And so it's easier to say nothing.

00:09:29:06 - 00:09:30:10
Jacques Martiquet
While Sad said, Well.

00:09:30:12 - 00:09:55:07
Wayne Turmel
Not so. So this idea of psychological safety is relevant wherever. And it's the little things that we can do to generate that. And so now that it sounds like we're on the same page and we're agreeing with everything, we need to talk about techniques, and I'm going to tell you that I am a crusty old cis hat white guy.

00:09:55:14 - 00:10:24:03
Wayne Turmel
And I do I the minute somebody says I have an icebreaker, I clench so hard you can't believe it. It makes me I just get automatically uncomfortable. So Mr. Young party guy, how do teams go about, you know, creating this environment in ways that won't make my head explode?

00:10:24:13 - 00:10:52:00
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah. Um, two things I want to say. First of all, I'm a connection guy, and I use partying as one of my modalities. So I'm not just the party guy, although, I mean, most leaders are just they're not sufficiently creating the buy in the motives for people to participate in party activities, and they're also just not willing to take the risk.

00:10:53:03 - 00:11:28:11
Jacques Martiquet
I'm going to get into your question, like, how do we how do we really make people feel excited to participate in relationship building, to to move out of this kind of formal space, mechanical, formal and and into more of an emotional space, into more of a vulnerable space. And to just lighten up a bit, right now, the first thing I want to emphasize is just this concept of emotional availability as it relates to psychological safety.

00:11:29:08 - 00:12:10:17
Jacques Martiquet
And I think this is one of like the core traits for leaders to to cultivate if they want to create psychological safety. And emotional availability is just being present with others emotions and acknowledging what those emotions are, what is being shared. It's about availability is is there's receptivity. Um, so let's jump into your question and I'm like, please, please collaborate with me because I'm a young, open minded, you know, very positive.

00:12:11:10 - 00:12:42:11
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm kind of extremely biased because, you know, I've led thousands of parties and and I I'm biased in this way. Some people have not experienced what I've experienced and and haven't haven't had the experience to become motivated to experience new things. So, you know, I'm just thinking I'm just thinking when, you know, we we get motivated based on emotion, right?

00:12:42:11 - 00:13:05:08
Jacques Martiquet
But then we justify our actions with logic. So it's kind of a chicken and egg problem. I mean, we I want people to experience how it makes them feel. And when they experience how it makes them feel, it's like, well, I want to feel that way more often. I want to feel connected. I don't just want to think I'm connected to my coworkers.

00:13:05:08 - 00:13:36:09
Jacques Martiquet
I want to feel connected to my coworkers. Um, how I approach this problem generally, Wayne is, first of all, I'm getting everyone's consent. I'm getting everyone's consent before I lead something new. And I'm not, I'm not saying it's an icebreaker. I'm not saying it's even an energizer. I'm, I'm saying I'm I'm framing this as incredibly a nourishing for us.

00:13:37:00 - 00:14:13:11
Jacques Martiquet
It's it's for our well-being. It's for our our health. It's for for enjoying work more. It's it's all these personal reasons. So I think getting into the personal motives for people is really important. The second thing that I just want to emphasize is like when people understand how things work, they're more likely to consent and embrace it. So I like to explain how things work, and a lot of people aren't really familiar with social neurochemistry, like what?

00:14:14:06 - 00:14:40:20
Jacques Martiquet
You know, what are the other ways that we can connect other than just informal chatter over drinks? I mean, a lot of a lot of people that's that's the only way they socialize. Right. That's kind of the main norm for socialization. But really, there's this like massive field of possibility that nourishes us more, makes us feel healthier, more energized and, like, deepens our relationships.

00:14:41:12 - 00:14:43:08
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, well, do you have anything to add or.

00:14:43:08 - 00:14:44:04
Wayne Turmel
Oh, for example.

00:14:45:22 - 00:14:46:12
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, yeah.

00:14:46:12 - 00:14:47:14
Wayne Turmel
We can't just get on that road.

00:14:48:05 - 00:15:23:00
Jacques Martiquet
We can get into some tools, we can get into some tools. Um, let me just summarize this whole buy in thing. So the next thing I'll just say is baby steps. Baby steps. Um, if you throw up people an hour long experience, I mean, it's less, it's less likely they're going to consent to that. So I'm, I'm a huge advocate for snacks, for connection snacks and connection snacks that vitalize people, but also create this this vulnerability.

00:15:23:00 - 00:15:47:22
Jacques Martiquet
Okay. All right. So what can we do? I mean, like a lot of people are not willing to take risks. Okay? A lot of leaders are trying to save face and they're not willing to take the risks necessary to drastically improve their reputation. Right. Because there's a risk some people might not like it. Some people may think it's ridiculous and a waste of time.

00:15:48:04 - 00:16:05:13
Jacques Martiquet
I've I've dealt with leaders who feel this way all the time around, like stretching to music as an example like that. That's where I encourage a lot of leaders to start. Okay. I encourage a lot of the leaders to start with two things. Two things. The first is how almost did that.

00:16:05:22 - 00:16:18:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. See appropriate changes. This is a family walk for the first session and he started on an interesting finger.

00:16:18:16 - 00:16:54:16
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, yeah. You can tell you can have a rule breaker, can't you? Um, so there's two things I encourage people to start. First of all, music. Music, especially nostalgic music, puts people in a different mood. It's variable, but certain songs just improve people's mood, moods and creates creates less stress, reduces stress. So I like I encourage leaders if they want to try out new relationship building practices to begin with, some form of of stretch changing the physiology of the body.

00:16:54:16 - 00:17:20:14
Jacques Martiquet
So get people up, get people moving in some way. They can just do simple stretches to open their posture. Right. Maybe it's a yoga stretch with music, calming music, maybe funny music. Maybe it's a sing along that everyone loves. People are stretching, they're changing their physiology. And then I like to stack an intentional, structured one on one prompt.

00:17:21:23 - 00:17:47:09
Jacques Martiquet
Intentional is we choose it beforehand. We choose it beforehand to invite people into a personal, vulnerable space. Okay, intentional. What did I what did I say? Structured. So it's a prompt. It's like a question you answer or it's it's a phrase dot, dot, dot. Like, um, my favorite Christmas memory is dot, dot, dot. Okay, that's, that's a prompt.

00:17:48:01 - 00:18:15:01
Jacques Martiquet
Hear one on one, one on one because one more, one on one. There's a massive spectrum for vulnerability versus one more in front of a large group. Okay, so deep relationships are easier to form when we're one on one them when it's private and this is the benefit this is really one of the massive benefits of of remote work, is that we're not in a space where everyone's talking and we're getting distracted all the time.

00:18:15:22 - 00:18:17:03
Jacques Martiquet
So to summarize.

00:18:17:03 - 00:18:19:02
Wayne Turmel
You can use things like breakout rooms.

00:18:19:20 - 00:18:20:10
Jacques Martiquet
Totally.

00:18:20:17 - 00:18:24:06
Wayne Turmel
Totally separate chat in teams or something like that.

00:18:24:11 - 00:19:02:01
Jacques Martiquet
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Um, so the point is summarize all this. There's three, there's three components here. Music movement and then vulnerability through a structured prompt. You could do this probably 4 minutes doesn't need to be, doesn't need to be long. And this is going to not only impact the rest of the meeting, but it's also going to gradually build more and more of this, these relationships and friendships at work.

00:19:03:12 - 00:19:13:21
Wayne Turmel
And that is a reasonable place given where we are in time to stop this conversation. There is so much more that we could do. Hijack. M.K. Where can people find you.

00:19:15:07 - 00:19:16:20
Jacques Martiquet
The party scientists dot com.

00:19:18:01 - 00:19:47:11
Wayne Turmel
And we will have links to the party scientists dot com and Jax link LinkedIn page and a couple of other things on our show notes which are of course at long distance work like dot com by the time you are hearing this, we will be dangerously close to the launch of our new book, The Long Distance Team Design Your Team for Everyone's Success.

00:19:47:11 - 00:20:20:00
Wayne Turmel
We're very excited about that. And of course, if you like the show, you like subscribe, you understand podcasts, you know how that works. And if you want to reach either myself or Marissa with questions or comments or vicious personal attacks or show ideas have at it, we can be found at our name and Kevin Eikenberry dot com jock thank you so much for taking the time man.

00:20:20:00 - 00:20:25:18
Wayne Turmel
I really appreciate it. I'm going to let you say goodbye real quick.

00:20:26:16 - 00:20:34:02
Jacques Martiquet
Goodbye, everyone, and hope this has encouraged you to take a few more risks.

00:20:34:02 - 00:21:00:02
Wayne Turmel
And that's it. We will see you on the next show. Thanks, everybody, for joining us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasels get you down and we will talk again soon.

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