April 2023 - The Long-Distance Worklife

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Month: April 2023

the great mismatch - wayne turmel and marisa eikenberry on Long-Distance Worklife

Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

The Great Mismatch: Why Returning To The Office Is Not As Easy As We Thought

In this episode of Long-Distance Worklife, co-hosts Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel discuss "the great mismatch" between organizations and remote workers when it comes to returning to the office. They explain that while there has always been a mismatch in expectations, the pandemic has highlighted the need for flexibility and understanding from both sides. They suggest that organizations need to understand their employees' needs before implementing return to office policies, rather than relying on perks like foosball tables or bring-your-dog-to-work day. Listeners will gain insight into how to navigate this great mismatch and create a successful hybrid work environment.

Key Takeaways

The challenges of returning to the office after remote work due to the pandemic.
The Great Mismatch: Polarization between organizations that want employees back in the office and employees who prefer remote work.
Pilot over policy.
Return to office was always going to be a challenge, and it's important to be flexible and adapt plans as needed.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction: Return To Office And Remote Work Challenges
00:01:40 Unexpected Resistance to Return to Office
00:03:17 The Great Mismatch Between Employers and Employees
00:08:02 Corporate Mandates For In-person Work Are Ineffective
00:09:11 Benefits of Hybrid Working Arrangements
00:14:02 Pilot Over Policy for Return to Office
00:15:59 Strategies For Leaders: Overcoming Objections To Returning To Office
00:18:07 Summary: Returning to Office After Working Remotely

Related Episodes

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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View Full Transcript

00:00:07:20 - 00:00:18:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife. Where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Say hi, Wayne.

00:00:18:21 - 00:00:21:13
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, that would be me. Hi, everybody. How are you?

00:00:22:18 - 00:00:23:17
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm good. How are you?

00:00:25:01 - 00:00:26:03
Wayne Turmel
I am swell.

00:00:26:20 - 00:00:44:12
Marisa Eikenberry
I love that answer. And well, speaking of swell, we're going to talk about some things that aren't going so swell and specifically return to office. We hear it talked about all the time. We all have mixed opinions about it. And so one of the things that I wanted to start with was we know it's not going very well.

00:00:44:12 - 00:00:48:18
Marisa Eikenberry
We see the headlines, we see people talking about it. But what exactly is happening?

00:00:49:20 - 00:01:01:11
Wayne Turmel
Well, as far as the headlines, we all know that we have to take that with a little bit of grain of salt, because nobody ever posts a headline that says, hey, the plan is working.

00:01:01:22 - 00:01:02:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:01:02:16 - 00:01:39:21
Wayne Turmel
I have never seen that headline ever. Right. But but to be fair, there have been some challenges with remote with returning to the office and there are some things that have been happening. First of all, there was like all of these people quitting because they were like, no, we're not going to go back. And now there's a second wave, which for the record, I predicted, and you can find both Kevin and I talking about this a year or so ago, saying that there would be a return to office and then there would be this second wave of chaos that followed a few months after.

00:01:40:01 - 00:01:41:22
Wayne Turmel
And darned if we weren't right.

00:01:42:13 - 00:01:45:22
Marisa Eikenberry
We will link to that in the show notes.

00:01:46:05 - 00:02:08:06
Wayne Turmel
But we didn't know that that was going to happen. So, yeah, there are some problems with return to the office. And basically it's been that whatever the plan was and there were as many plans as there are organizations and the plans didn't work out. Now, you know, I'm a firm believer that if you want to hear God laugh, tell him your plans.

00:02:08:10 - 00:02:09:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. We've all heard that one.

00:02:10:06 - 00:02:35:05
Wayne Turmel
I am totally down with that particular thing. But there are some there's been some unexpected resistance. There has been a shuffling of things. We thought it would look like this, and now it looks like that. And sometimes that shuffling is kind of consensual and everybody agrees to it. And it's the right thing to do. And sometimes it's knee jerk reaction.

00:02:36:06 - 00:02:53:06
Wayne Turmel
But essentially, people didn't really know what to expect when they came back. And there has been this tension, this real tension between employers and employees.

00:02:54:04 - 00:03:10:20
Marisa Eikenberry
So kind of to to go off of that. There's a blog post that you posted and I'll link to it in the show notes, too, where recently you said that you were talking to somebody and they had said people are acting like we're insulting them by asking them to come back into the office. They knew that they would come back eventually.

00:03:10:21 - 00:03:16:00
Marisa Eikenberry
What gifts like did people really know that they were coming back? Is that part of this resistance?

00:03:17:09 - 00:03:44:12
Wayne Turmel
Let's remember what happened in March of 20. Whatever the heck it was. Right. Work. Originally, this was all going to be over by Memorial Day. We were going home for a few weeks. The cooties would die and go away and we would just get back to the office like nothing happened. And two something years later that turned out not to be true.

00:03:45:03 - 00:04:16:23
Wayne Turmel
So when we say people knew they'd be going back, yeah, they probably did. But they also didn't know that they would have to readjust their lives as dramatically as they did for several years. And then once people have adjusted their lives, now there's a transition to going back. And just as the transition to remote work was really traumatic and dramatic for some people and other people, it didn't bother them.

00:04:16:23 - 00:04:34:10
Wayne Turmel
Same is true of going back to the office. What has happened, though, and I think this is legit, is that, you know, I wish I had coined the term great mismatch. I really wish I had because it explains so much of what's going on.

00:04:34:18 - 00:04:36:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay. So what is the great mismatch?

00:04:37:02 - 00:04:45:04
Wayne Turmel
The mismatch is the difference in expectations between the organizations and the people doing the work.

00:04:45:12 - 00:04:46:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay. That makes sense.

00:04:46:08 - 00:04:57:23
Wayne Turmel
There's always been a mismatch. But capitalism 101, we pay you to do certain things. Yes, I can live with those expectations. Give me my check and I will just do what I'm told to do.

00:04:58:04 - 00:04:58:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:58:15 - 00:05:29:07
Wayne Turmel
That's how the system works, right? What has happened in the world of work, though, is employers, many employers, not all employers, of course, many employers, especially the senior leadership, not so much the the managers, but the senior leadership have said, well, so much for COVID. Let's get back to the beautiful before times when all was well.

00:05:29:19 - 00:05:31:11
Marisa Eikenberry
And acting like nothing and.

00:05:31:11 - 00:05:57:23
Wayne Turmel
Acting like nothing happened. And that's the problem. Employees said, Wait a minute, we upended our lives. We adjusted all kinds of things. Some of the things about remote working we liked, some we hated. We didn't get a choice in the matter. If we wanted to keep our job, we had to do it. You were worried that there would be massive productivity loss?

00:05:57:23 - 00:06:08:09
Wayne Turmel
Turned out not to be the case. We stepped up. We did everything you asked us to do. We exceeded your expectations. And now you're going to act like none of that happened.

00:06:08:22 - 00:06:16:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it might almost feel like a punishment in that way. Hey, I've been doing all of this really great stuff, and now I have to upend my life again.

00:06:16:15 - 00:06:44:02
Wayne Turmel
For two and a half years, I haven't had to commute, which means I essentially got a raise, right? Right. Even if you didn't pay me, I've gotten several thousands a year back in my pocket because I don't have to commute and do all that kind of stuff. I've stepped up, I've done the job. I've proven that the job can be done, or at least part of the job can be done remotely by now without asking us or giving us an option.

00:06:44:12 - 00:07:15:15
Wayne Turmel
You are now at asking us to give up something we have that's called the endowment effect, by the way. Okay. You are leading people. You need to know about this. And this shows up in our politics all the time. It is a simple law of psychology that people react more violently to emotionally violently, of course, to the idea that something is being taken away than they do the excitement and joy of something being granted.

00:07:16:02 - 00:07:21:12
Marisa Eikenberry
So it's like so many things we react more to the negative option regardless of what it's.

00:07:21:21 - 00:07:32:05
Wayne Turmel
So the reason people scream about entitlements in government is because if you have to take something back or change something, people will feel like something is being taken away.

00:07:32:15 - 00:07:33:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm. Okay.

00:07:33:22 - 00:08:01:17
Wayne Turmel
Right. The whole Social Security debate here in the US is that on steroids? So people have gotten used to the flexibility of working from home. They've gotten used to having a little extra money in their pocket, not putting wear and tear on their car. And now you're asking them to give that up. And all they're hearing is it's because the company needs you to do that.

00:08:02:01 - 00:08:05:09
Wayne Turmel
It's kind of the corporate version of because I said so.

00:08:06:01 - 00:08:06:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:08:06:18 - 00:08:09:15
Wayne Turmel
I never works. It never works.

00:08:10:02 - 00:08:27:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, I know we're hearing all the time, too, about, you know, oh, well, the culture is bad, so we have to bring everybody back to the office. Everybody's like, okay, either way, I didn't want them to be my friends anyway, so they don't care. Or it's like, you know, they're happy with the people that they talk to or they do have relationships with them.

00:08:27:15 - 00:08:32:09
Marisa Eikenberry
And so it's like bringing them back to the office is really going to change that or they don't feel like it's going to change or.

00:08:32:10 - 00:08:38:15
Wayne Turmel
They don't feel like it. Here's the thing. Kevin and I get lumped in a lot with the remote work zealots.

00:08:39:00 - 00:08:40:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay? Which make sense.

00:08:40:09 - 00:09:06:12
Wayne Turmel
Are like, you know, in a perfect world, we would burn all offices to the ground and turn them into Starbucks and, you know, whatever. And I don't believe that. Right. I think it depends on what is the work that needs to be done. I believe that there is something to in-person collaboration. I believe that we are basically a remote organization.

00:09:06:17 - 00:09:11:09
Wayne Turmel
But Kevin tries really hard, at least once a year, to get us in the same room at the same time.

00:09:11:15 - 00:09:22:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I think at this point I'm the only hybrid employee The Kevin Eikenberry Group has, and it's only because I shoot video. I have to do that in the office. I can't do that from here.

00:09:22:08 - 00:09:29:03
Wayne Turmel
But that's the thing. There are tasks that need to be done in the office that you can't avoid. Right. And oh, by the way, you live.

00:09:29:13 - 00:09:30:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I'm not that far away.

00:09:32:17 - 00:10:05:19
Wayne Turmel
But that notion of. Yeah, you know what? You can work remotely and build relationships, but darned if it isn't easier if at least once in a while you're together and you socialize guys and you get to meet the new team members and you get to do that stuff. So there is a in the defense of the organizations, they are trying to do what's best for the business, and sometimes that's just a perceived thing, right?

00:10:05:19 - 00:10:29:21
Wayne Turmel
This you see this a lot in financial services. This business is all about relationships and networking and mentoring and, you know, for 150 years, banking has been done this way and will ever be thus. And therefore, it's, you know, you've got to come in right now seeing that there is some truth to that.

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:31:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:10:32:08 - 00:10:40:16
Wayne Turmel
And we will find out if over time, as people vote with their feet and decide, no, that's not what I want to do if they change that.

00:10:41:03 - 00:10:41:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:10:43:08 - 00:11:01:12
Wayne Turmel
But as with anything in life, if you come at it only from your point of view, you get this polarization. So you get organizations saying people are selfish and lazy and they just want to work in their pajamas. And, you know, we're paying you. Damn it. Get in here.

00:11:01:12 - 00:11:04:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Right.

00:11:05:00 - 00:11:21:03
Wayne Turmel
And, you know, people are saying, you know, if all I do is fight traffic for an hour a day, hang my coat over my chair, sit down, try to avoid my annoying coworkers and then go home, Why am I going into the office?

00:11:21:09 - 00:11:22:10
Marisa Eikenberry
And it's a fair question.

00:11:23:01 - 00:11:28:09
Wayne Turmel
It's fair question because people have taken those, too. Binary extreme.

00:11:28:15 - 00:11:29:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:11:30:12 - 00:11:51:16
Wayne Turmel
Now, if I. If you explained to me, you know what, we want people to collaborate. We want you to meet with your coworkers. We want you to have that flexibility. And oh, by the way, if you met more in the office and you did more of that, you wouldn't be on Zoom calls for you know, for 8 hours a day.

00:11:52:02 - 00:11:52:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:11:52:10 - 00:11:54:10
Wayne Turmel
Oh, I can get behind that.

00:11:54:15 - 00:11:59:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Sometimes people need a reason for why they're going to do something. I can get on board with a reason.

00:12:00:15 - 00:12:28:17
Wayne Turmel
And that's the thing, is that we don't give reasons when people say, I want to work from home. Why? Because I want to. Well, that's not going to convince your boss. Right. Right. So, again, we live in this binary world where everybody lives on the extremes, but the numbers, if you look at what people say about hybrid work, remote work, what people most people want isn't to never see the office again.

00:12:28:17 - 00:12:53:21
Wayne Turmel
It's more flexibility and control over their lives. So if you look at the bell curve and it's always a bell curve when you deal with human beings on one end of the bell curve, you've got about 10% of the people who the minute the doors were open, could not get back in the office fast enough. Right. They hated their children or they were lonely or whatever the reason.

00:12:53:21 - 00:13:20:22
Wayne Turmel
Right. Or they desperately crave human companionship. Right. There were 10% of the people who, if they work from home at all, couldn't wait to get back. Right on the tail end. You've got somewhere between ten, 12, maybe 15% in some industries of people who never want to see the office again, they have adjusted to working remotely. Many of them have physically moved right locations.

00:13:22:07 - 00:13:23:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Back to the office anyway.

00:13:23:21 - 00:13:40:08
Wayne Turmel
Their commute would be uglier than before. They enjoyed the flexibility of remote work. Many of that 10 to 12% are already voting with their feet because they're going, No, I ain't ever going back because I have a choice. Oh, look, I have a choice.

00:13:40:18 - 00:13:41:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:13:41:21 - 00:14:06:22
Wayne Turmel
Now. You've got that middle hump of your bell curve and people are on a spectrum on this, but they kind of understand the advantages of being in the office and they want that flexibility. Maybe they don't want to go in every day. Maybe they want to go in when it makes sense. Hey, we're having a meeting today. Okay, I'll go in.

00:14:07:11 - 00:14:09:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. Or I know they want.

00:14:09:20 - 00:14:15:03
Wayne Turmel
Some kind of flexibility. But that's the. That's the vast majority of people.

00:14:15:08 - 00:14:15:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:14:16:06 - 00:14:20:11
Wayne Turmel
Fit in that center part. And that's where. Where the mismatch comes in.

00:14:21:01 - 00:14:21:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:14:21:16 - 00:14:28:00
Wayne Turmel
Right. Am I being asked to do something that is giving up more than I am gaining?

00:14:29:19 - 00:14:30:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:14:31:13 - 00:14:50:19
Wayne Turmel
And the way we get around this is by I you know, if we're thinking about how do we make Return to work subclass, there are really two things. The first is don't put ironclad policies in place until you see how it works.

00:14:51:17 - 00:14:52:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Makes sense.

00:14:53:04 - 00:15:17:07
Wayne Turmel
Kevin came up with this brilliant term and he came up with it about a minute and a half after we finished the long distance team. So it's not in the book, but his phrase, and I love it and I use it all the time, is pilot before policy. Talk to everybody, figure out something that makes some sense, some compromise, even if it's not perfect.

00:15:17:13 - 00:15:45:06
Wayne Turmel
Compromise seldom is. Figure out something that is going to work and then let's see how it works. Is good work getting done? Are people collaborating? Are people feeling included? And part of the organization is, you know, is what we thought would happen working. And if it's if it is great, we can keep what's working. If it's kind of working, how can we tweak it?

00:15:45:10 - 00:15:52:22
Wayne Turmel
And if it's not working, what can we do now? But the minute you put it in policy and you say this is the way it is.

00:15:53:10 - 00:15:53:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:15:55:12 - 00:15:58:04
Wayne Turmel
Then it's almost impossible to adjust.

00:15:58:17 - 00:16:15:13
Marisa Eikenberry
So, okay, let's say why not just let's say I know we have leaders listening to this show now and in the future, if they're having issues with this return to office, then what should they be doing right now? I mean, I know that you just said pilot over policy, like, how do they get started?

00:16:16:02 - 00:16:28:22
Wayne Turmel
It starts with, do you know what the objection is? Right. If you're getting your senior leaders coming down on you saying, we have to do this, the correct question is why?

00:16:29:16 - 00:16:30:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:16:30:14 - 00:16:38:13
Wayne Turmel
And what happens if we don't? We need to act. Right. Where is part of you? The first part coming from?

00:16:38:23 - 00:16:40:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:16:41:05 - 00:16:45:21
Wayne Turmel
If the answer is because. Okay, that's not a great answer.

00:16:46:02 - 00:16:47:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Come up with another one.

00:16:48:02 - 00:17:01:20
Wayne Turmel
Try again. But then there's part of the second part, which is what? How do you feel about coming back? What are you worried about? What do you want to see?

00:17:02:07 - 00:17:02:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:17:03:06 - 00:17:08:22
Wayne Turmel
What do you think you're giving up? And what could you potentially be gaining?

00:17:09:14 - 00:17:12:11
Marisa Eikenberry
So to boil it down, you need to talk to your people.

00:17:13:00 - 00:17:46:16
Wayne Turmel
You need to talk to your people and the manager. And one day, we're going to talk about my absolutely brilliant managers, the heartbeat model. Okay. But we we are uniquely positioned to have a foot in both canoes to be terribly Canadian. You know, we have the ear of those above us. And the visibility that the individual worker may not have right.

00:17:47:03 - 00:18:07:07
Wayne Turmel
Right. So we're in a unique position to facilitate this conversation and we need to do it. As you look at return to office. Why has it been a mess? Well, what are the things that are going wrong? There were a couple of things, right? One is people came in sulky and moping because they didn't want to be there.

00:18:07:13 - 00:18:09:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Attitude is always going to play into.

00:18:09:09 - 00:18:31:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And pretending like it didn't. And then not offering flexibility. It's like, good, you're back. Well, can I work from home a day or two a week? No. Just know that. Well, now you've got resentment and craziness and. And, like, that's the other thing is, remember that bell curve of people who were perfectly happy to say, Yeah, okay, I'll go in.

00:18:32:03 - 00:18:38:02
Wayne Turmel
They kind of, after a while, remembered what they didn't like about being in the office.

00:18:39:20 - 00:18:41:08
Marisa Eikenberry
The rose colored glasses came off.

00:18:41:17 - 00:19:07:13
Wayne Turmel
Rose colored glasses came off and they went, Oh, yeah, it's really hard to do quiet heads down work. And oh yeah, I really dislike sitting next to Bob and, you know, so it's like, Yeah, fine, we're back and I'm glad to be back in the social. Social interaction and, and excitement and not staring at the same walls and all of that's great and.

00:19:07:13 - 00:19:08:13
Wayne Turmel
Oh yeah, that's right.

00:19:09:10 - 00:19:24:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Well, and something else I've seen too and I know, I know we're about to run out of time, but like, I know that some companies in their way of, you know, okay, we're going to, we're gonna bring people back and we need to motivate them with something. Okay. Deejays in the lunchroom Really?

00:19:26:06 - 00:19:38:18
Wayne Turmel
You know, foosball tables bring your dog to work day. What You have to understand who your people are before you make that work. Yes. You know.

00:19:39:09 - 00:19:44:01
Marisa Eikenberry
So it's like, oh, D.J. in the lunchroom. Or I could just be my own DJ at home in my kitchen.

00:19:44:10 - 00:19:47:13
Wayne Turmel
And do you understand? Completely.

00:19:47:14 - 00:19:47:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:19:48:23 - 00:19:53:04
Wayne Turmel
Yes. Young pad one, You have you have reached enlightenment.

00:19:54:01 - 00:19:55:13
Marisa Eikenberry
It was going to be like. So, yeah.

00:19:56:08 - 00:20:07:13
Wayne Turmel
Return to office. What a shock. We made a plan. It didn't work out exactly the way we thought it would. That should surprise nobody.

00:20:08:07 - 00:20:08:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:20:09:00 - 00:20:35:23
Wayne Turmel
What we are trying to do now is say, What do we do about it? What do we do next? And that only happens through understanding of everybody's point of view, facilitating the conversation and reaching commitments and agreements and compromises. For now that we resist, we always and people are tired of hearing me say this We always reserve the right to get smarter.

00:20:36:10 - 00:20:41:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. Now we do the best we can until we know better. And then when we know better, we do better.

00:20:41:21 - 00:20:46:06
Wayne Turmel
Okay. There you go. So that's the story on Return to Office.

00:20:46:13 - 00:21:05:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, thank you so much, Wayne, for this conversation. I think it was great and I hope our listeners get a lot out of it. And, listeners, thank you for listening to the long distance worklife for show notes, transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit longdistanceworklife.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes while you're there.

00:21:05:13 - 00:21:19:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show. 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 suggest a topic for Wayne and I do tack on a future episode. We'd love to hear from you.

00:21:19:18 - 00:21:45:01
Marisa Eikenberry
And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry’s new book, The Long-Distance Team, you can learn more about the book at LongDistanceTeamBook.com. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.

Guests, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility, and Focus with Ali Greene and Tamara Sanderson

Wayne Turmel joins Tamara Sanderson and Ali Greene, authors of the book Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility and Focus, to discuss their passion for remote work and the importance of intentionality in successfully transitioning to remote work. They stress the need for companies to have non-negotiables in place, including trust-building, autonomy, and rethinking traditional management techniques. They also emphasize the need for leaders to embrace the liberation and benefits of remote work and let go of outdated practices. Ultimately, remote work must be designed to fit a company's values and decisions must be made with intentionality in order to maintain sustainability and attract talent.

Key Moments

Remote work is not just about the surface level of technology tools like Zoom, but it requires rethinking every aspect of work to truly unlock its benefits.
Intentionality is crucial for successful remote work, including having non-negotiables in place and designing remote work to fit a company's values.
Trust-building, autonomy, and letting go of outdated management techniques are key to successfully transitioning to remote work.
Remote work should be embraced as a form of liberation from the traditional office, and not simply as a temporary solution to the pandemic.
Leaders must learn to let go and embrace the future of remote work to maintain sustainability and attract talent.

Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction
00:02:31 Benefits of Remote Work
00:04:19 Non-negotiables for Remote Work Success
00:06:18 Letting Go and Cut & Paste Behaviors
00:12:42 Location Flexibility and Communication in a Remote Setting
00:14:03 Leaders' Role in Identifying and Helping with Burnout in Hybrid Work Environments
00:16:12 Comparing the High School and College Models of Working to Prevent Burnout
00:17:27 Remote Work Autonomy and Burnout Prevention
00:19:17 Conclusion

Quotes

"Once you really unlock the benefit of remote work, you start completely rethinking every aspect of work."

Related Episodes

Featured Guests

Name: Ali Greene

What She Does: Remote Work leader, advocate & speaker and co-author of Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility, and Focus

Notable: Ali is the former director of People Operations at DuckDuckGo.

Name: Tamara Sanderson

What She Does: L&D advisor, trainer and facilitator. Co-author of Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility, and Focus

Notable: Tamara is the former director of Strategic Partnerships and Corporate Development at Automattic.

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

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View Full Transcript

00:00:07:21 - 00:00:38:10
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome to The Long-Distance Worklife podcast where we try desperately to make sense of remote and hybrid work and basically all of the ways that the workplace is changing. My name is Wayne Turmel, I am master trainer/ coach with The Kevin Eikenberry Group. My usual co-host, Marisa is not here today, which means this is one of our interview episodes and so I am very, very excited.

00:00:39:04 - 00:00:59:04
Wayne Turmel
We have a couple of guests with us, Ali Greene and Tam Sanderson, and we are going to talk about their book, Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility and Focus. And so that is enough of staring at my face for those of you on YouTube. Ali and Tam. Hi, how are you?

00:00:59:05 - 00:01:02:10
Ali Greene
Hello. Hello. Thanks so much for having us.

00:01:03:08 - 00:01:28:07
Wayne Turmel
Well, thank you for being had. We are we are stablemates in a sense. Both of our books, our newest books are out from Barrett Koehler. So lovely to have kinfolk with us again. Where did this come from? You both had real big girl jobs. Where did the idea for the book come from?

00:01:29:06 - 00:01:53:01
Ali Greene
Yeah. So it really came up in a organic way based off of the passion that me and Tam have for remote work. Both of us. Everybody knows the story of what happened a few years ago when the world went into shambles, trying to figure out how to make sense of this great work from home experiment. And for us, we had already been doing it for many years in many different formats.

00:01:53:02 - 00:02:31:09
Ali Greene
I was previously the head of people at DuckDuckGo and Tam was at a director level role at Automattic, and that's how we first met and started our remote friendship. And so when it got to the point in 2020 when the world was figuring this out, we would have regular WhatsApp friends catch up messages and Zoom calls. And it went from us just talking about our life and what we were cooking in quarantine to being really extremely frustrated with how our friends, our peer and the media was talking about this shift from working in offices to remote work and work from home.

00:02:31:09 - 00:02:56:12
Ali Greene
Even the fact that people think those are still synonyms is is troubling to me. And it was this deep rooted fear that if people did not get it right, that they would not get to reap the benefits personally and professionally that that Tam and I had. And so we set out wanting to show the world that not only is it possible, but it's possible to unlock your dreams and your ideal lifestyle.

00:02:56:12 - 00:02:59:08
Ali Greene
But you need to know how to build a remote work muscle first.

00:02:59:16 - 00:03:28:04
Wayne Turmel
Well, given that you are coming to us from Portugal today, which is frankly just showing off, just go do stand that. Tam, why don't we start with what do you think people got wrong? Didn't expect got surprised by as remote work just we got pushed across the Rubicon.

00:03:28:21 - 00:03:45:09
Tamara Sanderson
Yeah. So I think people just stayed at the surface level of remote work. And so everybody was thinking about, oh, I've tried Zoom, nobody knew about Zoom beforehand. I sometimes joked that, like, maybe it sounded like a vacuum cleaner. And now everybody talks about Zoom as if that's a part of the dictionary.

00:03:46:09 - 00:03:57:06
Wayne Turmel
Well, it's interesting. Zoom went from, “What’s Zoom?” to a verb to a syndrome. In like, 18-months. It was insane.

00:03:57:23 - 00:04:19:05
Tamara Sanderson
Exactly. So now it's like probably all over Urban Dictionary. It's like all kinds of news articles. I just think people just touch the surface level of what it means and they're like, Oh, cool. I can like, wear pajamas. I don't have to commute. But once you really unlock the benefit of remote work, you start completely rethinking every aspect of work.

00:04:19:05 - 00:04:40:03
Tamara Sanderson
And so I think people didn't necessarily go deeper into that. There's just like a copy paste for in the middle of a pandemic, Let's make this happen. So there's a lot more to building your remote work muscle then, I don't know, like a top ten listicle there, it's actually like a real skill and it can be completely life changing.

00:04:41:22 - 00:05:02:11
Wayne Turmel
All right. So let's take a look and you can take this. I don't care who takes what. Frankly, you've probably got your internal rhythm figured out, and I'm not going to mess with it, so I'm just going to ask the questions and you guys can manage it. What are some of the non-negotiables to make remote work happen?

00:05:03:06 - 00:05:21:08
Ali Greene
Yeah, so I love this question because first and foremost, as Tam said, a lot of people when they were starting to dip their toes in the remote work water, we're just trying to copy and paste what they had seen other successful companies do. And the number one non-negotiable is you have to be really intentional in order to work well remotely.

00:05:21:08 - 00:05:56:01
Ali Greene
Everything that you do stemming from your operational decisions, your strategy, how you engage with the tools you use, how you interact with people. It all comes down to intentionality. And so it has to be designed in a way that fits your values as a company. The processes you have, the decisions you make around things like if you're going to be fully distributed globally, if you're going to lean into asynchronous communication to allow for people working and living in different time zones, what products you offer, in what markets, what your risk tolerance is for things like taxes and compliance.

00:05:56:01 - 00:06:18:01
Ali Greene
All of those business decisions and cultural decisions are things that can't be copied and pasted from a company that you admire. So while you can seek out inspiration, you need to learn. What questions do you ask at the leadership level of your company? What questions do you ask at the team level? How do you gather this information and make streamlined decisions for yourself?

00:06:18:01 - 00:06:42:16
Ali Greene
And so that would be the number one non-negotiable. And from there it goes to other things like building trust. I think this is just as important, frankly, in an office than not. But nowadays we have things like tools to keep track on time tracking. And if you're actually sitting behind your computer and frankly, I think that's super patronizing and it's not building a culture of trust and motivating people in the right way and respecting your employees.

00:06:42:16 - 00:07:10:05
Ali Greene
Autonomy is the third non-negotiable, really leaning into you hired intelligent people to get the job done. Let them get that job done in the way that works for them. So things like leaning into your energy, not time management, working at different hours of the day non, you know, disjointed work days. There's all these ways and tools that people have to be more productive and more happy and we just need to provide the space to let people figure that out for themselves.

00:07:10:18 - 00:07:31:09
Wayne Turmel
Okay, so all of those things are great. Now, you said a couple of things, and I'm going to wear my grumpy old man hat for just a moment because there are people listening to this who are going, yes, preach this or it's all good. And there are people who are not nearly as comfortable. And when you say things like, well, you just have to let go.

00:07:31:09 - 00:07:41:15
Wayne Turmel
Oh, yeah, I'll get right on that. Right. Let me break a couple of hundred years of conditioning to manage things and we'll just magically.

00:07:41:15 - 00:07:42:19
Ali Greene
It's scary. Yeah.

00:07:43:21 - 00:08:02:15
Wayne Turmel
Well, talk to me. If I am a leader of an organization, I find individual managers do this reasonably well. But organizations and the senior leaders there struggle with this. Talk to me about that letting go process. How do you do that without heads exploding?

00:08:04:03 - 00:08:08:18
Ali Greene
Tam, do you want to take this and talk a little bit about design thinking at the strategic level?

00:08:08:18 - 00:08:30:22
Tamara Sanderson
Yeah. So I think you hit the nail on the head way and I think underlying all the conversation, the remote work is actually about control. And the reason why it's such a hot topic is because remote work could like fundamentally change all the ways that we've been working for the last, definitely the last 50 years with the last hundred, 200 years.

00:08:30:22 - 00:08:53:01
Tamara Sanderson
And so there's so much at stake. I think at at a leadership level, I think you have to think about the future and we're not going back. The genie is out of the bottle. Just think about when the smartphone came out. So I said, like when I started working in 2006 as a management consultant, they gave me a BlackBerry.

00:08:53:11 - 00:09:11:04
Tamara Sanderson
And at that moment, that was the second I had my electronic leash. And I started working all of the time based on the day that they gave me that BlackBerry and I couldn't go back. And so my whole life has been electronic with work and being able to be contacted after hours. And I had to create my own boundaries.

00:09:11:16 - 00:09:42:19
Tamara Sanderson
I think in a similar way, people had this huge experiment with remote work. I think in the middle of the peak of the pandemic, 60% of Americans were working from home. And so you can't take that experience back. Your employees know what it's like and they also know when it's been taken away. And so I think at a leadership level, you have to be realistic about the situation at hand and that people will not be comfortable and they will see flaws in when you arbitrarily bring people back to the office.

00:09:43:00 - 00:10:07:13
Tamara Sanderson
But in letting go, I do think it's a practice. And so I am a part of a meditation center here. And there's a lot of really interesting Buddhist philosophy about this is actually one of the main struggles in life is attachment and letting go. And so I think it's a daily activity. I don't think in one moment you're like, Oh cool, we're going to completely change exactly everything we did in the organization, whatever to the last 20 years.

00:10:07:19 - 00:10:36:18
Tamara Sanderson
I think it's individual moments and so you have to just be present like, okay, I feel really uncomfortable with this. What is a way that I can manage that uncomfortability? And so when we were actually coming up with the subtitle of our book, there's a reason we put managing for Freedom, flexibility and Focus, because managing is like how to still maintain a structure, how to still maintain visibility, how to still maintain output, like all the things that you need.

00:10:36:18 - 00:10:53:17
Tamara Sanderson
So you're still managing it, but you're allowing people that freedom. And so it is a dance and you're gonna have to try a lot of different things and experiment. There's not one way to do remote work, but I do think in the long run, if you can make this change now, you're going to improve the sustainability of your organization in the long term.

00:10:53:17 - 00:10:59:07
Tamara Sanderson
And if you don't, I think you're going to lose out on a lot of talent and be kind of seen as like a dinosaur.

00:11:00:18 - 00:11:22:02
Wayne Turmel
You mentioned earlier and you both use this phrase and I know what that's like because Kevin and I often mind-meld. But if we only do it on the things that really matter, and so you keep using the phrase cut and paste from the office, what specific behaviors are we talking about?

00:11:22:22 - 00:11:53:23
Ali Greene
So very tactically behaviors that we've seen a lot of companies that struggle with transitioning to remote work do is have set schedules for their employees regardless of where they are. So setting, setting core working hours on such as 9 to 5 Eastern time is a common practice and then expecting people to be sitting in front of their desks, whether it be at home or at a co-working space and be readily available if you get a ping, a slack message between those hours because those are considered working hours.

00:11:54:06 - 00:12:17:07
Ali Greene
The problem with that is that you're limiting when a person is feeling innovative and creative and you're isolating them to be tied to their desk instead of providing them opportunities to go out and recharge and take micro breaks throughout the day in a way that could creatively inspire them, reconnect them socially, or tie into some of their personal motivators that can actually make them stronger at work.

00:12:17:07 - 00:12:42:19
Ali Greene
And so that framework of 9 to 5 is just being replicated from working anywhere, being the first definition that people think of when they think of remote work is working. Location flexibility is something that immediately causes challenges in a remote setting because you're not leaning into creating a new structure around check ins. Instead, managers and companies that can say Work whenever you want.

00:12:42:19 - 00:13:08:12
Ali Greene
We're going to have core synchronous hours during these Times. The intention of these synchronous hours are brainstorming, are building relationships, and these will happen once a week, for example, and then asynchronous work project management. We're going to have to check end points, let's say Monday and Friday within a 24 hour period is an alternative way of thinking about a workday that gives people the room to experiment with how they work best.

00:13:08:20 - 00:13:27:00
Ali Greene
Another easy assumption within what I just mentioned already is that meetings should happen, and so a lot of people, in order to feel connected, in order to feel like they had trust, would say, Oh, we're just going to communicate more often and communicating more often in the cut and paste model meant adding in more meetings to people's calendars.

00:13:27:00 - 00:13:56:20
Ali Greene
Well, two years later we realized what happened. People were getting incredibly burnt out. They were over communicating but not feeling any more social. And there was an emotional drainage on a lot of people in society. And so instead of assuming that communication means live communication and questioning that assumption is another thing that leaders had to sit back and think of What is the intention of communication, Why am I doing it, and what other methods can we use in our workplace to make sure that people have the information they need?

00:13:56:20 - 00:14:03:15
Ali Greene
Because it's about information sharing and relationship building, not jumping on Zoom calls?

00:14:03:15 - 00:14:32:03
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think it's really interesting and I you know, not to make this about me, but one of the things that we are discovering is that the difference with hybrid work is that it's not just when and where it happens. Well, it's not just where and how it happens. It's when that the time flexibility piece is really the part that we've never dealt with before, and it's the part that's causing the chaos.

00:14:32:18 - 00:15:00:18
Wayne Turmel
But one of the pieces of chaos that it's causing is really good intentioned people being over connected and burning out and like that. And as a leader, you know, if I walk into the office and I see Tam banging her head on her monitor, I can go, “Oh, is everything okay?” But I can't see her banging her head on her monitor, you know, from wherever she is.

00:15:02:05 - 00:15:16:13
Wayne Turmel
Talk to me about what is the leader's role in identifying and then helping people deal with burnout. Not all at once now.

00:15:17:14 - 00:15:46:11
Tamara Sanderson
Yeah. I like looking at Ali, who so I think actually it comes back a little to I like the the framework of five wise and so why are people always connected? Why are we always on meetings, Why are we always doing that? And if you keep asking why, you can get to the root of it and usually underlying it is that there's not clear communication to begin with and clear intentionality.

00:15:46:11 - 00:16:12:22
Tamara Sanderson
And so the reason that we as 9 to 5, it's really nice to just have everybody around you and you can just ask people to do things the second it comes into your mind. And people are always waiting for you as a leader. And so there is something really nice about that. But it also doesn't necessarily strengthen your capacity to clearly communicate, give people deliverables and allow people to go out on their own.

00:16:12:22 - 00:16:28:18
Tamara Sanderson
And so I often think of this as like the high school versus the college model, which I think actually this originally came from Ali. So I'll give her credit. I just love to use it. But the old way of working, I think is like the 9 to 5 is very much like high school. And so you go from class to class, you're always there.

00:16:28:18 - 00:16:48:08
Tamara Sanderson
You need to have your button seat. You do that for four years, you graduate, right? And so those people that are fortunate enough to go on to university or choose that path, all of a sudden it changes and it becomes a model that I think is much more similar to remote work where a professor the first day of class, they're very thoughtful on what needs to happen throughout that semester.

00:16:48:08 - 00:17:02:12
Tamara Sanderson
They know the outcomes, they know what they're looking for, they know what the students need to deliver and they assign it so they have a syllabus. Maybe they meet once or twice a week in the classroom, but outside of that, they're allowed to complete their work on their own at their own pace because they've been given that information ahead of time.

00:17:02:20 - 00:17:27:03
Tamara Sanderson
You don't have professors calling all the time like, Hey, what you do, the what you do and what you do and like, hey, are you in the library or are you at IHOP? What are you doing? Instead? They know what they're allowed to do and they have the freedom to go do that. And so I think this goes to burnout in a similar way because it's it it prevents burnout by just the ability of people being able to work at their own pace and not be always on.

00:17:27:03 - 00:17:48:18
Tamara Sanderson
And so when you actually move up the ladder of remote work autonomy, you should experience less burnout if you're practicing really good, asynchronous, remote work behaviors. That would be like my initial thought. But Ali, do you want to talk a little bit about like actually viewing burnout? Because there's a lot of ways you can still do that remotely?

00:17:49:04 - 00:18:14:07
Wayne Turmel
Well, I was I was going to say I agree in principle, people are capable of autonomy and all of that stuff. And we have had it bred out of us to a great degree. And so not everybody, while it might be fine for me, is the leader. Just say you are autonomous, you are free, go and do. Not everybody is coping with that in equally successful ways.

00:18:15:12 - 00:18:35:04
Ali Greene
Yeah, I think this goes back to it's a muscle we have to build. You don't expect to go weightlifting the very first time and being able to bench press £200. You have to start smaller and I think the role of the leader is helping someone navigate when they're ready to take on the next batch of weights in their in their bench press.

00:18:35:04 - 00:18:55:16
Ali Greene
That is remote work. And over time that skill becomes easier. The most simple example that I can use to illustrate this point is in our pre chat. When you this is the first time we were talking and you noticed maybe based off of hearing my energy and other podcasts or just seeing the expression on my face that I was a little bit tired today.

00:18:55:16 - 00:19:17:11
Ali Greene
And already through the conversation today I have my energy back and I'm feeling really great. And so when it comes to things like burnout, it's I hate to to use this word, it's a word we use in our book that's quoted from a good friend of mine, but it might seem a little bit too abstract for people, but it's almost the spidey sense of what is this person's norm and when are they not acting like their norm.

00:19:17:14 - 00:19:36:16
Ali Greene
That is the red flag to dig deeper and just ask, Hey, are you okay? Or Hey, you said you were good, but that good was a little not super enthusiastic, which is exactly what you did for me. And it opened up a room for me to feel safe, to be vulnerable, to say, Actually, I don't think I drink enough water today and I'm a little tired, but I'm going to show up today because I'm really excited to be here.

00:19:37:01 - 00:19:56:11
Ali Greene
And those are the conversations it's okay to have at work. I think for so long we were afraid to to be vulnerable. And what remote work has done is it's invited people into our personal lives to be able to give that vulnerability back. But we need to learn how to do it. And we learned through asking those questions for determining what's the norm.

00:19:56:14 - 00:20:05:08
Ali Greene
You can figure out what the norm for someone is through something like a user guide, for example, and then knowing when does someone behave differently than their norm.

00:20:05:08 - 00:20:47:01
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, that noticing what isn't there is is the skill. It's the Sherlock Holmes skill, right? Why? The Sherlock solved more cases than anybody else Because he notices what isn't there is what he picks up on and Ali Greene, Tam Sanderson. The book is Remote Works: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility and Focus. Real quick, wrap up. If you have one takeaway and I know this question all authors because we've got but 85,000 words of wisdom and you want me to boil it down to one thing, you moron, but what's the one thing.

00:20:48:01 - 00:21:02:00
Ali Greene
Drink water. Listeners out there, I have a bottle with me that I'm drinking from. And experiment. You don't know what works for you, especially when it comes to remote work until you unlearn and relearn new habits. That's my one takeaway.

00:21:02:00 - 00:21:10:14
Tamara Sanderson
I would add self-reflection because all of remote work is based on knowing more about yourself and how you prefer to work.

00:21:10:21 - 00:21:23:16
Tamara Sanderson
And also how you prefer to manage and how you prefer to lead in ways that you can do that more intentionally. That's it. that's all I got.

00:21:23:21 - 00:21:55:14
Wayne Turmel
That goes into the audio. Got a little bumpy there, but the self reflection piece is really terrific. I am going to bid you ladies adieu while I close out the show. Thank you so much for being with us. We respect the heck out of that. Thank you. We will have notes in the show links. Those of you who are familiar with us know that our website LongDistanceWorkLife.com is all about.

00:21:55:14 - 00:22:31:16
Wayne Turmel
You can find the episodes, you can find links to Ali and to Tam and to their book. You can find ways to contact Marisa and I, we are doing a lot more episodes where we're taking questions from you and yours and turning those into episodes and topics worthy of discussion. I am going to suggest that besides Remote Work: Managing for Freedom, Flexibility and Focus, you might want to consider The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success.

00:22:31:16 - 00:23:05:15
Wayne Turmel
That's Kevin Eikenberry and my latest book. Of course, if you're enjoying the podcast, please like and subscribe. Tell your friends, tell your neighbors we really appreciate you. So thank you so much for being with us. My name is Wayne Turmel. Don't let the weasels get you down.

Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

Crucial Conversations: Navigating Communication Boundaries in the New Age of Remote Work

Marisa Eikenberry shares some recent frustrations when email was treated as a form of synchronous communication and how it pushed against her communication boundaries. Wayne Turmel and Marisa use that situation to discuss the importance of setting boundaries in the workplace, particularly for remote team members. They emphasize that if a pattern of behavior is established and not addressed, it will continue. They suggest that there are two options for dealing with this: accepting it or confronting it. They also offer suggestions for managers to effectively communicate expectations around boundaries to their team members. They mention tools such as scheduling emails and out-of-office messages to help maintain these boundaries. Turmel and Eikenberry also touch on the importance of setting boundaries in personal email as well as work email. Overall, this episode provides valuable insights into maintaining healthy boundaries in the workplace and offers practical tips for both employees and managers.

Key Moments

1. Managers and team leaders should effectively communicate expectations and boundaries to remote team members to prevent these issues.
2. Email should not be treated as a synchronous form of communication, and tools like scheduling emails or setting do not disturb settings can help maintain boundaries.
3. It's important to address patterns of behavior that violate boundaries, as condoning them will only lead to continued issues.
4. Setting personal boundaries, such as not answering emails on Friday nights, can also help prevent workaholic tendencies.

Timestamps

00:00:07 - Boundaries in Remote and Hybrid Teams
00:01:53 - Marisa Eikenberry discusses Workaholism and How She Establishes Healthy Boundaries
00:03:33 - Professional Communication Boundaries
00:05:22 - Effective Communication of Expectations for Remote Team Members
00:07:46 - Establishing Communication Expectations in the Workplace
00:10:14 - Consider Using An Out Of Office Message To Set Boundaries For Online Availability
00:11:56 - The Importance Of Setting Expectations For Email Communication
00:14:33 - Establishing Work-Life Balance Boundaries
00:15:36 - Struggling With Work-life Balance And Setting Boundaries As A Manager
00:17:55 - Setting Boundaries in the Workplace

Quotes

"As a manager, when you see people struggling with boundaries. Do not take advantage of it."

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:19 - 00:00:18:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance Worklife, where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Turmel.

00:00:18:17 - 00:00:19:09
Wayne Turmel
Hello.

00:00:19:22 - 00:00:20:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Hey, how are you doing.

00:00:20:15 - 00:00:21:20
Wayne Turmel
Welcome aboard right.

00:00:22:15 - 00:00:44:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome aboard the long distance work life ship right. So today we're going to be talking about boundaries with your team members, with your boss, with people that you work with, whatever that work, whatever that looks like. So I wanted to start off, Wayne, because, you know, we have episodes all the time where we have a topic and you go on a rant and so it's my turn.

00:00:44:13 - 00:00:46:18
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm taking the reins. I'm sitting in the rant chair today.

00:00:47:14 - 00:00:54:15
Wayne Turmel
Excellent. I love this. Ranting. Very few people know Ranting Marisa, and she is well worth the price of admission.

00:00:55:07 - 00:01:12:08
Marisa Eikenberry
So there's another story I'm going to say later, but I'm actually going to start with something different than what we had talk about right before we started the show. But I had a situation, a couple of weeks ago where email was treated like a synchronous form of communication, and it drove me absolutely up the wall.

00:01:13:22 - 00:01:25:19
Wayne Turmel
So when you say that, when you say that it was treated as a form of asynchronous or synchronous communication, help our listeners. Yes. What specifically was going on?

00:01:26:06 - 00:01:53:04
Marisa Eikenberry
So I volunteer with an organization. I will not name the organization because I also won't be what the much longer for this reason. But essentially an email was sent to me after hours on a Friday and at Monday at 8 a.m.. Well, they hadn't heard from me yet, so they contacted somebody else that knows me. Well, she didn't respond and apparently also called me, but didn't leave a voicemail or a text message.

00:01:53:04 - 00:02:20:17
Marisa Eikenberry
So I couldn't respond to anything. We've talked about this on a couple episodes before. I'm a recovering workaholic. Like, I was so bad about boundaries when I first started. I worked all the time. I would I would respond to your email as long as I was awake. Like it was it was bad. It was really bad. And I have done everything in my power, and even more so in the last year to try and prevent that.

00:02:20:17 - 00:02:46:10
Marisa Eikenberry
And one of the things that I do is on Friday night, I don't answer emails. I don't look social media for 24 hours. I don't look at anything until Monday morning. I don't care for my personal email. I don't care if it's my work email. I do not look at it at all. And unfortunately, this person sent me an email at 8:50 p.m. on a Friday and then wondered why I hadn't seen it by 8 a.m. Monday morning.

00:02:47:15 - 00:03:09:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, versus how? It's fine. It's like whatever I'm at, but it's fine. And then a couple of days later, she sent another email, which I knew was coming. I just didn't know what time it was going to come at like 435 in the afternoon, I end my day at 4:00. I go hang out with my husband. I make dinner, we watch a movie, whatever.

00:03:10:01 - 00:03:33:16
Marisa Eikenberry
I don't look at my email at night. At 845 that evening, I get a text message. Well, you didn't respond to my email yet. I didn't know I even got it. And there was just this idea that email was going to be used as their synchronous form of communication as this, you know, chat or text in a way that, like, we don't preach here.

00:03:33:22 - 00:03:54:03
Marisa Eikenberry
And I've been very lucky to not have really experienced this very much in the last nine years that I've worked here. And I think there was just a moment of this goes against what we teach. This goes against the boundaries that I have set. This goes against everything we stand for. Like, I was ticked.

00:03:54:13 - 00:04:23:04
Wayne Turmel
Well, and understandably so. Right. Right. Here's the thing. I'm putting myself in the other person's shoes. Mm hmm. Obviously, everybody who works with this person knows how she operates and has allowed this to happen. And by the way, many of them may have may operate in the same way.

00:04:23:11 - 00:04:26:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. And this is not somebody I never worked with before.

00:04:26:07 - 00:04:45:08
Wayne Turmel
So this is a cultural behavior thing. And the problem with human beings is we assume that our behavior or our position is the default until proven otherwise. And that proof seldom comes in the form of gentle correction, usually comes in the form of conflict.

00:04:45:14 - 00:04:45:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:46:14 - 00:05:22:04
Wayne Turmel
Right. So-and-so never answers my email. So-and-so is driving me crazy with text messages. We have what we have and we're doing what we're doing and we're communicating what we need to communicate. And our natural assumption, even to the outside world, it looks like insane behavior. But the most insane behavior has a rational purpose and and reason for existing, if you know what that is.

00:05:22:04 - 00:05:33:09
Wayne Turmel
Right. What's going on in that person's mind? Right. And so we've got somebody who behaves in a certain way as obviously not had this be a problem before.

00:05:33:20 - 00:05:35:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Which is so surprising to me. But yes.

00:05:37:00 - 00:05:58:19
Wayne Turmel
Well, because one of two things happens. Either she's working with people of a similar generation mindset or whatever. So they all kind of think the same way. And they've been doing it for a while. Mm hmm. Right. Or nobody wants to have that conversation with cruel.

00:05:59:18 - 00:06:04:03
Marisa Eikenberry
And I think that one might be might be the sticking point.

00:06:04:15 - 00:06:44:12
Wayne Turmel
And especially with nonprofits and volunteer type organizations. I remember I had a guy who worked for me on a part time basis who was at one point CEO of a very large nonprofit. And we were having dinner one night and I said, Steve, what is the best thing about leading a nonprofit? And he said, Oh, if people are motivated, they're not driven by money, they're doggedly determined, and they don't take no for an answer.

00:06:44:12 - 00:06:54:10
Wayne Turmel
And they said, Very cool. What's the worst that they're not motivated by money. Doggedly determined. And they don't take no for an answer.

00:06:54:22 - 00:06:58:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. The blessing becomes the curse in that way.

00:06:58:18 - 00:07:18:21
Wayne Turmel
When people are driven to do something and their mission is the most important thing. It becomes very easy either not to pay attention to the needs of other people or to assume that the needs of other people are always subservient to the needs of the mission.

00:07:19:14 - 00:07:27:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and before we go too far down, because, like, I don't want anybody to think we're bashing nonprofits or volunteer organizations. No, no, no.

00:07:27:12 - 00:07:29:15
Wayne Turmel
Not at all. But we're talking about the behavior.

00:07:29:20 - 00:07:46:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And so just kind of to build off of this, how can managers or team leaders actually effectively communicate expectations around these boundaries to their remote team members? Like, how can we set up these these things so that way stuff like this doesn't happen?

00:07:46:13 - 00:08:18:16
Wayne Turmel
I think it's like so much. We haven't had explicit conversations or if we have, it's been kind of one on one. Mm hmm. As a team, when you're coming together, when you're forming, storming, norming, all those lovely phrases about team construction and design, when you are coming together as a group. Have you had the conversation about when do you email and what are the expectations?

00:08:18:16 - 00:08:52:09
Wayne Turmel
What are when do you text? When do you use your webcam? When do you not? Those need to be explicit or somebody is not going to live up to somebody else's expectations because we all have our preferences and our styles and and whatever. One of the things that obviously nobody has told this well meaning person is and listen to me, dear podcast listeners, I cannot stress this enough.

00:08:52:20 - 00:08:56:10
Wayne Turmel
Email is not a synchronous form of communication.

00:08:57:09 - 00:08:58:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Amen.

00:08:58:09 - 00:09:06:04
Wayne Turmel
If you are sending an email and then sitting there drumming your fingers waiting for an answer, you are using it wrong.

00:09:06:10 - 00:09:11:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it should have been a text message or a phone call or a Slack message or any number of these.

00:09:11:02 - 00:09:36:16
Wayne Turmel
Simply number of things that we have come to realize are more synchronous now. I can remember back in the day when email was kind of a synchronous form of communication because there was no other way. There was a phone call or there was an email and what we now use chat for. MM. Didn't really exist.

00:09:37:02 - 00:09:37:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:09:38:02 - 00:10:08:07
Wayne Turmel
Especially in the workplace. It's funny, we had Yahoo chat and all that stuff. Right. For our personal use. But it wasn't really in use in the workplace for a really long time. Mm hmm. And so and this kind of goes to expectations around when people are in the office and when they're not. And what do they do with their I mean, this woman would be shocked to know probably, that you can turn off notifications.

00:10:08:23 - 00:10:11:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And that people don't check their emails a certain hours of the day.

00:10:12:15 - 00:10:24:17
Wayne Turmel
But here's the thing. Nobody had that conversation. Nobody had that conversation with her. No, you did not have a conversation with her before you decided to turn off your notifications.

00:10:24:19 - 00:10:47:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and even I was going to say because of this and I've teased about it, but I'm almost I'm almost serious about it. I know that there are some people that use their out of office type messages when they're not online just to say, hey, I'm not online during these days or these hours. Here's when you can expect a response from me.

00:10:47:14 - 00:11:06:02
Marisa Eikenberry
And up until last week, this has never been a problem for me, but I've almost considered adding one for this reason, because there's a reason I'm not online during certain hours of the day and certain days of the week. And and people should feel like they're safe to do that.

00:11:06:19 - 00:11:32:06
Wayne Turmel
Well, absolutely. And so I've seen people do some really interesting things. One is they actually set their out of office on their email when the day ends. Right. They have two standard out of office message that they do. I'm out of the office now. I'm back in at 9:00 tomorrow morning. Talk to you that. Mm hmm. If it's an emergency, text me.

00:11:32:16 - 00:11:35:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:11:35:00 - 00:11:37:17
Wayne Turmel
I've also seen people put it in their signature.

00:11:38:08 - 00:11:38:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:11:39:19 - 00:11:55:12
Wayne Turmel
That says, you know, Wayne Trammell, Kevin Eikenberry group, blah, blah, blah. In order to maintain work life balance, I will answer all emails first thing in the morning.

00:11:56:03 - 00:12:05:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I've seen some similar ones. They don't say it quite like that, but they'll say I use email as a asynchronous form of communication. You can expect a response within 24 hours.

00:12:05:16 - 00:12:11:05
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. And at first blush that a feels really formal and weird.

00:12:11:10 - 00:12:12:01
Marisa Eikenberry
It does.

00:12:12:12 - 00:12:32:00
Wayne Turmel
Right. It's interesting. A lot of people do that with their work email. They've gotten better about that. What they don't do it with and I'm bad about this is their personal email. Mm hmm. I constantly forget to set out of office stuff on my personal email.

00:12:32:18 - 00:12:35:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I mean, I do too. I just don't check.

00:12:36:09 - 00:12:41:05
Wayne Turmel
Well, because you are a disciplined, highly intelligent human being and very aware.

00:12:41:07 - 00:12:43:03
Marisa Eikenberry
And it took me a long time to get there.

00:12:43:08 - 00:12:44:17
Wayne Turmel
And you weren't born that way.

00:12:44:22 - 00:12:45:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Hey, man.

00:12:46:08 - 00:13:19:10
Wayne Turmel
But this is. This is the thing that we talk about so often when there is not an explicit conversation, when we have not set guidelines that everybody has agreed to. It's the Wild West. Everybody is going to respond the way that they respond, and they assume that that is the natural order of things. It took me a long time to come to the very obvious realization that the world does not think like I do.

00:13:20:20 - 00:13:25:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. The day I learned that people don't communicate the same way I do, my mind was blown.

00:13:26:02 - 00:13:35:11
Wayne Turmel
I was like, Really? You don't do that. No, we don't, Wayne. You are a freak of nature. And you must understand how we mortals choose to deal with things.

00:13:36:02 - 00:13:38:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:13:39:00 - 00:14:07:06
Wayne Turmel
And so explicit conversations. But they don't have to be super formal. There is a biblical admonition that says the first time you have a problem with somebody, you let it slide. The second time you talk to that person, The third time you take it to the authorities in a crisis. I paraphrase, but that's kind of the thing, right?

00:14:07:22 - 00:14:16:18
Wayne Turmel
The first time somebody does it. You know, I'm a firm believer that once is happenstance, twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

00:14:16:23 - 00:14:17:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:14:17:17 - 00:14:32:01
Wayne Turmel
And so anybody can get frustrated and stuff once. Oh, yeah. The second time there is definitely a pattern developing here. By the third time, if you do not address it, you are in fact, condoning it.

00:14:33:00 - 00:14:33:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:14:34:06 - 00:14:52:02
Wayne Turmel
There is the pattern has been established. If you don't do anything to disrupt that pattern, it is going to continue. And if it is going to continue, you have two options as human beings. One is to just get with the program and say, okay, when I'm dealing with moreso, this is what I got to deal with.

00:14:52:22 - 00:14:53:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:14:53:19 - 00:15:18:03
Wayne Turmel
The second thing is to get really angry and bitter and start gossiping and talking smack about here is a until we finally have to have it out and deal with it. I would prefer to do that in a civilized fashion. So to be able to say, hey, Marissa, and this is an important feedback thing for anybody when you do X.

00:15:19:15 - 00:15:23:15
Wayne Turmel
This is how it appears to me or this is how it affects me.

00:15:24:00 - 00:15:24:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:15:25:21 - 00:15:57:23
Wayne Turmel
Be very specific. Not just what are you doing sending emails after 830. Right. Or I'm not going to answer e-mails that come in effort. I'm struggling with my work life balance. I am trying to do this. And if it is really time sensitive, here's an alternative way to reach you. Have my phone number. Text me. That conversation needs to be explicit.

00:15:58:05 - 00:16:28:06
Wayne Turmel
As a manager, when you see people struggling with boundaries. Mm hmm. Do not take advantage of it. I mean, it is really tempting. It's like, Well, Marissa's going to be around anyway. I'll ask her this question because she's going to respond. You don't be that person. You don't want to take advantage of somebody's foibles like that. But when you're having your one on one, have that.

00:16:28:11 - 00:16:46:18
Wayne Turmel
Hey, I notice that you're sending a lot of emails late at night. What's going on there? Well, I have FOMO. Well, it, you know, freaks me out to show up in the morning. And I've got 32 emails waiting for me and it stresses me out. Whatever the reason.

00:16:46:23 - 00:16:47:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:16:47:21 - 00:16:49:08
Wayne Turmel
And there probably is one.

00:16:49:20 - 00:16:50:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, yeah.

00:16:50:18 - 00:16:56:11
Wayne Turmel
I need to know what that is so I can coach you, help you let you know that it's okay.

00:16:56:19 - 00:16:57:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:16:57:19 - 00:17:30:02
Wayne Turmel
Because a lot of times and I know that I've said this before, but it is crucial. We as managers don't understand how our actions are interpreted. We know how we mean. Like I say, if I send an email late at night, just so it's off my plate and out of my head and I can get on with what I'm doing, my expectation is not that you're going to drop everything at some bizarre hour of the night or make the kids read themselves to bed so you can answer this question.

00:17:30:19 - 00:17:31:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:17:31:11 - 00:17:40:12
Wayne Turmel
That was never my intention. But now I see how my actions impact you. We need to have a conversation about boundaries.

00:17:41:04 - 00:17:55:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, into that point, too. I mean, now there are so many other tools out there that will allow you to schedule an email so that way it does reach them at a more reasonable hour. You can still get it out exactly when you're thinking about it, but it doesn't reach my inbox until 8 a.m. when I'm in the office.

00:17:55:20 - 00:18:21:03
Wayne Turmel
You know what's funny is about two months ago there was a change to outlook that I you know, they update stuff all the time. Of course. What about when I log on at seven in the morning? There is a little message in the upper left hand corner of my screen that says you are outside normal working hours. Do you want to send this email or schedule it for later?

00:18:21:17 - 00:18:22:15
Marisa Eikenberry
That's fascinating.

00:18:22:20 - 00:18:26:04
Wayne Turmel
By default, up in the upper left hand corner of your outlook.

00:18:26:12 - 00:18:30:17
Marisa Eikenberry
See, I haven't seen that because I'm only ever looking at Outlook during work hours. That's fascinating.

00:18:30:21 - 00:18:54:02
Wayne Turmel
You know, the sun revolves around the Statue of Liberty and so all business takes place in the East Coast time. But that's just it's in pale blue font up at the top of your screen. And I actually know I need to send it now because it's 10:00 to the person that's sending it to. But that's kind of cool.

00:18:54:15 - 00:19:15:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, Slack does something similar. Yeah. You know, if if I'm sending you a message, you know, the fact that you're in a different time zone, it'll tell me it's 7 a.m. for Wayne right now, you know, And I can still choose to send that if I want, especially if I know you're already online and there are also things to do where, you know, this person's in Do not disturb right now.

00:19:16:06 - 00:19:28:18
Marisa Eikenberry
You can send it and they'll they'll get it. But do you want to ping them? I'm also going to tell you to not ping people unless it's an emergency. I've been pinged for crap before that I was like, this could have waited until tomorrow.

00:19:29:16 - 00:19:44:11
Wayne Turmel
You know, it just occurred to me. Yes, it just occurred to me now. And we are running. Wait. Yeah. Forgive me. When software engineers are telling you you need to chill.

00:19:45:21 - 00:19:46:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:19:46:15 - 00:19:48:08
Wayne Turmel
You need to chill.

00:19:48:16 - 00:19:53:20
Marisa Eikenberry
I was going to say me as a tech person. Like, I'm, like, chill, but shut off your notifications.

00:19:54:01 - 00:20:02:13
Wayne Turmel
It's clearly a big enough problem that it is worth addressing in the tool itself. That should tell you something.

00:20:02:18 - 00:20:03:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:20:03:18 - 00:20:05:07
Wayne Turmel
And set your boundaries.

00:20:05:14 - 00:20:24:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. And I know that there's so many more things that we can talk about with boundaries. So we're definitely going to have to do another episode to talk about some of the other boundaries that you can set with other people. But for now. Thank you so much, Wayne, for answering these questions. This was a blast. I can't wait to dive into more of this topic with you in the future.

00:20:24:20 - 00:20:40:20
Marisa Eikenberry
And for you listener, thank you for listening to the Long-Distance Worklife. For show notes, transcripts, and other resources. Make sure to visit LongDistanceWorklife.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like in review. This helps us know what you love about our show.

00:20:41:07 - 00:20:58:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our shownotes. Let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tack on a future episode. And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne Turmel and Kevin Eikenberry's new book, The Long-Distance Team. You can learn more about the book at LongDistanceTeamBook.com.

00:20:58:22 - 00:21:15:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.

Uncategorized

Presentation Skills for the Virtual Workplace with Roger Courville

Wayne Turmel and Roger Courville discuss the impact of virtual communication on presentations and the importance of teaching skills rather than solely focusing on technology. They note that communication is a crucial factor in the success of virtual hybrid work and that the key to success is how technology is used to connect with people. The conversation also touches on the difficulties of presenting online compared to in-person, including the lack of visual cues and how to assess audience engagement using alternative tools like dashboard features in Zoom or WebEx. Roger and Wayne emphasize the importance of learning the skills needed to present virtually and using available tools to understand the audience. They also discuss the need for a balanced approach to technology and communication to be successful in virtual presentations.

Key Points

00:00:07 - Virtual Presentations

00:02:31 - The Nature of Mediums and Human Connectedness

00:04:18 - Virtual Presentation Skills Training

00:06:52 - Online Presentation Tools

00:08:52 - "Creating Meaningful Virtual Eye Contact with Your Audience"

00:10:19 - Mastering the Art of Online Presentations

00:15:12 - Presentation Tools and Muscle Memory

00:16:42 - Maximizing Efficiency of Virtual Presentations

00:19:01 - Benefits of Using Participant Lists and Calling on People by Name in Virtual Presentations

00:20:35 - Combining Polls and Chat for Effective Q&A Tactics

Featured Guest

Name: Roger Courville

What He Does: Head of Strategy at Virtual Venues

Notable: He has been teaching about web conferencing since 1999. His white paper, "Five Keys to Moving Training Online" written in 2008 won TrainingZone.co.uk's Reader's Choice Award for "Top Download of the Year."

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:19 - 00:00:32:13
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife podcast. My name is Wayne Turmel. Marisa is not with us today. This is one of our guest episodes and I am really excited. Those of you who are familiar with the show know that we try to make sense of the whole virtual hybrid work thing, and nothing is more important to that than communication.

00:00:32:19 - 00:00:57:14
Wayne Turmel
And we are talking to a very smart guy. Roger Courville has been in the world of remote communication, virtual presentations as long or longer than I have, which is a really long time. He's with virtual venues. He is a writer and a teacher and all of that stuff. And Roger, good to have you with us, man.

00:00:57:15 - 00:01:00:06
Roger Courville
Oh, so glad to be with you again, Wayne. Thank you.

00:01:01:01 - 00:01:33:20
Wayne Turmel
I'm what I thought we would do is it's people. Look at things like teams and WebEx and whatever, Zoom, whatever else, and they think of them as meeting tools. But I want to talk about presentations, you know, webinars, training, teaching things, what we used to think of as presentation skills and why so many of us frankly think, Oh, we do it in a virtual environment, so let's start there.

00:01:33:20 - 00:01:42:20
Wayne Turmel
Right? We thought we knew how to talk and then we had this to work with, you know.

00:01:43:06 - 00:02:07:23
Roger Courville
Well, like you, I go way back September 1999, very first virtual event I ever worked on. And the presenter shows up by dialing in on a cell phone while he was standing in line at an airport. He had no idea what was going on. And, you know, it became fascinating to actually like you. Since I know a little piece of your story, I became fascinated with how the medium affects how we connect with people.

00:02:08:08 - 00:02:31:16
Roger Courville
Right. And sometimes the basic level is, Oh, how does Zoom work? And I or WebEx or Adobe Connect or pick your and I want to learn how to use a piece of software. But the point isn't connecting to it's connecting through. And if I can be theoretical for 92 seconds, transmission theory or medium theory of communication began to study decades ago.

00:02:31:16 - 00:03:06:04
Roger Courville
In an academic sense, the the nature of how a medium affects the sending and receiving of signal right and illustrated. We understand that you can tell a story in a book. You can tell a story in a movie, and the discipline of telling even the same story to the same audience is very different. It's a little less obvious when we use a tool like, you know, our teams or WebEx or Zoom, because what we do is we're used to being talking on the telephone, and then when we make a presentation, what do we do?

00:03:06:04 - 00:03:30:17
Roger Courville
We put a PowerPoint. But if we think about the things that are the best part of human connectedness in an in-person world, and then we move it and we ask anybody, Hey, what's the best part of connecting in person? Nobody would say somebody talking over PowerPoint. And so I think one of the key problems that we have is that we also see webinar is done badly every day.

00:03:31:05 - 00:03:42:11
Roger Courville
And so we have an expectation of what a webinar or virtual event is. And then of course, there's the personal attitude. Do I realize that I suck? Because you can't help those who don't realize they need help.

00:03:44:02 - 00:04:18:20
Wayne Turmel
I love that you said that because it has always frustrated the heck out of me that people who in a in a room, in an audience environment are engaging and charming and they interact with the audience and they're kind of fearless. And then they get online and they become presenters and all listen, it's great. All the things that we know about communicating go out the window and we do things that we know are.

00:04:18:20 - 00:04:33:03
Wayne Turmel
But if you said to somebody, I'm going to talk to you for 45 minutes, I don't want you to talk to me. I want you to sit there and hold your questions till the end as you walk out of the room. Right?

00:04:33:11 - 00:04:55:14
Roger Courville
Exactly. You know, one of the things that and I don't even know why other than the need, it seems like it's the same thing. I'm got PowerPoint, I'm talking to people. And yet if we asked people how to be successful with when technologies involved in other contexts, nobody would say, teach me the technology. And that's all I need to know, right?

00:04:55:14 - 00:05:15:16
Roger Courville
If we were teens in telephone customer service skills, yeah, we might need to know how to mute a call and forward a call. But nobody does training on the telephone and thinks that they've just been trained as a customer service agent. Right. And similarly, we wouldn't teach presentation skills and show somebody how a projector works and then think our job was done.

00:05:15:16 - 00:05:45:13
Roger Courville
And yet, at least to me, one of the things that I did, you know, was focus on skills. And over and over people would call and go, Hey, we need some, you know, a virtual presentation skills training. And I would say, great. Tell me what you want to know. Well, we use WebEx or whatever their answer was, and I'm just and I just got used to using the old sales adage, sell them what they want, but give them what they need.

00:05:45:13 - 00:06:11:02
Roger Courville
So to me, it's it's just upside down. In fact, if we're going to turn this into a teachable moment and turn it into a tip, it would be like saying someone wants to learn to be a better writer and you're going to do it specific to the medium of Microsoft Word. At some point, you might say, here's how to underline or bold some text, because that's part of you expressing yourself as a writer.

00:06:11:16 - 00:06:29:06
Roger Courville
We wouldn't only teach you that, but we would teach the tool and the tactic after the principle of going, When might I want to italicize something? If I was thinking about being a better writer and then using the tool to to execute that in a particular way.

00:06:29:13 - 00:06:52:22
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, focusing on the technology is is counter productive and yet that's where most people go, right? So here's my question. If you were talking to somebody and you had one thing for the love of all that is all you learn. This.

00:06:52:22 - 00:07:16:10
Roger Courville
Well, I know you know where I'm going. And I appreciate the question, in part because I've answered that question on on more podcasts than I've been on every time I released a book or something that I can count and I say I lean in pause for a fact open, you're at a glance tools to which someone typically goes, Huh?

00:07:16:17 - 00:07:42:04
Roger Courville
What are my at a glance tools? And I say, Okay, here, here's this slightly different, lengthier explanation. The number one complaint people move online and present is I can't see the audience that I'm connecting with. Right? And I think then the default is then talking too much, talking over PowerPoint and as you already pointed out, committing the unpardonable sin of ignoring people with their hands up.

00:07:43:21 - 00:08:06:12
Roger Courville
But when we move on line, we're minus some of the feedback mechanisms that we might be used to from standing in front of rooms. Meaning I see people are snoozing, I see people. I see that Wayne has his hand up. I see somebody else, you know, glancing at their watch, whatever that might be. And I use those visual cues to then do what I do.

00:08:07:03 - 00:08:29:17
Roger Courville
Well, how do we do that online? Various tools have all kinds of platforms Zoom, WebEx, go to, etc., have all kinds of tools that are proxies that I think of, like the dashboard of your car, right? The default is, Oh, I want to see everybody on video, but that only works in two. You get ten videos and by the time you know, most of them cut off after 25.

00:08:29:22 - 00:08:52:07
Roger Courville
And if you're presenting the any group of people, you're not going to look at 25 different cameras anyway. So you're back to going, okay, what is the way that I make eye contact, virtual eye contact with my audience, and that is to learn to use the instruments on your dashboard, like looking at the dash of your car. You don't stare at the speedometer, you glance at the speedometer and get meaningful feedback.

00:08:52:12 - 00:09:20:20
Roger Courville
Because if you stare at it too long, you get distracted and bad things happen Open. You're at a glance. Tools, to me is the single easiest and most interactive way that you can do that. Forget the hands up, forget the polls, forget the audience built in attention meters. Open the chat box and when Wayne type something in, learn to glance at it and go, Oh, Wayne makes a good comment.

00:09:20:20 - 00:09:37:21
Roger Courville
And in fact, what you figure out is that if you want, it doesn't even have to be a question like Wayne asked a question. How much should I do on Tuesdays? Great. I'm going to answer Wayne's question. How much should I know you? I'm bopping along and Wayne says, Oh, you should also do that on Tuesdays. And I'm like, Oh, perfect.

00:09:37:21 - 00:10:11:03
Roger Courville
Wayne says, You should also do that on Tuesdays. And now I just brought Wayne into the into the conversation. And assuming it's not in a really two way medium like a Zoom meeting and you maybe you're more in a one way broadcast kind of medium, you still gave Wayne a voice. People realize that you're connecting with real people in real time, and it just transforms the experience on the other side, because the downside is that if you are nothing more than a glorified YouTube video, then why should I show up live?

00:10:11:03 - 00:10:19:21
Wayne Turmel
And, you know, as I've tried to explain to people, hands up everybody who's never fallen asleep in front of the television right.

00:10:19:21 - 00:10:24:03
Roger Courville
Exactly. Has a great voice.

00:10:24:03 - 00:10:45:15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I love what you say, that notion of getting that feedback, because that's what freaks us out, right, is we're speaking into the void and then we get in our own head because we're not getting the smiles and the nods and they're laughing at our silly jokes. Well, if I see somebody put up a smiley face laughing emoji, I know that they're there.

00:10:45:15 - 00:10:46:18
Wayne Turmel
I'm getting feedback.

00:10:46:20 - 00:11:16:13
Roger Courville
Right? Right. And you know, you can I mean, and that's you asked the one tip to where you start. Let me encourage someone listening to think that we can get really deep and advance. Let me give you one example. Frequently, if not most frequently, when you're presenting online, you're in a different audio environment, meaning you hear yourself differently, whether you've got a headset on or you're listening through your computer speakers.

00:11:16:20 - 00:11:38:12
Roger Courville
Even right where I'm right at right now, like in a in a guest room because I'm on the road and not in front of my regular microphone. It sounds different in terms of how I have my own biofeedback in my own head. It sounds different than my usual studio, but any of those sounds different than when you're standing on stage or in a room that's big enough to seat 50 or 100 people.

00:11:38:19 - 00:11:58:23
Roger Courville
Now, you might not think that's critical, but I've seen over and over that part of what creates apprehension is that something is different and there is something psychosocial is different about presenting in a different space. Maybe you're in a cubicle or you're in a small office or or you're listening on your earbuds or you know what I mean?

00:11:59:06 - 00:12:11:02
Roger Courville
So we think you can get really deep about the things to become conscious about, to master the environment. I mean, that's not where I'd start, but that's how literally how deep we can get.

00:12:11:02 - 00:12:35:02
Wayne Turmel
Sure. Well, there's a couple of things that you just said that I think are maybe news to some people, Right? Number one is you said very early on about making eye contact with your audience. And I think the number one mistake, you know, where I'm going with this that people make is they make eye contact with the picture of their audience right corner of the screen, which is not where their audience is.

00:12:35:02 - 00:12:50:11
Wayne Turmel
Eyes open, right? That little picture can't see their eyes are straight ahead looking into the camera. But that notion of making eye contact with the camera is literally not natural.

00:12:50:11 - 00:13:18:18
Roger Courville
Right. And another thing that's that is maybe too natural would be this. If you're standing in front of a room and you were had your back to the audience and you stared at your PowerPoint slides, let alone read them, people would think you sucked, right? And yet what what do we do when we move online? Now they're right in front of our face and we have more propensity to want to read things literally or use my PowerPoint as a teleprompter.

00:13:18:18 - 00:13:49:21
Roger Courville
And that's not natural, right? I mean, maybe it's almost too natural to just glance at my PowerPoint slides because they're right in front of my face. But that's not where and how you would make connection. Think more like a TV person. You want to make eye contact with the camera. Now, even great TV hosts don't always in fact, a lot of one of the trends in the last couple of decades relative to how TV used to be used to be a lot is not necessarily making 100% eye contact with the camera.

00:13:49:21 - 00:14:10:20
Roger Courville
Right. We know the teleprompter. Look at the teleprompter in that way. It looks like I'm always making eye contact with the camera. And you can do those kinds of things virtually. And there's a number of contraptions that will help you try to figure out a teleprompter while making eye contact with your with your computer camera. But most most of the time, authenticity wins.

00:14:12:03 - 00:14:31:22
Wayne Turmel
That is so important. I can't tell you how often I've said to people, you know, we do certain things when we're presenting online because we don't want to make a mistake. We don't engage the audience that ask questions because we want to get through all our material and, you know, we don't.

00:14:32:05 - 00:14:36:11
Roger Courville
That's an amateur mistake offline to all.

00:14:36:11 - 00:14:40:21
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely. But they are the group we used to.

00:14:40:21 - 00:14:45:16
Roger Courville
Call that trying to squeeze £50 of spuds into a £5 sack.

00:14:45:16 - 00:15:11:10
Wayne Turmel
Your grandpa, he's so much nicer than mine is. Yes, exactly what it is. But those kinds of things we do for our convenience as the presenter, like we read our slides because we don't want to forget anything. We don't want to read out a point. And I always tell people we, your audience, will forgive imperfection. They will not forgive having their time wasted.

00:15:12:21 - 00:15:15:14
Roger Courville
Oh, bingo.

00:15:15:14 - 00:15:16:16
Wayne Turmel
So what you call.

00:15:16:20 - 00:15:21:03
Roger Courville
Five extra bonus points for Turmel? Oh, my gosh. Yes, right.

00:15:21:17 - 00:15:55:09
Wayne Turmel
Lying squirrels, acorns. You know how that works. We could do this all day and have did. But here's the thing. It's the muscle memory involved in using tools. And I don't care what it is. Say, WebEx, whatever the tool aims. Yeah, it's really not that important. They all do 90% of the same thing, but there's a muscle memory involved and as a result, we tend to not use all of the tools because we don't know them.

00:15:55:09 - 00:16:19:14
Wayne Turmel
We're not used to them. We don't want to get thrown off. What are the three features? Because 80% of people use 20% of the features, right? Is kind of the rule. What are the three features of that most platforms have, right? They're kind of universal. That would make a huge difference to how people present.

00:16:19:14 - 00:16:42:08
Roger Courville
Let me put an exclamation point behind something you just said and it will do sketch and I already told you my first feature, so we'll get to the next couple, but exclamation point when when it's not. You used the term muscle memory, right? That autonomic thing. It's like swinging golf club when you're thinking about it. It sucks. So you just have to do it enough so that it's not.

00:16:42:08 - 00:17:07:16
Roger Courville
You don't have to think, Where do I find the mute button? And and actually, scientifically, when we experience some level of apprehension, right, our our adrenaline increases, our breathing gets more shallow and our voice doesn't sound as awesome and a bunch of other things and we. Oh, and we forget things that we thought we knew cold. So that your point about muscle memory is dead on?

00:17:07:16 - 00:17:09:09
Roger Courville
It's not hard. It's just.

00:17:09:09 - 00:17:11:08
Wayne Turmel
It only takes half a dozen times.

00:17:11:13 - 00:17:27:21
Roger Courville
Right? It's not hard. It's just different. You just got to do it a few times. Particularly if you're working with a great coach like Wayne Trammell Big, who's going to who's going to know what to walk you through and how to to to maximize the efficiency of those repetitions. So I mentioned the idea of chat just to open it up.

00:17:29:06 - 00:18:03:19
Roger Courville
The second one that I think is overlooked is almost not a feature. It's a it's a behavior which would be the ability or willingness to stop sharing your desktop. So even if you are just going to do a webinar and you're going to present PowerPoint and it's just going to roll every once in a while, if you stopped presenting PowerPoint, even if you weren't going to show anything else, you stop presenting PowerPoint because maybe you're going to take a moment just to check out the chat or something and answer a question.

00:18:05:11 - 00:18:35:21
Roger Courville
When you stop on every one of these platforms, if you stop sharing, something happens for the audience that moves their player around right there, where the location of the video reconfigures or whatever. So just the act of stopping sharing and restarting your sharing of terms that you push in your PowerPoint creates a psychological trigger on the other end of the on the other end, right?

00:18:35:21 - 00:19:01:07
Roger Courville
So and then I'll extend that to the ability to turn on or off anything. For instance, if you truly aren't going to take questions, turn off the raise hand feature as opposed to let waiting in the front row raise his hand and sit there for 30 minutes wondering if you actually saw him. Right. I know you've probably experienced what I have read presenting to a larger audience and somebody submits a question and and then they go, Hey, did you see my question?

00:19:01:22 - 00:19:29:18
Roger Courville
Because they don't realize they're sitting there with 800 other people, right? So the same would happen with turning on or off a raise hand feature or something like that. If there was a third feature that I might that I would say is critical, at least to the way that I do things, it's parallel to the chat box, which is simply the ability for you to see names and call on people by name.

00:19:29:18 - 00:19:30:09
Roger Courville
Now in most.

00:19:30:12 - 00:19:32:08
Wayne Turmel
Recipient lists is your friend.

00:19:32:16 - 00:19:55:19
Roger Courville
Right now most of the cases that's enough integrated with chatter questions so that you can go, Oh, Wayne makes a great comment. But whether it's the tool or the skill, something your first grade teacher knew that one of her best tactics was to call on Wayne by name as opposed to, Hey, you troubled kid in the back row.

00:19:55:19 - 00:20:16:21
Roger Courville
That's right. So and and if even if you're talking to 800 people, if I say, oh, Julie asks personally, I only use first names unless I, you know, it's cool to do something else. And personally, I also go, Pradeep, Pradeep, did I get your name right? I'm just not going to be shy. Did I get your name right?

00:20:16:21 - 00:20:35:01
Roger Courville
And sometimes you mispronounce it and they'll type the phonetics into the chat and you just made a friend because you asked them how their name was pronounced, but that to your point, participant list or the ability to call on a name is like using a name tag when you're sitting in front of somebody or in an in-person sense.

00:20:35:09 - 00:20:50:07
Roger Courville
And there is a tool plus skill that dramatically transforms attention. Because if I call on Julie or Pradeep, even if I didn't call out Wayne's name, Wayne knows that I'm connecting with real people in real time.

00:20:50:14 - 00:20:53:15
Wayne Turmel
And Wayne might be next, and so he'd better pay attention.

00:20:53:22 - 00:21:15:06
Roger Courville
Right? Oh, well, let's talk about that as a Q&A tactic. You know, maybe you get to get to end and you're doing Q&A at the end and you go all right, Julie, great question, Wayne. I see your question. Your next something accuser. Oh, Wayne, I'm next. You're right. So people are people are paying attention. So anyway, there's a thousand of those.

00:21:15:10 - 00:21:40:00
Wayne Turmel
I love, and I'm not going to try to add the 37 things that came your question. But the notion of changing the view is really important because people are a little like raccoons, color, light and motion gets our attention. So when something changes, even if I'm not really paying attention, all of a sudden I reconnect. And the same is true for audio.

00:21:40:06 - 00:21:57:02
Wayne Turmel
One of the reasons for taking questions as you go is any time there's a new speaker, our brains automatically reconnect and so I love this Roger. We could geek out. I mean, we had one more. Yeah. As long as we're.

00:21:57:02 - 00:22:29:16
Roger Courville
Talking about maybe unconventional ways to use tools. I love I love combining polls and chat when I ask questions. Polling gives you quantitative data, right? I know that 37% chose a and 27% chose B, but I love to use it like a like a Likert scale where the all of the above or open ended option is, okay, I give you A, B, C, and D, and then on E, I right other parentheses add yours to the chat and it gives you a chance to connect those long tail, right?

00:22:29:16 - 00:22:50:22
Roger Courville
I mean, if you're asking the question you know, 80% of the people are going to choose C but now somebody can give you their corner case piece and they type something in the chat and it gives you something a chance to respond going, Oh, that's an interesting that's an interesting answer, Kyle said. E And here's what he said is a way to combine the quantitative and the qualitative.

00:22:50:22 - 00:22:54:01
Roger Courville
And it's it's a it's a really powerful way to think about polling.

00:22:54:14 - 00:23:18:21
Wayne Turmel
Love it. We could both geek out on this. We have both literally written the book or written a book like this. And, you know, look up Roger Courville on Amazon. You will find all kinds of good stuff. You'll find what I've done in the field. Roger, thank you so much, man. I really appreciate your wisdom, your tips. This is really good stuff.

00:23:18:21 - 00:23:44:07
Wayne Turmel
For those of you listening, we will have in the show notes, Roger's LinkedIn and his website and virtual venues and all of that good stuff. You will find those at longdistanceworklife.com. That's where we have the show notes for each episode. You can reach out to Marisa and I any time Marisa Eikenberry is on LinkedIn.

00:23:44:07 - 00:24:13:08
Wayne Turmel
Marisa@KevinEikenberry.com. Wayne@KevinEikenberry.com. If you have not yet please feel free to pick up Kevin in my new book The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for everyone in Success. We are so glad you join us. We'll be back next week with the Marisa episode and thank you so much. Don't let the weasels get you down and we will talk to you soon.

00:24:13:08 - 00:24:34:01
Wayne Turmel
Thanks so much.

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