Remote Work Rants: Is Asynchronous Video Killing the Meeting Star? with Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry
Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

Remote Work Rants: Is Asynchronous Video Killing the Meeting Star?

Marisa and Wayne discuss pet peeves related to remote meetings. They address the issue of team members not turning on their cameras during meetings and the value of having cameras on. Wayne explains that while there are advantages to being on camera, it's important to consider the context and purpose of the meeting. For larger groups, the value of seeing everyone may be limited, but for smaller teams, having cameras on can enhance engagement and collaboration. They also discuss the responsibility of the audience to pay attention and the importance of being present during meetings.

The conversation then shifts to the topic of recording presentations and sending them out for asynchronous viewing. Wayne suggests that while this can be a useful alternative to meetings, it's important for individuals to take responsibility for engaging with the content and not simply ignore it. They also explore the idea of using asynchronous video as a form of communication, highlighting its potential benefits in terms of richness and accessibility.

Key Takeaways

1. Cameras on during meetings can enhance engagement and collaboration in smaller teams.
2. The responsibility of the audience is to pay attention and actively participate in meetings.
3. Asynchronous video can be a valuable form of communication, providing a richer experience than email or written messages.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:21 - 00:00:19:03
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. Hi, Wayne.

00:00:19:05 - 00:00:20:21
Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marisa. How are you?

00:00:20:22 - 00:00:22:05
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

00:00:22:07 - 00:00:27:15
Wayne Turmel
I am well, actually, this is I think this is going to be a fun conversation.

00:00:27:17 - 00:00:55:16
Marisa Eikenberry
It usually is when we talk about pet peeves. But that being said, we had some of you send in pet peeves about meeting specifically. And so we're still continuing to dive into those, including in this episode. So I'm going to start with one that we got from Facebook from Brianne and it says It's been three years since the pandemic and I would have better luck demanding that someone procure me a unicorn before getting every single team member on a call with their camera on.

00:00:55:18 - 00:01:10:22
Marisa Eikenberry
So I know that we've talked several times about if it's a town hall kind of situation. Not everybody needs their cameras on. But what about if it's a team of three or four people and you're wanting engagement? Like, what can we do to get cameras on? Should we be trying to get cameras on?

00:01:11:01 - 00:01:26:21
Wayne Turmel
Oh, man, this quest, it's so funny. Before the pandemic, we push and push And push what? Your camera on. Put your camera and get people to put their camera on. And then they did. During the pandemic, some begrudgingly, some willingly. And we were.

00:01:26:21 - 00:01:27:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Lonely.

00:01:27:07 - 00:01:48:01
Wayne Turmel
It's kind of weird because we're desperate for human companionship, and any pork in the storm is fine. But then it's kind of reverted. And I'm going to say there are two parts to this conversation, right? The first part is, are there advantages to being on camera? The answer is, of course there are.

00:01:48:05 - 00:01:49:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:01:49:02 - 00:02:24:23
Wayne Turmel
Right. And it's funny because most people like seeing the other party. They just don't like being on camera. Right now, it is true that the larger the group, the less value there is in seeing everybody, because we are working from home. It's also possibly true that depending on time zones and what's going on in the place that you live and work, that there may be distractions and things going on that don't work really well.

00:02:25:02 - 00:02:56:16
Wayne Turmel
You know, I just got back from the gym. You know, the kids are running around. It's lunchtime and I've got to eat. Nobody needs to see that. All of those things are the kind of excuses that we get. And you need to stop and say, Why don't I want to be on camera? Some of it is, as you know, if I'm trying to present information and out of the corner of my eye, I see four people all kind of answering emails and visibly checking notes.

00:02:56:21 - 00:03:30:11
Wayne Turmel
Well, there are two sides to that coin. The one coin, the one side is, yeah, it's this whole thing is mostly going to be me talking, and it doesn't add a lot of value because most people are going to be passively listening. So do I need to see that? The other side of that, of course, is if you can't be trusted to pay attention and focus when the camera's on, you, what makes you think I am going to trust that you are paying attention when I can't?

00:03:30:13 - 00:03:49:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. To your point, like I have heard about, I don't agree with this, but I have heard about people who, when it is, you know, a town hall type meeting and maybe it's something where they don't have to have cameras on or whatever. They're posting pictures on LinkedIn of, oh, look at me cooking dinner while I'm listening to this town hall or something like that feels weird to me.

00:03:49:09 - 00:03:52:12
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm sorry. And that might be an unpopular opinion.

00:03:52:14 - 00:04:23:05
Wayne Turmel
Well, it gets back to something we spoke about a week or two ago on this very podcast, which what is your responsibility when you are allowed to work from home? You are being asked to do certain things and certain things are inside your bailiwick. I have a kind of rule that if I wouldn't do it in the conference room with everybody there, why would I do it?

00:04:23:07 - 00:04:24:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00:04:24:07 - 00:04:47:14
Wayne Turmel
When I'm working from home, do I you know, if I'm in the conference room, do I check my phone more than I should? Sure. I do. But I'm also there and I'm, you know, at least paying some attention to the person who's speaking. If you are turning off your camera because you don't want to get busted doing something, why are you doing something you don't want to get busted for?

00:04:47:14 - 00:04:49:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Like, use your head.

00:04:49:12 - 00:05:04:04
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I mean, one quick. Oh, somebody sends a teams message and you respond real quick. Nobody cares. Nobody cares about that. What they care about is if you are very obvious, as, like, not paying any attention.

00:05:04:06 - 00:05:04:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:05:04:20 - 00:05:28:09
Wayne Turmel
So this becomes does the camera need to be on for all of this? Right. Is the question. Well, I think that again, where does it add value? Where it adds value is seeing people reading their body language. So on team meetings, for example. I'm a big fan of everybody has their camera on at the beginning, everybody says hello.

00:05:28:14 - 00:05:52:14
Wayne Turmel
Everybody greets everybody. And then as the meeting goes on, you know, if you need to eat, if you have something going on, right, then there's no need to be on camera because it's stressful being on camera for an hour and worrying about where do I put my hands and oh, look, I'm paying attention, but I need to look like I'm paying.

00:05:52:14 - 00:05:58:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Attention, right? Or like I really am writing notes about whatever this is, but I don't want to look like I'm not paying attention. Yeah.

00:05:58:17 - 00:06:25:03
Wayne Turmel
God forbid. I'm actually looking up and referring to something that we're talking about, right? I mean, you are a machine. When we are on meetings, if we just average the dual screens, everybody needs a Marisa anyway in their life. But, you know, if we're talking about something. And so when was that meeting that we had 30 seconds later up in the chat, Marisa will have the answer to that.

00:06:25:04 - 00:06:31:18
Wayne Turmel
She's quite wonderful about that. But if the camera was on her all the time, you see a lot of her looking off.

00:06:31:19 - 00:06:32:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, yeah.

00:06:32:06 - 00:06:33:00
Wayne Turmel
So I do it.

00:06:33:02 - 00:06:39:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Because, you know, I've got a screen here, but I have a screen here too, which is usually where I've got whatever I'm looking up.

00:06:39:06 - 00:07:02:11
Wayne Turmel
Right. But if I'm paranoid about whether or not whereas is paying attention, that could be sending the wrong message. Mm hmm. Some of this is what is the responsibility of the audience? The responsibility of the audience is to pay attention, to contribute to the work to do. You need to be on camera all the time. No, you don't.

00:07:02:13 - 00:07:12:08
Wayne Turmel
And if you constantly refuse to be on camera, if this becomes a thing at some point, why?

00:07:12:10 - 00:07:13:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:07:13:08 - 00:07:22:03
Wayne Turmel
Why don't you want to be on camera? Why don't you want to help your teammates connect with you? Well, I don't want to.

00:07:22:05 - 00:07:23:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Is not a good enough reason.

00:07:23:16 - 00:07:25:08
Wayne Turmel
It's not a great reason.

00:07:25:09 - 00:07:28:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Stop being a baby and turn camera on.

00:07:28:12 - 00:07:54:06
Wayne Turmel
Now, again, do you need to do it all the time? No. This should be something that is discussed and agreed. If you are doing a brainstorming meeting where it's really important that people see each other and make sure that we understand what the other person is saying. My rule generally is the bigger the audience, the less important it is that the passive audience members be on camera.

00:07:54:08 - 00:08:10:14
Wayne Turmel
The smaller the group. And this goes back to the richness of the communication, the smaller the group, the more active the discussion, the more we need to collaborate and cooperate, the more I want to see who I'm working with.

00:08:10:16 - 00:08:29:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. Well, and we talked about this off off this recording, but it was this idea of, you know, well, I don't want people looking at me. I don't want my boss to see me, even if it's on a one on one. And it was like, do you walk into a conference room with a bag on your head? Because if you don't, the what are we talking and.

00:08:29:11 - 00:08:42:05
Wayne Turmel
And it also is part of your responsibility as a worker. I mean, the most common thing is, well, I'm not really dressed to be on camera. You knew there was a meeting today. And if you help.

00:08:42:05 - 00:08:45:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Out to one. Okay. But like.

00:08:45:10 - 00:09:03:07
Wayne Turmel
If the boss says, I need to talk to you for a second and you say, well, I'm not really camera ready. And she says, I don't care. I just need to talk to you for 2 seconds. That's a different conversation. But if, you know, there is a meeting at 10:00 in the morning and you're still in your pajamas.

00:09:03:12 - 00:09:06:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Get a pajamas, you're going to be done.

00:09:06:08 - 00:09:08:01
Wayne Turmel
I'm going to get judgy.

00:09:08:03 - 00:09:09:10
Marisa Eikenberry
But do it.

00:09:09:12 - 00:09:29:22
Wayne Turmel
Particularly if there are people in the office who have had to shower and dress and commute and do all the rest of that stuff. And again, you only need to be dressed from the belly button up. How lazy are you that you can't put on a shirt with buttons when you know there's a meeting?

00:09:30:00 - 00:09:51:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and in the interest of time, I'm going to pivot a little bit to our next question, but it's related to what we're talking about. So Mike McBride from LinkedIn says, you know, it's not necessary to have a screen full of people who are clearly reading and responding to email while others are presenting information. Just record the presentation and ask for written feedback so we can all go back to working.

00:09:51:19 - 00:09:57:04
Marisa Eikenberry
So yeah, I mean, we've talked about this secret as before. Yeah. This actually video.

00:09:57:06 - 00:10:22:00
Wayne Turmel
When you told me that this question was coming, I actually got jazzed because it's a conversation that we haven't had on this podcast and is worthy of discussion. Mm hmm. So I'm going to kind of take this in a couple of parts. You know, a bunch of people are paying attention. The message obviously isn't that riveting. They're probably making announcement of some kind.

00:10:22:02 - 00:10:25:02
Wayne Turmel
Does that need to be a meeting, period?

00:10:25:04 - 00:10:26:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And that's a good question.

00:10:27:04 - 00:10:33:23
Wayne Turmel
And these are the same people, though, who say things like, I just survived another meeting. That could have been an email.

00:10:34:01 - 00:10:34:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:10:34:16 - 00:10:50:17
Wayne Turmel
And when we talk to the managers and say everybody says this could have been an email, why did you hold a meeting? And their answer, in all seriousness and with tears in their eyes, is because nobody reads the damn email.

00:10:50:19 - 00:11:14:18
Marisa Eikenberry
I was on a meeting once, thankfully not for this company, but I was on a meeting once where they set a Google document that they wanted everybody to read, and because they could not confirm that people were going to read the document, they had a meeting where they literally verbatim read the document. Now, granted, I want to take forks and poke my eyes out, but I understood why they did that.

00:11:14:20 - 00:11:47:06
Wayne Turmel
Right. So, again, do we need a meeting to make this particular announcement? Possibly not. But what was really interesting at the end of Mike's comment is, can you just record it, send it, and ask everybody to acknowledge that they've seen it? Well, we know that that's no guarantee that anybody has actually read or understood. And it does, though, raise the specter of we're really big on asynchronous communication.

00:11:47:08 - 00:12:00:17
Wayne Turmel
Right. Send chat messages. People don't need to respond to written things right away. You can communicate this. We can contribute to meetings. You can do things. What we haven't talked about is asynchronous video.

00:12:00:20 - 00:12:03:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Which has been such a big topic lately.

00:12:03:08 - 00:12:26:21
Wayne Turmel
Well, it's funny. It's a big topic now. I remember ten years ago people telling me that video email was going to be the wave of the future that you would push a button and the camera would come on and you could say, Hey, Marisa, I need you to do this, this and this today. You know, if you have any questions, give me a call.

00:12:26:22 - 00:12:53:02
Wayne Turmel
Click set. And it was clunky and it was huge and it never really caught on because it's time consuming, right, to do that kind of stuff. But now that we work in a hybrid world, now that the bandwidth and things aren't nearly the problem that they used to be, and the fact that everybody has cameras on their phone and you don't need a great setup to do that.

00:12:53:04 - 00:13:23:14
Wayne Turmel
Is there value in making a richer form of communication than another email? I know one organization where every morning the manager records a12 minute video. Hey, good morning. I'm out of the office today. Here's what you need to know. If you need to get to know me. You can reach me here. And by the way, don't forget, we have a meeting on Friday, and I need everybody to read that thing.

00:13:23:17 - 00:13:24:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, Fair.

00:13:24:14 - 00:13:51:21
Wayne Turmel
And it's very short, but she sends that out every morning. And, yeah, you can do read receipts and you can see if it's been clicked on. You can see who read it, and you can do all of that, you know, semi fascist documentation stuff. But if you develop a rhythm and if people demonstrate that they do in fact treat these messages seriously and do take the required action.

00:13:51:23 - 00:13:52:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:13:52:21 - 00:13:59:11
Wayne Turmel
It's not a bad idea. It's something to think about. Slack, for example, could not be easier.

00:13:59:13 - 00:14:10:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. They even add captions to the video or transcripts To the video. I don't remember when they did that, but like, there's another accessibility point that isn't there in a regular meeting usually.

00:14:10:09 - 00:14:40:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I mean, I'm not walking around with subtitles of clearing, of course, on my shirt, although Lord knows, I probably should. So we have these forms of communication. People are becoming more and more comfortable. Certainly generationally, people face time and do all kinds of things video wise. Tik Tok. So it's actually asynchronous video is something worth exploring, you know, even if it's a monday morning.

00:14:40:16 - 00:15:09:14
Wayne Turmel
Hi, it's Monday. Here we go, team. How are you? Right. Or if you want to send a quick message to your boss. Right. Hey, I've got a question. Can we do this? You know, it's just. But it needs to be short and it needs to be easily accessed, which means it needs to be a link in teams or Slack, something that no matter what their device on, they can click it and watch it.

00:15:09:16 - 00:15:13:19
Wayne Turmel
The more hassle it is, the less valuable it's going to be.

00:15:13:21 - 00:15:30:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, I was going to add on to this, too, because, I mean, you know, we were talking about video and this idea of like some people, like I don't want to be on camera or whatever, which we've already set our pieces on that. But I do know that some of these platforms also allow audio clips, too. So maybe whatever you're talking about, you don't need it to be a video.

00:15:30:21 - 00:15:43:07
Marisa Eikenberry
To your point, you know, Hey, I got a real quick thing for my boss, but it's way easier to explain it than it is to type it out here. I'll just send an audio clip really quick and then you don't even have to mess with the video part at all if you didn't want to.

00:15:43:10 - 00:16:08:02
Wayne Turmel
The problem with that, of course, is that we have an entire generation of these darn kids with their rock and roll and their Foo Fighters who don't listen to voice mail, which again, there is no excuse for that. It is a tool. It is an expectation of the job you don't like. It is not a legitimate excuse.

00:16:08:04 - 00:16:16:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay. But as the one of the kids with the rock and roll, if I'm not listening to voice mail, wouldn't I also not turn on a video too?

00:16:16:19 - 00:16:26:16
Wayne Turmel
Which is where Mike's point about accountable and he comes in. Right. If you don't want meetings that don't have to be meetings.

00:16:26:18 - 00:16:27:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:16:27:13 - 00:16:42:04
Wayne Turmel
If you say I'm not an idiot, just tell me what you want and I'll do it. Then you'd better do it. Because if you don't, we are going back to entire meetings where I read the memo to everybody.

00:16:42:06 - 00:17:05:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and I can't help but come back to this idea, too. And I mean, don't get me wrong, I love the idea of a here. I'll watch the video on my own time or listen to the audio clip in my own time. Like, I get all that. But regardless, the time is spent. Either way, if it's a 20 minute meeting or a 20 minute video that you watch asynchronously later, it's still 20 minutes that you have now spent.

00:17:05:07 - 00:17:26:17
Marisa Eikenberry
So it's like, is it better if it's already scheduled and you're, quote unquote, forced to do it rather than, okay, yeah, I'm going to try to make time in my schedule to watch this 20 minute video at some point, which I think sometimes might also be why some of these videos and audios and things like that don't get watched or listened to.

00:17:26:19 - 00:17:53:10
Wayne Turmel
They don't watch videos, but they don't read the email and they don't pay attention in the meeting. I mean, if you are blithely ignoring communication that's on you at some point, that's a performance management issue, right? If your boss is sending emails of your teammates or sending out emails and you start every meeting with, I didn't see that right.

00:17:53:14 - 00:17:55:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, how do you expect your job to.

00:17:55:19 - 00:18:04:11
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, that's a performance management issue. At that point you are not taking your responsibility. The rest of the world can only do so much.

00:18:04:17 - 00:18:06:23
Marisa Eikenberry
We can give you all the tools.

00:18:07:01 - 00:18:21:04
Wayne Turmel
We have all the tools at our disposal. There is no excuse for not getting a message anymore except time and attention. And that is on you. And that's end of the lesson.

00:18:21:06 - 00:18:25:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes, we could wax poetic about this for ever, but.

00:18:25:20 - 00:18:27:21
Wayne Turmel
Whatever it is that we're waxing.

00:18:27:23 - 00:18:47:01
Marisa Eikenberry
You know. Yes. So, anyway, I do want to thank Brianne and Mike for sending in their pet peeves for meetings. And we have a few more that we're going to go into. And I'm so excited to get to those as well. But, Wayne, thank you so much for talking to us about these two very important topics and listeners.

00:18:47:01 - 00:19:02:14
Marisa Eikenberry
I hope that you got a ton out of it and thank you for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit us at long distance work life dot com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show so you don't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like and review.

00:19:02:16 - 00:19:14:16
Marisa Eikenberry
This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our shownotes. And let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic or pet peeve for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

00:19:14:16 - 00:19:28:13
Wayne Turmel
And if you haven't figured it out by now, Marisa actually pays really close attention to that stuff. We are digging what we're hearing from you. So questions, pet peeves, vicious personal attacks. Bring it.

00:19:28:15 - 00:19:45:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. Follow me on all the social media. I yes, I will bring you all the stuff you 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 Long Distance Team Book Dotcom. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:19 Discussion about getting team members to turn on their cameras
02:25 Advantages and disadvantages of having cameras on during meetings
03:30 Importance of trust and attention during meetings
04:23 Responsibility of remote workers during meetings
05:28 Value of seeing body language and greetings at the beginning of meetings
06:25 Challenges of being on camera for long periods of time
07:02 Importance of active discussion and collaboration in smaller groups
07:25 Addressing concerns about appearance and being seen by others
08:45 Responsibility of workers to be prepared for meetings
09:03 Dressing appropriately for video meetings
09:30 Importance of considering if a meeting is necessary
09:51 Recording presentations and asking for written feedback
10:22Exploring asynchronous communication and video
12:00 The value of asynchronous video communication
13:23Using short daily videos for communication
14:10 Accessibility benefits of video transcripts
15:09 Exploring audio clips as an alternative to video
16:42 Accountability and the need for meetings
17:05 Considering the time spent on meetings and videos
17:26 Ignoring communication is a performance management issue.
18:07 No excuse for not getting a message anymore.
18:47 Closing

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!

 Order
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Benefits of Co-Working in Remote and Hybrid Workplaces with Taylor Harrington on Long-Distance Worklife Podcast with Wayne Turmel
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Benefits of Co-Working in Remote and Hybrid Workplaces with Taylor Harrington

Taylor Harrington, Head of Community at Groove, joins Wayne Turmel to discuss the concept of co-working and how it can be applied in both physical and online spaces. They explore the benefits of co-working, such as accountability, social connection, and the opportunity to meet new people. Taylor explains how Groove facilitates online co-working sessions, matching individuals with similar interests and goals. She emphasizes the importance of transparency and vulnerability in building meaningful connections. Taylor also highlights the value of physical co-working spaces in providing a change of environment and fostering community.

Key Takeaways

1. Co-working provides accountability, social connection, and a sense of community for remote workers.
2. Groove offers online co-working sessions, matching individuals with similar interests and goals.
3. Transparency and vulnerability are essential in building meaningful connections.
4. Physical co-working spaces provide a change of environment and opportunities for community building.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:23 - 00:00:36:11
Speaker 1
Hi, everybody. Welcome to another edition of the Long-Distance Worklife. This is the show where we try to make sense of remote hybrid working wherever the heck you are, and in trying to make sense of it and helping us not just get through it, but to really thrive under those circumstances. My name is Wayne Turmel. I am a master trainer here at Kevin Eikenberry Group.

00:00:36:13 - 00:01:01:14
Speaker 1
If you are a regular to this show, you know that we do two types of shows. We do episodes with myself and my co-host and producer, Marisa. This is not one of those. This gives me a chance to talk to really cool people about things that are happening that you might not know about. And that's certainly the case today, is something I don't know a lot about.

00:01:01:15 - 00:01:26:08
Speaker 1
And we're talking about co-working. Not that I don't have coworkers, but the idea of co-working as third locations or alternatives to being in the office. And in order to do that, this is me bringing in Taylor Harrington. Hi, Taylor. Who the heck are you? And what the heck does Groove do That brings us to this topic.

00:01:26:10 - 00:01:50:00
Speaker 2
Amazing. Thanks so much, Wayne, for having me and for Marisa recommending that I. Come on. I'm so excited to talk about co-working. I love this topic. Clearly, I have had a co-working journey myself, having had experiences being in offices and then moving remotely and trying to find that awkward space in between and what that means. Back in college, I was in an incredible co-working space that I'm sure we will talk about more.

00:01:50:01 - 00:02:15:11
Speaker 2
And so when I heard what Groove was building, which was really this idea of taking the best parts about a physical co-working space and bringing it online so that people from all over the world could be a part of it and could co work together. I was so excited. So we do 50 minute co-working sessions in the Groove app where folks get matched up in small groups with people like them, whether it's friends or people who are relevant doing similar things.

00:02:15:13 - 00:02:39:06
Speaker 2
It's mostly people who don't have teams and just want good vibes and high fives, as we like to say, from people who understand that they're on these maybe career paths. So me as a whole, I'm living in New York City. I love hosting gatherings. I'm a party host. I love creating this feeling of what I call the opposite of loneliness, which there's not really a good word for.

00:02:39:06 - 00:02:52:23
Speaker 2
So my my life mission is to help people feel the opposite of loneliness. And I do that through gatherings online in person. And you can usually find me wandering into tiny coffee shops or bookstores.

00:02:53:01 - 00:03:23:11
Speaker 1
All right. So using very small words, because I struggle with this, I will tell you the truth, when we talk about co-working, obviously our frame of reference is the office You work in the office, people are sitting at desks next to you. There are conversations sometimes these are wonderful, enlightening social activities and very productive work things, and sometimes they are what drives us to work remotely.

00:03:23:14 - 00:03:39:03
Speaker 1
But when you talk about co-working in an app, help me out here. What does that look like and why in heaven's name, if I'm just, you know, how is this different than being on a teams meeting which is already killing us?

00:03:39:05 - 00:04:05:13
Speaker 2
Yes, I hear that. So, like I said, a lot of people that are on Groove don't have teams, so we know how good it can feel to have those coworkers and camaraderie of doing things together. And even just the accountability or the goal setting that happens with coworkers. When you say, okay, this is what we need to get done this week, and having those regular scheduled meetings or goal planning sessions, whatever that looks like inside of group, the folks that are attracted to it are people that don't have that type of structure in their day.

00:04:05:14 - 00:04:25:20
Speaker 2
So there are people who are designing their days as, let's say, a freelancer and they're wondering, okay, what time do I really need to start working? Because they've created a flexible schedule where they work for themselves. So a typical groover might hop onto the app on their phone and click start a groove, right as they've got their coffee in hand, opening up their laptop for the first time.

00:04:25:20 - 00:04:42:09
Speaker 2
And it's really that push to get into the zone to do the thing. So they might hop into one session. Like I said, it's 50 minutes. They'll be joined by three other people and get to it. And so immediately they've got this burst of social connection that there are other people around them, which is typically quite a lonely day.

00:04:42:09 - 00:05:01:11
Speaker 2
If they're by themselves as a freelancer, they might work with clients and work with other people who help them out on specific projects, but they don't have that camaraderie of going into the office or those Zoom meetings that you might have on working on a on a remote team. So that's typically the target user of something like Groove.

00:05:01:11 - 00:05:24:06
Speaker 2
There are a lot of other apps or platforms out there that are made for remote co-working, for folks that are remote coworkers. So you might hop on with your full team and it's more like a focus session where you're coming to get stuff done in a series of a certain sprint. So it's like, okay, let's get together four of our coworkers and hit the button and all co work together.

00:05:24:08 - 00:05:53:23
Speaker 2
That's a little bit different because you're not there for the discovery of meeting other people, whereas on Groove, a lot of folks are there to meet other people. They're there to find who these, as a griever calls them, chosen coworkers are because they don't have those coworkers. So there's a discovery part to it, there's a friend's part to it, inviting people that maybe you met at a conference last year and you thought they were really cool, but you didn't really know A meaningful, meaningful way to connect with them regularly and grouping together allows you to do that.

00:05:54:01 - 00:05:59:16
Speaker 1
Okay, so there are several things that you've said here that give me great angst.

00:05:59:19 - 00:06:00:12
Speaker 2
That sometimes.

00:06:00:12 - 00:06:11:10
Speaker 1
I don't think they're desirable just because I can't, for the life of me, imagine doing it. Know when you're five and you see somebody on the playground that you've never seen and you go, Oh.

00:06:11:10 - 00:06:11:22
Speaker 2
I want to.

00:06:11:22 - 00:06:40:06
Speaker 1
Be friends, okay? And off you go. As you become an adult, that becomes harder and harder to do. Right? So I guess, you know, the idea of, hey, there's a bunch of us and we all run our own little one man shops and it would be kind of cool to hang. I get that part. Talk to me about just involving complete strangers in this craziness, that process is just so foreign to my being.

00:06:40:08 - 00:06:58:00
Speaker 2
Yeah, so it's funny because it's grown over the last two years, you know, And we started our community was super tiny and it was mostly friends of the team that were doing this. And then I remember when our first groover came from the wild on Google and was like, I found you and I want to start co-working on Groove.

00:06:58:00 - 00:07:18:16
Speaker 2
And we were like, Oh my gosh, someone found us. And so obviously that's happened again and again now. And I think that that stranger danger is something that people bring up a lot when they're brand new to groove and when they're hearing about it. However, a lot of the people that join Groove and really love it have had some sort of an online experience where they are meeting strangers.

00:07:18:16 - 00:07:37:17
Speaker 2
So that's one thing that tends to be a commonality, whether it's they are someone who have done online workshops, so they've taken some sort of an online class where they were paired up with people in a Zoom room and they know what that experience is like, or they've done some sort of other focus app. Like I've mentioned before, or some sort of co-working.

00:07:37:17 - 00:08:01:21
Speaker 2
Even if it was a friend that started a Zoom Room or a mastermind and they were in a room co-working together for a certain amount of hours. So a lot of people have those experiences with within that. I think that one of the best parts about Groove is that people have really cool, transparent, wacky bios. So if you go on groove and you click on someone's bio before you happen to agree with them, you get to understand a little bit about who that human is.

00:08:01:23 - 00:08:23:19
Speaker 2
I like to say they're very anti LinkedIn. It's not like, Hi, I'm Taylor and I run this company. It's like people saying, Hey, I have a green thumb in a garden I can't stop paying attention to or I love to roller skate in my free time, or I've got three kiddos running around and my dog's name is Pudding and like, you just learn these funny things about people through these bios.

00:08:23:19 - 00:08:37:00
Speaker 2
So that starts to eliminate that, that scared nature of it. When you've started to create a culture of this is how we show up here and people showing up with that vulnerability and that transparency about who they are as full humans, not just what they do for work.

00:08:37:02 - 00:08:58:07
Speaker 1
Great. And we will have links to Groove and all of that stuff and you can check it out for yourself if you're so inclined. We will have those on. Oh dear. On the website. Long distance work like Dot. We will be doing that. So we will have that for you. What are some of the acts you mentioned a couple of things.

00:08:58:07 - 00:09:13:03
Speaker 1
You mentioned sprints and what are some of the activities that if I knew to coworking, what are a couple of the things maybe that you can do to kind of get started and get a get comfortable with that?

00:09:13:06 - 00:09:38:02
Speaker 2
Yes. So I think that one of the basic things is just the accountability in public. So even as simple as starting to say, okay, maybe you follow some really cool people on social media. So whether it's your Instagram stories or your Twitter account or threads or whatever you're on these days, if you want to start sharing publicly, hey, these are some things on my to do with that I'm getting done today and then celebrating any wins from the week publicly.

00:09:38:04 - 00:10:01:12
Speaker 2
I think that starts to help you feel that that shared social connection of putting it out there, Hey, this is what I want to get done today. People responding, reacting to it. And then at the end of the day or the end of the week, closing that loop with these are some of the things that I did this week or celebrating it so that I would say it's like a very easy way to ease into it without having to get on a camera, but starting to feel the benefits of it.

00:10:01:14 - 00:10:30:11
Speaker 2
If you do want to start doing it with someone else, I would say that the easiest way is to just do it with a friend. I even recommend two groupers that are brand new to group. Hey, if you are not interested in meeting someone new for the first time, use that little invite link and just hop into a private group with a friend so that you can experience it together because it is quite easy to get the hang of so I think that there are other platforms like that where if you are interested in this or if you want to do it with a coworker, for example, and you're like, Hey, this thing sounds interesting.

00:10:30:11 - 00:10:58:04
Speaker 2
Coworking online. There are a bunch out there where you can do it with someone that you already know. And then as you get used to just the process of it, it makes it way easier to do it with more people that you haven't met yet or have some sort of a commonality with it. But I think that that commonality and making that that transparent is one thing that I'm really looking forward to doubling down on with Groove, whether it's the fact that we both hop into a groove and I can now see that you're a podcaster and it's like right in my face, like, Hey, this person's a podcaster.

00:10:58:06 - 00:11:19:16
Speaker 2
It just breaks the ice. I think about relationships, kind of like peeling back an onion where if we had this onion of trying to get to the core of why we should connect is to humans. It's hard to do that when you have no context on that person. So if I met you on the side of the street and we were both walking in different directions and I said, Hey, I'm Taylor, you would be like, Why is a stranger talking to me?

00:11:19:21 - 00:11:37:19
Speaker 2
Versus if I was walking and I had a tote bag that had one of your favorite podcasts on it, you might say, Hey, I also listen to that show. What's your favorite episode? And we suddenly are layered deeper into that onion. And so you can take that even further and say, What if we're both standing in an elevator going to our friend's birthday party?

00:11:37:19 - 00:11:53:00
Speaker 2
And so now it's like, not only do I have that tote bag, but we both know we're going to the same place. And so you keep peeling back that onion. And I think that there's a lot of opportunity in connection in this space of remote work where we can be more transparent about helping people get through those layers.

00:11:53:03 - 00:12:08:16
Speaker 2
They can connect on something more meaningful, quicker. So that's something I'm keeping top of mind as we build group. But I'm sure that other other spaces are like that too. Even teams that are working remotely wondering how they can peel back the layers for coworkers to connect over meaningful topics.

00:12:08:18 - 00:12:51:22
Speaker 1
Yeah, one of the things and again, you know, when you know this, when you're writing or you're creating a podcast, you kind of have an avatar of who that person is, right? Yeah. But there are people who don't fit that. And in the remote workspace, this is particularly true. I mean, we think about people in companies that are working apart from each other, but there are a ton probably listening to this solopreneur or people who are loosely affiliated with others and need that social interaction and they're just not being alone with your own brain, which if you're like me, is something nobody wants for any length of time.

00:12:52:00 - 00:13:25:04
Speaker 1
You said something really early on in this conversation that I did pay attention to, and that is that you were a fan of traditional co-working spaces. And I will be honest, when we talk about remote work, most people or a lot of people at least think it's binary. You're in the office or you're working from home, but there's places and of course, anybody who saw the series on We Space, you know, is running away with their fingers crossed, you know, with nightmares.

00:13:25:06 - 00:13:42:16
Speaker 1
But these things exist and they exist for a reason. Talk to me a little bit about the advantage of working in a shared workspace with complete strangers and how you maximize that.

00:13:42:18 - 00:14:00:04
Speaker 2
Yeah, well, first off, I'll just say that sometimes getting out of the house is just a healthy thing to begin with. To have a commute to work, even if it's 10 minutes that you're walking. I live in New York City, so I could walk in any direction and be at a physical co-working space within 10 minutes. And so I think that that's that's part of it.

00:14:00:04 - 00:14:21:14
Speaker 2
I think that there are many different kinds of co-working spaces physically, and a lot of them oftentimes, people say, are quite cold. They're not really social co-working as a term. Sounds quite social. You're co-working next to people and yet you get to this big office space and you're next to someone on their laptop with their headphones in and no one's talking to you.

00:14:21:14 - 00:14:26:18
Speaker 2
And so I think there are lots of spaces like that. And in order.

00:14:26:18 - 00:14:47:01
Speaker 1
To get that's kind of been my limited experience with this is, Oh good, So you know, I can stay at home and put my earphones in and, and work or I can go somewhere else with unfamiliar physical surroundings and put my earphones in and work. I'm failing to see the benefit here.

00:14:47:06 - 00:15:20:00
Speaker 2
Yeah. I think that there are other ones that I find are more curated. They're often more expensive too, that are focused on community and helping you get to know other people in that space. So back when I was in college, I had the privilege of being able to go to one of those. I went to Penn State, which is in the middle of nowhere, Pennsylvania State College, and I went to this space called the New Initiative, and it was all focused on local entrepreneurs, which automatically, once it's a curated space for a specific kind of person, it just attracts a certain level of connection.

00:15:20:01 - 00:15:44:08
Speaker 2
But the community events that happened in that space were so well done where they brought in guest speakers. They even had salad bowl Fridays where they had folks bring in different ingredients for their salad bowl. So you could bring in carrots, you bring in lettuce, you bring in dressing and co-create a salad together. So there were just like all different things that this space did that fostered connection and foster real conversations.

00:15:44:10 - 00:16:00:22
Speaker 2
I attended an event where we had to figure out how to explain our ground truth, who we are at our core, and those types of things really allow people to open up so that when you hop into the coworking space the next day, you're not sitting next to strangers. You're having a conversation with someone who you know something meaningful about.

00:16:01:00 - 00:16:20:12
Speaker 2
So I do think that's a rare experience in the physical coworking world. But I do know there are a lot of spaces in Brooklyn, for example, that are tinier and have that. So it exists. It's just harder to find. And I think that the more narrow the spaces about who it's for, the better it can deliver on that community experience.

00:16:20:14 - 00:16:30:17
Speaker 1
And we have a number of digital nomads who listen to this. And the nice thing is that there are these places literally everywhere.

00:16:30:17 - 00:16:47:22
Speaker 2
Yes, yes. And I think that even digital nomads have such incredible resources out there. I know so many nomads from from group that have traveled to all these different places and they keep in touch with those people as they go to the next place, even if that person isn't there, because it's such a connected web of, Oh, you're going to be in Portugal.

00:16:47:22 - 00:17:08:20
Speaker 2
Let me tell you about this cool digital man I met last year, who's in Portugal right now. So I do think that even setting up in a coffee shop with a small group of people is another alternative to co work with people and make that experience special. It doesn't have to be something that you pay for. You know, you're enjoying a cup of coffee and a piece of coffee cake and you're hanging out with some good people as you get stuff done.

00:17:08:20 - 00:17:29:23
Speaker 2
And maybe even bringing a specific project, like a writing project that might take a couple of hours. So that's another alternative to do some co-working in-person. Just get out of your physical space, because I do think that that is is really healthy. And just having that connection. I mean, there's so much great research out there about how human connection throughout the day can really change your mood, but also that other person's mood.

00:17:30:01 - 00:17:54:21
Speaker 1
That's terrific. Lots to think about. Taylor, thank you so much. I'm going to wrap up the show now, but thank you. And we will have links to Groove and Taylor's LinkedIn page and all of that good stuff on the long distance work life dot com page. In the meantime, thank you for joining us. I hope you enjoyed the conversation.

00:17:55:01 - 00:18:27:20
Speaker 1
We try to judge it up a little bit and change topics constantly. And this was something that honestly I don't know a lot about being the anti social curmudgeon that I tend to be, but I will not be an anti social curmudgeon next episode because Marissa will be back. And if you have questions, show ideas, topics you want discussed, especially pet peeves, Marissa is constantly collecting pet peeves about remote work and and flexible and hybrid work.

00:18:27:22 - 00:18:54:21
Speaker 1
Drop us a line. Our emails are Wayne at Kevin Eikenberry icon Marissa Kevin Eikenberry dot com. LinkedIn or the show's LinkedIn page is a great way to find us. And of course if you are thinking about how should we be working and maybe rethinking how your team functions, check out my Kevin Eikenberry's new book, Long-Distance Team Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success.

00:18:54:21 - 00:19:17:13
Speaker 1
You can learn more about that at Long distance team book. Dot com If you listen to podcasts, this is the obligatory please like and subscribe. That's how people find us and we hope that you are telling your friends about us. So there you go. That's it. My name is Wayne Turmel. Thank you so much for being with us.

00:19:17:14 - 00:19:24:14
Speaker 1
Come back next week for another fun and interesting episode and don't let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to the show and topic of co-working
01:26 Groove app provides online co-working sessions for freelancers
03:23 Difference between co-working on Groove and team-focused platforms
05:01 Groove attracts users who don't have coworkers and want connection
06:40 Overcoming the initial discomfort of co-working with strangers
08:58 Exploring activities and sprints to get started with co-working
09:38 Benefits of using a platform like Groove for remote work
10:01 Ease into remote work by sharing goals and achievements online
10:30 Start using Groove with a friend or coworker
11:19 Importance of commonality and transparency in remote work connections
12:08 The challenge of connecting with coworkers in remote teams
13:42 The advantage of working in a curated co-working space
14:47 The struggle of finding meaningful connections in physical co-working spaces
16:30 The availability of co-working spaces for digital nomads
17:08 Alternatives to physical co-working spaces, like coffee shops
18:27 Ways to connect and provide feedback to the podcast hosts

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Taylor Harrington, Head of Community at Groove

Name: Taylor Harrington

What She Does: Head of Community at Groove

About: Taylor Harrington is the Head of Community at Groove, an app that brings the concept of co-working online. She is passionate about creating connections and helping people feel a sense of community, both online and in-person. Taylor has experience in physical co-working spaces and understands the value they bring to remote workers.

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!

 Order
Read More
The Spider-Man Paradox: How Remote Workers Balance Power and Responsibility
Ask Wayne Anything, Hybrid Work, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

The Spider-Man Paradox: How Remote Workers Balance Power and Responsibility

Marisa and Wayne discuss the Spider-Man Paradox, which is the idea that with great power comes great responsibility. They explore the responsibility that remote workers have in managing their own schedules and demonstrating their trustworthiness to their employers. They emphasize the importance of proactive communication, setting expectations, and taking ownership of one's work. They also discuss the need for remote workers to take responsibility for their own development and seek out opportunities for growth.

Key Takeaways

1. Remote workers have the power to control their own schedules, but they also have the responsibility to demonstrate their trustworthiness.
2. Proactive communication and setting expectations are essential for building trust with employers.
3. Remote workers should take ownership of their work and be proactive in seeking out opportunities for growth and development.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:21 - 00:00:18:17
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. Hi, Wayne.

00:00:18:18 - 00:00:21:03
Wayne Turmel
Hi. That would be me. Yes.

00:00:21:05 - 00:00:37:17
Marisa Eikenberry
So today we're actually talking about something that you've talked about several times, including on this podcast, which is called the Spider-Man Paradox. And we're going to talk about what remote workers can learn from Spider-Man, basically. So let's dive right into what exactly is the Spider-Man paradox anyway?

00:00:37:19 - 00:01:05:13
Wayne Turmel
Well, the Spider-Man paradox on some level is an old man trying to sound relevant, but what it truly is, is there is this line in Spider-Man, canon and mythos and keeps showing up in all the origins stories. And that is, as you know, Uncle Ben is dying. And he says to Peter, with great power comes great responsibility. Right.

00:01:05:13 - 00:01:20:02
Wayne Turmel
And that is good advice anyway. But it generally gets directed to managers and leaders. And I am going to stir the pot a little bit, which is so unlike me.

00:01:20:06 - 00:01:22:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. We never do that on the show.

00:01:22:07 - 00:01:52:06
Wayne Turmel
But here's the deal. A lot of remote work advocates, a lot of remote work literature, talks about people's right to work from home, people's need to balance their lives and the power that we have to control our own schedules and to manage our time a little bit differently and get some of our life back. That's great power. But there is also responsibility associated with that.

00:01:52:09 - 00:01:56:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. It's not entitled things that we just have access to.

00:01:56:17 - 00:02:21:06
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, a lot of the remote work literature support stuff just sounds really entitled. And I have heard from several employers legitimately want to make this thing work, but they're like every time we make a request of the people who work from home, we're the bad guy.

00:02:21:08 - 00:02:24:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And sometimes it's warranted.

00:02:24:07 - 00:02:53:14
Wayne Turmel
And sometimes it's warranted. I will be the last person to constantly leap to the defense of employers and, you know, corporations and like that. And workers have a responsibility here. And I have found myself doing it of late. I've been working from home for the better part of 20 years, you know, as far as I know. Our boss, Kevin, has no worries about the way I work or whatever.

00:02:53:19 - 00:03:10:07
Wayne Turmel
But I remember one afternoon I was eating lunch and my phone pinged and Kevin was like, Where are you? And I'm sitting on the couch eating a sandwich watching sports center. And it's like, how dare he question whether I'm working right?

00:03:10:11 - 00:03:14:03
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm eating lunch right now. This is my time. But it's not that right.

00:03:14:04 - 00:03:34:19
Wayne Turmel
It's like I'm sitting at home. I got a ham sandwich stuffed in my face. I'm watching Sports Center, and it's like, how is this for a how is he supposed to know that? And B, if I said to him, I'm on the couch watching SportsCenter, what do you want? Wouldn't make me sound like a really involved, committed worker.

00:03:34:19 - 00:03:40:01
Wayne Turmel
Right? And by the way, lunch had run a little long. To be fair.

00:03:40:03 - 00:03:42:04
Marisa Eikenberry
That SportsCenter must have been really good that day.

00:03:42:06 - 00:03:51:15
Wayne Turmel
Yes, In general, I am very you know, I'm committed and I'm a good worker and all of that stuff. And sometimes not so much.

00:03:51:17 - 00:03:52:20
Marisa Eikenberry
We all have our days, right?

00:03:52:20 - 00:04:16:16
Wayne Turmel
We all have our days. So do we accept that with all of this newfound stuff that we didn't have until fairly recently? Mm hmm. Right. Usually when you went to work, you physically went to another location, you went to work, you stayed there for the required amount of time to get paid, and then you came home.

00:04:16:18 - 00:04:17:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:17:05 - 00:04:43:12
Wayne Turmel
Well, we now have considerably more power than we had, and there's a responsibility that goes with that. Now, it can get a little tricky because all some organizations are addressing that by and I'm putting this in imaginary air quotes by making them earn the right to work from home.

00:04:43:14 - 00:04:45:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. I've heard that a lot.

00:04:45:17 - 00:04:54:17
Wayne Turmel
Which I know what they mean when they say that. Have you demonstrated rated sufficient skills that you can be left on?

00:04:54:19 - 00:04:55:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Will we trust them?

00:04:56:01 - 00:05:09:08
Wayne Turmel
Can we trust you? And trust, as I have said so many times, is evidence based. Right. Scripture will tell you that faith is the evidence of things. Unseen trust actually requires.

00:05:09:10 - 00:05:09:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Some.

00:05:09:17 - 00:05:10:19
Wayne Turmel
Backup.

00:05:10:21 - 00:05:14:23
Marisa Eikenberry
And yeah, it's not just like inherently you've been hired, so therefore, we trust you.

00:05:15:00 - 00:05:37:14
Wayne Turmel
Right. It's, you know your job well enough. Right? If you have a question, can you get it answered? If you're in the office with the manager, the answer is usually pretty quick. Mm hmm. You know, we're not going to make you work from home and then not give you resources and help you get your work. Of course. So there are lots of ways that organizations are doing that, bringing people in at first.

00:05:37:16 - 00:06:00:10
Wayne Turmel
Gradually, you can work from home one day to day. If it looks like there's no problem in your performance is good and your production is fine, we extend the leash, right? So there's lots of ways to do that. But a lot of people who work from home get very defensive about this notion of What do you mean I am responsible?

00:06:00:14 - 00:06:06:17
Wayne Turmel
How dare they question my work ethic? How dare they question whether I'm working? You know.

00:06:06:18 - 00:06:30:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, there's a there's a bit on both sides. So I guess with this. So I know that one of the things that you've talked about, you know, talking about things like it's not all on the employer, like there's responsibility between need to be doing as well. So how can we demonstrate these responsibilities? How can we act on these responsibilities so that way, you know, our employers do trust us.

00:06:30:06 - 00:06:36:13
Marisa Eikenberry
So that, you know, as you've said in a previous episode and I'll I'll link it in the show notes that, like, we don't screw this up.

00:06:36:14 - 00:06:47:04
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I think a lot of it goes back to the three piece model that we've talked about before from a long distance team, and Marisa will have.

00:06:47:04 - 00:06:48:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Links.

00:06:48:11 - 00:07:07:13
Wayne Turmel
To all of that good stuff. But the three part P model says to be a great teammate, you need to be productive, you need to be proactive and you need to take a long term view and see the potential in the third piece. And proactivity is really a part of this. Does your boss know when to expect you there?

00:07:07:13 - 00:07:22:02
Wayne Turmel
You know, it's one thing to say, Oh, it's the middle of the day. I'm going to make a quick target running them out. It's another thing to actually say, I'm going to be out of the office for an hour. Yeah, it's a simple thing, but then they're not worried about it.

00:07:22:04 - 00:07:41:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, it's like you just talked about earlier with, you know, lunch and stuff like that. And it's like, well, how is Gavin supposed to know that you're eating lunch like, I know many of us on our team do it. I know I do it specifically, too, but like, I put up a slack statuses as I'm eating lunch and I put my do not disturb on for an hour and everybody knows that if they need me, I'll come back in an hour.

00:07:41:19 - 00:07:53:23
Wayne Turmel
And it does two things. First of all, oh, she's not there. So if I need something right away, I'll go bug somebody else. Right. But the other thing is, here's why I'm not here and here's when to expect me home.

00:07:54:01 - 00:07:54:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:07:54:12 - 00:08:07:13
Wayne Turmel
Home to the office. Dr. Freud. To the front desk, please. But it's those little things, right? Because you got to think. What is the other person? What does the other person know?

00:08:07:16 - 00:08:10:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. They go back to the. You're not there.

00:08:10:11 - 00:08:27:10
Wayne Turmel
It goes back to the Johari window. We talked about her. I know where I am. I know that I did yeoman service on that project before I left. So I don't feel bad about taking a break, but they don't. All they know is they have a question. And when it's not there, he's supposed to be there. What's he doing?

00:08:27:12 - 00:08:33:07
Wayne Turmel
Oh, he's not answering me. As opposed to, Oh, he's at lunch. I'll bug him right, later on.

00:08:33:09 - 00:08:35:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you're on a client call or whatever. It doesn't matter.

00:08:35:13 - 00:08:43:06
Wayne Turmel
You're taking you're taking responsibility for not creating problems that don't need to be there.

00:08:43:10 - 00:08:46:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you're. You're communicating what's going on? So then. Right.

00:08:46:17 - 00:08:58:18
Wayne Turmel
One of the things one of the things that we don't do often enough is check with our managers about the priorities of things, because it's not. Are you working? It's. What are you working on?

00:08:58:20 - 00:09:08:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Yeah. If you've been on a rabbit hole for something that was not a high priority, but this other project that needs to be done next week is been left drowning in a corner.

00:09:08:07 - 00:09:27:15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And I do this fairly frequently. You know, we've established on this show, Kevin and I are in different time zones, and so my day starts very early by West Coast standards, and every morning I send them a quick hello. Sometimes I send them a hello. Here's what I'm working on today.

00:09:27:16 - 00:09:28:10
Marisa Eikenberry
That way he knows.

00:09:28:10 - 00:09:44:07
Wayne Turmel
It's not a big deal. It's just he knows if I'm not terribly active on Slack, if I'm not, you know, if I've got my Do not disturb on whatever, he at least knows what's going on. And unless he has a problem with it, he trusts me to do what he needs to do.

00:09:44:09 - 00:10:06:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I know. I've had situations where, you know, I mean, pretty much my entire job is task based. I don't do a lot of meetings other than like this. And so there are times that I get overwhelmed with tasks. And when Kevin was my manager, although now Adrian is, I would be like, okay, here's my task list, but I don't know what the bigger picture is and how these tasks relate.

00:10:06:20 - 00:10:14:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Can you help me decide what the priority of this is? Because right now I'm looking at the list and going, all of it needs done and I don't know where to start.

00:10:14:15 - 00:10:38:13
Wayne Turmel
Well, there's a perfect example, though. You have said, help me with this. I have given you let's say I'm your manager. I have given you guidance on this. You obviously know what needs to be done. I have given you the guidance. You acknowledge that? Silly me. I'm going to assume that when we ring off, you are actually going to work on those things, right?

00:10:38:15 - 00:10:47:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and, you know, taking the responsibility of, hey, I know this needs done, but I need help like asking for help is not something that we do very often either.

00:10:47:10 - 00:10:55:22
Wayne Turmel
Well, and that's a problem. That's part of the proactivity thing, right? Is we get really caught in the headlights sometimes.

00:10:56:00 - 00:10:56:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:10:57:00 - 00:11:11:13
Wayne Turmel
And we don't want to look like we don't know what we're doing. We don't want to appear helpless and stupid. We think somehow we'll just magically figure it out until it's too late. Now it's a problem.

00:11:11:14 - 00:11:20:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. We're so afraid of seeming like we're incompetent or we don't know how or how to do our jobs that later we look like we're incompetent. Don't know how to do our jobs.

00:11:20:17 - 00:11:45:20
Wayne Turmel
Now, some of this is if you are proactive about communicating, you know, like I say, Kevin and I talk by chat at least once a day. Some days that's all it is. But we do it every day. And because I know where he is, he publishes his schedule and lets people know. And we're very good about letting everybody know where we are and what's going on.

00:11:46:00 - 00:12:12:15
Wayne Turmel
It's fairly easy to be proactive. I know when he's there. I know that he's, you know, he's in the office today, so if I have a question, I can probably get him sharing schedules, letting people know who's where. And especially when you're in a hybrid situation where some days you're in the office, some days you're not. Some days those days are scheduled, some days it's, you know, left up to the gods.

00:12:12:16 - 00:12:13:17
Wayne Turmel
Right.

00:12:13:19 - 00:12:32:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. But I mean, to the to your point, so, you know, I'm a hybrid employee. I think at this point, I'm the only hybrid employee that our company has. Just because I'm in Indianapolis. And so, you know, most of the team knows I'm in the office Tuesday and Thursday. Sometimes I'm not in on a Tuesday or Thursday because Kevin's traveling or whatever.

00:12:32:22 - 00:12:55:11
Marisa Eikenberry
And so I know sometimes I'll get a message. Are you in the RH today or as we referring to you, remarkable house. And you know, sometimes the answer is yes, because they need something, you know, that they can only be found in remarkable house. And I'm right there to be able to answer it. And so while I don't publish that necessary, I do have on my Google calendar, if somebody looked, they would be able to know.

00:12:55:13 - 00:13:09:04
Marisa Eikenberry
But but like I don't change my slack status to say I'm in the office today or not because it's typical that if it's a Tuesday or Thursday, I'm probably there and maybe I should. But also, as we're talking, I should probably communicate that more than I usually do.

00:13:09:07 - 00:13:36:19
Wayne Turmel
But all teams develop a rhythm. But so to get back to Spiderman, I mean, the big thing is what is your responsibility as the employee? Right. It's no great mystery that the more engaged you are and the more you like your coworkers and the more you like your work, the more of that you tend to do, right? You tend to own it When here's what I would say.

00:13:36:22 - 00:13:54:04
Wayne Turmel
Going to dig this too much, but that's okay if you are being called out before you get your hackles up. As with any feedback, is it valid? Right. Right. Are you in fact, you know, my boss doesn't trust me. He says as he's driving to Starbucks.

00:13:54:06 - 00:13:55:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Know thyself is.

00:13:55:14 - 00:13:59:10
Wayne Turmel
Going. Right. How dare he not think I'm working?

00:13:59:12 - 00:14:04:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Have I given them reason to believe that I am not working? Oh, well. Okay.

00:14:04:12 - 00:14:18:19
Wayne Turmel
And. And what has to happen at that point is the coaching conversation. And this needs to come from both the manager and the employee is. What do you need to say?

00:14:18:21 - 00:14:19:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:14:19:23 - 00:14:30:05
Wayne Turmel
What are you seeing that is creating this lack of trust? And what do you need to see? What would establish that trust and make you comfortable?

00:14:30:07 - 00:14:32:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, we're not mind readers.

00:14:32:17 - 00:15:02:01
Wayne Turmel
And it may be as simple as use your status updates and keep people apprized. It might be as simple as you know, if you're going to do something out of the or if you go spend your day doing something out of the ordinary, you need to be heads down over a project or whatever. Send up a flare, let the team know, let your manager know so that there isn't all this whitespace that gets filled up with paranoia and not knowing.

00:15:02:03 - 00:15:23:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, so, you know, we just talked about the responsibilities of remote workers and how it's not all on the employer, but like one of the responsibilities as remote workers, as workers in general is our own development. So now that you know, you're not in the office anymore, so it's not quite as easy as, okay, I'm the boss, I'm sending you to training.

00:15:23:11 - 00:15:28:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Like how can remote workers improve the development on their own? Like what are some. Yeah, they can do.

00:15:28:21 - 00:15:47:01
Wayne Turmel
Well, and that gets to the third P in the model. The potential is if you want to get better at your job, if you want a better job, if you want a career track, you have always owned that. Ultimately that's always been on you.

00:15:47:03 - 00:15:47:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:15:47:22 - 00:16:16:05
Wayne Turmel
And it's been easier to do when everybody is in the office and everybody goes to the same training together. And and there's this constant visibility and these little side conversations and things that support those behaviors. You don't have those, right? So when they send out notifications, hey, there's this class coming up, it's really easy to delete it and go back to work right?

00:16:16:09 - 00:16:51:21
Wayne Turmel
Right. Is this something I need to do? Is this something I could benefit from? Have I taken any classes this year? Because if not, whether I think I need them or not. And that's a question you really should be examining, whether I think I need it or not. What message does it send? Yeah, I am not working visibly, noticeably working on things that are important to the leader, to the organization, to the perception of me as an engaged, committed employee.

00:16:51:21 - 00:16:56:22
Wayne Turmel
I have the responsibility to look like I care.

00:16:57:00 - 00:17:19:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and back to your proactivity point. Like not only is it, you know, hey, this class is available, you know, should I take it kind of thing. But you can also find your own courses, trainings, webinars, whatever. And you know, you may tell your manager, Hey, I just found out about this webinar on X, Y, Z. You know, I'm going to attend that on Friday and I will let you know what I learn.

00:17:19:05 - 00:17:39:13
Wayne Turmel
And by the way, a great thing to do is to share that with your teammates. If your group has a Slack or a microsoft teams channel on cool stuff like family or learning stuff, whatever you want to call that, right? Some people call it the so.

00:17:39:14 - 00:17:42:02
Marisa Eikenberry
I think we call ours continuous learning.

00:17:42:04 - 00:17:57:19
Wayne Turmel
Well, that sounds appropriately consultant ish, right? But we share that with each other. And hey, I'm going to be at this class, I'm going to be on this webinar. So not only don't come to me until it's over.

00:17:57:19 - 00:17:58:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:17:58:14 - 00:18:32:01
Wayne Turmel
Right. But also if you want to know about this, I'll share the slides. I'll give you the recording link, I'll do whatever is the appropriate thing to do. So to wrap this up, the Spider-Man paradox essentially is this thing about with great power comes great responsibility. And yes, as leaders, we have a great responsibility and as remote workers, we need to own more than we often do.

00:18:32:01 - 00:18:34:21
Wayne Turmel
If we're going to make this a success.

00:18:35:00 - 00:18:55:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. Wayne, thank you so much for talking to us about this. I'm actually going to link a video in our Shownotes listeners about Wayne talking about this quite a while ago about lessons from Spider-Man for remote workers. There's a couple of things that we didn't get to cover today, so hopefully that'll fill in some extra gaps. But listeners, thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for notes, transcripts and other resources.

00:18:55:12 - 00:19:15:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Make sure to visit long distance work life dot com if you haven't yet subscribed to the show so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, 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 even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

00:19:15:15 - 00:19:28:16
Marisa Eikenberry
We'd love to hear from you. And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams or 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.


Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:37 Explanation of the Spider-Man Paradox
00:02:21 Remote workers getting defensive about responsibility
00:03:10 Demonstrating responsibility as remote workers
00:05:09 Trust is evidence-based
00:06:00 Three P model
00:07:07 Being proactive in communication with boss
00:07:41 Using Slack statuses to communicate availability
00:08:07 Importance of considering what others know
00:08:27 Misunderstandings when communication is lacking
00:08:27 Proactive communication and taking responsibility for creating problems
00:08:46 Checking with managers about priorities of tasks
00:09:27 Communicating daily tasks and work progress to managers
00:10:06 Asking for help and guidance when overwhelmed with tasks
00:10:38 Fear of looking incompetent leads to inaction and problems
00:11:46 Establishing a rhythm and clear communication within teams
00:12:12 Hybrid work situations and the need for schedule transparency
00:13:09 Need for better communication regarding office presence
00:14:04 Reflecting on one's own actions and trustworthiness
00:15:23 Taking ownership of personal development and career growth
00:16:57 Finding and sharing your own courses and trainings
00:17:19 Sharing learning opportunities with teammates
00:17:39 Closing

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!

 Order
Read More
How Tectonic Forces are Reshaping the Future of Work with Phil Simon on Long-Distance Worklife Podcast with Wayne Turmel
Hybrid Work, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Technology

How Tectonic Forces Are Reshaping the Future of Work with Phil Simon

Wayne Turmel interviews Phil Simon about the trends that are reshaping the workplace, particularly in the context of remote and hybrid work. They discuss the dispersed workplace, employee empowerment, and the need for new metrics to measure productivity. Phil emphasizes the importance of acknowledging the shift towards remote work and the need for organizations to adapt to this new reality. He also highlights the role of employee engagement and the changing contract between employers and employees.

Key Takeaways

1. The dispersed workplace is here to stay, and organizations need to embrace the opportunities it presents.
2. Employee empowerment is crucial for attracting and retaining talent in a remote and hybrid work environment.
3. Traditional metrics for measuring productivity may not be effective in a remote work setting.
4. Companies should create a work environment that employees want to engage with, rather than forcing them to come to the office.
5. The contract between employers and employees is changing, and organizations need to adapt to the new expectations of workers.

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:09 - 00:00:35:11
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the long distance worklife the podcast where we try to help people thrive and survive in the crazy changing, never quite the same world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. I'm with Kevin Eikenberry Group. This is a Marisa-less episode today. She will be with us next week. But I am really lucky.

00:00:35:13 - 00:01:02:06
Wayne Turmel
I get to talk to really smart people on this show. And one of them is my longtime friend and colleague, Phil Simon. And we are going to take a very high level look at some trends that are going to dictate whether exactly or generally where especially remote and hybrid work is going. And there's nobody that I would rather have this conversation with.

00:01:02:06 - 00:01:16:01
Wayne Turmel
So, Phil Simon, real quick, buddy, introduce yourself and then we're going to get down to the nine. The tectonic forces reshape in the workplace.

00:01:16:02 - 00:01:26:01
Phil Simon
Anyway, thanks for having me on. And let me just say that of all my podcasts, I think this is the first one in which the word chrysalis has been used well.

00:01:26:03 - 00:01:43:11
Wayne Turmel
And I think people tolerate me and like her is kind of out this year. So they tune in for Marissa and then they tune in for the people I talk to, and I am the necessary right way to that happening.

00:01:43:13 - 00:01:57:12
Phil Simon
I set the bar low. But anyway, thanks for having me on. My name's Phil Simon. I've written a bunch of books. The last four have been about the future of work and I write and speak and consult companies about how to navigate the chaos.

00:01:57:14 - 00:02:22:14
Wayne Turmel
And this book in particular, I like it. And you say, right on the cover of the book, this is not a tactical book. If you're looking for, you know, do this, don't do this, probably not the thing. But if like me, you spend a lot of time trying to figure out where is this going and what's impacting it and how the hell did that happen, I think this is an excellent book.

00:02:22:14 - 00:02:51:04
Wayne Turmel
And you outlined nine things that you think are kind of driving the workplace. And some of them are things like blockchain and generative A.I. and immersive technologies. But I want to focus on a few that are specific to this show and the people who listen. And I think I want to start with the dispersed workplace and what that really means.

00:02:51:04 - 00:03:13:17
Wayne Turmel
I know in the book you kind of said, look, the battles over people are working remotely, get over it. But what does that actually mean to organizations that are have been functioning in the before times and are trying to function now? What what what's the big aha. There?

00:03:13:19 - 00:03:36:09
Phil Simon
Well, I don't know if there's a single big aha moment, but as I write in chapter ten of the book, basically distilling some of the lessons from the nine into a number of strategies, pretending that COVID didn't happen and that people are going to gleefully return to the office five days a week is insane. And you could look at that as a negative because sometimes it can be difficult to do certain things remotely.

00:03:36:09 - 00:04:03:03
Phil Simon
You and I both know that if you're going to write all day, I don't need to be in office to do that right. If I'm going to code, if I'm going to do graphic design, But if I'm doing anything collaborative, you can do things sharing screens and design with Figment and those sorts of things. But, you know, for a collaborative session to receive a performance review, to brainstorm, to get to know your colleagues, you want to do that in person.

00:04:03:05 - 00:04:25:09
Phil Simon
So one of the consequences of that way in, as you know, is that if you only have employees coming in on a hybrid basis, that A, you may not need an entire office to yourself. So you might just want part of an office and B, you can actually hire from a larger talent pool if you're in San Francisco and you say, no, all of our coders have to be local.

00:04:25:13 - 00:04:45:05
Phil Simon
Well, good luck with that, because there are any number of tech companies, and as I write in the book, the head of machine learning at Apple, I think it was in March of last year, didn't take too kindly to Tim Cook's mandate that everyone return, at least on a hybrid basis. So he promptly quit. And I think by the end of the day, Google hired him.

00:04:45:07 - 00:05:06:01
Phil Simon
So that's a challenge. But if you look at it as an opportunity, well, now we aren't restricted to San Francisco, so it might be cheaper for us to pay someone who lives in Iowa a salary commensurate with other people in Des Moines and fly that person out once a month and still come out ahead, particularly if you then factor in lower real estate costs, even though the market has a bounce back yet.

00:05:06:01 - 00:05:25:18
Phil Simon
So all of these forces are related. But the most direct answer to your question, Wayne, is that it is silly to pretend that this hasn't happened. If COVID had been two or three weeks, it's a snow day. It's been two or three years of working remotely. The data is in. We have been productive. No, you don't want to hire people who will never come into the office.

00:05:25:20 - 00:05:37:04
Phil Simon
But if you think that you're going to find capable people who long term say, sure, sign me up for an hour or half commute each way, like it's 2018, ain't going to happen.

00:05:37:06 - 00:06:12:03
Wayne Turmel
What do you think this means to the individual worker? I mean, part of what the office provided, I think about new new hires and interns and people just out of school who are learning what it means to go to work right. What do you think this means organizations are going to have to do to help people prepare to work here, here being whatever that company is?

00:06:12:05 - 00:06:31:07
Phil Simon
Lots of things. First, and I think you recently wrote a post about this, about proximity bias that's alive and well. I mean, they've done studies controlling for performance. People who go into the office tend to be promoted and just thought of as harder working than people who are remote. Even though that may not be true. That's a legitimate concern.

00:06:31:07 - 00:06:49:08
Phil Simon
And I don't see it going away soon because it just taps into psychological biases. You could be cranking away at home. I don't see it out of sight, out of mind. But you're in the office till six and you take a couple smoke breaks and a two hour lunch. And boy, Wayne's a really good worker, but I think it's imperative for companies to find people who are willing to come to the office.

00:06:49:08 - 00:07:05:03
Phil Simon
I'm not saying that you have to be there a certain number of days per week because you can argue that that's arbitrary. But I think it's equally insane for companies to say you have to be in the office to work as it is for employees, say, I'm never coming to the office. So to me, that's an interview question, right?

00:07:05:03 - 00:07:26:01
Phil Simon
And then test people, you know, if they're not willing to come in, maybe it's time to cut the cord with them, because I agree with you, there is something to be said for that. And if I were 30 years younger, I would schlep into an office even when I didn't have to, to build that social currency, to establish reactions to relationships with folks, to collide with folks.

00:07:26:01 - 00:07:47:20
Phil Simon
Right. To have that random conversation about the bear in the hallway. And now, Oh, yeah, when you see the bear last night, I believe strongly love to get your thoughts on it, that those types of social ties matter. And if my manager likes me and my colleagues treat me well, maybe I'm less likely to leave for a 5% raise without having to move because I can now work anywhere.

00:07:47:22 - 00:08:21:09
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think that that's true. I also you know, I was talking to somebody about people returning to the office and she was bemoaning the fact that her people have basically gone feral and they don't know how to you know, they don't know how to act in an office setting anymore. And I think for young workers who've never had that experience, and if we're going to hire people from different backgrounds and people whose daddy didn't work at IBM, right.

00:08:21:11 - 00:08:47:04
Wayne Turmel
So it's kind of certain behaviors and certain tacit knowledge has been passed on. We have to create what it's like to work here and we have to teach people boundaries. And I know that it can be done with less physical proximity. But I think depending on where you are in your career, the demand for flexibility is going to be different.

00:08:47:06 - 00:09:12:22
Phil Simon
Oh, 100%. I mean, you could argue that the pandemic was ultimately a net positive for working mothers because to work from home and to not have to pay in some cases 20 $500 a month in childcare, and it should be a more present parent is beneficial. I'd also argue that companies there is a certain onus on employees. I agree with you there, but I believe that companies have to make the work a destination.

00:09:13:02 - 00:09:47:00
Phil Simon
Don't make me come in because I have to make me come in because I want you researching the book. I found many examples of companies that have completely rethought the office. My favorite example is Cisco. In the Manhattan office pre-pandemic 70% of the workspace Wain was allocated to individual workstation cubicles, desks, whatever they inverted that they spent a ton of money making it 30% individual workstations because they understand that if you're going to be coding or doing individual work all day, we don't want you there, right?

00:09:47:02 - 00:10:11:16
Phil Simon
It's actually better. It's a more flexible, collaborative environment so we can demonize employees all we want. And there certainly are many examples of slackers and quiet quitting. But if I were running any company of consequence, I would absolutely make it a cool place to be or people would want to hang out. And even though that mandate might be two days a week, people come in three or four because it actually is a better environment.

00:10:11:17 - 00:10:38:21
Wayne Turmel
Well, and that ties to employee engagement. One of the things that this show is very big on is that engagement isn't something companies can do. They can create an environment that people want to engage with. But engagement comes from inside the individual person, right? You choose. I can get down on one knee and give you a ring, but you're not engaged until you say yes.

00:10:38:23 - 00:11:00:03
Phil Simon
So I think we're now at my my prediction for laughing twice with your questions. But yeah, I mean, we could talk about nature versus nurture all day long. If I had to give a pithy 140 character answer, I'd just say do the opposite of what Musk is doing with Twitter and you'll probably be in a good spot.

00:11:00:05 - 00:11:11:04
Wayne Turmel
Safe enough. But this gets to one of your nine things, which is employee empowerment. Tell me what you mean by that.

00:11:11:06 - 00:11:35:22
Phil Simon
Yeah, as I've said before, when I think it's silly to believe that employees will return to their relatively docile states and forget what I think. Union approval ratings, I believe, are at 72%. Last time I checked. That's the highest rate in something like 40 or 50 years. Amazon famously is facing a number of union votes, and I think a few of them have been successful, even employee friendly companies.

00:11:35:22 - 00:12:10:12
Phil Simon
In the book, I write about Kickstarter and Trader Joe's have had to deal with unions, and I start off the book with the example of Google and how employees and contractors there basically staged a walkout over what happened with Andy Rubin from Android Frame fame and some sexual impropriety charges with the whole MeToo movement. It was remarkable to me watching that whole thing play out back in 2018, because Google employees aren't steelworker employees in the minds of Pennsylvania dying on the job or facing lung disease.

00:12:10:14 - 00:12:33:23
Phil Simon
They get free massages and dry cleaning and food, and here they are. So I think, again, all of these forces are related. And if you take for granted the fact that we do have a more dispersed workplace than a natural extension of that is I don't want to commute an hour each way. Prior to the pandemic, the average American commute was 37 minutes.

00:12:33:23 - 00:13:00:15
Phil Simon
I get that back twice per week. That's how is my math 168 minutes. That's close to 3 hours that I could spend walking my dog or watching TV shows or spending time with my family or whatever. So I. I couldn't separate the two. That's why they go in that particular order. But we've seen this with employees, this whole notion of bringing your whole self to work and maybe the pandemic contributed to that.

00:13:00:17 - 00:13:23:21
Phil Simon
If we saw you at home and you had a dog or a cat or a Breaking Bad poster in the background like I do, you got to know people a bit. And employees, right or wrong, started to develop this expectation. And without getting all political, we see how say would Salesforce, after Roe v Wade got overturned, the company more or less said, We will work with you to find alternatives.

00:13:23:23 - 00:13:55:22
Phil Simon
That to me, Wayne was unfathomable. Ten years ago. So progressive employers are responding to this because they realize it's just good business. That doesn't mean that you can placate employees as I said before, I think it's completely reasonable to expect people to come to the office once in a while. But I just don't think, particularly in this country, if you look at our labor laws compared to your home country, Canada, our countries in Europe that are much more employee friendly, I think it's going to be incredibly difficult to attract employees if you just say, we're giving you a paycheck now, shut up and do as you're told.

00:13:56:00 - 00:14:18:00
Wayne Turmel
Well, and there is a three beverage conversation to be had about the changing contract in the workplace. Right. This notion that for years the lip service has always been it's supply and demand. And when demand is up, you know, one side has leverage over the other. But it's been 60 years since Labor actually had any leverage.

00:14:18:02 - 00:14:39:06
Phil Simon
Yeah, it says it's funny. My masters is an industrial labor relations. I could bore you for more than three beverages on this topic, but I, I do think that a shift has taken place and that to me it's not a binary. So the pendulum will maybe swing back and forth a little bit, but I do think that employees in general and particularly talented folks will have no shortage of alternatives.

00:14:39:06 - 00:14:56:09
Phil Simon
And for you, if it's a deal breaker to only go in the office once or twice a week, you'll be able to find jobs like that from the previous book. Or maybe it was two books ago, I forget. But there was a story of a company that recruited a guy and he was thinking about the offer accepted on a Friday.

00:14:56:09 - 00:15:22:03
Phil Simon
But on Monday morning he emailed the recruiter and said, I'm sorry, I can't do this. Okay. Why you use Microsoft teams? I'm a Slack guy. To me, that is just a particular data point. But the very idea and I'm a big Slack fan or Slack for Dummies, I use it almost every day. The fact that you could say basically I like Miller Lite, not Bud Light, therefore I'm not going to watch that team no matter how much I like them.

00:15:22:04 - 00:15:37:22
Phil Simon
Does signal that the pendulum, I believe, has swung to employees, at least for the time being. And if you take a look at some of the other forces in the book, I just I'm not saying it's going to stick at 80% or 90%, but I don't think it's going to shift completely to the other way any time soon.

00:15:38:00 - 00:15:43:03
Phil Simon
But maybe generally I will prove me wrong.

00:15:43:05 - 00:16:10:16
Wayne Turmel
There are about five rabbit holes in that sense that I desperately want to go down and I'm not because I am a professional, darn it. But what I do want to do is talk about something that you spend some time on. And it's interesting to me that you broke it out as a separate item, okay? Because to me, this is part of the empowered employee thing and it's certainly important.

00:16:10:16 - 00:16:42:12
Wayne Turmel
And that is the idea of the analytics that we use to manage people and measure success and reward people. Are we are still using horse and buggy metrics and, you know, what's his face following people around in the factories in Buffalo doing time studies the idea that we're using the metrics, what's wrong with the metrics? We're using and how should we be measuring work instead?

00:16:42:14 - 00:16:47:11
Phil Simon
Oh, you want to talk about rabbit holes. That's all the time out of the way.

00:16:47:11 - 00:16:49:17
Wayne Turmel
Fluffy.

00:16:49:19 - 00:17:14:03
Phil Simon
I think you're thinking of Frederick Winslow Taylor from that. Sam Yep. There you go. You know, by way of background, I'm not anti data. I've written books about analytics, big data, data visualization. I think that data can certainly informed decisions. But when it comes to productivity, we've got a number of problems. First off, and Rodney Malar from Vox wrote a great piece on this.

00:17:14:03 - 00:17:33:18
Phil Simon
Of course, after my book came out and it was just a month ago, it was something about how companies are obsessed with productivity, but they can't define it. So what does it mean? Does it mean being in the office? Well, that's not true because we saw during the pandemic you could not go to an office and we struggled at first with Zoom and different tools, but we were, by all accounts, productive.

00:17:33:19 - 00:17:53:22
Phil Simon
Microsoft's done some fascinating research about not only were we as productive, but as possibly more so. In fact, they coined the term second shift. People were putting in another hour or two after dinner, so they weren't get deluged in the morning with messages or they could prove that they were working hard and not watching Game of Thrones or Better Call Saul.

00:17:54:00 - 00:18:23:11
Phil Simon
So there's that. But generally speaking, and this isn't limited to the world of remote work, but I am fascinated with good hearts, lore and Campbell's lore. And to paraphrase them, they kind of overlap. But the minute that you begin measuring something, it ceases to become an effective measure. So by way of example, as a former college professor in part, I was not tenured, so I would receive an offer in part, again based on my student evals because students know what they want.

00:18:23:12 - 00:18:39:23
Phil Simon
Right? Okay, I can get my student evals up from a five to a six. On a scale of seven, I'll just make it easy. You know what, Wayne? I know you missed your assignment. What the hell? Have another crack at it and you're going to give me a higher rating If I'm a hardass and I am, I'm not going to do that.

00:18:40:01 - 00:18:58:09
Phil Simon
And you're going to give me a lower rating. But I'd argue that I'm actually doing you a favor. Now, higher education aside, once you know that they're grading you on how often you come to the office, you can come to the office and check out right. I'm pretty sure that in an era of bring your own device, you can find ways to slack off.

00:18:58:11 - 00:19:18:11
Phil Simon
Then you see companies countering that with surveillance software, particularly for remote employees. And then there are programs that you can download that will basically enter keystrokes because of course, if you're doing things you and I both know, that means you're super productive. And if you're thinking and not touching your keyboard, then you can't be doing something worthwhile. So I don't have all the answers.

00:19:18:11 - 00:19:40:12
Phil Simon
But I do think that when we tend to quantify things, and especially if you're working in a remote or hybrid capacity and we're entering things, we're using applications, you're going to be able to come up with certain numbers, but they're not necessarily effective ones. And if you tell me what the numbers are going to be, I don't have to be a rocket surgeon to figure out how to game them.

00:19:40:14 - 00:20:05:14
Wayne Turmel
Thank you so much. That's fabulous. I told you people that this would be a very high level conversation and give you what's to think about. And I hope your head hurts right now. I really do. The book, The Nine, The Tech Talk. Tectonic Forces Bet Reshaping the Workplace is an excellent, excellent read. If you want just stuff to generate your thinking.

00:20:05:15 - 00:20:45:22
Wayne Turmel
Phil, you and I have had much longer conversations. They are much deeper rabbit holes and I hope that will continue. But thank you so much for being with us and just introducing some of these topics to us. I truly appreciate it. For those of you listening, thank you. Thank you. Thank you. If you want links to Phil's book and his work and to him, if you want a transcript of this show, because so much good stuff flew by fast visit long distance worklife dot com you can also by the way, speaking of Marisa, we are currently taking pet peeves and questions.

00:20:45:23 - 00:21:12:16
Wayne Turmel
Those episodes people really seem to enjoy and you don't have any problem complaining, so get those in there. We want to hear from you if you have not yet checked out. Kevin’s and my new book, The Long Distance Team Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success. By golly, please do so. We really appreciate it. If you're listening to this, this is unlikely to be your first podcast, so you know the drill.

00:21:12:20 - 00:21:40:11
Wayne Turmel
Like subscribe, tell your friends. If you didn't like it, keep your mouth shut. And if you want to reach us on either LinkedIn or by email, wayne@kevineikenberry.com, marisa@kevineikenberry.com. Phil Simon. Thank you so much, man. Good to talk to you. We really appreciate it. And for the rest of you, we will be back next week with another episode.

00:21:40:16 - 00:21:42:06
Wayne Turmel
Don't let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction to the podcast and guest Phil Simon
00:01:16 Discussing the nine trends shaping remote and hybrid work
00:02:51 Focus on the dispersed workplace and its impact on organizations
00:06:12 Importance of helping individuals prepare for remote work
00:07:26 The value of in-person collaboration and social ties
00:08:47 Teaching boundaries and creating a work destination
00:09:47 Example of Cisco rethinking the office space
00:10:38 Engagement comes from creating an engaging environment
00:11:00 Conclusion on creating a positive work environment
00:12:10 The dispersed workplace and the desire for flexibility
00:16:10 Outdated metrics and measuring productivity
00:17:14 Defining productivity and the shift in remote work
00:18:23 The flaws of quantifying and gaming productivity metrics
00:19:18 The ineffectiveness of quantified numbers in remote work
00:20:05 Conclusion 

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Phil Simon

Name: Phil Simon

What He Does: Workplace technology expert and author of The Nine: The Tectonic Forces Reshaping the Workplace

Notable: He also hosts the podcast, Conversations About Collaboration

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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Remote Work Rants: Holding Attention & Harnessing Breakout Rooms on Long-Distance Worklife Podcast with Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry
Ask Wayne Anything, Technology, Working Remotely

Remote Work Rants: Holding Attention and Harnessing Breakout Rooms

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel delve into the realm of remote work pet peeves, with a particular focus on virtual meetings. As they banter in their signature casual-yet-business-oriented style, Marisa and Wayne discuss the ups and downs of attention spans, attention-grabbing tactics, and the intricate dynamics of breakout sessions. Sharing insights from their own experiences, they highlight the importance of intentional meeting behavior and how to make breakout rooms truly effective. Tune in to gain valuable tips on managing meeting frustrations and optimizing remote team interactions.

Key Takeaways

1. Attention spans are shorter in virtual meetings, so facilitators should change things up every 6 minutes to keep participants engaged.
2. Meeting behavior is a performance management issue and should be addressed by managers.
3. Breakout rooms can be effective for generating better discussion and involving all participants, but they should have a specific outcome and be relevant to the topic at hand.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:23 - 00:00:09:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife.

00:00:09:13 - 00:00:19:02
Marisa Eikenberry
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. Hi, Wayne.

00:00:19:04 - 00:00:21:03
Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marisa. How are you?

00:00:21:04 - 00:00:24:21
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. We're talking pet peeves today. Are you excited?

00:00:24:23 - 00:00:31:02
Wayne Turmel
You know, I love when people get a chance to vent. That makes me so happy.

00:00:31:04 - 00:00:51:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, I'm happy that we get to do this because. Oh, my gosh, I put out a question on my personal social media. So Twitter, LinkedIn, and my Facebook and said, What do you hate about virtual meetings? And nine of you responded, which does not sound like a lot, but in podcast world, that's a pretty big number. Which also tells you connect with me to get on the show.

00:00:52:01 - 00:00:54:03
Wayne Turmel
But you are.

00:00:54:05 - 00:00:54:10
Wayne Turmel
You.

00:00:54:14 - 00:01:03:17
Wayne Turmel
Know, when we started this show a year ago, she was like, I guess you could kind of contact me if you want. Now she's now she's like the queen of social media.

00:01:03:20 - 00:01:04:06
Marisa Eikenberry
I try.

00:01:05:16 - 00:01:28:06
Marisa Eikenberry
But anyway, so we asked you guys, what do you hate about virtual meetings? So many of you responded, Thank you. We're not going to be able to get through all of them in the show. So we're going to have multiple episodes just like we do with our other pet peeves. So keep sending those in. But I'm going to start with Sam Roberts from Twitter, who says Attention spans are shorter and we're fighting against countless distractions.

00:01:28:12 - 00:01:50:11
Marisa Eikenberry
This means facilitators need to do more prep and think of how to keep the agenda moving, to keep things interesting. I pressed a little harder just to say like, okay, so you're saying to keep things interesting, like our facilities are supposed to do that. She said that for her, she changes up what she's doing every 6 minutes. So thoughts on that as a facilitator for longer than I?

00:01:50:16 - 00:02:20:20
Wayne Turmel
Well, I think the instinct is right, which is that people do have short attention spans. Now, some of this is it's amazing. Attention span is within the normal realms, like if you keep it inside an hour or if you. Yeah, the attention span is discretionary. People are really good at paying attention to things that matter to them. Right.

00:02:21:00 - 00:02:28:12
Wayne Turmel
We are really good at tuning out things that our brain goes, don't care, don't want to know. Oh, look, Squirrel.

00:02:28:14 - 00:02:29:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:02:29:16 - 00:02:40:22
Wayne Turmel
Right. So some of this starts before the meeting. I wrote a book, and I know it's a little bit outdated, so this is not a plug for the book, but the title of the book was Meet Like, you mean it?

00:02:41:00 - 00:02:42:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:02:42:14 - 00:03:09:10
Wayne Turmel
Still pretty good advice. Right. Right. Why are we meeting? Is this something that needs to happen? Does the people that do the people that we've invited need to be there? And will they add value to the time to gather? Is this the best alternative as opposed to discussion threads or other asynchronous kind of things? But let's assume for a moment that you have actually made a conscious decision that this meeting matters.

00:03:09:14 - 00:03:13:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. And I assume you have an agenda for said meeting.

00:03:13:19 - 00:03:27:21
Wayne Turmel
Well, that's the next part is do people know why they're there? Do they know what's expected of them? Do they know what the desired outcomes are? You know, have you prepared them to hit the ground running?

00:03:27:23 - 00:03:29:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:03:29:05 - 00:03:44:15
Wayne Turmel
And all of that is before you even start your presentation. Now, her point, about every 6 minutes we try to change this is absolutely right. I have said before and gotten in trouble for saying that human beings are like raccoons.

00:03:44:17 - 00:03:45:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:03:45:04 - 00:03:47:22
Wayne Turmel
We're attracted by color, light and motion.

00:03:48:00 - 00:03:50:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:03:50:11 - 00:04:07:03
Wayne Turmel
Are there things going on? And there's a fourth thing on there, which is sound. One of the cardinal sins of online meetings is people hear the same voice for a very long time.

00:04:07:05 - 00:04:08:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:08:20 - 00:04:23:09
Wayne Turmel
And after a while, our brains can only physically maintain focus on a single voice for a short period of time. After that, you turn into Charlie Brown's teacher. More, more, more, more.

00:04:23:09 - 00:04:23:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:24:00 - 00:04:25:20
Wayne Turmel
And it's very, very difficult.

00:04:25:20 - 00:04:27:21
Marisa Eikenberry
So we all had one of those teachers.

00:04:27:23 - 00:05:02:06
Wayne Turmel
The six minute rule is is fine. It's a perfectly valid rule. I try to do that by not making people hold their questions till the end. Mm hmm. Right. Doing check ins and not just any questions. Okay, good. But legitimate at check ins every little bit. You know, if you are presenting a slide deck, for example, I actually decide during my as I'm building my presentation where I want to stop and take questions.

00:05:02:08 - 00:05:12:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. You actually coached me on this on something I'm going to do this weekend. And and that was the idea that in between we're asking them questions about stuff that's relating to what I'm talking about.

00:05:12:20 - 00:05:37:14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And so and I know I've mentioned this before. There's this concept called the horror limit, which is that we can only take in seven pieces of information because information comes into our short term memory. We process it. We decide what we need to keep and what we don't and what's worth remembering. And we move that to the oh, yeah, got to remember that pile and that makes room for more stuff.

00:05:37:16 - 00:05:38:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:05:38:12 - 00:05:48:14
Wayne Turmel
If, as is often the case, because we're trying to cram a bunch of stuff into a short period of time, you just turn on the firehose.

00:05:48:16 - 00:05:49:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:05:49:16 - 00:05:58:18
Wayne Turmel
And just one way. Push information to people. You are going to hit that horror limit wall very early.

00:05:58:19 - 00:06:01:14
Marisa Eikenberry
And then wonder why they forgot X, Y, Z.

00:06:01:16 - 00:06:27:12
Wayne Turmel
And then wonder what I told them. Now, there are a couple of things I'm going to say to this specifically about attention span, because I know we've got a bunch of other cool stuff that we want to address. Number one is don't be afraid of handouts, reference material, stuff that people can look at later.

00:06:27:14 - 00:06:29:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:06:29:07 - 00:07:07:07
Wayne Turmel
You don't have to give them everything and walk them all through it at that point. Right. If you can give them the information beforehand, that will be immensely helpful. But that requires something else. And this is something that managers don't want to talk about, but it's really important. Okay. And that is that meeting behavior is a piece of their job performance.

00:07:07:09 - 00:07:24:10
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And it needs to be coached like a performance management issue. And that covers both ends of the spectrum. If people are dominating the meetings and not being respectful and not giving people a chance to talk. That needs to be addressed.

00:07:24:12 - 00:07:25:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00:07:25:16 - 00:08:04:10
Wayne Turmel
If people are constantly logging on and and I'm talking about a convergence of problems, none of these are in and of themselves deal breakers. But if they come on to the meeting and they don't get there, you know, they're not on camera and they don't participate and they're constantly on mute the whole time. And, you know, they basically whine and complain and don't contribute in the chat or anything else.

00:08:04:12 - 00:08:13:20
Wayne Turmel
At some point in your one on ones as a manager, you should go, you know, you're awful quiet on the meetings. What's going on?

00:08:13:22 - 00:08:17:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. It makes you look like you're not a team player.

00:08:17:09 - 00:08:38:18
Wayne Turmel
And the problem is that that becomes a perception problem. Mm hmm. Right. And when you address that, why aren't you speaking up in meetings? You actually learn stuff. Right, Right. Like, I probably shouldn't be on that meeting anyway. Or I don't want to say anything, because you know how Bob is.

00:08:38:20 - 00:08:39:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:08:39:12 - 00:08:54:05
Wayne Turmel
Right. Which tells you that there's a team dynamic issue that needs to be addressed. Yeah. You know, it's like with the camera. Why don't you want to be on camera? Well, I just hate it now. Sucks to be you.

00:08:54:07 - 00:08:57:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Or is it a bandwidth issue? In which case you can't really happen.

00:08:57:15 - 00:08:58:11
Wayne Turmel
With the issue.

00:08:58:13 - 00:08:59:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Or anyone else.

00:08:59:12 - 00:09:10:06
Wayne Turmel
My kids are running around. It's it. I just got back from the gym, and if it's. I just got back from the gym, Maybe a little more notice. Mm hmm. Before you call me.

00:09:10:08 - 00:09:11:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:09:11:10 - 00:09:24:02
Wayne Turmel
Right. None of these things individually are dealbreakers, but when you put them all together, it starts to affect people's ability to pay attention in the meeting.

00:09:24:04 - 00:09:24:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:09:24:20 - 00:09:47:05
Wayne Turmel
So if you meet, like you mean it. Yeah, right. And you plan it, and you do the work up front and you hold people accountable or. I'm sorry, I use bad language when you help people be accountable. I don't want Kevin on my case.

00:09:47:07 - 00:09:49:18
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm going to send just that clip to him directly.

00:09:49:22 - 00:10:16:04
Wayne Turmel
What, you. Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. When you help people be accountable, if will make a difference. The thing is that meeting behavior over time has kind of devolved because we've allowed it to be devolved. We haven't addressed it. Mm hmm. Nobody says anything. I'm so busy trying to get through the meeting that, you know, I'm just as glamorous.

00:10:16:05 - 00:10:18:11
Wayne Turmel
Kept your mouth shut because I got to get stuff done.

00:10:18:13 - 00:10:42:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. You only have so much time to do it. Well, I'm going to go ahead and move on to the next question. But thank you, Sam, for sending that in. And so chat tsunami on Twitter said the stereotypical jokes that we said pre-COVID. And, you know, we get it. Our mike our mike is muted and I'm wearing trousers, let it go.

00:10:42:11 - 00:10:48:09
Marisa Eikenberry
And they also mention that breakout sessions are the bane of their existence. But I don't think we've talked about breakout sessions before.

00:10:48:11 - 00:10:51:15
Wayne Turmel
We haven't. I mean, to the first part.

00:10:51:18 - 00:10:52:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:10:53:01 - 00:10:55:18
Wayne Turmel
Right.

00:10:55:20 - 00:10:56:12
Marisa Eikenberry
I mean.

00:10:56:14 - 00:11:12:09
Wayne Turmel
People at the office still tend to resent those who don't go into the office every day and will take their little digs right? Yes, you are correct. We should have gotten past that point by now. Yeah.

00:11:12:09 - 00:11:17:10
Marisa Eikenberry
I mean, you know, one third of my working life has been this pandemic remote work. Whatever.

00:11:17:12 - 00:11:26:17
Wayne Turmel
Say that again, louder for the people in the back, because we were talking about this before we started recording. And it's such an important point.

00:11:26:19 - 00:11:47:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So full disclosure, I'm 31. I started working at this organization literally the Monday after I graduated college. So I worked here for nine years and one third of my working life has been this pandemic remote work stuff, which is kind of wild when you really think about it.

00:11:47:03 - 00:12:10:19
Wayne Turmel
It's incredibly wild and it means that what was normal in the before times or what was novel or weird no longer is right. We need to just deal with that and get on with it. So I think that's a valid point. What the topic of breakout rooms is really interesting.

00:12:10:21 - 00:12:35:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I mean, I've only been in some. I know for me it depends on the meeting that I'm in. So sometimes I don't mind the breakout session because I'm excited about whatever we're talking about and we're going to talk about this project or I like who I'm in the breakout session with, but I've also been in some where, you know, we're the volunteer organizations that I'm in that are talking about leadership stuff.

00:12:35:21 - 00:12:51:16
Marisa Eikenberry
For me, I'm like, I don't even really need to be here because I already know this, but that's beside point. So I get pulled into a breakout room for them and I'm like, Cool, we're going to answer these really fluffy questions that don't really matter, and then we're going to come in and talk about it and yay, rah rah.

00:12:51:18 - 00:12:55:09
Marisa Eikenberry
So I think sometimes it depends on how the breakout session is done.

00:12:55:11 - 00:13:08:11
Wayne Turmel
Okay. Like everything else, if you're going to do something, understand why you're doing it right. You said something which is fluffy whatevers.

00:13:08:12 - 00:13:09:16
Marisa Eikenberry
And we've all been in those.

00:13:09:17 - 00:13:18:12
Wayne Turmel
We have established on this show that Wayne is not a fan of Fluffy ice breakers. They irritate me in general.

00:13:18:14 - 00:13:20:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. We have a video.

00:13:20:00 - 00:13:20:13
Wayne Turmel
Hook it up.

00:13:20:15 - 00:13:21:16
Marisa Eikenberry
An icebreaker.

00:13:21:17 - 00:13:48:01
Wayne Turmel
But I'd rather get to the business at hand. So if you are going to do remote or breakout rooms, why are you doing them in training? There is a very reasonable reason, which is sometimes you want different groups to discuss different things. Sometimes it's because you generally get better input in groups of four or five than you would in a room full of 20.

00:13:48:03 - 00:14:12:15
Wayne Turmel
Mm hmm. Everybody gets to speak. You're introverts aren't as intimidated or, you know, the groups tend to generate better discussion and then they come out and they debrief. And it it's it's generally better input. And it's also a great way to jumpstart a meeting that otherwise people join in, they go on mute and there's nothing happening at the beginning.

00:14:12:16 - 00:14:20:13
Wayne Turmel
Mm hmm. If you are doing them just to give them something to do, they are not going to be looked on fondly.

00:14:20:15 - 00:14:21:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:14:21:08 - 00:15:00:02
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, they should be relevant to the topic at hand. They should not put people in an embarrassing situation. I think breakout rooms can be very helpful and they're especially helpful if you have the same people, the same large group of people, and they've done it a few times the first time you use a breakout room. It's weird and awkward and people aren't really sure how it works and what they're supposed to do once they've done it a couple of times and it becomes standard operating procedure.

00:15:00:04 - 00:15:26:18
Wayne Turmel
They can be very helpful, but you need to have a specific outcome that there is a reason we'd broken you into small groups. This is what we want. We tend to be very prescriptive. We're in a class and we send people in to breakout rooms. We will, as part of the instructions, say things like The person whose next birthday it is is going to report out.

00:15:26:20 - 00:15:31:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Yeah. And then you don't have to do this. Well, do you want to do it? Well, what about you?

00:15:31:04 - 00:16:01:03
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. It's. Here's your assignment. Get to work. Oh, look, you're finished. Your work. Let's report out. Your work is important. We're seeking your input. We respected your input. We've acknowledged your input, and it's added value to the meeting. If you're doing it just to have something light and fluffy to do. And I suspect the person who sent that in a is male.

00:16:01:05 - 00:16:04:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes, I know this person. So. Yes.

00:16:05:00 - 00:16:28:20
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. Okay. So, you know, probably not as grumpy and old as me, but certainly grumpy and male and probably focused on Let me do my work. Let's get to work. Let's do what we need to do. And so the the value of the breakout rooms isn't as apparent.

00:16:28:22 - 00:16:29:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:16:30:00 - 00:16:38:03
Wayne Turmel
Because it's being seen as soft and fluffy and getting in the way of the desired outcome of the meeting.

00:16:38:05 - 00:16:43:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. I mean, just like we talk about all the time, clear communication is key there.

00:16:43:18 - 00:16:49:23
Wayne Turmel
But it's like everything else. If you're going to do something in a meeting, what is the reason for it?

00:16:50:01 - 00:16:51:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, don't waste people's time.

00:16:51:11 - 00:17:09:03
Wayne Turmel
If everybody knows everybody, if this team has been together forever, how much of an icebreaker do you really need right. And do we need to go through the mechanics of breaking out into a room and going back? Well, most of us went to the movies this weekend. That doesn't feel.

00:17:09:05 - 00:17:19:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah, but if it's like, hey, we have this one problem that we need to solve and we're going to pull you into breakout sessions so you guys can talk about, you know, how we might be able to approach this a little different.

00:17:19:10 - 00:17:53:15
Wayne Turmel
Well, or, you know, a really common one is you signed up for this course. You signed up for this meeting. What is your top priority? What is the thing that worries you the most about this? What are you most concerned about? That is a very legitimate use. And as the larger the group gets, the more you need to do that, because if you get above the team level, right, if you get above six, seven, eight people, just the group dynamics are going to dictate that some people are going to talk and some people are going to hide.

00:17:53:17 - 00:17:55:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:17:55:12 - 00:18:07:22
Wayne Turmel
Breakout rooms if used properly and properly managed, can draw information and involve those people who might otherwise hide or not be heard.

00:18:08:00 - 00:18:28:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I think that's all we have time for today. But we have so many more. Like I said, we had nine people respond and I'm so excited to get to more of these and future episodes. If you have one, please make sure to send it in. And listeners, thank you so much for listening to the long distance worklife for show notes, transcripts and other resources.

00:18:28:16 - 00:18:45:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Make sure to visit long distance worklife dot com. If you haven't yet subscribe so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, 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 or any of our social media profiles. Those are all in our show notes.

00:18:45:17 - 00:18:46:07
Marisa Eikenberry
And let us know.

00:18:46:07 - 00:18:54:00
Wayne Turmel
You should know by now that Marissa is apparently the queen of social media and she does listen when people tell her stuff.

00:18:54:05 - 00:19:16:01
Marisa Eikenberry
So yeah, it's really true. If you want to talk to somebody about the podcast, talk to me. That is that is not a secret. But anyway, if you have pet peeves, if you have topics that you want us to tackle, if you know thoughts, general, whatever, like email us, talk to us, send me a message. I get so excited when I hear from listeners, so please do that.

00:19:16:03 - 00:19:27:22
Marisa Eikenberry
And if you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne and Kevin Barry's new book, The Long Distance Team, you can learn more about the book at Long Distance Team BBC.com. Thanks for joining us. As we like to say, don't let the weasels get too down.


Timestamps

00:00:00 Introduction
00:00:19 Discussion about virtual meeting pet peeves
00:01:28 Attention spans are shorter and distractions are a challenge
00:03:09 Importance of meeting preparation and clear objectives
00:04:07 The need to change things up every 6 minutes
00:05:49 The impact of long monologues on attention span
00:06:29 The value of providing handouts and reference materials
00:07:07 Meeting behavior as a performance management issue
00:08:04 Addressing issues of dominant or unengaged meeting participants
00:08:17 The perception problem of not actively participating in meetings
00:08:38 Team dynamic issue needs to be addressed.
00:08:54 Camera and bandwidth issues affect meeting participation.
00:09:10 Lack of notice and distractions affect meeting engagement.
00:09:24 Meeting behavior has devolved due to lack of accountability.
00:10:42 Stereotypical jokes and breakout sessions as meeting challenges.
00:11:26 Remote work during the pandemic is a significant portion of work life.
00:12:10 Breakout sessions can be effective if done purposefully.
00:13:08 Fluffy ice breakers are not favored by Wayne.
00:14:20 Breakout rooms should have a specific outcome and purpose.
00:16:43 Clear communication and not wasting time are essential in meetings.
00:16:50 Reason for doing something in a meeting
00:17:09 Icebreaker activities in meetings
00:17:19 Using breakout sessions to solve problems
00:17:53 Importance of involving all participants in larger group meetings
00:18:08 Proper use and management of breakout rooms
00:18:28 Closing

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!

 Order
Read More
Solving the Challenges of Hybrid Teams with AI Technology with Projjal (PJ) Ghatak on Long-Distance Worklife with Wayne Turmel
Guests, Hybrid Work, Leadership, Technology

Solving the Challenges of Hybrid Teams with AI Technology with Projjal (PJ) Ghatak

Wayne Turmel interviews Projjal (PJ) Ghatak, CEO and co-founder of OnLoop, a habit-forming AI-powered platform for high-functioning teams. They discuss the challenges faced by hybrid teams and the need for increased clarity and visibility in remote work. OnLoop helps managers and team members stay connected and informed through regular check-ins and feedback. The platform aims to address biases and create a level playing field for all employees. Ghatak emphasizes the importance of rethinking traditional work practices and embracing the transition to a hybrid workplace.

Key Takeaways

1. OnLoop helps managers of hybrid teams navigate the reduced visibility and clarity that comes with remote and hybrid work.
2. The platform uses habit-forming technology to make it easier for managers to understand what is happening with each team member.
3. OnLoop aims to close the perception gap and eliminate biases by bringing better visibility into the actual work being done.

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:04 - 00:00:32:16
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome back to the Long Distance Work Life, the podcast, where we help you thrive, survive, live. Figure out how to find your way in this crazy, evolving world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. I'm a master trainer and coach here at the Kevin Eikenberry Group, coauthor of the Long Distance Work Life Books.

00:00:32:18 - 00:01:05:01
Wayne Turmel
And we'll talk more about those in a bit. This is one of these episodes where Marissa is not with me. That doesn't mean you should leave, because we have another really interesting interview with a really, really smart person. And so to that point, I am going to bring in Brazil P.J. Gottschalk, who is with On Loop. And I'm going to let him introduce himself and what on loop does, and then we'll get into it.

00:01:05:02 - 00:01:38:04
Projjal Ghatak
Hey, man, thank you for having me. So in 2020, I started a company called on Loop. And what on loop really is, is a habit forming gen AI powered platform for goals and feedback in high functioning teams. And I know that that's a bunch of potentially buzzwords. And we can we can go deeper into it. But really, in essence, we were born as a company to help managers of hybrid teams really navigate sort of the reduced visibility that now have on their teams because people are remote or hybrid.

00:01:38:06 - 00:01:54:23
Projjal Ghatak
And so we were born in the pandemic. That was partly luck and that was partly the timing, given everything happening in the world. And our goal is to use our collaborative team developing framework to help hybrid managers do okay.

00:01:54:23 - 00:02:23:17
Wayne Turmel
So as you said, the buzzword alert went off big time during that. And that doesn't mean there aren't some things there that we need to talk about. So the first thing I guess is hybrid teams have certain challenges and whenever I talk to technology people, I'm actually less interested in the nuts and bolts of the technology because I'm not smart enough to understand what any of that is.

00:02:23:19 - 00:02:32:12
Wayne Turmel
What I do care about is what's the problem you're solving for. So when hybrid teams in particular, what were you trying to cure?

00:02:32:14 - 00:02:58:10
Projjal Ghatak
Yeah, so, so the disease really is one of reduced clarity, right? So, so before managers had their team members at their beck and call five days a week in the office. And so it was much easier to infer how someone was doing what they were working on, how it was progressing and giving quick feedback, giving quick coaching or tips and advice.

00:02:58:12 - 00:03:25:15
Projjal Ghatak
That medium has largely now been constrained into a much shorter time frame. And so managers around the world are incredibly anxious as to whether their teams are focusing on the right things and moving in the right direction. At the same time, team members are also anxious as to where they stand because they now have a much more reduce feedback loop with their managers.

00:03:25:17 - 00:03:38:01
Projjal Ghatak
And our job as a company is to really fill in that visibility and clarity gap that has been inserted into the workplace because of a shift to a hybrid feature.

00:03:38:01 - 00:03:55:17
Wayne Turmel
I mean, the thing about technology is it's garbage in, garbage out, right? And so when we're talking about clarity and expectations, how does the technology help a manager who maybe isn't doing a great job at this?

00:03:55:19 - 00:04:20:00
Projjal Ghatak
Yeah. So we all believe that every manager in the world has good intent. Nobody walks into the workplace and says, I'm going to be a bad manager today. But it is also overwhelming for a manager. The average manager has 4 to 6 direct reports. They have their own responsibility and their own pressures coming from their managers and it's a hard job to juggle.

00:04:20:02 - 00:04:20:19
Projjal Ghatak
And so.

00:04:21:01 - 00:04:21:09
Wayne Turmel
What.

00:04:21:09 - 00:04:44:23
Projjal Ghatak
We do with our platform is make it much easier for the manager to get a sense of what is happening with each of the team members, and that might be related to the person's wellbeing. It might be related to the fact that they may not be clear what they're working on. It might be they're not receiving enough feedback so that they can take the right action at the right time for the right team member.

00:04:45:01 - 00:05:23:12
Projjal Ghatak
And and where we take a lot of inspiration from is fitness apps. And so we've seen products like the Woo Band and the Aura Ring take concepts like diet and exercise and sleep and give each individual a readiness score and also suggested next actions of what they can do around their readiness. And we sort of draw that parallel to clarity and we help managers navigate where a team member might be blocked or where they might need help so that they can invest the time in the place that accelerates the team in the best way possible.

00:05:23:14 - 00:05:50:17
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I don't want to get too hung up on the technology, but this is fascinating for me. So how does walk me through? I'm stuck. I'm working on something and I'm stuck. How does the I magical Genie robot thing? Yeah. Been to my manager. And what does he hear or see that tells him that I need help?

00:05:50:19 - 00:06:12:04
Projjal Ghatak
Natalie So, you know, one of the things, as you said, garbage in, garbage out. So all of the things we do in our product is make it much more habit forming. So when people use the on loop app, we see much more regular updates that team members are making towards as to what is the state of their wellbeing or how a day progressing against their goals.

00:06:12:04 - 00:06:50:08
Projjal Ghatak
And, and when people are reflecting and checking in on a much more bite sized continual visit, it's much easier to spot when something's off track or things that to be brought on track. And so, you know, there is no magician reading through your emails or Slack messages making up stuff. It's really making it really easy for managers and team members to keep each other updated of what's happening and discovering things that might be going off track much sooner than a weekly one on one conversation, or even worse, off a team meeting that happens every two weeks.

00:06:50:10 - 00:07:18:23
Wayne Turmel
How do you what are the conversations like with clients as you're talking about integrate this? Because I see the benefit everything you're talking about. And there is a lot of push back right now from employees about, oh, this is glorified keystroke monitoring. Yeah, you know, they're going to come and take me away if I'm not putting in so many minutes per hour at the keyboard.

00:07:19:01 - 00:07:24:19
Wayne Turmel
How do you have those conversations and what are those look like?

00:07:25:01 - 00:07:56:23
Projjal Ghatak
And that's a really good question. And so all of our messaging, as well as onboarding new customers, is very much targeted to the icons, the individual contributors and the managers, because unfortunately, practices like performance management has created a ton of baggage around form filling and check boxing and compliance exercises that don't make the employee feel that the stuff they're doing is actually for their benefit.

00:07:57:01 - 00:08:23:19
Projjal Ghatak
And so part of our package when we onboard a new customer is obviously the app, but also a fairly intense 12 week success program where we build the habits that drive that clarity and give team members that benefit. And and there's no other product in the world bar none that's focused on the end user and not on a functional organization like h.r.

00:08:23:19 - 00:08:50:17
Projjal Ghatak
So for us, h.r. Is a stakeholder, but our customer is really the manager and good teams, and that's what's very important for the managers and the teams to see the benefit for them to then adopt a product and only the product is adopted to drive the impact that it aspires to have. And therefore, for us, we basically serve the hybrid manager and the organization above all else.

00:08:50:19 - 00:09:00:05
Wayne Turmel
What are some of the habits and best practices that managers need to develop that you're seeing need that kind of support?

00:09:00:07 - 00:09:21:06
Projjal Ghatak
Yeah. So one of the great sort of habits, one of my customer success team members came up with was called to want to check in every week, which is making two well-being checks, making one celebrate capsule about something that went well and then requesting one piece of feedback on a goal that they're working towards and and it's an easy thing to do.

00:09:21:07 - 00:09:54:19
Projjal Ghatak
You can do it in a matter of seconds, if not a minute. And what that does is build up a rhythm of getting a pulse of what's going on and not requiring a manager to pester and check in being like, what's happening on this project and what's happening on that project? And so the very simple habits that we can create and also tack on to other things that are happening often on loop will get used as part of a team meeting to do celebrate peers or to solicit feedback or to brainstorm around a project someone stuck on.

00:09:54:21 - 00:10:36:19
Projjal Ghatak
And so habit formation is a lot about taking what's already happening and that might be one on one or team huddles and conversations and inserting technology or new habits into that so that they stack the right way. But but these take a lot of time and effort to design the product. And in fact, right now we're doing a full design overhaul of the product based on user feedback to really make these habits second nature so that people don't see it as a chore to be done, which is how people have typically viewed goals and feedback works, is something that's making their life easier and allowing them to cross their goals much faster.

00:10:36:21 - 00:10:57:12
Wayne Turmel
And of course, a big part of your marketing, your message to the world is around hybrid teams. And I know that there are some specific What are the challenges to hybrid teams that you're seeing in your clients that managers need to be super vigilant about?

00:10:57:14 - 00:11:16:20
Projjal Ghatak
Yeah, So, you know hybrids obviously a new buzzword that the pandemic's created. So I often also use the word distributed, right? So I used to work for a company called Uber for many years and we had thousands of people around the world. And so when I was living in Singapore in a global role at Uber, I was working with team members around the world.

00:11:16:22 - 00:11:43:13
Projjal Ghatak
And so when the pandemic happened, it was that we are to spend many hours on a on a Zoom call. But but really instead of the technology that we had built to get work done was very much centered around facilitating an in office workplace and and you know, leaders tend to be older and and older people are creatures of habit and they.

00:11:43:13 - 00:11:47:00
Wayne Turmel
Don't I have no idea what you're talking.

00:11:47:02 - 00:11:56:19
Projjal Ghatak
And they don't like changing things all that often. Although you do move continent to continent every every few years that might be that might be an exception.

00:11:57:00 - 00:11:59:16
Wayne Turmel
And so, you know, people are used.

00:11:59:16 - 00:12:24:10
Projjal Ghatak
To seeing work getting done. And just because they can't see work getting done, they're anxious that work is not getting done. And Microsoft calls that the productivity paranoia, that 12% of leaders believe that their teams are productive, which is 87% of employees are saying they are perfectly productive in this new world. And so that creates a big perception gap.

00:12:24:12 - 00:12:53:17
Projjal Ghatak
And and sort of as we think about pooling our approaches, we need to close that perception gap, because I think reality is showing us that hybrids the way we move is, in fact, things like API, things like VR and AR are only going to make teams more dispersed and be able to effectively collaborate across borders. So in the next three, five, ten years, we'll see more teams distributed around the world.

00:12:53:17 - 00:13:09:17
Projjal Ghatak
And so this train has left the station, so there's no point putting the genie back in the bottle. We just need to rethink the experience so that we are thinking of pools and processes to cater to this new world versus trying to force an old world that is never coming back.

00:13:09:18 - 00:13:41:07
Wayne Turmel
And that brings us to something that I know you at on Loop are very cognizant of, which is the idea of proximity bias. Right. And that to me is what I'm hearing over and over and over again as the biggest hurdle. It shouldn't be, it seems to me, but it is the biggest hurdle that managers of distributed teams and if they're fully distributed, it's much less of an issue than if they've got a core group of people in the office.

00:13:41:09 - 00:13:52:04
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, tell me a little bit about that problem that you're solving for and then how will technology and tools help deal with that now?

00:13:52:04 - 00:14:07:23
Projjal Ghatak
I mean, proximity bias is a good way of framing it. I, I call it eloquence bias that that people who sound better are perceived to be better or the people who are talking more about their work are doing more work. And there's and there's very good proven research.

00:14:07:23 - 00:14:10:14
Wayne Turmel
That some of us have made a career out of that that.

00:14:10:16 - 00:14:33:22
Projjal Ghatak
I like. I agree. Right. And I'm and I want to fix that because I've benefited from it. And I think that's entirely fair. And so people talk a lot about closing the gender pay gap or die at work. But the reality is that no amount of training is going to change those issues. What's going to change is how are we assessing?

00:14:33:22 - 00:14:54:14
Projjal Ghatak
We're getting done and so often that we see and we're probably going to take out a couple of case studies about this, about certain individuals using the on loop team, on loop on the app, on how much more seen they feel like work, because now their work is now equally seen where it says who has the most confidence to speak up in a room.

00:14:54:16 - 00:15:15:17
Projjal Ghatak
And we feel very passionately about just bringing fairness and visibility across the board to everyone's work. Equally worse is who has drinks with the manager or who's speaking up more in meetings. And the people who struggle to speak up in in-person settings struggle even more in hybrid settings. And it's much harder to speak up in a Zoom call or speak up in a room.

00:15:15:22 - 00:15:26:14
Projjal Ghatak
And so that bias is only getting worse. And we believe the only way we can fix that or close that gap is by bringing better visibility into the actual work that each person's doing.

00:15:26:18 - 00:15:53:04
Wayne Turmel
And in our work, Kevin and I, in a number of our books have talked about what we call ethical visibility, which is the responsibility of the employee to be visible to their manager and their colleagues for exactly that reason. I'm guessing that tech that the technology is not just one way, it's not just manager to employee, but the employee can be more proactive about it.

00:15:53:06 - 00:16:20:04
Projjal Ghatak
So so one thing I've learned is and you know, I had imagined Santas in the past as well, if someone can advocate for themselves, why should I go out of my way? And what I've learned is that is privilege working at its very best, because often people don't understand the confidence gap that a lot of people who are minorities or come from socially disadvantaged families or women often struggle with and having the confidence of speaking up.

00:16:20:04 - 00:16:51:13
Projjal Ghatak
And so we absolutely need to build tools and approaches that allows everybody to be visible irrespective of how much confidence they have to speak up in a room. And as I've got older and I've been reminded of my own privileges, I've got a lot more cognizant to the fact that just because someone's not standing up or advocating for themselves, it may not be in their control and might go back to deep rooted situations on where they come from.

00:16:51:16 - 00:17:16:01
Wayne Turmel
Well, the fact that there is an inherent power gap in every employer employee relationship is there. I am fascinated by what you just said. I think that's huge. And as usual, as an old cis white male, I feel I feel both seen and attacked, which is probably as it should be. So thank you very much for raising that.

00:17:16:02 - 00:17:22:16
Wayne Turmel
Anything. PJ Before we close out the show and send people on their way.

00:17:22:18 - 00:17:44:09
Projjal Ghatak
No, thank you for all the work that you are doing. I think more and more people need to be focused on this transition to a hybrid workplace, and I think we will have to rethink a lot of things that we've taken for granted pre-pandemic. And it is it is both exciting and daunting to hopefully do our small bit in that transition.

00:17:44:12 - 00:18:08:12
Wayne Turmel
Excellent. Thank you so much. Profile PJ Gottschalk, thank you so much for being with us. I am going to remove you from the room for just a moment while I close up. Thank you for listening. There was a lot of really good stuff in this interview. I liked the piece at the end actually about how technology can help a level playing field, so I think that's so important.

00:18:08:14 - 00:18:47:16
Wayne Turmel
But on the other hand, if you are a regular listener, please like and subscribe to the show. If you enjoyed this conversation, if you want links to project two on loop to any or just to recap some of what we talked about, you can find those show notes at long distance work life dot com. If you are interested in building a hybrid team, perhaps using some of these tools, but want to know what goes into that, check out Kevin Eikenberry and his new book, The Long Distance Team Designing Your Team for Everyone six.

00:18:47:18 - 00:19:13:09
Wayne Turmel
Marisa will be back next week. We are having a blast hearing from you with your pet peeves, your questions. People are kind of digging the chance to snark and vent a little bit. So we love hearing from you. Please drop us a line. Wayne at Kevin Eikenberry dot com Marissa at Kevin Eikenberry ecom or connect with us on LinkedIn.

00:19:13:09 - 00:19:25:23
Wayne Turmel
That's it thank you so much. I appreciate your time. Thank you to P.J. for stopping in. We will see you on the next episode of the long distance Work Life. Don't let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction to the podcast and Projjal Ghatak
01:05 The problem of reduced clarity in hybrid teams
03:55 How technology helps managers with clarity and expectations
05:50 Addressing concerns about employee monitoring
09:00 Developing habits and best practices for managers
10:57 Challenges of hybrid teams and the need for visibility
13:41 Solving the problem of proximity bias in hybrid teams
15:26 The importance of ethical visibility for all employees
17:44 Closing remarks

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Projjal (PJ) Ghatak

Name: Projjal (PJ) Ghatak

What He Does: CEO and Co-Founder of OnLoop

Notable: Projjal Ghatak is the founder of On Loop, a habit-forming AI-powered platform for goals and feedback in high-functioning teams. On Loop was created to help managers of hybrid teams navigate the reduced visibility and clarity that comes with remote and hybrid work. Projjal has a background in working with global teams and is passionate about bringing fairness and visibility to everyone's work.

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!

 Order
Read More
The Performance Paradox: Empowering Remote Teams through Feedback with Eduardo Briceño
Guests, Leadership

The Performance Paradox with Eduardo Briceño

In this episode, we're joined by Eduardo Briceño, renowned author of "The Performance Paradox: Turning the Power of Mindset into Action". Eduardo sheds light on the power of feedback as the cornerstone of learning and high performance in a remote work world. Eduardo's insights reveal the importance of cultivating a growth mindset and encouraging team members to solicit feedback for continuous improvement. Learn how leaders can create a culture of learning and empower their remote teams to thrive, all while unraveling the mysteries of the performance paradox.

Key Takeaways

1. Feedback is Essential: Feedback is the most important strategy for learning, improving, and achieving high performance, especially in remote and hybrid work environments. It helps individuals understand the impact of their actions and allows for continuous improvement.
2. The Power of Growth Mindset: Embracing a growth mindset is crucial for personal and professional development. Leaders should encourage team members to see themselves as constantly evolving and capable of improvement, rather than being limited by fixed traits.
3. Focus on Soliciting Feedback: Creating a culture where team members actively solicit feedback empowers them to drive their own growth. Leaders can set the stage by being open to feedback themselves, modeling a learning culture for the entire team.
4. Balancing Praise and Improvement: When giving positive praise, avoid attributing success solely to innate abilities. Instead, focus on specific behaviors and their positive impact. This approach encourages individuals to keep improving and seeking feedback.
5. Regular Check-Ins and Opportunities: Regular team check-ins and personal conversations are critical in remote and hybrid work settings. Deliberately create opportunities for feedback discussions, allowing team members to address progress, challenges, and growth opportunities collaboratively.

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:02 - 00:00:39:12
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody, and welcome back to the long distance work life forecast. Assuming that you've been here before and if you haven't. Welcome. My name is Wayne Turmel My usual co-host, Marisa is not here because this is one of our interview episodes and I am really, really excited. As you know, this podcast is designed to help leaders and people who are working remotely adjust to the new world of remote and hybrid work.

00:00:39:16 - 00:01:01:11
Wayne Turmel
And yet, while a lot of that feels new, there are some things about work and leading people that haven't changed at all in the great scheme of things. And that's what we're going to talk about. We're going to talk about feedback, praise and how we do it or don't do it correctly. I am going to bring in our guest.

00:01:01:16 - 00:01:14:00
Wayne Turmel
Eduardo Briceno is the author of The Performance Paradox. Eduardo, tell us a little bit about yourself before we get into the meat of things here.

00:01:14:02 - 00:01:31:20
Eduardo Briceno
Sure. Thanks, Wayne, and it's great to be here. Eduardo Briceno I am a keynote speaker and facilitator that helps companies develop cultures of learning and of high performance. So as you said, I recently wrote a book called The Performance Paradox, which is about how to do that, how to build cultures of learning and high performance.

00:01:31:23 - 00:01:55:00
Wayne Turmel
Okay, So regardless of where they and their people sit, the one thing that leaders admit that they don't do very well is coaching and offering feedback. So let's start with why is feedback important? Well, let's start with why is feedback important? And then we'll get to how badly we're screwing things up.

00:01:55:02 - 00:02:18:07
Eduardo Briceno
Sure. So feedback is, I think, the most important strategy to learn and to improve and to perform highly, especially in work that is about communication and collaboration, which is most work, right, because we're social beings. And so what we're trying to do is we're trying to create a positive impact on other people, whether it is our customers, our partners, our colleagues.

00:02:18:08 - 00:02:39:19
Eduardo Briceno
And sometimes what we do doesn't have the impact that we want it to have. And so that's why feedback is so important so that we can get information about what's helpful or not helpful about what we're doing and so that we can continue to change and iterate so that we can have the impact we want to have. And also other people can give us information that might be helpful for us to generally to continue to improve.

00:02:39:19 - 00:02:52:08
Eduardo Briceno
They have different perspectives, they have different expertise. So more brains are smarter than one brain, especially if those brains are diverse, have different backgrounds and experiences and skills. And so that's why, you know, feedback is so critical and important.

00:02:52:10 - 00:03:15:19
Wayne Turmel
Or one of those brains is mine, and I'll take all the help I can get. The kind of common belief among leadership experts and I have fallen into this trap on more than one occasion is getting caught up in We give way more negative feedback than positive feedback. And you know, especially when you're working remotely, that balance gets off even more.

00:03:15:21 - 00:03:31:02
Wayne Turmel
But the thing about the performance paradox is you say something fairly disturbing, which is that we give positive praise incorrectly. Help me understand what's going on there.

00:03:31:04 - 00:03:59:22
Eduardo Briceno
Well, yeah. So you referred to the performance paradox. The performance paradox is a counterintuitive phenomenon that if we're always performing, our performance suffers. So if we're always getting things done, we stay at the same level of effectiveness and we don't improve further. So we can talk about that more. But to to your question about praise. I started this work when I started working with Stanford professor Carol Dweck.

00:04:00:00 - 00:04:23:09
Eduardo Briceno
She wrote the book called Mindset The New Psychology of Success. And I started working with her 15 years ago, and her research has shown and now thousands of researchers have studied the same thing in many different contexts, that when we are in what we call a fixed mindset, there's all kinds of negative consequences. A fixed mindset is when we think of ourselves or others as unable to change.

00:04:23:09 - 00:04:42:14
Eduardo Briceno
We think that people are either naturals and gifted or they're inept. And so, for example, if you're a good leader, it must be because you're a natural leader rather than everybody can continue to develop as a leader, or if you're great at giving and receiving feedback, it's because you're a natural, not because you've worked at it. It's not like you can continue to improve.

00:04:42:16 - 00:04:47:11
Wayne Turmel
And so that an unintended consequence of focusing on strengths.

00:04:47:13 - 00:05:07:14
Eduardo Briceno
Well, so we can focus on strengths either in a fixed way, in a fixed mindset way, or in a growth mindset. So if somebody is doing something really well, right, and we want to praise them, we can attribute their strength to something that's fixed and then you're so good at this, you know, keep doing this. But we're not we don't have the idea that they can continue to improve further, Right.

00:05:07:16 - 00:05:32:13
Eduardo Briceno
So that can make them feel like what they do well is just because of something that's inside of them and so few consequences of that. First, they won't they won't be looking to continue to improve that. So to continue to experiment, to continue to solicit feedback, to continue to read and watch podcast and about how to continue to improve that thing that they do well.

00:05:32:15 - 00:05:51:06
Eduardo Briceno
And then second, when they get into trouble, when they do something and it doesn't work well, we tend to feel really badly. We say, Oh, I must not be this good, right? So I'm just going to either give up and do something else because I'm not good at this or I'm just going to hide my mistake. Pretend that it didn't happen.

00:05:51:08 - 00:06:09:22
Eduardo Briceno
So those are some of the consequences of fixed mindset. And so when we're praising people, it's important to not label them, right? Not attribute what they're doing well to something that's fixed in them, but just say, hey, like this behavior that you did, this is the impact that it had. This is what I appreciated about that. And I would love for you to continue doing that.

00:06:09:22 - 00:06:20:22
Eduardo Briceno
Right. And so we are attributing that be the positive effects to what people do and always kind of commenting on behavior with the assumption that we can always continue to improve.

00:06:20:22 - 00:06:35:17
Wayne Turmel
And so let's go back to what you said about the performance paradox and that we're so busy doing stuff and that becomes the the focus. Tell me a little bit more about the actual paradox.

00:06:35:19 - 00:06:58:10
Eduardo Briceno
Yeah. So we tend to think that the way to succeed is just to work hard and to execute. And if we do a lot of an activity, we will get really good at that activity. But that's actually not true. It's actually gets us stuck. So if you think about if we take it out of our context so we can understand the idea and then we'll bring it back to our context.

00:06:58:12 - 00:07:21:04
Eduardo Briceno
If we think about, for example, a professional athlete, if they're working to win a championship, they're in the middle of a game. It's a really important game and they're having trouble with a particular move. Say, I'm a tennis player, I'm having trouble with the topspin serve and I'm having trouble with that move in that match. I'm going to try to avoid that move during that match because all I care about was winning.

00:07:21:05 - 00:07:43:04
Eduardo Briceno
Right. But then after the match, I'm going to go to my coach and I say, Coach, have to work on my topspin serve. So it's a very different activity and an area of attention. And what we do when we're seeking to improve and what we're seeking to execute and get things done. So that's what I call the learning zone is when we're working to improve and the performance tone is when we're working to perform and get things done.

00:07:43:06 - 00:08:03:16
Eduardo Briceno
And what often happens in work and life is that we are just focused about getting getting things done. All we care about is going through a task list, getting things done, and that works okay when we're novices because we're so bad that if we just try to do the activity, we'll get better. But then once we become proficient, we actually stagnate and we don't get better.

00:08:03:16 - 00:08:27:01
Eduardo Briceno
And so, for example, there's research out of Harvard that shows that the more years of experience that doctors, general physicians have on the job, on average, their patient outcomes actually get worse over time. The more experience they have because they're so busy seeing patients, right. Diagnosing and prescribing that they don't have time to engage in continuing to learn.

00:08:27:02 - 00:08:42:00
Eduardo Briceno
And and that's what is needed in order to improve and to increase performance. So we think that we're too busy to engage in learning, but actually we can get more done and perform better if we figure out how to embed learning and integrate learning into how we do things.

00:08:42:02 - 00:08:58:00
Wayne Turmel
And some of that, I presume, is tied to the old adage that, you know, you get what you practice. So, you know, spending hours and hours practicing or doing something doesn't make you better. And it just makes you really, really good at what you're doing. Well.

00:08:58:01 - 00:09:11:19
Eduardo Briceno
Right. And so if you're doing something to your point with techniques that are not great, you're going to reinforce those techniques to your point, are going to keep doing those techniques, even if they're not great techniques or if there are better techniques out there. Yeah.

00:09:11:22 - 00:09:40:16
Wayne Turmel
Now, one of the things that coaches tell coaches, leaders tell us all the time is that giving feedback can be kind of uncomfortable. And, you know, so we do tend to keep it very transactional, right? Go down the checklist and get that done. You are an advocate for, as are we for asking questions as a form of getting to the feedback.

00:09:40:21 - 00:09:46:10
Wayne Turmel
Tell me a little bit about how one does that. What kind of questions are we talking about?

00:09:46:13 - 00:10:15:06
Eduardo Briceno
Well, first, I do think the power of questions and helping people reflect in a coaching approach is so powerful and we can talk about that. I think before we do that, we need to set the stage. So when we start working with our colleagues and with our teams and this is so much more important to do even in a hybrid world, but to your point is important everywhere, right, is to set the stage in terms of how we want to work together, you know, and in lots of different ways, including feedback, Right?

00:10:15:07 - 00:10:39:15
Eduardo Briceno
What do we think of feedback? What is feedback? Because different people have different views of what feedback is. Some people are afraid of it. Some people are not just like some people are afraid of snakes and others are not. Some people are afraid of chickens, others are not. And so if we just go and start working with somebody and give them feedback, they might see feedback as something that is a sign that they're not doing their job well.

00:10:39:15 - 00:10:59:19
Eduardo Briceno
Right. Or a sign of of incompetence. Whereas we might see feedback as something that everybody can benefit from, right? Even the best person in the world loves to get feedback to get even better. And so we need to make our implicit assumptions about feedback, about learning, about what work is, about what our relationships are, about what we're trying to accomplish together.

00:10:59:21 - 00:11:19:14
Eduardo Briceno
We need to make those implicit assumptions explicit in conversation, right? So that we're not kind of dictating what culture we want to have, but co-creating that with our colleagues and say, Hey, what do people think about these ideas? What would you like to focus on? Should we focus on feedback now or in something else? How do we how can we work together as a team better?

00:11:19:16 - 00:11:23:17
Eduardo Briceno
And what do we what do we want to focus on now for the next month? For example?

00:11:23:19 - 00:11:48:07
Wayne Turmel
I think those assumptions are really important because we tend to work the way we like to work, right? We assume that everybody thinks about us. I'm one of those people. Don't sugarcoat it. Don't give me the sandwich. I don't need the fluff. Just tell me what I did wrong and we'll move on. Right. And that's my preference. And so that tends to be my default style.

00:11:48:09 - 00:12:14:09
Eduardo Briceno
That is my preference to wane and that is my default style to and it it was the default style also of a friend of mine and classmate. His name is Marcello Beddoes, and he's the CEO of Beauty for All Industries. And in my book I talk about a story that he shared with me, which is that his dad, who whom I've met, he his dad always gave him very blunt feedback and focused on what he could improve.

00:12:14:15 - 00:12:36:22
Eduardo Briceno
And Marcello knew that his father always meant love, and he was just being helpful. And it worked for him for Mattel. But when he became a CEO, he took that same approach with his colleagues and he would just tell them very straight, blunt, you know, here's here's what we can do better. And his colleagues felt like he didn't appreciate how hard they were working and what they were contributing.

00:12:37:02 - 00:12:54:16
Eduardo Briceno
So through feedback, through conversations, Marcello realized, okay, like, this is how I view feedback. This is how I like to receive feedback. But other people need to know that I appreciate them, that I'm seeing the work, the good work that they're doing because he did really appreciate them and that he think that they were being very valuable, but it wasn't coming across.

00:12:54:21 - 00:13:10:15
Eduardo Briceno
So he had to learn through feedback how what was going to be the culture and the rituals of that team. Because to your point, we all have different preferences and so we need to be in conversation and co-create the culture with our colleagues so that we can do something that works for everybody.

00:13:10:17 - 00:13:34:20
Wayne Turmel
So tell me about the questions that you ask, because there is a huge difference between what were you thinking and what were you thinking? I mean, those are those are two they sound like the same question, but they're not. Right. So talk to us about what kinds of questions get us, the kind of results that you're talking about.

00:13:34:21 - 00:13:56:12
Eduardo Briceno
Well, yeah, I agree. And I think that the setting and the purpose of the conversation is very important. Kind of what what is to come, the common understanding about our goals. And so it depends on what kind of conversation is and what the goal is. But I think it's important in anticipation of that, to share with each other what we're looking to improve.

00:13:56:12 - 00:14:18:11
Eduardo Briceno
What am I interested in getting better at sharing that with my colleagues so that we all know what we're all working on so we can help each other around those areas in particular. So if I'm having a coaching conversation with a colleague and I know, you know, she's working on participating more in meetings, you know, I might ask her, hey, how, how, how do you think that's going?

00:14:18:11 - 00:14:51:18
Eduardo Briceno
How do you feel about your progress or not in participating in meetings? And then she might give some reflections around that. Right. And I might say, well, what specifically did you feel went well or didn't go well, or what did you do that that made it go well or that what could you have done differently so that helping reflect on how much progress is she making and what is she doing or not doing that is working and very important to identify what is she going to do differently going forward.

00:14:51:18 - 00:15:15:22
Eduardo Briceno
So in the next meeting or the next few meetings, what what one thing is she going to work on in order to continue to improve and how can I support her to it? How can I support you in your progress? Do you have any feedback for me? And that's probably the most part. One of the most powerful questions to ask as a as a colleague and as a leader is do you have feedback for me or what could I have done better or I'm trying to get better at this.

00:15:15:22 - 00:15:28:17
Eduardo Briceno
Do you have any ideas? When we model soliciting feedback, then we are modeling a learning culture where we're learning from each other. And when other people emulate our behaviors, then we build a culture we want to build.

00:15:28:19 - 00:15:48:18
Wayne Turmel
I like what you said about asking those questions because if you ask those questions early on, you know, how do you think it went? You know where they're at in terms of receiving the feedback if they're beating themselves up, Oh, I suck. I was the worst little bit. Okay. That's I have to work with that person differently than if somebody goes, Oh, I was great.

00:15:48:18 - 00:15:49:15
Wayne Turmel
I was bulletproof.

00:15:49:18 - 00:16:11:12
Eduardo Briceno
Absolutely. Yeah. And if they're generating those insights is is much more powerful and it's much more credible, they understand it a lot better. So if we are helping them generate the thoughts and having the thoughts come from them is going to work a lot better than if we are kind of trying to transmit the thoughts from us to them.

00:16:11:15 - 00:16:35:06
Wayne Turmel
You know, the big difference, it seems when you're in the office versus working remotely or apart from each other is the opportunities for feedback. And we've only got a few minutes left because that's the way the world works. But as a leader, how do I help myself remember to create those opportunities?

00:16:35:08 - 00:17:00:04
Eduardo Briceno
Well, I think regular tech teams are so powerful when possible, right? It's just having regular conversations scheduled in the calendar and they're recurring basis whether one on one or there are some cultures where you can have a team conversation that involves feedback, where people have so much trust that you can have open and honest conversations. And that's super powerful because then when you're having those conversations, other people can chime in, Oh, I saw that too.

00:17:00:04 - 00:17:23:13
Eduardo Briceno
Or, you know, but what I appreciated about about that was X, so you can learn more in a group conversation. But with hybrid, Yes. So it's harder to build relationships. It's hard to build trust. So it's important for us to be deliberate about creating those regular conversations, to creating opportunities for having personal conversations, not only work conversations, but it also creates opportunity, right?

00:17:23:13 - 00:17:48:13
Eduardo Briceno
Because we can connect with any of our colleagues wherever they are. We can be more equitable. We can because if we have kind of regular check ins with everybody, we can have conversations with everybody and not be as biased around who is who is closer to us or who are working more regular and regular basis. So we I think we have to be more deliberate in general in a hybrid environment, but but it also comes with opportunities.

00:17:48:17 - 00:18:12:21
Wayne Turmel
We are sadly at the end of our time and this is one of those conversations that I could geek out for a very long time on. And Eduardo, if there's one thing that you want people to walk away, and of course, if people only walk away from one thing in this conversation we done a terrible job. But if there is only one thing that they can walk away with, what do you want people to know?

00:18:12:23 - 00:18:35:20
Eduardo Briceno
What I want people to know is that feedback is probably the most powerful way to improve and to build relationships and the most effective. The most powerful thing that you can do around feedback is to encourage the soliciting of feedback and solicit feedback yourself. When people solicit feedback rather than focus on giving feedback, then the person soliciting the feedback is in the driver's seat.

00:18:36:02 - 00:18:50:09
Eduardo Briceno
They can ask for specifically what they're looking for. They can also choose the time, right? Which is more important, a hybrid setting. When am I ready to hear this feedback? So a culture of soliciting feedback is the most powerful thing that you can build when it comes to feedback.

00:18:50:11 - 00:19:17:16
Wayne Turmel
Eduardo was saying, you know, the book is The Power of Performance Paradox. Thank you so much for being with us on the Long-Distance Worklife. That's it. Thank you, everybody. If you want to know how to contact Eduardo, how to learn more about the book and about his work, go to longdistanceworklife.com, It will all be in the show notes as is a transcript of the show.

00:19:17:18 - 00:19:45:03
Wayne Turmel
If you are looking to build your team with a culture of feedback, may we suggest the long distance team designing your team for everyone's success? Kevin Eikenberry and my new book, you can learn more specifically about the book with special offers at longdistanceteambook.com. Marisa will be with us in the next show. I know many of you say thank goodness, like and subscribe to the show.

00:19:45:05 - 00:20:10:03
Wayne Turmel
You know how podcasts work. If you like it, tell your friends If you didn't. It's just our little secret and you can reach us directly on LinkedIn or by email. We are currently soliciting pet peeves about remote work and your questions. So we want to make sure that the show addresses what you care about in this new world of work.

00:20:10:03 - 00:20:20:11
Wayne Turmel
So thank you so much for being with us this week. My name is Wayne Turmel. We'll see you again on the long distance work life. And don't let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:39 Importance of Feedback
01:14 Guest Introduction: Eduardo Briceno
01:55 Why Is Feedback Important?
02:18 Impact of Feedback in Communication and Collaboration
02:52 Importance of Diverse Perspectives in Feedback
03:15 The Performance Paradox: Balancing Performance and Improvement
04:00 The Impact of Fixed Mindset in Feedback
04:47 Focusing on Strengths in a Growth Mindset
05:32 The Consequences of Fixed Mindset in Feedback
06:20 The Learning Zone vs. Performance Zone
06:58 How Continuous Learning Leads to Improvement
08:02 Importance of Regular Check-ins and Conversations
08:58 Understanding Individual Preferences
09:40 Setting the Stage for Feedback
10:15 Asking Reflective Questions
11:19 Building a Culture of Soliciting Feedback
12:14 Understanding Different Feedback Styles
13:10 Creating Opportunities for Feedback in Remote and Hybrid Settings
16:11 The Power of Soliciting Feedback
17:48 Conclusion

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Eduardo Briceno, author of The Performance Paradox

Name: Eduardo Briceño

What He Does: Author of The Performance Paradox, Keynote Speaker, and Facilitator

Notable: Eduardo has a bachelor’s degree in finance from the Wharton School and an MBA from Stanford, as well as degrees in chemical engineering and education. He is a Pahara-Aspen Fellow, a member of the Aspen Institute’s Global Leadership Network, and an inductee in the Happiness Hall of Fame. He has helped some of the world’s largest companies develop a culture of learning and high performance and his TED talks have been viewed over eight million times. 

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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Read More
Meeting Cancellations and Time Zone Troubles episode of Long-Distance Worklife podcast with Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry
Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Technology, Working Remotely

Remote Work Rants: Meeting Cancellations and Time Zone Troubles

In this pet peeves episode, Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel tackle two common frustrations faced by remote workers: last-minute meeting cancellations and the challenges of coordinating meetings across different time zones. They empathize with the annoyance of blocked-out time being wasted and provide insights on how to handle such situations professionally. The hosts also discuss the importance of considering team members' time zones when scheduling meetings and how to avoid unintentional home office bias. Listeners will gain valuable tips on effective communication, asynchronous alternatives, and fostering a more understanding and inclusive remote work culture.

Key Takeaways

1. Last-minute meeting cancellations can be frustrating, but acknowledging the inconvenience and providing a reason for the cancellation can help alleviate the frustration.
2. When meetings involve participants from different time zones, consider their preferences and try to find meeting times that are mutually convenient.
3. Utilize asynchronous communication methods like recorded videos or shared documents to avoid unnecessary late-night or early-morning meetings.
4. Be mindful of home office bias and make an effort to balance meeting times to accommodate team members in different time zones.
5. Effective communication, empathy, and flexibility are crucial for building a positive remote work culture that values the needs of all team members.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:23 - 00:00:12:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to Long-Distance Worklife where we help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams.

00:00:12:10 - 00:00:18:12
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm Marisa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi, Wayne!

00:00:18:13 - 00:00:20:13
Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marisa. How are you?

00:00:20:14 - 00:00:23:15
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. Are you ready to tackle some more pet peeves today?

00:00:23:16 - 00:00:45:16
Wayne Turmel
I am. This is like my favorite thing is when I do training, I always tell people, don't be shy. This is your chance to vent. And just a little word about pet peeves in general. When we get them from readers, it very often starts with Maybe it's just me, and the answer is no. It is not just you.

00:00:45:16 - 00:00:46:17
Wayne Turmel
That's the point.

00:00:46:22 - 00:01:14:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. So if you've been thinking about sending us one for a while, do it. Because not only is there, it's not just you. There's probably also even us that feel the same way. So we're going to start tackling those. I've got two lined up for you and we're going to start with Michael's. And Michael told me on LinkedIn that for him, his pet peeve is meeting canceled meetings, canceled the day of and it's worse if it's an early meeting or the closer the cancellation is to the starting meeting time.

00:01:14:20 - 00:01:17:17
Wayne Turmel
Yes, the answer is yes, right?

00:01:17:19 - 00:01:19:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I feel that, too.

00:01:19:09 - 00:01:30:09
Wayne Turmel
It's interesting because what Michael didn't say is the momentary feeling of relief. And hallelujah, right goes when a meeting is canceled.

00:01:30:14 - 00:01:34:12
Marisa Eikenberry
The introvert in me is like, Oh, thank God.

00:01:34:14 - 00:02:05:10
Wayne Turmel
What I suspect he's referring to is the sense that you have blocked out time on your calendar. And there is something presumably at least as important, likely, more important, that isn't getting done because you have blocked time for this meeting. There's prep time and then the meeting is simply and I think that there are a couple of things that need to go into this because what is it that peeves us off about that?

00:02:05:16 - 00:02:33:19
Wayne Turmel
It's seldom that the meeting is canceled, right? That's that in itself is often, oh, I get an hour of my life back or whatever. It's a couple of things. One is I've wasted all this time. Yeah, prepping or blocking it or not schedule ing something that I could be doing. So there's a productivity waste here. The second thing I think is it's just plain rude.

00:02:33:21 - 00:02:34:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:02:34:15 - 00:03:00:00
Wayne Turmel
Right, right. And depending on if you're crossing time zones and doing different things, it's an inconvenience. So I think there are some things. First of all, your mother probably raised you right. So if something is canceled, apologize, acknowledge the work that's gone into it and give a reason why it's canceled.

00:03:00:02 - 00:03:10:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. I mean, this week that got moved a couple of times and every time it was crap. I didn't know about this thing. Here's why I need to move it. Okay, No problem.

00:03:10:07 - 00:03:36:01
Wayne Turmel
Most people are reasonable human beings. People will be reasonable about this, assuming two conditions. One is that it is acknowledged and you you don't have to grovel or anything like that. But a simple. I'm really sorry. I know that you prep this. I know that you blocked the other time out. Here's why we had to change or cancel the meeting.

00:03:36:03 - 00:03:36:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:03:36:14 - 00:03:44:21
Wayne Turmel
Because frankly, there's very often a good reason for that. If you are canceling the meeting, they're jolly well, better be a good reason for this.

00:03:45:02 - 00:03:46:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:03:46:08 - 00:04:14:02
Wayne Turmel
And it has to do with a key stakeholder. Can't make it or we're missing certain information or the building caught fire or whatever it is When you cancel, do so with an explanation. As much explanation as you can give, because most people will go, Oh, that makes sense. So that's the first thing. The second thing is whatever business was supposed to be conducted in this meeting obviously did not take place.

00:04:14:04 - 00:04:33:14
Wayne Turmel
How are we going to handle that if it was important enough to hold a meeting? Obviously it's important. Are you going to send the information via an asynchronous form? Right. Are you going to send the PowerPoint or are you going to direct them to where they can get the information that would have been given out in the media?

00:04:33:16 - 00:04:48:14
Wayne Turmel
Right. So that people at least get the value of that. I think it's important that we know is this canceled or is it rescheduled? And approximately when will it be rescheduled? Tell us what the future holds.

00:04:48:16 - 00:04:50:19
Marisa Eikenberry
So we can block that time in our calendar and we.

00:04:50:19 - 00:05:17:01
Wayne Turmel
Can walk that unnecessarily. And I think that's and I know that that doesn't make up for the frustration, particularly, as I say, if you are readjusting your life, not just your your schedule, but your actual life. You know, when I have clients in Europe and I love my European clients very much, but I live on the west coast of the United States, there is no good time.

00:05:17:03 - 00:05:20:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, somebody is going to get inconvenienced either way.

00:05:20:07 - 00:05:42:22
Wayne Turmel
Somebody is going to be inconvenienced and the customer being the customer, it's probably me as it should be now, depending on the time of day, can be a big deal because if I need to be on webcam, for example, I need to be showered and dressed from the waist up and, you know, look reasonable, lay awake and be properly caffeinated.

00:05:43:00 - 00:05:46:16
Wayne Turmel
Well, if I have done that at five in the morning.

00:05:46:18 - 00:05:48:07
Marisa Eikenberry
And you've now canceled.

00:05:48:08 - 00:06:07:06
Wayne Turmel
And it's happened, I mean, I've gotten up at 415 for 5:00 meeting only to check my email and they've canceled meeting. Oof! Congratulations. It's 415 and you're awake and the coffee's on. Well, you know my day. I'm a serious head.

00:06:07:08 - 00:06:27:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I know. For me, like, because the. The nature of what I do, like, I do so much deep work, and there are some times where it's like, I won't plan my deep work. I project work during certain times. This well, I'm going to have a meeting at 10:00 or I'm going to have me, so I'll just do this later and then when it gets canceled, it's just like crap.

00:06:27:17 - 00:06:38:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Like, that was time. I mean, yeah, I theoretically have it back now, but it's like, but now I've scheduled other other stuff around it, so it doesn't really feel like I got that time back, even though I theoretically did.

00:06:38:17 - 00:07:11:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And what you said is really important because you're not just losing the time of the meeting. I'm the same way. If I know, for example, we're recording this today and that's on my my schedule. Well, for the last half hour, I've been doing little things right, right. Deleting stuff from my inbox and, you know, updating some things, but little mindless tasks because I want my head in the game to do this and I don't want to get into something that requires deep thought and then have to stop.

00:07:11:17 - 00:07:14:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. That's that's where I'm at. Right?

00:07:14:12 - 00:07:29:11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. So what happens is we not just lose call it an hour because that's an easy. Yeah. Framework we know lose that hour we probably misspent a half hour at least.

00:07:29:12 - 00:07:32:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Maybe depending on when the last thing that we got done. Got that.

00:07:32:23 - 00:07:41:11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. Oh, I got off my call at 930 and the meeting is at ten. I'm not going to jump in and do something major.

00:07:41:12 - 00:07:55:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, yeah. Like I've gotten off meetings. I mean, I end my day like 345. And so there are times that, you know, I'll get done with whatever task that I'm doing it like 330. And I go, Well, what am I to do for 15 minutes? I'm to be honest, I probably go on Facebook because it's like, what am I going to get done in 15 minutes?

00:07:55:06 - 00:07:56:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Not a whole heck of a lot.

00:07:56:08 - 00:08:27:18
Wayne Turmel
And so and here's the thing, though, you do that, nobody cares. The work got done. And this is the thing about remote work. The work the product for the day got done. The fact that you're 15 minutes late, early coming in, leaving, running to target, whatever you're doing is not as important as the fact that the work product, you got an acceptable amount of work product done for the day.

00:08:27:20 - 00:08:34:03
Wayne Turmel
The problem with canceled meetings is that you could have gotten more work product done right now.

00:08:34:03 - 00:08:39:00
Marisa Eikenberry
You know, now those projects have been scheduled on other days because I thought I didn't have it in my calendar today.

00:08:39:01 - 00:09:15:17
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. So I know, Michael, that this does not assuage the pain. Right. Because it is annoying. But I think if we apologize and recognize the inconvenience, give people some sense of what's next. Right. Are we going to reschedule it for Thursday? Are we going to send out the materials in advance? Tell us what's going to happen as a result of this so that whatever work we were supposed to get done still gets done because the meeting was supposed to accomplish work.

00:09:15:19 - 00:09:25:23
Wayne Turmel
Right. Give people a sense of what's next so that they can plan their life. I think, you know, stuff happens.

00:09:26:01 - 00:09:26:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:09:26:17 - 00:09:33:12
Wayne Turmel
And most people recognize that. But, you know, we can take the sting out of it a little bit.

00:09:33:14 - 00:09:51:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and I think, too, because I have also heard this where, you know, you have a meeting that, well, maybe it might happen, but maybe it won't happen. But it's not like we're canceling it because, you know, that was caught on fire or something like that. It's just like, I don't know if I'm going to have it or not cancel it like earlier rather than later if the day before.

00:09:51:07 - 00:09:54:09
Marisa Eikenberry
You're like, I don't know if we need to have it, cancel it.

00:09:54:10 - 00:10:00:11
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I think periodically, you know, asking yourself, do we need to have this meeting at all?

00:10:00:17 - 00:10:02:03
Marisa Eikenberry
And that's an important question to ask.

00:10:02:08 - 00:10:13:01
Wayne Turmel
And can it be done in another fashion? If everybody comes in to the office Tuesdays and Wednesdays, maybe we'll just do a Wednesday when everybody's here.

00:10:13:03 - 00:10:18:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Or I don't really need a status update because we technically talked the other day like we can just cancel this meeting.

00:10:18:16 - 00:10:25:12
Wayne Turmel
And if you have a decent reporting system, status updates are largely unnecessary.

00:10:25:14 - 00:10:27:22
Marisa Eikenberry
That too.

00:10:28:00 - 00:10:29:00
Wayne Turmel
What's your next question?

00:10:29:04 - 00:10:33:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So our next one is from Lourdes. I'm hope I'm pronouncing that right.

00:10:33:12 - 00:10:34:15
Wayne Turmel
Gorgeous.

00:10:34:17 - 00:10:55:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Thank you. And it says, if you're collaborating across time zones, global or country specific organizing meetings or expecting response, is it convenient times where headquarters are based with little regard of how late or early in the day it might be for other remote locations? Slack and Outlook have a send delay option for a good reason and she added a very nice little emoji.

00:10:55:04 - 00:11:11:11
Marisa Eikenberry
I did ask for a little bit more detail and I go, okay, what's the worst that you've ever seen for this? Like, what does that look like for you? And she said, the worst times that she's ever seen were 5 a.m. for a meeting or between 9 p.m. and midnight for time zones outside of headquarters.

00:11:11:13 - 00:11:19:06
Wayne Turmel
People who live in headquarters forget what they learned about eighth grade physics.

00:11:19:07 - 00:11:20:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay?

00:11:20:05 - 00:11:27:12
Wayne Turmel
And they don't realize that the sun does not revolve around their particular building.

00:11:27:14 - 00:11:28:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:11:28:23 - 00:11:33:11
Wayne Turmel
People on the east coast of the United States are particularly bad at this.

00:11:33:13 - 00:11:36:07
Marisa Eikenberry
I mean, we are particularly bad at this even as an organization.

00:11:36:10 - 00:11:38:17
Wayne Turmel
Well, but we're not. We're not. Here's the thing.

00:11:38:22 - 00:11:39:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:11:39:15 - 00:11:44:21
Wayne Turmel
Indianapolis is on. Indy is in Indiana, which is in the Eastern.

00:11:44:21 - 00:11:45:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Time.

00:11:45:08 - 00:12:12:00
Wayne Turmel
Zone. We have trucks in the Mountain Time zone, Arizona. Nobody knows what time it is in Arizona ever because of gas and switching. Right. And I'm on the West Coast. I'm an early bird when Kevin's schedule's like our team meetings first Friday of every month. It's 7:00 in the morning for me. But that was negotiated fair, right? That is the latest that I usually start my day.

00:12:12:04 - 00:12:19:01
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, I'll often have a t shirt and a baseball cap on because I won't have showered, but everybody knows me and that doesn't matter.

00:12:19:04 - 00:12:20:14
Marisa Eikenberry
And it's a TV call in.

00:12:20:14 - 00:12:22:12
Wayne Turmel
The morning doesn't bother me.

00:12:22:15 - 00:12:22:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:12:23:04 - 00:12:58:02
Wayne Turmel
Now, as I say, if I'm talking to somebody in London. Right, that's a different that's a different animal. Or if you're talking to somebody in Asia-Pacific, that can get complicated. But the default very often is whatever time the headquarters is in, everybody synchronizes their clocks accordingly. And that shouldn't be necessarily the norm unless it's absolutely mandatory. You know, if you've got a call center in Manila, yeah, it probably used to be when your customers in the U.S. are awake.

00:12:58:04 - 00:12:59:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:12:59:03 - 00:13:19:21
Wayne Turmel
Right. There are some things that just make sense in terms of workflow. But there are two things I think. One is look for peak times, right? Hey, if I have to stay an hour later than usual to do a call, and that's not all the time. Yeah, I'll take one for the team. It's not a big deal.

00:13:19:23 - 00:13:21:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, once in a while it's.

00:13:21:00 - 00:13:41:07
Wayne Turmel
Fine if you feel like you are constantly being imposed upon and unnecessarily so, that can lead to disengagement and disgruntlement and all of that kind of negative stuff because it just feels like your needs are secondary to everybody else's.

00:13:41:13 - 00:14:01:19
Marisa Eikenberry
So when this happens, I mean, who needs to be the one to raise the flag? Is it the person who's being super inconvenienced needs to go talk to their manager, or does the leader need to realize, Hey, I might be in New York, but my team is in Spain and I'm asking them to be on a call at a time that's not great for them.

00:14:02:01 - 00:14:18:11
Wayne Turmel
Well, and that's the thing, right? I know that for me, when I led a team and it was an international team, I tended to take one for the team. Unless the majority of the people on the call were in a single time.

00:14:18:11 - 00:14:20:05
Marisa Eikenberry
So that makes sense to try to get as.

00:14:20:05 - 00:14:45:09
Wayne Turmel
Many of the person. If it's just me in that person, I will generally take one for the team and do it when it's convenient for them. That is one of those dark side of servant leadership things that we've talked about though, where if you've got five team members outside of your time zone and so you're starting at five in the morning and finishing at eight at night, that ain't good.

00:14:45:11 - 00:14:47:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you need to take care of you too.

00:14:47:11 - 00:15:17:18
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So everybody needs to communicate that. I think one of the things that is very helpful besides just asking people, when would you like to hold this meeting so that it's not killing you? That would be good, right? Just ask people what works Every once in a while, though. Toss them a bone. You know, maybe people in the New York office need to suck it up and, you know, take a morning call or stay a little bit later.

00:15:17:23 - 00:15:41:00
Wayne Turmel
And the thing is, the way that we work now, it's not like if I have an 8:00 call, I have to work every minute up till 8:00. We live in a time flexible world. If you're you know, if you work till 2:00 and you've got a call at 8:00 at night, go to the gym, have dinner with the family circle back and join when you when you need to.

00:15:41:02 - 00:16:06:16
Wayne Turmel
I think what Lord is, is addressing is this kind of home office bias, which literally leads to thoughtless behavior and thoughtless, not in the sense of you're a miserable, horrible human being. It's that you literally didn't think about it. So when you have people in different time zones confer with them, find out what works, Do they like early morning?

00:16:06:19 - 00:16:11:10
Wayne Turmel
Do they like evening? How does this impact their workday?

00:16:11:12 - 00:16:21:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and to your point, even just from the last question, does it need to be a meeting at all? Could this be done asynchronously, which would probably benefit all of them?

00:16:21:17 - 00:16:32:23
Wayne Turmel
And we're living in a world where literally with the push of a button, you are recording transcripts, ing and translating your meetings.

00:16:33:01 - 00:16:33:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:16:34:01 - 00:16:44:02
Wayne Turmel
So if it's an informational meeting where you're basically giving information, maybe somebody doesn't have to be up at midnight.

00:16:44:04 - 00:16:44:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, maybe.

00:16:44:20 - 00:16:45:09
Wayne Turmel
That be that.

00:16:45:11 - 00:17:02:06
Marisa Eikenberry
A meeting, it could be a video. If if it's truly just I'm going to give information and then people can ask questions. I've seen people use loom or other software to just record a video and then send it out and then, hey, watch this video. If you have questions, let me know.

00:17:02:08 - 00:17:15:12
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So there are ways to do this. Technology allows us to do that, but have conversations with people. What works, what doesn't? Do they mind? You know, what is their body clock tell you?

00:17:15:14 - 00:17:16:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:17:16:02 - 00:17:37:20
Wayne Turmel
Somebody to attend those things. You should know that anyway if you're hiring people outside of your time's up. So you know, what is their preference? Can they be accommodated or are there alternatives to those meetings? And by the way, every once in a while toss them a bone and schedule when it's good for them and everybody else has to suck it up.

00:17:37:20 - 00:17:42:04
Wayne Turmel
And when they complain, you go, yes, that's the point.

00:17:42:06 - 00:17:51:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. So it's always, always been, you know, missing dinner for this. You can miss dinner once a while.

00:17:51:04 - 00:17:52:19
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. Yeah.

00:17:52:21 - 00:18:10:07
Marisa Eikenberry
So I just want to thank both of our listeners for sending in these questions. I'm so excited that we got to tackle these today and we have a few more, but we would love to answer your questions too, so please make sure to send those to us. Thank you for listening to Log. This is work life for Shownotes transcripts and other resources.

00:18:10:07 - 00:18:31:23
Marisa Eikenberry
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. Be sure to like in 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 Shownotes let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic or pet peeve for Wayne and I to tackle on a future episode.

00:18:32:01 - 00:18:44:15
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 Long Distance Team Book.com. Thanks for joining us. It is Wayne. Like say don't let the weasels get you down.

00:18:44:17 - 00:18:48:14
Wayne Turmel
Darn weasels.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
02:05 Frustrations with Canceled Meetings
06:07 Impact on Work Productivity
09:15 Time Zone Challenges
12:12 Inconvenient Meeting Times
15:14 Asynchronous Communication
18:10 Conclusion

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!

 Order
Read More
Remote Work for All: How Developing Nations are Embracing New Work Paradigms with Alvaro Daza
Guests, Leadership, Technology, Working Remotely

Remote Work for All: How Developing Nations are Embracing New Work Paradigms with Alvaro Daza

In this episode, we welcome Alvaro Daza, a visionary entrepreneur with a passion for remote work and its impact on the Global South. Alv shares his unique insights from living and working in diverse countries like Colombia, Kenya, and Dubai, where remote work has been a natural way of life long before it became a global trend. He explores the evolution of remote work in lesser developed countries and how innovative solutions like virtual offices and metaverse meetings are reshaping the future of workspaces. Discover how companies are preparing for remote work, the importance of mindset shifts around productivity, and how community-driven organizations like Alv's Circlolo are creating connections and empowering remote workers worldwide. Whether you're a leader or team member on a remote team, this episode will open your mind to the exciting possibilities of remote work in our ever-changing world.

Key Takeaways

1. Remote Work in the Global South: Countries like Colombia and Kenya have embraced remote work due to historical infrastructural limitations, making it a natural and well-adapted practice for them.
2. Shifting Mindsets: Companies need to embrace a shift in mindset about productivity, recognizing that remote work can be just as effective as traditional office work, and employees can be productive in various timeframes.
3. Future of Offices: The future of offices lies in alternative spaces, such as virtual offices in the metaverse and flexible policies for remote work, fostering creativity and reducing environmental impact.
4. Embracing Freedom: Companies should focus on building communities and providing freedom for employees to work on projects based on their expertise and interests, promoting satisfaction and productivity.
5. Sustainability and Accessibility: Remote work reduces commuting and makes work accessible to more people globally, benefiting the environment and creating opportunities for a diverse workforce.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:20 - 00:00:32:16
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome. Welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife. The podcast where we try to help make sense of the world of remote and hybrid work and help you not just survive, but actually maybe enjoy it a little and live your life. My name is Wayne Turmel. I am super, super excited and I'm warning you now we're going to get super geeky today.

00:00:32:20 - 00:01:01:07
Wayne Turmel
We are going to talk about remote work in parts of the world that you might not have thought about for a while. And we're going to talk about do offices still make sense. And the person who's going to guide us through all that is not Marisa, who is not here today. We do, in fact, though, have Alv Daza who is well, he'll tell you all about himself in just a moment.

00:01:01:08 - 00:01:04:09
Wayne Turmel
Alv, welcome to the Long-Distance Worklife.

00:01:04:11 - 00:01:13:08
Alvaro Daza
Thank you so much, Wayne. I'm super thrilled I've been here and I'm very happy to say hello from Colombia, in South America.

00:01:13:10 - 00:01:38:21
Wayne Turmel
So we're going to start with something that I am in old North American white guy, and I have preconceptions about what offices look like and what remote work looks like because that's my frame of reference. Group of you are a Colombian who has lived in Kenya and currently lives in Dubai, but is now at the moment back in Colombia.

00:01:38:23 - 00:01:47:15
Wayne Turmel
And I'm going to guess that you have seen stuff that I have not. So before we get started, introduce yourself real quick and your company circle up.

00:01:47:19 - 00:02:20:03
Alvaro Daza
Thank you so much. Yeah, my name is Alvaro. I'm Colombian. A started is company connecting people across the world, selling bracelets into the last For over five years. I started traveling the world and I ended up traveling to 64 countries in that way. Then after COVID, I started a company called Circle, which is a community that connects remote workers, companies who want to transition to remote working governments, to finding ways of redefining the future by improving the ways how people work, how people connect to people, go to places.

00:02:20:05 - 00:02:29:14
Alvaro Daza
And I'm currently, in fact, yes, living in Dubai for three months in the year and moving around the world across more or less 12 countries per year every every time.

00:02:29:18 - 00:02:59:09
Wayne Turmel
Good heavens. Okay, so most of your experience certainly that's relevant to this conversation has been in what is unquestionably called lesser developed countries. I love your term for it, which is the Global South, which is kind of everything that is in North Asia, Europe, North America. When we're talking about remote work, the change here has been very seismic and it's been kind of gradual.

00:02:59:11 - 00:03:07:21
Wayne Turmel
What is the remote work scene in the global south in countries like Colombia, for example, that we might not think about?

00:03:07:21 - 00:03:29:11
Alvaro Daza
In fact, Colombia got used to remote work way before it was a thing as we were as we were discussing earlier. For example, Colombia, Colombia has had the needs of working remotely because in many, many moments we didn't have the enough resources or infrastructure to travel to another city, for example, to get education or to learn new skills or to communicate with people.

00:03:29:11 - 00:03:55:03
Alvaro Daza
So in many locations, we will need to have a meeting over a phone call, not even a video call, but a phone call and send, for example, the science of over the mail. I remember when I was a state, I studied architecture so when I was starting, I used to design infrastructure for places where violence was existent in Colombia, and I used to have to send the plane the plans of the designs with the bus, with the local bus, because it was the only way how the plans will arrive to the country, rightly so.

00:03:55:03 - 00:04:15:03
Alvaro Daza
I was working remote. I would visit the place or I would see pictures and videos and I would work from remote and and send the things to Colombia. I never had. For example, in the global south, that's something that happened for in some cases, we never had the time of adapting to that transition between the office, the office space and the remote work space.

00:04:15:05 - 00:04:23:17
Alvaro Daza
And we just jump without knowing into learning new skills that right now are very useful. And that's why the Global South is catching up very fast with it.

00:04:23:19 - 00:04:38:08
Wayne Turmel
And it's also because there's been less reliance on the p c. A lot of these countries went from not having access to doing everything on mobile devices.

00:04:38:10 - 00:05:01:08
Alvaro Daza
Totally, totally. That's true. For example, what happened in Colombia and in Guinea in particular, there are two countries that I know like deeply. It was that in the case of Colombia, the government started before. We didn't have infrastructure ala we had 60 years of violence. Hence we didn't have the opportunity of communicating between cities or doing so in the in 13 has a plan of eradicating violence in the country.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:36:00
Alvaro Daza
The government has started a plan to establish optic fiber across the country and then an educational program sending laptops to the kids so the children so they can learn and they can educate themselves online without having to go to the schools because they were exposed to violence or otherwise. And in the case of Kenya, the the government, not the government, but a local company called Safaricom and started giving the community access to a new banking system by empowering them using the normal cell phones, not even as smartphones for doing transactions with everybody, like peer to peer transactions everywhere.

00:05:36:06 - 00:06:12:11
Alvaro Daza
And that became a thing. The fact that, for example, 80% of Kenyans, they didn't have a bank account, but they do have M-Pesa, which is the mobile banking system. So they were used to that remote banking work that as if fighting 2011 when, let's say, remote work, it started to become a thing among some Colombians. What professionals working mainly in marketing and software led to have in Colombia has now Colombians now working from their mobile phones, working from from the lockdowns in conditions that they were not really suitable, but that allowed them to access to These weren't working for international companies.

00:06:12:17 - 00:06:38:13
Alvaro Daza
Same in Kenya, for the youth who were not having access to investors. So reaching us, the investors in London and in the Gulf, in Saudi Arabia, in Dubai, working with them, sending them all of the due diligence to having access to funds and things. So probably that's why because of the way how we needed to adapt as countries, it's why remote work is not a new thing for us, but kind of a natural thing that we just adapted to.

00:06:38:13 - 00:06:39:20
Alvaro Daza
And now we just rename it.

00:06:39:22 - 00:06:49:03
Wayne Turmel
I mean, not to put too fine a point on it, you don't have 150 years of deprogramming to go through and go through the years.

00:06:49:05 - 00:06:49:14
Alvaro Daza
You don't have.

00:06:49:14 - 00:07:13:08
Wayne Turmel
Multiple generations of people who schlep to the office and then had to unlearn that which okay, so you've been working in these countries in the Global South. I love that term. And now you're in Dubai and there is no shortage of offices in Dubai. So here's my question for you. What are the future of offices? When do we need offices and when do we not?

00:07:13:10 - 00:07:38:01
Alvaro Daza
You know that now that you mentioned Dubai, I remember like Dubai, in fact, is also part of the Global South, Right? I call the Gulf and the Emirates. They are nontraditional economies and particular the Gulf has developed over the past 50 years, initially as a response to to a process of of independence that they were going through, like trying to take ideas from the best in the world back into time.

00:07:38:02 - 00:08:05:23
Alvaro Daza
So they do have the infrastructure of the US combined with the infrastructure of of the UK and then from from Japan and then from China and everything is kind of a mix. And as you say, Dubai does not have a shortage of offices, but for the past or like looking forward to the past 50 to to the next 50 years, Dubai's actually developed a plan to make people work from home by redeveloping the cities and like rebuilding areas of the city.

00:08:05:23 - 00:08:32:14
Alvaro Daza
So what you find is that now the developers, for example, in Dubai, it's very common to find developers offering you get you an apartment with a co-working space, get your apartment in a co-living space. There are hotels actually is a very good sample. Robberies is a hotel chain in Dubai, which is actually in space. They are all across the all across the city and they have coaches, they have living rooms, and they also have infrastructure for remote workers.

00:08:32:16 - 00:08:58:11
Alvaro Daza
Dubai, as well as other 52 countries in the in the in the world, which actually, by the way, 62% of these countries are in the global south, like the UAE, like together with all the other 52 countries have issued remote or visa policies for remote workers in what I think is offices are only required. And this is this is probably my vision are only required if and only if we need to start information physical.

00:08:58:13 - 00:09:11:18
Alvaro Daza
And why do I say this? Because what people have found is that is more interesting to have meetings in unusual environments, and it's actually proven that having meetings in initial environments can actually increase your productivity.

00:09:11:20 - 00:09:24:05
Wayne Turmel
So just to make sure know just to make sure people know what you're talking about, you're not saying you don't have meetings and you don't get together physically, but you can have a meeting pretty much anywhere.

00:09:24:08 - 00:09:25:19
Alvaro Daza
It's actually, in.

00:09:25:21 - 00:09:35:00
Wayne Turmel
Fact, not being in conference room B where you spend all your time may actually be better for creativity and.

00:09:35:02 - 00:09:59:19
Alvaro Daza
Totally in fact, like, let me tell you something that happened over the past two months, particularly in Colombia and in the Emirates, in Colombia, the first duty duties realization. AUDIENCE So this is or the first like crime audience was held in the metaverse in the US in the past two months. Like the guy the guy didn't need to move from the prison and the judge needed to move from his house.

00:09:59:21 - 00:10:17:02
Alvaro Daza
They had the audience in the metaverse. They create a whole office, they create the avatars of the characters, and they have they held the audience there, the lawyer, the judge. And in the clip that the presenter went all in there, in the in the places and all the this was held online. This was the first time ever in history.

00:10:17:04 - 00:10:36:02
Alvaro Daza
And now in Dubai, parallel to that one and a half, one one month ago, there was this project called London that was launched. And this is a project that offers virtual offices in the metaverse where the all the employees of the company can create their own avatar. And they sit down in a meeting room, but it's a virtual meeting room.

00:10:36:04 - 00:10:52:15
Alvaro Daza
They can be talking is like a game, so they can be talking that can be shared and they have the meeting there if they want, and they don't need to move from their locations. They if they are in the UAE or if they are outside in other parts of the world. So what I think is this the evolution of offices, it's going to be in two directions.

00:10:52:15 - 00:11:15:17
Alvaro Daza
One, alternative spaces empower local economies. This can be coffee shops, these can be restaurants, these can be places designed for remote work by the like, by the governments, like communal spaces for it or places in the metaverse. So then help us it help us to save in the city infrastructure times in transport nation and build more sustainable cities by requiring less and less cars to move, moving from one place to another.

00:11:15:17 - 00:11:41:12
Wayne Turmel
Again, I can geek out about this for a long time and you said a couple of things that have triggered much larger conversations in my adult brain as you're dealing with companies literally all over the world, obviously you have brand new startups who can start from scratch and kind of start from a blank piece of paper. But we also have existing companies with existing infrastructure.

00:11:41:12 - 00:11:54:23
Wayne Turmel
And what do you see? How are these organizations going to prep for remote work? What do you think the the important things are to consider when making that move?

00:11:55:00 - 00:12:17:07
Alvaro Daza
I think that, first of all, the main thing for big companies is the mindset around productivity, right? And this is what I find most of the times where I'm working either with governments or with corporates on the same topic, the first or some of the first impressions I get is like, Yeah, but am I is going to be as productive as they are if they are not in an office.

00:12:17:09 - 00:12:37:18
Alvaro Daza
Right? But other people who I'm working with going to be really responsive with the task they need to deliver and so on and so on. So the first thing for me is the companies are prepared, like some of the big companies are preparing by having infrastructure like alternative infrastructure. In this case, for example, network of apartments where they can host their produce.

00:12:37:18 - 00:12:57:07
Alvaro Daza
So the people who are working with them, some people are doing it really in a very funny way. They are having like, let's say, methods of control. By putting things like making people are asking people to to, to measure day time as they work day. If they wake up from the from the work station, they have to stop the time of productivity and so on and so on.

00:12:57:07 - 00:13:37:04
Alvaro Daza
And some other companies are just going 100% remote and trying to, let's say, go without timeframes and and these type of things to work. What personally we found is that each company is very different and the best way of preparing for remote work in the case of the companies is understand that first of all, is a responsibility, meaning that the indirect implications and that implications of working remote are not only mental health implications, improving the mental health and the connection of people with the plot, with the family and loved ones and but also environments, environments of compensation or environmental effects by, for example, making cities that can breathe better because the cars are not moving

00:13:37:04 - 00:14:08:19
Alvaro Daza
anymore. That much. And for a company to prepare for remote work, the first thing that needs to to happen is a shift in the way how they think of productivity and understand that people can be productive as long as the company understand deeply their produce and know what are the best times for productivity of each and every of them that there are like there is enough information on the types of productivity, the types of personality, and how that personality can affect and can make people, people able to work in different timeframes.

00:14:08:21 - 00:14:42:01
Alvaro Daza
And if companies take this as an advantage, especially international companies, they can actually find an ally in remote work to make the companies work better If they have the employees not only related to the place where they work from, but to the waste, how they work in order for them to achieve task and I also think that the companies that some companies in the Global South, particularly that are working closely with governments and making sure that because that's another and other challenge is the policy making right and how the how the framework, the legal framework works in each country.

00:14:42:01 - 00:15:06:05
Alvaro Daza
So some companies are already working with policymakers in order to create a flexible policy that can allow companies to introduce in nontraditional timeframes so the employees can actually be productive in their own way. So I think that these are the two sides, the companies working with policymakers and the companies understanding the productivity times of their employees in these ways is how companies, I think, are preparing for remote work.

00:15:06:08 - 00:15:20:16
Wayne Turmel
So much good stuff. How to single out a circle of work. I mean, you know, you've got people and stuff and just as the guy running the business, how do you structure it and make it work?

00:15:20:16 - 00:15:40:14
Alvaro Daza
I met a very good friend as I was traveling five years ago. His name is Matt Perez and his wife. I remember I arrived at his house. He told me about his company called Near Salt and this these and they are salt companies, a company that creates software for companies who want the people to work remotely, essentially. So this was a whole new thing for me.

00:15:40:16 - 00:16:10:08
Alvaro Daza
And then when I asked him about some works, he says, Well, my company has no bosses or no or employees. And I'm like, How is that? So it's like, you see, I develop a concept that is called the radical companies movement and this radical company movement consists in finding organic waste in the same way how the brain works and operates by using the stimulations from the environment to allocate tasks across the people or among the people who are working in a company.

00:16:10:11 - 00:16:28:11
Alvaro Daza
And like the same small groups are small corporate products. So I fully I fell in love with this idea and I tried many times to have a company without bosses and employees. I failed many times. And what we found kind of a good formula. That is the way how we work. Currently, we have teams allocated in different parts of the world.

00:16:28:11 - 00:16:57:15
Alvaro Daza
We are 100% remote and what we do is we hire people or we work with people who have, let's say, unique sets of skills. They are not only good in accounting, but they can also be good in market and also good in design and also good in different other things. So then they can be allocated in different types of tasks and they can get money, let's say basic money, very good money, but also they can get bonuses by things that they do or achievements that they make based on the new ways.

00:16:57:15 - 00:17:15:09
Alvaro Daza
How the company find new find is that a company has seen in ways to perform better at remote. What does it say on the on the backend now on the front end circle is very difficult in that community. We understand that right now companies are not any more about a product company out of now and for the future about a community.

00:17:15:11 - 00:17:37:20
Alvaro Daza
So we are essentially a community that aims to connect remote workers and communities around the world. What we do is we find the providers of accommodations, we find the policymakers, we find the companies, we find the insurance providers, like every aspect of what a remote work worker might need or a remote company might need. We find them, we connect them, and then we sell a membership.

00:17:37:22 - 00:18:00:17
Alvaro Daza
And these membership that can be a corporate membership or an individual membership, let's say, falls under a tier that is represented by this bracelet. When people have access to that membership. Just to give you an example, if you are a sole proprietorship or like an individual and you want to travel to work, we just offer you this membership and you never have to pay a bigger a bigger cost for rent.

00:18:00:17 - 00:18:21:05
Alvaro Daza
You just travel and always you pay the same for an apartment in more than 80 countries in the world, you always get the same health insurance. That is actually I had the general travel insurance, but I health insurance, you have you have access to 30,000 gyms to assistance in disaster assistance and everything you need for us. Remote worker only pay once so that you don't have to worry.

00:18:21:07 - 00:18:37:22
Alvaro Daza
But now as a government, what we do is we connect you with the stakeholders, with the remote workers, with the companies who are working in, let's say, transition for remote work, and we attract the companies to your country and we have you to do the policy making in order to redesign the city. So to adapt this is for remote work.

00:18:38:00 - 00:18:56:18
Alvaro Daza
And as a corporation, what we do is we onboard all the people that you are working with who are remote workers or consultants and only pay us one fee, you get access to all the properties for the things that you need to so you don't sign 10,000 contracts in each of the cities where you operate. You only sign one contract and that gives you access to everything.

00:18:56:20 - 00:19:33:21
Wayne Turmel
So that I mean, you're seeing a couple of things in terms of circle. So it's a central centralized approach relies upon working, working, you know, across across the globe, essentially what I'm what I'm hearing about what you're doing as circle is when you work on a project basis, it allows much more freedom for remote work for people to be on their time zones, because when you're assigning the project, it can be by geography, it can be by skill set, it can be by whatever.

00:19:33:21 - 00:19:54:07
Wayne Turmel
And that notion of, you know, you're going to work on this project for a while and then you're going to work on this project for a while is another change that is going to happen in the workplace. Instead of you're going to sit at this desk for the next five years until your boss dies so that you can get a promotion through.

00:19:54:09 - 00:20:20:04
Alvaro Daza
I think that's right. Now, it's not anything like it's good that that you mentioned the word promotion. I think that there's a very funny, funny term that I, I don't like very much, but I hear a lot that is that them call emotional salary. Right. So like that emotional side is like let's say all the incentives that your company gives you in order to feel better at the workplace and like wanting to stay in the company.

00:20:20:04 - 00:20:41:05
Alvaro Daza
Right. Why? Because some companies found that people will stay in a work position for 18 months on average, and they will leave for another job. So many companies were struggling with retaining the employees. They developed this whole compensation package that is called no emotional salaries. First of all, I think that's very creepy because I shouldn't have to stick to it.

00:20:41:05 - 00:21:08:07
Alvaro Daza
I have to to compensate someone like it to make someone feel happy about something that they're supposed to love. Right. It would be better and easier if a company understands the people that they are working with, their dreams, their aspirations and their intentions. And that's white promotion doesn't matter anymore, or that emotional salary doesn't matter anymore. People are identified by the idea of belonging again, and that belonging is not a physical space or a brand.

00:21:08:12 - 00:21:28:21
Alvaro Daza
They don't want to work for Google or for Facebook or for Apple. They want to work for a project for something that brings change, for something that is aligned with what they do. And they don't want to be promoted somewhere. What they want is to be able to cover and to afford whatever they want to afford. And they they don't necessarily want to be associated with one with one type of job.

00:21:28:23 - 00:21:44:16
Alvaro Daza
They want to be jack of all trades. Right? Like somehow people want to be a singer at the same time that they are an influencer at the same time that they're in a content and that is all one person. So if you understand that way how people think and understand the world right now, that is a perspective of freedom.

00:21:44:16 - 00:21:56:08
Alvaro Daza
And companies use that freedom to give people the enough space to develop their capacities at 100%. So then companies are going to be not only more productive, but people are also going to be happier.

00:21:56:11 - 00:22:08:04
Wayne Turmel
Well, again, you know, we have gone on way longer than we were supposed to and still could. If you ever get to Las Vegas. I owe you a beverage, my friend.

00:22:08:04 - 00:22:09:19
Alvaro Daza
I would love to.

00:22:09:21 - 00:22:35:06
Wayne Turmel
We need to continue this conversation. In the meantime, for those of you who've enjoyed this show and want to know how to get hold of Alvaro and learn more about Circolo, go and we will have his LinkedIn information and links to the company and all of that good stuff available on our website. Longdistanceworklife.com.

00:22:35:08 - 00:23:12:20
Wayne Turmel
You listen to podcasts, by the way, we just went over 5000 downloads in barely a year. We're very pleased people are finding the show. I suspect some of that is people telling people about the show. So if you like us, please like and subscribe. It means the world to us in the podcast business. If you want to reach out to us, if you have comments, questions, vicious personal attacks, especially if you have specific questions or pet peeves about remote or hybrid work, you can contact Marisa at Kevin Eikenberry.

00:23:12:20 - 00:23:39:09
Wayne Turmel
Dot com. Wayne at Kevin Eikenberry dot com and we will include you in your question in some of those episodes. Meantime, I'm going to remind you, if you are looking at redesign your team, my and Kevin Eikenberry's book, the Long-Distance Team: designing your team for everyone's success is out there in the world. You can find that at longdistanceteambook.com. Alv Daza,

00:23:39:09 - 00:23:50:21
Wayne Turmel
Thank you so much for being with us. We will be with you in the next episode of The Long-Distance Worklife. Thank you for joining us. Don't let the weasels get you down.

Time Stamps

00:00 Introduction
00:32 Alv Daza's Introduction
01:01 Remote Work in the Global South
02:20 The Future of Offices
06:38 Preparing for Remote Work
15:06 Circolo
19:33 Future of Work
22:09 Conclusion and Call-to-Action

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Alvaro Daza, founder of Circolo

Name: Alvaro Daza

What He Does: Co-founder of Circolo.life | Nomad Entrepreneur | Author

Notable: As founder of Circolo, a Network State that connects people and communities around the world, Alv focuses in creating a world for a new kind of citizen who travels, works, connects and discovers at the same time.

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!

 Order
Read More
The Return-to-Office Backfire: Why Scare Tactics Don't Work, episode of Long-Distance Worklife with Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry
Ask Wayne Anything, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

The Return-to-Office Backfire: Why Scare Tactics Don’t Work

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel dive into the world of scare tactics surrounding remote work and the push to return to the office. They discuss the underlying motives behind exaggerated claims and unflattering portrayals, emphasizing the importance of reevaluating productivity metrics and setting realistic expectations. They highlight the need for leaders to define metrics focused on outputs rather than physical presence, while debunking outdated data and emphasizing the value of understanding the nuances of remote work. Tune in for insights on navigating scare tactics, fostering a productive remote work culture, and creating a thriving hybrid work environment.

Key Takeaways

1. Beware of scare tactics: Recognize the underlying motives behind exaggerated claims and unflattering portrayals of remote work. Question the source and consider the biases at play.
2. Rethink productivity metrics: Focus on defining metrics that measure outputs rather than physical presence. Consider what truly matters for the success of the work being done.
3. Set realistic expectations: Clearly communicate and align expectations with remote team members. Provide guidance and support to ensure everyone understands their roles and responsibilities.
4. Evaluate the relevance of data: Be cautious when using outdated data, especially from the pandemic era, to make sweeping generalizations about remote work's impact. Context matters, and the current state of remote work is continually evolving.
5. Embrace the nuances of remote work: Recognize that being pro-remote work does not mean being anti-office. Find a balance and explore the benefits that remote work can bring to individuals and organizations.
6. Foster a supportive remote work culture: Prioritize effective communication, training, and feedback to maintain productivity, engagement, and overall well-being in remote teams.
7. Create a thriving hybrid work environment: Strive for a flexible work arrangement that blends remote and office-based work. Tailor the approach to the unique needs of the team and organization.

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:21 - 00:00:18:13
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. Hi, Wayne.

00:00:18:15 - 00:00:20:06
Wayne Turmel
Hi, Marisa. How the heck are you?

00:00:20:10 - 00:00:22:00
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

00:00:22:02 - 00:00:30:14
Wayne Turmel
I am really, really well. Looking forward to this conversation nation, because we have been talking about it internally at work for like a week.

00:00:30:17 - 00:00:51:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Right. So for all of you listening today, we're actually going to be talking about scare tactics and ways that we are actually being scared back into going into the office. So there's been a lot of news that's come out in the last week or so. I know that we've been talking about it internally at work. We hear this concept about the war on remote work and work from home is ending.

00:00:51:14 - 00:01:07:07
Marisa Eikenberry
And is remote work a thing of the past, which we both know that it's not. And as we say frequently on the show, remote work didn't start in 2020 and it's not going to end because the powers that be decided that it was over. So, Wayne, do you want to start with this New York Post article that we talked about the other day?

00:01:07:08 - 00:01:39:07
Wayne Turmel
This is this warms the cockles of my heart because lately I've been cutting businesses a lot of slack and saying, no, there are reasons to go back to the office. Like I've been trying to be very gracious, gracious about this. And then this happened, the short version, and we will have a link to this in the show notes at longdistanceworklife.com and The New York Post ran an article a couple of weeks ago.

00:01:39:09 - 00:01:47:12
Wayne Turmel
But what started it is a furniture company in the UK did research and you've.

00:01:47:12 - 00:01:48:00
Marisa Eikenberry
That’s a good way to put it.

00:01:48:00 - 00:02:11:12
Wayne Turmel
If you can’t see the air quotes you can certainly hear them and basically said this is what if we continue to work from home, we are going to look like by the year 2100. And they had this avatar named Anna and Anna. I didn't realize they had work from home coal mines, but apparently this is what she got because she looked awful.

00:02:11:12 - 00:02:29:08
Wayne Turmel
And there are certain things you can imagine, like the eyes are red and sunken because she's been staring at screens too long and, you know, she hasn't been getting up to exercise. So there's a potbelly. But they were not kind. In this particular video simulation.

00:02:29:14 - 00:02:33:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. I didn't realize that working from home meant my skin was all going to sag.

00:02:33:18 - 00:02:55:05
Wayne Turmel
Oh, your skin is going to sag. Anna apparently does her work from her bed with half eaten food sitting around her and a laptop not even on a bed desk. Yeah, on the bed. And she basically looks like she should have Carrie Fisher chained to her.

00:02:55:07 - 00:02:57:21
Marisa Eikenberry
She looks like the epitome of goblin mode.

00:02:57:23 - 00:03:10:19
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, it's really, really unflattering for poor Anna. You know, at first I kind of laugh and I went, Well, of course they're going to do that because this is done by a company that sells office equipment.

00:03:10:21 - 00:03:13:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. They're trying to get people to come back.

00:03:13:08 - 00:03:38:20
Wayne Turmel
People need to go back to the office because who else are they going to sell to? Right. And this is part of a larger pattern of people trying to scare essentially people back to work. The most famous example lately was Jamie Dimon’s keynote in Australia from JPMorgan Chase, who said, this is nonsense. We are banking, this is how it's done.

00:03:38:22 - 00:04:06:05
Wayne Turmel
Get your butts to the office. We're not going to fire you if you choose flexibility. But you have taken yourself off the career track and you are just on the work track and that's how it's going to go. And two months later, of course, the rumblings are people are quitting, people are not applying in the numbers that they're used to, having people apply to them, too.

00:04:06:05 - 00:04:15:19
Wayne Turmel
Right. You know, there are consequences to this. The problem, when people take these kind of draconian steps is the inevitably backfires.

00:04:15:21 - 00:04:16:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:04:16:15 - 00:04:35:08
Wayne Turmel
And it backfires for a couple of reasons. It seems to me. And, you know, feel free. I mean, what would you do if somebody said this to you? Right. The first thing is, well, when we hired you, you were expected to come into the office and nothing has changed, to which the whole world says, Oh, really?

00:04:35:09 - 00:04:39:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I was sorry. The last three years suggest otherwise.

00:04:39:03 - 00:05:03:09
Wayne Turmel
Seems to me a lot to change. And and so some of that is is true. There are also reports there was a big thing in Fortune and you expect this from fortune. It's like with anything in the news you need to consider the source and where the information comes from. Fortune magazine is Fortune 500, very establishment, New York centric, whatever.

00:05:03:15 - 00:05:20:11
Wayne Turmel
And they're saying, no, no, no,.You know how for the last years we've been saying people have actually been just as productive or more productive. Now, magically, they are 30% less productive working from all CFOs. And people are grabbing this information and waving it in the air going, Aha, told you.

00:05:20:13 - 00:05:35:01
Marisa Eikenberry
I had somebody do that on Twitter with me today. And I was like, “And if you also look at that article, it will also tell you that part of the reason why there is an issue is because they don't know what they're doing. They don't know how to manage the team. There's communication issues. It's like, Oh, crazy. We teach all of those things.”

00:05:35:04 - 00:05:37:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Those are all fixable problems.

00:05:37:16 - 00:06:14:23
Wayne Turmel
They are. I mean, yes, you can certainly come to the Kevin Eikenberry Group and we would love to have that conversation with you, dear listener. But I think that speaks to the larger issue, which is, is the lack of collaboration, is the lack of productivity, is the kind of shirking responsibility a function of people working from home? Is it a function of the workers kind of the nuts are running the asylum kind of approach, or is it a failure of leadership?

00:06:15:00 - 00:06:48:01
Wayne Turmel
And when we talk about a failure of leadership, we talk about things like have the expectations been expressed? Are the realist patients, are the expectations realistic, exact right. If you're comparing productivity to the beginning of the pandemic, it probably is that because of the beginning of the pandemic, people had zero boundaries and they were actually working way more hours and it settled down to where they have now figured out whatever their schedule is going to be.

00:06:48:03 - 00:06:56:23
Wayne Turmel
Right? So if you're measuring productivity against 18 months ago or two years ago, it probably is down a little bit.

00:06:57:01 - 00:07:13:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, in real quick before you move on, like I'm noticing that in a lot of these articles, they are citing studies for 2020, not just because of like work hours and things like that, but it's also like, you know, oh, well, in 2020 we did a survey and and people that were working from home had had a really bad mental health experience.

00:07:13:05 - 00:07:31:10
Marisa Eikenberry
And it was like, of course they did. We all did like you, like we're pros at this. And I struggled. Why? Because I wasn't used to working in the same room with my husband because the world was on fire outside like 2020 is not a good representation of what remote work is or was.

00:07:31:12 - 00:07:59:04
Wayne Turmel
Or let's assume that that shouldn't be the baseline for anything. But but to your point, the other reason for that is this research. Ah, lag involved lagging indicators, right? We're just now getting the numbers from 2021. It takes time to gather, collate, process and look at the numbers. So the numbers are always lagging behind where the current state is.

00:07:59:06 - 00:08:00:01
Marisa Eikenberry
What makes sense.

00:08:00:03 - 00:08:32:19
Wayne Turmel
What isn't lagging behind is the employment numbers and the number of people voting with their feet. And I want to be careful while we're talking about this, that we are not talking about legitimate requests for time in the office. We are not talking about we are talking about going so far overboard in painting a picture of doom and gloom that you are setting yourself up for tension with your employees that do not need to exist.

00:08:32:21 - 00:08:38:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. I mean, to your point, earlier, you mentioned Jamie ‘Demon’ like or Dimon, I think.

00:08:38:23 - 00:08:43:03
Wayne Turmel
Nice Freudian slip. Thank you. Nicely done.

00:08:43:05 - 00:08:45:17
Marisa Eikenberry
My bad. That was legitimately not intentional.

00:08:45:19 - 00:08:48:08
Wayne Turmel
That's why it's a Freudian slip.

00:08:48:10 - 00:09:05:16
Marisa Eikenberry
But anyway, but asking the managing directors back to the office five days a week, why does it have to be five days a week? And your gut instinct of, well, this is how, you know, the brainstorming discussions and impromptu meetings and like, you know, all of those things suck actually.

00:09:05:18 - 00:09:24:08
Wayne Turmel
Well, and it's two martini lunches. And, you know, there's lots of things that happen when people are in the office and they're not all brilliant. And some of this is legit pining for the before times. I can blame nobody for wanting to pretend the last couple of years of not happened.

00:09:24:10 - 00:09:25:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:09:25:06 - 00:09:53:15
Wayne Turmel
I can blame nobody for that. That's a mental health coping mechanism and I understand that and we're looking forward to what's next and how are we going to run our company and how are we going to become an employer of choice? And and there are very real issues to be addressed. One of the most important things and I interviewed Phil Simon, the author of The Nine Tectonic Forces Reshaping Work.

00:09:53:16 - 00:10:22:04
Wayne Turmel
And if you get a chance to read that book, do it. But one of the things that he kind of low key highlighted, what is super important is what are the metrics when people are saying productivity is down defined is what? Right. I mean, if I have a call center and I expect people to handle X number of calls a day or handle X number of tickets, that's a legitimate assuming it's a legitimate, realistic number to start with, of course.

00:10:22:04 - 00:10:24:01
Wayne Turmel
But that's a legitimate metric.

00:10:24:03 - 00:10:26:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. If it's down, it's down, right?

00:10:26:08 - 00:10:55:02
Wayne Turmel
If it's down, if people aren't servicing enough customers, if call times have gotten so much longer, that's a legitimate thing. Now, is that a function of being from home? Is that a function of not being properly coached and trained? Is that a function of. I haven't spoken to that employee since the last numbers came out. Right. Which means I'm not coaching them and I'm not developing them and I'm not giving them feedback on their performance.

00:10:55:04 - 00:11:04:11
Wayne Turmel
So the metrics that we choose to measure productivity and unfortunate way they are not easy to come up with.

00:11:04:13 - 00:11:09:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I mean, I would say productivity, but to your point, like, what does it mean?

00:11:09:12 - 00:11:26:07
Wayne Turmel
Right? And the problem is that the minute we measure something that then becomes the standard. So if it's are you logged on and do you stay available to your coworkers all day, that becomes the metric.

00:11:26:09 - 00:11:29:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Which is great. But you could also do that and be watching Netflix all day.

00:11:29:07 - 00:11:41:16
Wayne Turmel
Do Exactly. If you know, if you've got your little mouse jingle or you've got keystroke software, and for every keystroke monitoring software, somebody in their basement comes up with a way to beat it.

00:11:41:18 - 00:11:42:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, of course.

00:11:42:11 - 00:11:48:09
Wayne Turmel
Right. And and we've talked before about kind of, you know, workplace theater.

00:11:48:11 - 00:11:48:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:11:48:20 - 00:12:23:04
Wayne Turmel
This notion that I will pretend to be available all day and you will pretend that everything is fine. All right. So we really, really, really need to get smart, not just about creating the metrics, but stating expectations and explaining why they matter and are these the metrics that are really important? And honestly, we are in a period of chaos where a lot of the metrics that we've used in the past just don't make sense.

00:12:23:06 - 00:12:25:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay. So can you describe some of those?

00:12:25:19 - 00:12:42:12
Wayne Turmel
Well, I'm I'm talking about things like, you know, logging in at a certain time, logging off at a certain time, being available. Right. Participating in meetings, for example. Participating in meetings is an expectation of the job.

00:12:42:14 - 00:12:43:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:12:43:16 - 00:13:11:17
Wayne Turmel
Why do you have any business in that meeting? Do you legitimately have things to contribute? Does it matter that a 9:00 meeting in Indianapolis is a 6:00 meeting for me and maybe I don't need to be there or I don't need to be there at that time. I can watch the recording and and still contribute asynchronously to things.

00:13:11:22 - 00:13:16:02
Marisa Eikenberry
And does it need to be a meeting at all, or could it have been a video for everyone?

00:13:16:04 - 00:13:24:16
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. Does it have to be a meeting at all those types of things? We're still figuring them out and we all need to cut each other some slack.

00:13:24:19 - 00:13:25:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:13:25:13 - 00:13:53:08
Wayne Turmel
You know, if I have. I mean, I keep doing the math and it disturbs me, but basically I am 30 years, give or take, into my big boy management career. I have developed some habits. I have developed some default assumptions about how things happen. Some of them may still be valid, some of them may just be the result of being raised by wolves.

00:13:53:13 - 00:14:16:03
Wayne Turmel
Some of them might. I mean, there's lots of reasons why I think the way I think and what we need to do senior leadership managers, team members, we need to sit down and look at what is the work that needs to be done, who does the work, when does the work need to happen to achieve the outputs that we want to have?

00:14:16:03 - 00:14:23:13
Wayne Turmel
And if we focus our metrics on outputs, it becomes less important what happens where.

00:14:23:15 - 00:14:24:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:14:24:05 - 00:14:36:08
Wayne Turmel
As long as the outputs get met and if the outputs require being in the same place at the same time. If I'm great clips, I need to be in the store where people's heads are in order to make this happen.

00:14:36:11 - 00:14:48:02
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, there might be some things that you need to come to the office a couple of times a week. You know, we've talked about this several times that we are not anti office, we are pro remote work and those are two very different things.

00:14:48:04 - 00:15:10:12
Wayne Turmel
They are and that kind of gets lost in the in the discussion. So, you know, we've been talking about the scare tactics and I always come back and I know your eyes roll every time I do this. I always come back to the Spider-Man point, which is kind of, you know, with great power comes great responsibility.

00:15:10:12 - 00:15:11:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. Okay.

00:15:11:15 - 00:15:27:09
Wayne Turmel
And this applies to the workers. We are at a new age where we have more flexibility than ever before. I don't like to say the word earn it, but we have been like, screw it up.

00:15:27:11 - 00:15:28:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:15:28:05 - 00:15:47:08
Wayne Turmel
And that's going to take maybe a little more effort. It's going to take a little different focus. It's going to take some training and learning to do things maybe better or different or faster than we did. And so it's not all on the employers. We need to step up from our end as well.

00:15:47:10 - 00:16:04:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. And I think also, you know, for our leaders and stuff, when we see these scare tactic articles that come out and if they have this moment of, oh, no, I have to bring everybody back to the office, look at who did the study, because it's probably a corporate real estate agent or in this case an office furniture person or.

00:16:04:13 - 00:16:05:22
Wayne Turmel
Or I mean, the case.

00:16:06:00 - 00:16:07:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Lab. Well, somebody who's.

00:16:07:11 - 00:16:37:00
Wayne Turmel
Anything coming from Coldwell Banker or. Yeah, see, Ellis, Anything. You got to recognize that in major cities, the buildings are still occupied, but they're at 50% capacity on average, right? So even if they are having people come back to the office on any given day, 50% of the offices are empty and the deaths are empty overtime. That's unsustainable.

00:16:37:06 - 00:16:43:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, of course. And that's why, you know, some companies have, you know, downsized their office spaces or things of that nature, I guess.

00:16:43:13 - 00:17:07:17
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. I mean, it's easier at first blush to wave the wand and say, okay, let's get back everybody in so we can look around and feel better about ourselves. But ultimately they're going to have to be over time, some very hard choices made. So the return to office, the scramble to get everybody back is a needed three step to the long term considerations that are going to happen.

00:17:07:19 - 00:17:28:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, they're treating the symptoms, not the problem. Well, Wayne, thank you so much for this discussion. I had a lot of fun and I hope our listeners got a real kick out of it, too. And so, listeners, thank you so much 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 our show so you won't miss any future episodes. While you're there

00:17:28:22 - 00:17:44:05
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 shownotes. And let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode, including pet peeves. We'd still love to hear yours.

00:17:44:07 - 00:18:01:11
Marisa Eikenberry
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. As Wayne likes to say, don’t let the weasels get you down.


Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
01:39 New York Post article from Furniture at Work
04:06 Jamie Dimon's keynote speech about return to office
06:15 Potential failure of leadership in remote work and the importance of setting realistic expectations
07:13 Use of outdated studies and the unique circumstances of 2020
09:05 Need to redefine productivity metrics and focus on outputs rather than physical presence
11:48 Being pro-remote work does not mean being anti-office and the importance of finding a balance
15:11 Encouraging remote workers to embrace the responsibility that comes with the flexibility of remote work
17:44 Conclusion

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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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