Leadership Archives - Page 3 of 6 - The Long-Distance Worklife

Home
Category: Leadership

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

Who’s Really a Remote Work Expert?

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel explore the intricacies of remote work expertise. Wayne, a seasoned professional in the field, shares his candid views on the skepticism surrounding the term "expert," the evolution of remote work expertise, and offers practical advice for discerning true expertise in this domain. The episode is a must-listen for anyone navigating the remote work landscape, seeking to understand the blend of skepticism and wisdom in identifying genuine expertise.

Key Takeaways

1. Understand the History of Remote Work: Recognize that remote work has a long-standing history and is not just a recent trend.
2. Question Titles and Expertise: Be skeptical of self-proclaimed experts, especially those with pretentious titles.
3. Evaluate Credibility: Check the background and track record of a professional claiming remote work expertise.
4. Beware of Zealots: Be cautious of those who are overly zealous about remote work; true expertise is balanced and objective.
5. Look for Practical Solutions: Seek out experts who focus on practical help and realistic approaches to remote work.
6. Utilize Resources: Explore available courses and resources to deepen your understanding of remote work leadership and management.

View Full Transcript

00;00;07;26 - 00;00;19;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the long distance work life, where we help you live, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marissa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Jamal. Hi.

00;00;19;13 - 00;00;29;24
Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marissa. How are you? And hello, everybody listening? It sounds sometimes like I'm ignoring you and I'm not, so. Hello? I'm listening.

00;00;29;27 - 00;00;50;20
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm doing great. And, you know, I'm just so excited about this topic today because I think it's gonna be really interesting for our listeners. May not be something they've really thought about before, but we're going to tackle it today. So every episode I introduce you as a remote work expert and believe it or not, we actually get snarky comments about this on our videos and our clips all the time.

00;00;50;23 - 00;01;08;04
Marisa Eikenberry
How can you be a remote work expert in something that's not been around that long? Now, for the record, and people who have listened us for a while already know that remote work has been around for a very long time. And if you are not aware of this, I would highly encourage you to listen to one of our first episodes titled When Did Remote Work Start, which I will have a link to in the show notes.

00;01;08;06 - 00;01;13;05
Marisa Eikenberry
But Wayne, let's start with the basics. How do you define a remote work expert?

00;01;13;07 - 00;01;40;27
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, and total transparency. I cringe a little every time you introduce me as an expert. I am naturally a cynic and I'm kind of a that try to be a skeptic. And I sometimes go over the line to cynicism. The minute any time somebody introduces themselves as an expert, my radar goes off and the more pretentious the title, the more it goes off.

00;01;41;00 - 00;02;09;21
Wayne Turmel
When I look at somebody's LinkedIn title and they claim to be a guru, alarm bells ring, things go crazy. I just go, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. That and living in a time just in society in general, when expertise is kind of frowned on and nobody is really an expert and, you know, yeah, that's a nice Ph.D. you've got I've got this guy on YouTube who says.

00;02;09;23 - 00;02;10;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;02;10;19 - 00;02;23;24
Wayne Turmel
So there is a kind of general skepticism that I share to a degree. That being said, some people know more about other people.

00;02;23;26 - 00;02;25;25
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. That's going to be true for everything.

00;02;25;28 - 00;02;44;17
Wayne Turmel
Right. And if that is the case, then I suppose I am on the expert side of the spectrum. This is a topic that I started writing about in 2005 or six.

00;02;44;20 - 00;02;47;13
Marisa Eikenberry
So that's when I tell you I was a freshman in high school.

00;02;47;15 - 00;03;13;13
Wayne Turmel
And that's when I pulled the dagger out of my heart and tried to continue missing a beat. You know, I started investigating this thing called WebEx. And what did it mean back in 2005, 2006? And so you know, I have written, depending on how you counted, six books and multiple chapters and magazine articles and been doing the research and all of that stuff.

00;03;13;13 - 00;03;36;21
Wayne Turmel
So if I have to defend my status as somebody who knows more about this, then the defense rests. Your Honor. Right. That being said, that being said, it's a constantly evolving field. And this is the other thing is, as I tell people, I do all I read the research and follow the stuff and listen to a lot of nonsense.

00;03;36;25 - 00;04;03;06
Wayne Turmel
So you don't have to. And I run it through whatever filter I can to kind of separate the wheat from the chaff and present in as logical and and pertaining and kind of easily digested as possible, presented to people for them to then make their own decisions with. So, you know, that's as defensive as I get about the title.

00;04;03;08 - 00;04;10;11
Wayne Turmel
That being said, it goes back to anybody. Anybody who calls himself a guru probably isn't.

00;04;10;13 - 00;04;33;04
Marisa Eikenberry
So let's get into that a little bit. Like we've established. You've been doing this for a really long time. You have a bunch of expertise. You know what you're talking about, expert title or not. But how can how can your layperson, your normal person, determine whether somebody is a true remote work expert like yourself or they just started doing this in March of 2020?

00;04;33;07 - 00;04;36;25
Wayne Turmel
Well, you know, just go on their LinkedIn profile.

00;04;36;27 - 00;04;37;12
Marisa Eikenberry
That's true.

00;04;37;16 - 00;05;04;20
Wayne Turmel
Seriously, I am serious. Is a heart attack go under LinkedIn profile and see what their track record. What if they were a manager at Arby's March of 2020 and then suddenly they were an expert in remote work? A little skepticism may be appropriate. So, you know, what is their experience? What is their background? What are we doing? It doesn't take much to check that.

00;05;04;23 - 00;05;06;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;05;06;14 - 00;05;09;28
Wayne Turmel
The other thing and this one is more controversial.

00;05;10;00 - 00;05;10;12
Marisa Eikenberry
I love it.

00;05;10;12 - 00;05;20;10
Wayne Turmel
And I have friends who are going to hate me. The more of a zealot they are, the less I take them at their word.

00;05;20;12 - 00;05;21;16
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, so why is that?

00;05;21;18 - 00;05;47;12
Wayne Turmel
Here's the thing. And we often, Kevin and I often get lumped into it when they give lists of people who are thinkers about remote work. We're often on the list, and we are not the most zealous specializing. The future is remote work and death to the office and you know, all of that stuff. That's not where we are.

00;05;47;12 - 00;06;16;08
Wayne Turmel
We think there are incredible advantages to remote work. We think that the trend is certainly moving that way. But the people who are zealots, the people who say that there is no use whatsoever, there is no need for people to ever get together physically. All of your social, biological, nourishing needs can be met through through Zoom. I tend to look at that skeptically.

00;06;16;11 - 00;06;17;01
Marisa Eikenberry
That makes sense.

00;06;17;04 - 00;06;40;22
Wayne Turmel
Our approach is these things are happening. They are certainly trends. We need to be aware of it. And like all technology and all work trends, where does it make sense for my company, for the things that I do, for the work I choose to do? Where does it make sense and where can I leverage it, and where are the pitfalls and things that you need to watch out for?

00;06;40;22 - 00;07;02;28
Wayne Turmel
And that's where I like to spend my time. I have no interest in helping Silicon Valley companies get their next new thing launched right. I am a real skeptic about technology, and so I am not an early adopter. I am not first one over the fence, and I don't think most people should be.

00;07;03;00 - 00;07;06;29
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. We've talked about this actually in our episode not that long ago.

00;07;07;00 - 00;07;34;23
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. So I think that and any time you are an evangelist or a zealot for something, your objectivity goes out the window. Yeah, you've gone in with a good vision of the truth, and your job now is to defend that as radically as possible. And so you tend to weed out information that doesn't fit your paradigm. That's in fact.

00;07;34;26 - 00;08;02;03
Wayne Turmel
And the fact that I use the word paradigm makes me cringe, but it's true. Yeah. And so I try to be objective. And at the Kevin Ikenberry group, our focus is not on changing the world in terms of upending business models. My job personally, is to help the individual person get through the workday with some shred of sanity and dignity.

00;08;02;05 - 00;08;03;21
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Right. We just want to.

00;08;03;21 - 00;08;27;22
Wayne Turmel
And if and if remote work helps you achieve that and you're a better person, here's how we can help. And if you have to go into the office every day, here are some things that you might want to think about that might save your sanity and your dignity. So I understand, you know, the skepticism of people online who go remote work expert.

00;08;27;25 - 00;08;37;22
Wayne Turmel
You know, anybody can call themselves that. Well, yeah, they can. And I challenge you as listeners to the dose of skepticism.

00;08;37;25 - 00;08;56;24
Marisa Eikenberry
So, I mean, there's lots of people that are getting the titles, some of which are given to them and some of which are they're trying to make themselves, I guess, is the point we're trying to make. But so but specifically, going back to you, how has your role as a remote work expert evolved over time, especially in the last four years?

00;08;56;24 - 00;08;58;22
Marisa Eikenberry
I mean, a lot of stuff has changed.

00;08;58;24 - 00;09;22;24
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I mean, if I go back to when I first started thinking about this, right, was June 26, I was teaching traditional presentation skills and I remembered the moment somebody said to me, Wayne, this standing in front of the room stuff is great, but I only talk to real people like twice a year. I work remotely and there's this thing called WebEx, and that's what I'm using.

00;09;22;24 - 00;09;55;10
Wayne Turmel
And I started investigating at the time there were 120 little plankton level web meetings and some WebEx was the Mack daddy of them all. But I became fascinated. I knew the trend was going to continue, and so I became fascinated in that. I started a company that taught people how to do webinars and how to present online, and I got asked more and more about the day to day work, not just the presentations, but how do you run a team and how do you do that?

00;09;55;13 - 00;10;20;05
Wayne Turmel
Kevin and I had known each other for a long time. We created a remote leadership institute, so I had gone from almost strictly presentation and communication skills to teams and leading them in a remote environment. And then the last year and some people have noticed this, some people haven't. The Remote Leadership Institute brand after COVID kind of went away.

00;10;20;06 - 00;10;42;29
Wayne Turmel
It still exists, but it's inside the greater Kevin Eikenberry group because the world has changed the the world of leadership, remote leadership. Most people now no longer look at it as a separate thing. It's part of the job. If you are above first line supervisor, odds are you're going to have at least one member of your team who doesn't work where you do.

00;10;43;04 - 00;10;44;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, and you have to prepare for that.

00;10;44;16 - 00;11;11;02
Wayne Turmel
And you have to be able to deal with that and include them in the team. And so the role of remote work in our getting our jobs done has morph and hope. And we like to believe that this is true. We have kind of kept up with that. And again, I have read more nonsense and taken part in more free samples of software and done all that stuff than any human being ought to.

00;11;11;04 - 00;11;59;04
Wayne Turmel
You probably can tell from my white beard and white hair, but I am 42 years old. No, look what it has done to me. So, you know, my has changed. And I think most human beings, if they are wise, they are open to changing as the world changes. I think that if you look at what Kevin and I teach in long distance leader London's team, one year team mate, all of our blogs, all of our courses, it's that while things are changing and we need to be aware of and adjust to and be mindful of the changes that come to us, the core of leading people, of getting work done, of having a leadership mindset,

00;11;59;06 - 00;12;12;10
Wayne Turmel
is really evergreen and it's the details and nuances that change. But those changes and nuances can drive you mad if you are unaware of them and can't deal with them.

00;12;12;12 - 00;12;30;04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? So I guess, you know, for our leaders and our managers that are listening, you know, what are some common challenges that remote work experts actually help businesses employees overcome? I know you've talked about a little bit of them as we've gone, but like really specifically, like what? What do you help with? What do we think?

00;12;30;09 - 00;13;03;17
Wayne Turmel
Like the big thing, I think is helping us understand how being remote changes us, how we interact with each other. There are a few things. One is that we were raised from birth as face to face, nose to nose, visual in contact, communicating beings. That is our natural default. When we are not doing that, we have to rely on our higher functions.

00;13;03;20 - 00;13;30;12
Wayne Turmel
We have to rely on trust. We have to communicate quite effectively so that I don't have to stand at your desk and watch you do your job. Right. That's something that should be happening anyway. But with the rise of remote and hybrid work, the ability to micromanage the idea of command and control, which has been evaporating as we've evolved as a species, continues to do that.

00;13;30;12 - 00;13;59;11
Wayne Turmel
Well, not everybody's comfortable with that. Command and control is a very lizard brain, very natural response, right to pressure and a task and and all of that stuff. Remote work, hybrid work is a natural extension of expanding that approach in our courses and in our Long Distance Leader series, The first module, and we do this as a standalone course as well.

00;13;59;12 - 00;14;27;16
Wayne Turmel
Shameless plug is how leaders create and manage remote and hybrid teams. And really we introduce three models that are crucial to that mindset. The first is why does this feel so weird? And we have what we call the remote leadership, the three year model. There's a trust model. How do we build trust if something is happening? You know, can we apply this model and figure out what the problem is?

00;14;27;18 - 00;15;04;10
Wayne Turmel
And then the third one is choosing the right technology for the right communication task, which is huge in remote and hybrid work. If you are sending an email rather, or a text, rather than having the conversations you need to have, that is the root cause of a lot of problems, right? And I think that's the work that we do most effectively is we get people to say, if you have a leadership mindset, if you want to have a leadership mindset and you should, what are the nuances?

00;15;04;10 - 00;15;25;05
Wayne Turmel
What are the changes? What are the circumstances that require adjustments to that? And I think at the end of the day, that's not what makes us a zealot because not all work can or should be done remotely. Not all organizations function best that way. There are plenty who do if they do. This is how you need to approach it.

00;15;25;11 - 00;15;50;14
Wayne Turmel
If you are going to be hybrid. These are the nuances that you need to take into consideration. And, you know, I think that's what we bring to the party. I think if there's an expertise to it, that's what it is. So I hope that answered your question and I hope it answered the question for the listeners, because I know we we seldom talk about what we actually do, what our work is.

00;15;50;16 - 00;15;56;27
Wayne Turmel
We try to keep it more general and but specifically, sometimes you got to know that stuff.

00;15;57;03 - 00;16;15;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. We so classes, we have to pay the bills, right. I have my one last question before we end the show here. But what advice would you give to leaders of managers who would like to better understand how to leverage this kind of expertise of remote work professionals such as yourself and us? I think at Mike Berger.

00;16;15;10 - 00;16;33;18
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, and there's a lot of stuff out there and a lot of it's very good. There are a lot of very talented people. There are people we have on this show as guests who are wonderful people and they should make a living and you should hire them if that's what you want to do. I think it's like anything else, understand the first principles.

00;16;33;24 - 00;17;09;09
Wayne Turmel
What does your organization, what is the work that needs to be done? And you are the best person to know that, right? But knowing that doesn't mean that you are 100% comfortable with what's next. Some people have no idea, and they're kind of paralyzed. Some people think they know, but some validation would be nice to make sure that we're on the right track and other people are out on that path and maybe it's not going the way they want it to.

00;17;09;09 - 00;17;13;24
Wayne Turmel
And I think those are the circumstances where you bring in other people.

00;17;13;28 - 00;17;31;02
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, that totally makes sense. And Wayne, I know earlier you were talking about our Long Distance Leadership series. And for any of our listeners, listeners who are interested in that, you can go to Kevin Eikenberry dot com slash LDL s to find out more about those classes and what's coming up and.

00;17;31;02 - 00;17;41;20
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely and those class football as you know an open enrollment series for individuals or we're happy to talk to you about bringing it in-house to your company.

00;17;41;23 - 00;17;58;17
Marisa Eikenberry
And listeners. Thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit 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, we sure like and review This helps us know what you love about our show.

00;17;58;20 - 00;18;12;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via LinkedIn or email with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or even suggest a topic for one night to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne like to say, don't always get too down.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:29 Debating the Term 'Expert'
01:13 Wayne's Perspective on Expertise
05:10 Remote Work Zealots and Objectivity
06:17 Challenges and Solutions in Remote Work
08:58 Wayne's Remote Work Journey
12:30 Addressing Common Remote Work Challenges
17:31 Concluding Thoughts

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

Guests, Leadership, Working Remotely

Conquering Imposter Syndrome on Remote Teams with Rico Nasol

Wayne Turmel explores the challenging world of remote and hybrid work leadership, focusing on imposter syndrome and its impact on leaders. Joined by guest Rico Nasol, a seasoned consultant and coach, the discussion delves into how imposter syndrome manifests, particularly in remote work settings, and strategies for overcoming it. Nasol shares his personal experiences and insights from his time at Netflix, shedding light on leadership development, the importance of understanding team dynamics in a remote environment, and the significance of self-talk in shaping a leader's confidence and effectiveness.

Key Takeaways

1. Understanding Imposter Syndrome: Recognize that imposter syndrome is common, especially in remote settings. It involves feelings of self-doubt and a belief that one's achievements are just luck. Acknowledge these feelings when they arise and remember that they are a common psychological phenomenon.
2. Combatting Isolation in Remote Work: In remote work, the absence of real-time feedback can intensify feelings of imposter syndrome. Counteract this by establishing regular check-ins and feedback sessions with colleagues or mentors to validate your work and progress.
3. Positive Self-Talk is Key: Develop a habit of positive self-talk. Remind yourself of your accomplishments and skills. Remember, the way you talk to yourself significantly impacts your self-confidence and perception.
4. Leadership and Imposter Syndrome: New leaders often face imposter syndrome due to a lack of formal leadership training. Focus on developing leadership skills actively and seek mentorship or professional development opportunities.
5. Learning from Rico’s Netflix Experience: Understand that feeling like an imposter can occur in any environment, even in high-performance cultures like Netflix. Realize that everyone has unique strengths and that no one is inherently smarter than others.
6. Managing Remote Teams Effectively: For remote team leaders, balance personal and professional goal-setting for your team members. This approach fosters a well-rounded team dynamic and supports individual growth.
7. Hybrid Team Dynamics: In a hybrid work environment, don't underestimate the power of team building. Focus on collaborative, focused work during in-person sessions to maximize creativity and team cohesion.

View Full Transcript

00;00;08;19 - 00;00;38;18
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome to the Long Distance Work Life podcast, the show where we are really determined to help you thrive, survive, get through, keep the weasels at bay in this crazy world of remote and hybrid work. My name is Wayne Turmel. I'm with Kevin Eikenberry Group. This is a Marisa-less episode. I don't want to say Marisa free because that's sounds like she's an undesirable thing and she's not.

00;00;38;20 - 00;01;03;08
Wayne Turmel
But when we don't have Marisa with us, that means that we have an interesting guest, which we do today. We are going to talk imposter syndrome and getting out of your own head and all that good stuff with Rico and Rico is in the Las Vegas area with me, which is kind of cool. And Rico, how are you, man?

00;01;03;10 - 00;01;07;13
Rico Nasol
I'm good. I'm good. Good to talk to you, Wayne. Thanks for having me.

00;01;07;15 - 00;01;33;22
Wayne Turmel
Thank you for being here. So you are a consultant and a coach, and we will have links to your organization and all that good stuff. But one of the things that you and I have talked about offline, and I think this is really important for especially newer leaders, is this concept of imposter syndrome and not believing that you are good enough.

00;01;33;25 - 00;01;39;11
Wayne Turmel
Can you give us that kind of working definition of imposter syndrome just to kind of kick us off?

00;01;39;14 - 00;02;05;01
Rico Nasol
Yeah. So imposter syndrome, how it showed up for me and I think how it shows up for a lot of people is you don't really believe that you have talent and that potentially you are lucky and that at some point in time someone is going to find out you're not as smart as they think you are because you yourself don't feel like you have the confidence or the intelligence or the smarts to have achieved the things that you have.

00;02;05;04 - 00;02;23;21
Rico Nasol
And the thing that drives that imposter syndrome are the stories that we tell ourselves, whether they're true or not true. It's just a running narrative that goes on in our heads. And what happened with the pandemic in remote life. It's exacerbated by the missing of real time feedback. Right.

00;02;23;21 - 00;02;33;28
Wayne Turmel
So, okay, so tell me what you mean by that. By real time feedback, because some of us have spent our entire lives coping with this nonsense.

00;02;34;00 - 00;03;04;03
Rico Nasol
Yeah, great question. And I had to get used to it because I was a mom before the pandemic, mostly in person leader except for my global teams which were distributed. But since the pandemic, when that camera turns off, you're kind of left alone with the thoughts that you have. So if you don't think you if you don't have the confidence, you will continue to reinforce that in your head as opposed to when I was in in person and I did a presentation right when that presentation was over and I walked out, I'd have a colleague, I would go, Hey, how was that?

00;03;04;03 - 00;03;25;18
Rico Nasol
Did that go okay? Was I did I sound too fast? Did I answer the question like you get real time feedback from people that were in there just naturally walking to your next meeting. And in this zoom environment or this remote environment, you don't get that benefit unless you explicitly and this is what I advise people to explicitly ask for it, whether it's through Slack or chat or some sort of mechanism after the fact.

00;03;25;18 - 00;03;51;02
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, that's really important because one of the blessings, of course, of remote work is that you don't have a million people around you, but then you are left with the voice in your head. And if the voice in your head is unkind and I'm really not being facetious about this, you know, I always said I would fire any manager who talked to an employee the way I talked to myself.

00;03;51;05 - 00;03;55;00
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely. Our self-talk is so, so critical.

00;03;55;00 - 00;04;14;26
Rico Nasol
Yeah. And that's one of the things that so I coach leaders and almost the problem solving and it'll parlay into this is I think we've all had here's the story we've all had those jobs, whether it's in high school or college, you kind of you don't think a lot of it, but you end up being good at it and then they promote you to like the shift lead or something.

00;04;14;28 - 00;04;37;29
Rico Nasol
For me, I worked at a theme park and I got promoted to the warehouse lead and nobody taught me how to be a leader. They taught me about labor laws, they taught me about harassment, but nobody ever taught me how to lead people. And unfortunately, what I what happened to me in high school and college, I see happen in the world today where people, leaders, whether they intentional or not, assume, hey, this person is really good at the tactician.

00;04;37;29 - 00;04;54;29
Rico Nasol
Part of the job, so they must be a good leader and they never develop them in the way that leaders need to be developed. So in that way, when you're trying to pretend to be something that maybe you were never trained to do, that's where I come in. And a lot of the folks that I work with are either new leaders or executives.

00;04;55;05 - 00;05;13;27
Rico Nasol
They didn't have proper training. They don't know what they don't know, and they just have this low confidence and this imposter syndrome that, like the people who promoted me, think I'm good at what I do. I don't think I'm not good at what I do, and I don't know when they're going to find me out. So I'm either going to fake it till I make it or I need to get help.

00;05;13;29 - 00;05;14;17
Rico Nasol
And that's where.

00;05;14;17 - 00;05;42;22
Wayne Turmel
You find Do you find that that is. Here's the dirty little secret about our business, right? Is that the people who seek out learning, the people who want to get better at the job and are proactive of about doing that, are probably not the ones who need it the most. Because if they care enough to want to be good at it, right, they probably got some chops because wanting to do the job is a big piece of the deal.

00;05;42;24 - 00;06;04;24
Rico Nasol
Yeah, unfortunately that that is true. But what I do see is I put myself out there is people start to see themselves in me. So there's somebody that I worked with the he I don't want to say he was reluctant, but it was took him a long time to want to work with me because he didn't see anyone around him that looked like him.

00;06;04;26 - 00;06;26;22
Rico Nasol
Right. And so what I'm trying to do here and I think what we try to do with the work that we do is expose people, that there's more people like us out there, there's more ways to be successful. And nobody goes out and says, I want to be a toxic leader. Right? Nobody does that intentionally. But what happens is they have somebody who was never trained to train them and then they train their leaders the same way, or lack of training.

00;06;26;25 - 00;06;42;19
Rico Nasol
Right. And so you're right where, you know, the people who want to be better at it, I think are the ones that go after it. But I think it also takes leaders looking inward and saying like, hey, maybe I do need to get better than I can get the skills to help these folks get better. So I think it's a little bit of both.

00;06;42;19 - 00;06;47;28
Rico Nasol
You get people that want to be better and hopefully they will want to help the people that report to them.

00;06;48;00 - 00;07;08;10
Wayne Turmel
Now, one of the things, the way we connected is you heard the interview you have with Janice Chalker. Yes. On being a introvert and a remote leader, and Marisa will link to that in our show notes. For those of you who are interested, you're an introvert. Tell me a little bit about your journey because you've worked at some big oil companies.

00;07;08;13 - 00;07;17;03
Rico Nasol
Yeah, I so for me, introversion is not like shyness because I'm not shy, right? So, you know, that's a really.

00;07;17;03 - 00;07;21;22
Wayne Turmel
Important distinction right there that we need to put a pin in.

00;07;21;25 - 00;07;38;05
Rico Nasol
Yeah, and I say that because in certain moments I can be shy, but, you know, like if I'm comfortable, you know, I can have a conversation and things like that. But where my introversion shows up is like, I'm not the loudest person in the room. It's not because I'm not shy, it's just not my nature, right? I'm analytical.

00;07;38;05 - 00;08;08;20
Rico Nasol
I need time to sit with things. And then after big presentations to like four or 500 people, I cherish the time to myself just to recharge, you know, just to get my batteries back. I know some people I worked with that Netflix and why this was I had so much imposter syndrome in the beginning because you have this tape type A personality there where they're the biggest voices in the room and after like a 500 person presentation, they're like excited, mingling everywhere and like talking to everybody in the room and answering every single question.

00;08;08;23 - 00;08;29;21
Wayne Turmel
So an organization like Netflix is really interesting, and maybe you can check my assumption here because Netflix is what I call show business adjacent. It's full of people who want to be in show business and want to be in the industry. And at its core, it's a data and and analysis company.

00;08;29;23 - 00;08;47;28
Rico Nasol
Yet it's interesting because I was there for almost nine years and when I first started we were just an aggregator. So we weren't much of an entertainment company. We used to call ourselves a tech company that happens to be an entertainment. And then towards the last maybe four years of my career is when we had more originals, more productions.

00;08;48;05 - 00;09;10;26
Rico Nasol
We were an entertainment company backed by tech, so I was there for that shift. And the culture I started in was very Silicon Valley, like everybody is a Type A, everybody's high performing all those things. And so when I started there, they recruited me. I felt so much like an imposter, like I'm not as smart as these people think they are.

00;09;11;01 - 00;09;31;23
Rico Nasol
And one thing that I have to coach out of people is nobody is smarter than anybody else. They just have more experience in certain things. But what I would tell myself is Netflix. When I first got there, everybody sitting across from me is the smartest person in their field, so why and why am I here? But nobody said that that was just my negative self-talk, right?

00;09;31;24 - 00;09;42;17
Rico Nasol
And it's my fear of being found out that made me speak to myself that way. And it's almost like you said, if I talk to anyone else the way that I talk to myself, it'd be terrible.

00;09;42;20 - 00;10;05;29
Wayne Turmel
I would be in a jar all day. Yeah, to tell you the truth. Now, something about Netflix that I read not too long ago, which is kind of fascinating, is there's kind of a famous PowerPoint presentation, if you can call it, if you can call any PowerPoint presentation, famous that the CEO of Netflix was trying to explain the culture.

00;10;06;07 - 00;10;13;27
Wayne Turmel
And he came up with something called the Keeper rule that you work kind of under that mindset, right?

00;10;13;29 - 00;10;35;19
Rico Nasol
Yeah, I did. And it's interesting because this is probably one of the biggest things I came across and had a debunk. And if you go to Glassdoor, you'll probably see all kinds of reviews about keeper test and culture of fear. But it's the idea that if you built this team again, would you keep this person right if you had to build a team over?

00;10;35;21 - 00;10;48;24
Rico Nasol
And so the way it reads, it seems like, you know, you're just constantly every week what I keep this person, I keep that person. And in actuality, that's not how it played out, at least how it played on my team, because that would be a very toxic environment.

00;10;49;01 - 00;11;10;23
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. What is it like? Because there are lots of it was like Jack Welch came up with, well, you always fire your bottom 10%, which is fine for a couple of years when you have people who are underperform forming. But once you have a performing team, it turns really toxic really fast because everybody's trying to make sure they're not in the bottom ten.

00;11;10;23 - 00;11;21;20
Wayne Turmel
Right. So all these good ideas very often get used for evil instead of good. So how did you apply it and how do you not make that toxic?

00;11;21;22 - 00;11;43;08
Rico Nasol
Yeah. So on that point, you had the lowest churn rate and I had 235 people organization and over my nine years had like a 3% churn and then kind of encountered voluntary set a really low churn rate for my team. But so how I thought about it was maybe during annual review time, maybe once or twice a year and it wasn't like every week or even month.

00;11;43;11 - 00;12;00;22
Rico Nasol
So I would think, okay, if I because tech moves fast. So Netflix, we are always changing and evolving, building new tools and new skill sets. So I would look at my team and say, Hey, if I had to build this team, knowing what I know now, would I keep the folks that I have? And for me, it wasn't an exercise in letting go.

00;12;00;24 - 00;12;19;18
Rico Nasol
People is more of an exercise if I have the right people in the right roles. So maybe at this point in time where somebody was a motion graphics designer, now they need to move into like a UX field where they can actually do animations on the product. So it wasn't a who can it who do I need to let go?

00;12;19;20 - 00;12;27;04
Rico Nasol
It doesn't fit anymore. It's how can I be a better leader and find better fits for an evolving company in an evolving organization.

00;12;27;06 - 00;12;50;03
Wayne Turmel
One more time for the people in the back because that's so important. And also I would imagine that a piece of that is, you know, this person was a functioning member of the team and and they've been good and the team has changed. How do we get them to that new role, Right? How do we develop them? How do we train them?

00;12;50;03 - 00;12;51;27
Wayne Turmel
What do they need?

00;12;52;00 - 00;13;16;16
Rico Nasol
Right. And I can give you a story, an example, perfect example where I essentially automated a team. I led out of a job. And so it was a new AI technology, a computer vision technology. We were like trying to pick images, right? And we first had humans doing it and then eventually got to the point where they were so good that we could have computer vision do it, and we needed just less people.

00;13;16;16 - 00;13;41;06
Rico Nasol
We needed people just to verify and select. And most people would say, okay, so this team's job is eliminated. Let's just get rid of that team. Well, we actually did is, hey, they have value because they know the workflows they know all these other things, and they were big enough to work towards eliminating their own roles. So that told us that they had so much more value because the way they might in their minds thought the way they were strategic.

00;13;41;14 - 00;13;57;03
Rico Nasol
And so we actually we found roles, new roles on new teams for all of them in ways that they could find more automations. So perfect example where most companies would reorganize and let go. We reorganized and found better fits for their future.

00;13;57;07 - 00;14;19;17
Wayne Turmel
So in the little bit of time that we have remaining Rico, you know, you have, as you said, you had international teams, you had give us a couple of your best practices and what you coach your clients to do, first of all, for totally remote teams and then for hybrid teams.

00;14;19;19 - 00;14;38;17
Rico Nasol
Yeah. So for we'll start with totally remote and I'll talk about things how I, how I developed my teams and my leaders and I'll talk about the things I do for myself, for my imposter syndrome. So some of the things I do with my teams and my leaders is it's not nothing new, but I have everyone come up with three personal and professional goals.

00;14;38;17 - 00;15;09;27
Rico Nasol
It needs to be balanced. So the personal goals is so we can check in on each other. On like if you want to travel more, if you want to get into more cooking, things like that, and we have something to anchor our one on ones into. And I also provide opportunities and for real time feedback. So like this story, I said, if I have a director of mine who's presenting immediately after all, like, Hey, you want to talk about how it went or, you know, like, here's some things that went really well or I'll send I'll just send feedback in to know, Hey, this, this part really went really well.

00;15;09;27 - 00;15;29;15
Rico Nasol
I loved how you did this. If there's anything to talk about, it'd be like this. So when they are in a vacuum with their own thoughts, they have my feedback and they have my thoughts and my reassurance that they did a good job, that whatever negative self-talk they have is not valid. So that's when.

00;15;29;22 - 00;15;51;10
Wayne Turmel
I also want to tell you something you said because you said you get them to give you three personal goals and three professional goals and a lot of managers do that. It's kind of rote. You do it at the beginning of the year and then they never pay any more or attention to those personal things, right? It's like, okay, I did that check, check, check.

00;15;51;12 - 00;15;54;02
Wayne Turmel
But our one on ones are going to be about work.

00;15;54;04 - 00;16;15;07
Rico Nasol
Yeah, I mean, it's really important. I can tell you right now, even though I'm not there anymore, most of my team is still there. I can go back to my team Annapolis Recruiter studio and tell you who their kids are, who they're seeing, who they're married to, like, what their goals are, all those things. Because that's the thing that's important with leaders is you make to make everyone around you better.

00;16;15;07 - 00;16;35;10
Rico Nasol
You have to know who they are, right? You can't just make everyone about everyone better. In general terms, you need to really get to know them as people because people some people are type A, some people are type B, some people show up differently than others. And especially in this remote world, if you don't understand how each person shows up best, you start to create exclusive environments.

00;16;35;13 - 00;16;55;09
Rico Nasol
I have folks on my team who show up best in my comments in a Google doc and are deathly afraid of speaking in public, but they show up really well in comments and in in documents. So if I just relied on, I need to hear you to see you, I'm going to exclude very high level contributors on my team.

00;16;55;09 - 00;17;02;24
Wayne Turmel
Wow. Real quick, hybrid teams, anything specifically to that environment?

00;17;02;26 - 00;17;29;17
Rico Nasol
Yeah. So hybrid teams don't don't underestimate the power of team building. I did a lot when we were in person and just getting in a room and whiteboarding. That's the thing I think is most important when you get to be in person is not just sitting in a room. I think it's getting together and actually working on something tangible together and really get the creative juices running and that's when you get the most creativity and engagement from your folks.

00;17;29;19 - 00;17;55;06
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think that's such a key point. And again, we're just this is me underlining verbally, but this notion that being together in the same room doesn't create camaraderie or teamwork or innovation. It's focused work. And if some of the people are in the room and some of them aren't, it's still that focused work that's going to do the job.

00;17;55;09 - 00;17;57;20
Rico Nasol
Exactly. Exactly.

00;17;57;23 - 00;18;27;24
Wayne Turmel
Rico, I am sorry to say that is the end of our times. So much good stuff. Rico is in Henderson, Nevada. He is. He has his own consulting company, Rico Nassau Coaching and Consulting. We will have links to that in our in our show notes. Marisa will do her usual terrific job of that. Niko, I'm going to say goodbye to you momentarily while I close up the show.

00;18;28;01 - 00;18;57;25
Wayne Turmel
That is the long distance work life for this week. If you enjoyed it, please, please, please, like subscribe. You know how podcasts work. We beg for your feedback, but we actually want your feedback. So if you have questions, comments, vicious personal attacks, if you have a pet peeve or a topic that you'd like Marisa and I to tackle or ideas for a guest, please reach out to us on LinkedIn or our names.

00;18;57;25 - 00;19;27;22
Wayne Turmel
Wayne at Kevin Eikenberry dot com Marisa Kevin Eikenberry dot com. If you are trying to reorganize your team, thinking about what your new work should look like, we urge you to check out our new book, The Long-Distance Team Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success. That's it. I hope you're enjoying the show. We really love bringing you a mix of kind of thoughtful trends stuff and tactical practical work.

00;19;27;24 - 00;19;45;04
Wayne Turmel
Very, very smart people like RICO. We're sure that you enjoy it. Check out all our past episodes. You can do that at long distance work life dot com as well. And for now, next week we'll be back with Marisa, my name is Wayne Trammell. Don't let the weasels get you down. We'll see you next episode.

Featured Guest

Name: Rico Nasol

Bio: Rico Nasol is an accomplished executive and leadership coach with over twenty years of global experience, including key roles at Zappos and spearheading the Netflix Creative Studio. Known for his expertise in executive coaching, content optimization, and innovative technology, including machine learning and computer vision, Rico is dedicated to redefining leadership and fostering environments where balance and engagement thrive, empowering individuals to unlock their full potential. His career is marked by a strong focus on team building, strategic planning, and driving engagement across various domains, from creative direction to product management and user experience.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
01:07 Exploring the Concept and Personal Experience of Imposter Syndrome
02:05 Impact of Remote Work on Imposter Syndrome and the Role of Feedback
03:51 Importance of Self-Talk in Leadership
04:55 Challenges Faced by New Leaders and Transition to Management Roles
07:08 Rico Nasol's Personal Journey and Experience with Introversion at Netflix
14:19 Best Practices for Managing Remote Teams
17:02 Approaches to Leading Hybrid Teams and Team Building Importance
18:27 Closing

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

Ask Wayne Anything, Hybrid Work, Leadership

Navigating Office Returns: Harmony or Hostage Negotiation?

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel navigate the evolving 'Return to Office' landscape. They discuss the challenges and realities of shifting from remote to hybrid work, focusing on employer-employee negotiations and the impact on productivity and employee engagement. Wayne sheds light on the varied experiences of returning to the office, touching on the concept of 'malicious compliance' and forecasting the future of hybrid work environments.

Key Takeaways

1. Adapt to Varied Office Experiences: Be flexible and adaptable in response to the diverse return-to-office experiences. Adjust your work routine to suit the new environment.
2. Negotiate Work Arrangements: Take an active role in negotiating your work arrangements. Discuss with your employer to find a balance between remote and in-office work that aligns with your productivity needs.
3. Evaluate Productivity and Engagement: Regularly assess how the shift in work environment affects your productivity and engagement. If necessary, seek adjustments to maintain your effectiveness.
4. Respond Thoughtfully to Remote Work Policies: If faced with restrictive remote work policies, consider how to respond constructively. Avoid malicious compliance by communicating your concerns and suggesting feasible solutions.
5. Prepare for the Evolution of Hybrid Work: Stay informed about the shifting landscape of hybrid work. Plan and strategize for the changes this might bring to your role and career.

View Full Transcript

00;00;07;28 - 00;00;18;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance Work Life. We help you lead, work and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Marissa Eikenberry, a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert Wayne Turmel. Hi.

00;00;18;18 - 00;00;20;26
Wayne Turmel
Hello. That would be me. Hi.

00;00;20;28 - 00;00;41;07
Marisa Eikenberry
So as we're recording this, it's actually early January. This is, you know, our first full week back to work. And something that we're hearing a lot of right now is about return to office. And it's popping back up on the scene and lots of different people are having lots of different conversations around this. And unfortunately, it's not going for the better.

00;00;41;09 - 00;00;44;25
Marisa Eikenberry
So, Wayne, overall, how is return to office going right now?

00;00;44;27 - 00;01;19;25
Wayne Turmel
I'm trying to think of the correct word and it's it's on a spectrum. It's not a dumpster fire. It's not quite a car wreck unless you consider a minor fender bender. A car wreck. It's somewhere on that spectrum. We're actually going to have an interview or two about this over the next few weeks. But I think that return to office is going okay and could and should be going a lot better, frankly.

00;01;19;28 - 00;01;42;06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. I was going to say, I think we can both be in agreement on that. I know one of the things that I keep seeing as I flip around on TikTok or I'm on Instagram or, you know, wherever it is like hangout, that companies are actually starting to increase the number of days per week in the office and up to and including having no remote work days at all, or it's four days a week, which makes some people go, okay, why bother?

00;01;42;08 - 00;01;47;07
Marisa Eikenberry
And so do you think we're starting to see remote work going to the levels that it was pre 2020?

00;01;47;09 - 00;02;03;22
Wayne Turmel
It's not quite at those levels. The latest numbers that I've seen is in the industries where remote work is possible, Right. It's about 33% remote work, whereas before the pandemic it was under 25.

00;02;03;24 - 00;02;04;23
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00;02;04;26 - 00;02;26;26
Wayne Turmel
So it has at least what we are seeing. And I am desperately trying to rein in my cynicism and also the desire to say, I told you so. What we are seeing is that the return to office was not a plan so much as a hostage negotiation.

00;02;26;28 - 00;02;29;04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. You had to be like there was no choice.

00;02;29;05 - 00;02;54;24
Wayne Turmel
Right? They were like the employers were saying, we want you back in. And the employees were saying, you know, if you push too hard, I will quit. And so they kind of negotiated this uneven Stockholm Syndrome thing where it wasn't so much a plan as it was. We can get them in the office so much that they don't quit.

00;02;54;24 - 00;02;56;19
Wayne Turmel
And that's kind of where it settled.

00;02;56;21 - 00;02;57;04
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;02;57;09 - 00;03;19;11
Wayne Turmel
Which which made no side really happy. And time has gone on. And this is the cynical part of me. Not surprisingly, organizations have kind of clawed back the time in the office, you know, until you're down to, well, you can stay home Fridays if you want.

00;03;19;14 - 00;03;20;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;03;20;14 - 00;03;21;16
Wayne Turmel
Which is not.

00;03;21;19 - 00;03;22;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Not a.

00;03;22;17 - 00;03;31;15
Wayne Turmel
Truly effective hybrid work. It's you know, the the the negotiations are going better for one side.

00;03;31;18 - 00;03;41;12
Marisa Eikenberry
So what do you think is causing this shift to more and more days? I mean, is it just managers being like, I want people in the office and we have a building we're paying for and that's just how it's going to be?

00;03;41;14 - 00;04;04;24
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I mean, some of it is. And this is senior leader. It's interesting. It's senior leaders more than it is individual leaders. If you look at the people who want more flexibility, people who are managers in the middle levels were ones to get the benefits of remote work and they saw it and liked it a bunch.

00;04;04;28 - 00;04;05;11
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;04;05;11 - 00;04;24;23
Wayne Turmel
And so your middle managers are not exactly leading the charge to come back. As a matter of fact, one of the problems is that the organization and the senior leadership have said, thou shall get your butt back here. And the middle managers are kind of tasked with making that happen, but they're not putting their full back into it.

00;04;24;26 - 00;04;25;20
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;04;25;23 - 00;04;48;00
Wayne Turmel
Because they haven't really bought into. Just fascinating to me. So, yeah, I mean, some of this is a desperate desire, partly through just sheer exhaustion and partly because of and the inbred belief that that's the way it is to get things back to as close to the before times as possible.

00;04;48;05 - 00;05;03;14
Marisa Eikenberry
On this show, we've talked about productivity with remote work a lot, and there are some people that feel like they're way more productive at home and some people that feel like they're more productive in the office. And there's been lots of data and lots of studies that show lots of different things. And you can make the data say whatever you want, but.

00;05;03;16 - 00;05;04;12
Wayne Turmel
And they do.

00;05;04;14 - 00;05;21;26
Marisa Eikenberry
And they do. We and we've seen it we've talked about it on the show. But have you have you seen noticeable changes in productivity or employee engagement with this shift back to remote work? I mean, I would think employee engagement might kind of be on the down low if people are mad about it.

00;05;21;29 - 00;05;52;27
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, it's interesting about that. And, you know, again, where do you get your numbers? Right? So the the best guess is you're looking at the Gartner's, the McKinsey's, the people who are kind of studying this. And you know, McKinsey stuff tends to support the people who are hiring them, which are the managers. But even still, what that is showing is that employee engagement hasn't really shifted.

00;05;52;27 - 00;06;02;21
Wayne Turmel
And that's because the people who are ticked off about going back to the office are more ticked off. And so they're showing up as less satisfied and less engaged.

00;06;02;22 - 00;06;04;07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;06;04;09 - 00;06;28;06
Wayne Turmel
Percentage of people, it's interesting when they talk about people going back to the office, it's always like, well, they're going to be more productive. What they are is happier because they are extroverts who like having other people around and they're comfortable in that environment. And there's a bunch of people and, you know, the remote work zealots will tell you that they're dinosaurs and will soon be gone.

00;06;28;06 - 00;07;05;15
Wayne Turmel
And that ain't true. There are people who enjoy working in an office environment and they like work peers, and there is some value to that. Anybody who says there isn't is kind of whistling past the graveyard. There is some benefits to being together. It tends not to be on the productivity side. Right. Unless your work relies on brainstorming and quick problem solving and people coming together, if it's task completion tasks get done and people are left alone to get their tasks done.

00;07;05;16 - 00;07;24;05
Wayne Turmel
I mean, that evidence was showing up pre-pandemic and it's becoming more and more clear that if you're going to be in an office environment, you still need quiet time protected from, Hey, it's Marissa's birthday, there's cake in the breakroom. We need a break from that.

00;07;24;07 - 00;07;25;13
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00;07;25;15 - 00;07;34;26
Wayne Turmel
And that has people and this is a whole other show for a whole other day is, you know, if we are going to asses, what should they look like?

00;07;34;28 - 00;07;36;19
Marisa Eikenberry

00;07;36;21 - 00;07;41;16
Wayne Turmel
And the cube farm and it as near as we can tell.

00;07;41;19 - 00;07;59;10
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, something else that I've seen, too, is that with some of these companies that are shifting back to, you know, return to office and they might even be doing away with remote work entirely. I know that there was a viral story on Reddit and somebody else does a tech talk about it. And so it's making its rounds again.

00;07;59;12 - 00;08;21;13
Marisa Eikenberry
But basically their employer had said, you you cannot work from home at all, period. Not the end. And so they were like, okay, well, if I can't work from home, I'm removing teams from my phone and I'm not checking my email or whatever. And then their boss tried to get a hold of them after hours and it was like, Sorry, you told me I wasn't allowed to work from home.

00;08;21;16 - 00;08;25;27
Marisa Eikenberry
So do you have any thoughts on that? Because I've seen some of this or.

00;08;26;00 - 00;08;34;24
Wayne Turmel
This gets to something we talked about in the very early days of this podcast, which is this idea of malicious compliance.

00;08;34;27 - 00;08;36;03
Marisa Eikenberry

00;08;36;05 - 00;08;43;21
Wayne Turmel
Right. And any time you put a hard and fast rule in especially one that is viewed as punitive.

00;08;43;24 - 00;08;45;05
Marisa Eikenberry

00;08;45;08 - 00;08;54;25
Wayne Turmel
Right. And let's keep in mind, we have people who were hired during the pandemic, so they were hired to be remote, and now they're being forced to come in.

00;08;54;27 - 00;08;56;04
Marisa Eikenberry
Or move.

00;08;56;06 - 00;09;22;19
Wayne Turmel
Or actually, you know, change their location or whatever. But this idea of if the return to office is seen as a punitive measure, you weren't getting your work done. You were slacking off. You were going to target when you should have been on that conference call. Therefore, we're bringing you in here. You are going to get a negative reaction to that if court move is deemed as punitive.

00;09;22;26 - 00;09;30;03
Wayne Turmel
The natural response short of actually quitting and, you know, the people that could easily quit and move on have.

00;09;30;07 - 00;09;31;01
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I was gonna say we.

00;09;31;01 - 00;09;55;17
Wayne Turmel
Can target that initial wave of resignations has has passed and where you are now is people who are complying but darn unhappy about it and therefore will do the bare minimum in order to keep their jobs, which is not what you want. Right. Right. And that wasn't the intent. The idea of return to office is we're going to work together better and we're going to do all this stuff.

00;09;55;21 - 00;10;09;14
Wayne Turmel
But if the rule is you need to come to the are paying you to be in the office, by definition, you are not paying me to answer calls at my kids soccer game. And so you get what you pay for.

00;10;09;16 - 00;10;11;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Right.

00;10;11;10 - 00;10;36;20
Wayne Turmel
Now, the other thing that's happening, and this is not a surprise to any rational human being, is that before the pandemic, we had a lot of what I used to call stealth remote. Officially, we were all in the office. But, you know, Lisa's kid is sick, so she's going to take that call from home. I'm working on a project.

00;10;36;20 - 00;10;46;11
Wayne Turmel
I need to focus. So I'm not going in on Friday. I'm going to stay home and work. And it was never official and it was never blessed. But we know what happened.

00;10;46;13 - 00;10;53;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, we got like and now going to see a client or whatever, like, yeah. And, you know, even acceptable once we're still.

00;10;53;09 - 00;11;10;27
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And now the term that is being and I hate it but nobody invited me to the meeting is what they call backdoor remote. okay. Which is the office has its rules, but if one wants to go work from home, I'm not going to rat on him.

00;11;11;00 - 00;11;17;19
Marisa Eikenberry
Gotcha. It seems like with middle managers, like they're the ones aren't for employees.

00;11;17;21 - 00;11;36;29
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, absolutely. And this goes back to the fact that middle managers with a straight face can't look at their employees and say, You have to come into the office because we don't trust you to get your work done when they know that's nonsense. And as a matter of fact, they want to be working from home more often.

00;11;37;01 - 00;11;38;16
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah, they want. Right.

00;11;38;23 - 00;12;05;05
Wayne Turmel
And they just can't with a straight face and a clear conscience, enforce these rules. And any time you get unwritten rules, you essentially have no rules. And it's chaos. And dogs and cats sleep there. And, you know, the end is nigh. And this is something that we predicted not. And it doesn't make me Nostradamus. It makes me a cynical studier of human nature.

00;12;05;07 - 00;12;09;28
Wayne Turmel
There is an obvious overreaction to everything.

00;12;10;00 - 00;12;10;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;12;10;18 - 00;12;41;24
Wayne Turmel
Right. The overreaction was we have to be in the office. No, I can work from home. I'm not going to office at all. And then there's you have to come into the office and, boy, this feels kind of familiar, and I like it. And it make get my boss off my back. So we're going to have you come back in until they you know, and management doesn't think we notice that that they're doing this and they're wrong.

00;12;41;27 - 00;13;04;02
Wayne Turmel
So there's a and what we have said all along is that hot work is not simply a compromise. And that's what the next wave is. You have to look at we were not in the office for a long time and now we're back in and some things are better and some things are worse. You know, tasks aren't getting done.

00;13;04;08 - 00;13;36;21
Wayne Turmel
It's a lot harder to get your focused work done. We have to only hire people who live within 40 minutes of the office, which reduces our talent pool. So as long as we look at return to office as this uneasy compromise and we're just trying to find what's the balance between keeping senior leadership happy and having people not start to quit, it's not going to progress to the next level, which is hybrid work is a different thing.

00;13;36;21 - 00;14;04;12
Wayne Turmel
And it's not just where people are. It's not just where people work, but when they work. And you have to build in the freedom to have flexibility in your schedule and work when it's most appropriate. And maybe we don't constantly need meetings where people always have to be, Yeah, you can work from home and you can have flexibility over your schedule, but we have four meetings today and you'd better be on them.

00;14;04;12 - 00;14;08;06
Marisa Eikenberry
All right. And we've talked about asynchronous work before and I'll.

00;14;08;07 - 00;14;44;14
Wayne Turmel
Be well again. I know we've got interviews coming up to make that, you know, to have that discussion in more depth. So the answer to your question, how's your return to office going is it's going right. I think some organizations are happy with the balance and got all of them. Other organizations understand that we Stacy's, but nobody's really happy and it's probably not the ideal answer.

00;14;44;14 - 00;15;12;04
Wayne Turmel
And so I'm hopeful that people who are listening to this podcast and and, you know, taking a look at the issue really continuously, continuously and seriously look at how to improve it rather than just going, okay, the bleeding is stopped. And, you know, we like this kind of and think beyond that because that's going to be the next wave.

00;15;12;04 - 00;15;22;21
Wayne Turmel
And the companies that are successful are the ones who are going to go above and beyond compromise to really thoughtful, intentional hybrid work.

00;15;22;24 - 00;15;34;25
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes, that makes a lot of sense. I know that we're getting close to wrapping up our time and wait. I know that we talked before this, that we wanted to talk about our Long Distance Leadership series. So would you like to take that away before I get into the outro?

00;15;34;27 - 00;16;04;00
Wayne Turmel
A lot of people think that, you know, we've done remote or we're going back to the office, so we don't need it. But the fact of the matter is that leadership in the age of hybrid work and remote work is mostly the same as it is. Good leaders will find a way to lead, but there are nuances and we have a public enrollment six part workshop that looks at those nuances of remote work.

00;16;04;02 - 00;16;37;00
Wayne Turmel
I think it's a great idea for individual leaders who want to take the bull by the horns and understand that better as organizations are thinking about how are we going to help prepare our leaders, maybe send somebody from your organization to that to take a look and see if it's appropriate for your team? And I think that it's important and solved built on the cons and the long distance leader, long distance teammate, long distance team that a lot of people on this pod who listen to this show are familiar with.

00;16;37;04 - 00;16;54;25
Marisa Eikenberry
Thank you so much for sharing that. And listeners, thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for shownotes transcripts and other resources, Make sure to visit long distance work life Bcom. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the show wherever you're listening so you won't miss any future episodes. And while you're there, be sure to like and review.

00;16;55;01 - 00;17;15;29
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 for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you. Thanks for listening. As Wayne likes to say, the weasels gets down to.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
01:19 Increasing Office Days: Impact on Remote Work
01:47 Shifts in Remote Work Prevalence
05:04 Productivity and Employee Engagement Trends
08:56 Malicious Compliance and Remote Work Policies
15:12 The Future of Hybrid Work

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Long-Distance Leadership Series

Unlock the potential of remote leadership with the Long-Distance Leadership series – your essential guide to mastering the art of leading teams, no matter where they are.

Learn More

Guests, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Technology and Trust: Key Pillars of Remote Work with Terry Isner

Terry Isner, owner and CEO of Jaffe, a remote marketing and PR agency for law firms, discusses the evolution of remote work and the challenges and benefits it brings. He shares how Jaffe transitioned to remote work 35 years ago and how technology has played a crucial role in their success. Isner emphasizes the importance of trust, empathy, and effective communication in a remote work environment. He also highlights the need for leaders to adapt and let go of traditional office norms to fully embrace the remote work revolution.

Featured Guest

Name: Terry M. Isner

Bio: A marketing philosopher, brand consultant and dynamic speaker for the professional services industry, Terry M. Isner is known as “the empathy man” because of his humanistic approach to business strategy.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
00:54 History of Remote Work
01:42 Evolution of Remote Work
02:28 Formation of Jaffe
03:21 Challenges of Remote Work
04:26 Benefits of Remote Work
05:11 Importance of Intention in Remote Work
06:24 Impact of COVID-19 on Remote Work
07:08 Accountability and Security of Remote Work
08:36 Success of Remote Work During COVID-19
11:28 Managing Money and Competitiveness in Retail
12:16 Importance of Empathy and Trust in Virtual Leadership
13:07 Using Technology to Establish Accountability in Remote Work
14:21 Challenges of Hiring and Ensuring Productivity in Remote Teams
16:17 Overcoming Communication Barriers in Remote Work
17:16 Fear and Barriers to Embracing Remote Work
19:00 Negative Impact of Early Technology Adoption in Remote Work
20:05 Generational Differences in Adapting to Remote Work
21:02 Trust the Process and Embrace the Humanity Revolution
21:27 Closing

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

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

Remote Work Rants: Making Sense of Remote Onboarding

Join Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel as they navigate the lively world of remote onboarding. In this episode they reveal some clever strategies for creating a welcoming remote culture and ensuring new team members feel connected from the start. They dive into practical tips like engaging webcam chats, clear task delegation, and the importance of a user-friendly employee handbook, all spiced up with their trademark humor and expertise.

Key Takeaways

1. Remote onboarding is a critical business problem, as remote workers are statistically more likely to leave if they don't feel a sense of belonging.
2. Onboarding should include webcam conversations with team members to build rapport and connections.
3. Remote employees should be given meaningful tasks and responsibilities from the start to demonstrate their value and contribute to the team.
4. Online employee handbooks and resources should be searchable and logically organized to help new employees navigate company-specific terminology and processes.

View Full Transcript

00;00;08;02 - 00;00;18;29
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the Long-Distance Work Life, 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.

00;00;19;01 - 00;00;23;25
Wayne Turmel
Hi. That's me. And also a remote worker, as it turns out.

00;00;23;28 - 00;00;37;27
Marisa Eikenberry
That is also true. It's what part of what makes you an expert? So today we are talking about more pet peeves. And first of all, thank you for to so many of you who have been sending us these, we've had so much fun doing them over the last several months.

00;00;38;00 - 00;00;42;09
Wayne Turmel
And I love listening to people whine. That makes me so happy.

00;00;42;12 - 00;00;49;03
Marisa Eikenberry
And the funny part is some of our listeners have said they enjoy hearing you rant about things. So it's a perfect match, right?

00;00;49;05 - 00;00;54;04
Wayne Turmel
It's a good it's a good thing, right? Tell me what you want me to rant about, Brady.

00;00;54;07 - 00;01;13;15
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, today we're going to rant about onboarding and specifically about remote onboarding. So I heard from Katrina on Facebook about onboarding as a fully remote worker into an existing, fully remote team is rough. She did it before COVID, before it was fashionable, and it took 4 to 6 weeks before she felt like she didn't just take up space.

00;01;13;18 - 00;01;37;27
Marisa Eikenberry
She's also had two peers and one supervisor who were all onboarded during COVID. They had a tough time with it and all have since left. And three direct reports, onboarded as a mostly remote experience. But they had complicated processes for getting access to technology and things of that nature. So far, all three direct reports are still here. But as a team, we have to and do work very, very hard to build cohesion and rapport.

00;01;38;00 - 00;01;51;21
Marisa Eikenberry
We actually had somebody else, Rachel, also on Facebook, who had said that onboarding new team members was very tricky for them and it was hard to form new and genuine connections. So there are people that are having issues onboarding remotely so.

00;01;51;23 - 00;02;24;26
Wayne Turmel
Well, they are. And I am going to be that guy again and remind people that this is not just, gee, it's really hard and gosh, I'd like to have gotten it. There is a business cost here if people do not deal within the first five days. A sense of belonging they are statistically more likely to leave. And remote workers, as we have talked about many times on this show, have no barriers to leaving.

00;02;24;28 - 00;02;29;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah, they can start the next day in a completely different job. They just have.

00;02;29;20 - 00;02;30;09
Wayne Turmel
Literally.

00;02;30;09 - 00;02;31;20
Marisa Eikenberry
The only thing that.

00;02;31;22 - 00;03;00;29
Wayne Turmel
Literally the only thing they need to do is get a new password. Yeah. So this is a business problem. It's not just a gosh, wouldn't it be nice to feel more connected to my people problem? It's a legit business problem. And I think the experience I mean, if it takes 40 days to become onboarded and be onboarded, I'm going to guess they mean doing the productive work for which you were hired.

00;03;01;02 - 00;03;04;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Feeling like they belong there. They're not here.

00;03;04;19 - 00;03;10;26
Wayne Turmel
And probably two parts, right? Feeling like they belong and actually doing the work that you were hired to do.

00;03;11;04 - 00;03;11;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;03;11;28 - 00;03;31;28
Wayne Turmel
Right. That you're not just doing busy work, that you're not just I mean, one of the things that makes me crazy about traditional onboarding and this is true of in-person as well, is why do we spend the first three days that we are hired filling out paperwork?

00;03;32;03 - 00;03;32;29
Marisa Eikenberry
That's fair.

00;03;33;01 - 00;03;45;04
Wayne Turmel
Right. I have to fill out the paperwork so that by the end of the week, hopefully I have my computer and my logging access and all of that stuff. Why isn't that waiting for me? Day one.

00;03;45;07 - 00;03;48;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Or even potentially filled out before then, if you're able.

00;03;48;13 - 00;04;25;26
Wayne Turmel
Well, this is what I'm saying is, you know, I know that I start work Monday. How about I get you the paperwork before then? Yeah. And I know that there are issues. If I'm filling out paperwork, I'm technically working and I should be paid, and there's stuff, but come on. Yeah. The fact that we spend so much of the onboarding process and when we're in the office and we're dealing with people and we're sitting in the cube farm and we're kind of kibitzing with people and meeting people and putting faces to names, it's not entirely wasted time.

00;04;25;28 - 00;04;30;00
Wayne Turmel
Right. But then how do you do that?

00;04;30;02 - 00;04;30;12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;04;30;12 - 00;04;52;16
Wayne Turmel
So how do you replicate that experience when you aren't in the office? Right. And I think that is it's an important question. I think it depends on where you are relative to the office. Right. If you can go in for a couple of days, your first couple of days, I think that is an optimum experience.

00;04;52;20 - 00;04;53;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00;04;53;29 - 00;04;56;20
Wayne Turmel
If you are in Guam.

00;04;56;22 - 00;04;57;25
Marisa Eikenberry
You're not going be able to do that.

00;04;57;28 - 00;05;20;23
Wayne Turmel
You're not going to be able to do that in a way that makes sense. So how do you do it? Now, we have and if you have heard us talk about this, forgive me, dear listener, but this is a best practice that we do that I think is really, really critical. When somebody joins our organization, their first assignment, this is an assignment.

00;05;20;24 - 00;05;43;27
Wayne Turmel
This is stuff they are expected to do. Day 1 to 3 is to set up a half hour webcam conversation with every member of the team, whether they're going to work with that person all the time or not. Right. They may very rarely work with Lisa in payables or Angie behind the scenes, but a half hour webcam conversation.

00;05;43;29 - 00;05;46;20
Wayne Turmel
And it starts with what's your job? What do you do here?

00;05;46;20 - 00;05;47;10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00;05;47;13 - 00;05;55;01
Wayne Turmel
Right. But it turns into where you go to school and do you have kids and what's on that shelf behind you and you know.

00;05;55;01 - 00;06;08;03
Marisa Eikenberry
It to not be mostly work. I mean, yeah, you're going to talk a little bit about that, but it's really meant to be. I'm trying to get to know you as a person. I'm trying to find commonalities so that way we can build rapport.

00;06;08;05 - 00;06;27;15
Wayne Turmel
And these conversations should happen spontaneously if you are in the office with people. Now, to be fair, they honestly don't, right? A lot of us are introverts or we don't want to bother somebody and we're not going to schedule time with somebody at the next desk to say, Give me a half hour and let me pick your brain.

00;06;27;15 - 00;06;55;28
Wayne Turmel
Right? Right. But that's a best practice because it doesn't matter where those people are. You're not just hanging out in the lunchroom with people in the office. Right. So that is a very and it needs to happen right away, like the first couple of days. Right. First of all, what else are you doing anyway? Yeah. You haven't really been trained to do anything yet, but make that useful time.

00;06;56;00 - 00;07;24;22
Wayne Turmel
The other thing that people report with onboarding remotely is there's a lot of time. The minute I meet with my manager, your manager does their best to have one on ones and give them lots of time and stuff, but they're not always available. They are doing other things and helping other employees and whatever. And so the amount of wasted time.

00;07;24;24 - 00;07;25;18
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;07;25;21 - 00;07;39;12
Wayne Turmel
Those first few days is really frustrating to people. They want to do work. They don't want to. Well, I had a call with my boss at one and I've got training at three and what do I do in the meantime?

00;07;39;14 - 00;07;59;19
Marisa Eikenberry
So on that same lines, I know that recently we had an episode where we talk a lot about asynchronous video and we talk about that in the context of meetings. But you know, to your point about this whole scheduling time and all that. Would you recommend asynchronous video on board in at least for part of the process?

00;07;59;21 - 00;08;20;15
Wayne Turmel
I think where it makes sense, I think that's absolutely true. And, you know, we a lot of organizations have training, right. E-learning and stuff. It doesn't have to be that formal. So it's great when you can do that, right? When you have all the schmancy e-learning and.

00;08;20;17 - 00;08;22;29
Marisa Eikenberry
And your I.T. department has time to build it for you.

00;08;23;02 - 00;08;45;20
Wayne Turmel
And the department has time to build that for you and all that stuff. I think that short asynchronous messages, you know, just to start the day. Hey, Marisa, today I want you doing this right. And it's not an email. It's just, Hey, how you doing? Hope you had a great night. Listen, today we're going to work on this.

00;08;45;27 - 00;08;59;06
Wayne Turmel
I want you to contact Alice this morning, and I want you to talk to so-and-so this afternoon and talk to them about this function or get them to show you how they do X.

00;08;59;10 - 00;09;00;28
Marisa Eikenberry
That all make sense.

00;09;01;00 - 00;09;12;25
Wayne Turmel
It's informal, it's casual, it's useful. Right? It's. You're still getting some degree of face and voice time with the person. And it's personalized.

00;09;12;27 - 00;09;15;17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Yeah. It's way better than just a slack message.

00;09;15;20 - 00;09;52;22
Wayne Turmel
And I think if we think about the way we've traditionally onboarded, it doesn't really work anyway. I mean, think about the way we used to start jobs, especially at big companies. It's your first day and so you go to bootcamp and you and eight other new hires fly to wherever the headquarters is and you're in class all day and then you go out for dinner at night and you do that lather, rinse, repeat, and it's at least four days and sometimes two weeks, and the amount that you remember is zero.

00;09;52;25 - 00;09;59;06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I was I will admit I've never had that experience. And now I'm very thankful that I have not.

00;09;59;08 - 00;10;31;06
Wayne Turmel
If you are if you join an organization as a new salesperson, especially straight out of school or new in your career, odds are that you have had to go to bootcamp. And the fact of the matter is, the human brain doesn't absorb information that way. Yes, you socialize, right? First of all, you you create a cohort with your fellow learners and those relationships can very often last throughout your time at the company.

00;10;31;11 - 00;10;33;02
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. And those are very important.

00;10;33;04 - 00;10;39;27
Wayne Turmel
There are no atheists in foxholes. And, you know, you bond in times of extreme stress.

00;10;39;27 - 00;10;41;08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;10;41;10 - 00;11;03;28
Wayne Turmel
But in terms of two weeks of constant training, training, training, here's your handbook. Turn to page eight. You actually retain very little and at least in the old days, you used to get a binder and you could go back and refer to the document in the binder and find, How do I do that? Again, we don't get binders anymore.

00;11;03;28 - 00;11;04;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, So we.

00;11;04;27 - 00;11;06;22
Wayne Turmel
Have that one.

00;11;06;27 - 00;11;20;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So I know that, like you said, we don't we don't do the binder thing anymore, but I know that there are some companies that they've created online employee handbooks or user guides or whatever you want to call it.

00;11;20;26 - 00;11;23;20
Wayne Turmel
And they are usually impossible to navigate.

00;11;23;23 - 00;11;24;19
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00;11;24;21 - 00;11;32;14
Wayne Turmel
The information, this is where I, he says, referring to an early conversation that we had. This is where II becomes helpful.

00;11;32;19 - 00;11;33;05
Marisa Eikenberry
That makes sense.

00;11;33;05 - 00;12;06;29
Wayne Turmel
Because at least in a binder, I can lift my finger and start flipping pages to find what I need online. If I don't know exactly what that thing is called, I am scrolling forever. Whereas if the A, I can say, Hey, show me how to do X boom, there it is and you're good. So if you're going to have online onboarding, if you're going to have employee handbooks electronically, they need to be searchable and they need to make some sort of logical sense.

00;12;07;01 - 00;12;14;17
Marisa Eikenberry
And that makes sense. I know that there are some companies they use notion for this. Some of them create a wiki or things like that. So I mean, even.

00;12;14;17 - 00;12;36;23
Wayne Turmel
One can be incredibly, incredibly helpful. But the other thing is it's just this two weeks of whatever and there's this lovely thing that I've talked about for years, but I don't think we've ever talked about on the show, which is the Maryland okay, which is the term. It's a big rabbit hole, literally, because it's stolen from the book Watership Down.

00;12;36;26 - 00;12;44;05
Wayne Turmel
But basically the horror element is how much you can take into your brain before it's full.

00;12;44;07 - 00;12;44;20
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;12;44;26 - 00;13;12;19
Wayne Turmel
And you can't. And you know, if you've ever been to a training class, this is usually about 11:00 on day one. You have absorbed all the stuff you can absorb. And it's not that you don't want to be a good soldier and you don't want to learn it. You just don't get a chance to use it and process it and move it from short term memory to long term memory to make room for more stuff, let alone a week or two weeks of this nonsense.

00;13;12;19 - 00;13;17;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, you'll remember the first things you learned in the last things you learned and you won't remember a lot of the in between.

00;13;18;00 - 00;13;38;11
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. And so one of the things that we are learning about onboarding is, yes, some things are best done in the office. Well, if you're going to be in a hybrid environment, be prepared to space in the office. You know, even if you're mostly going to be working from home, suck it up, take a day, two days, do what you need to do.

00;13;38;14 - 00;14;05;21
Wayne Turmel
But a lot of it can be learned in chunks and it can be learned in chunks from different sources. Traditionally at onboarding, Marisa's been here forever. I'm going to bolt the new person to Marisa, and she's going to follow her around like a little duckling and imprint on her. And that's how she's going to learn. And she's going to learn all of Marisa's good habits, and she's going to pick up all of Marisa's bad habits.

00;14;05;24 - 00;14;08;11
Wayne Turmel
And Marisa is not going to get a darn thing done.

00;14;08;13 - 00;14;09;03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00;14;09;05 - 00;14;16;06
Wayne Turmel
While this is going on, but helpful for knowing where the bathroom is and who's responsible for the coffee and, you know.

00;14;16;07 - 00;14;18;01
Marisa Eikenberry
And having a buddy in the office like that.

00;14;18;01 - 00;14;47;06
Wayne Turmel
So having somebody that you're assigned to online virtual team collaboration and onboarding should be the same. But you can pick different people for different functions so that you're not. Marisa isn't the only human in the world that person knows right? Right. Alison's our resident expert, expert on Excel, and Bob has been here a really long time. And you know what?

00;14;47;13 - 00;15;03;24
Wayne Turmel
I want you to take an hour with Bob and just get the history of the company. Look up what you know, What did he know? What does he know about the culture? That seems like a strange thing to assign. It's the kind of thing that we think happens organically in person.

00;15;03;24 - 00;15;04;26
Marisa Eikenberry
And it does not.

00;15;04;29 - 00;15;13;26
Wayne Turmel
But it does not. And if you wait for it to happen organically, you know it's not going to happen as quickly or perhaps as well.

00;15;14;01 - 00;15;39;09
Marisa Eikenberry
So going along the same lines of, you know, there's a point where there's too much information for us to grasp. And, you know, maybe employee handbooks aren't the right thing or user guides or I know for us and I'm sure this is true for many companies, you know, we have acronyms, acronyms and initial isms. And we have these words that nobody uses except for us, like, how do you how do you onboard somebody into that?

00;15;39;09 - 00;15;59;29
Marisa Eikenberry
How do you help them find that? I know that we as a company, we we keep realizing we've had two people who onboarded two years ago now and, you know, they've been with us and everything's great. And every now and then they ask a question that for us we think, Well, duh, it's X, Y, Z. And then we have to remember they don't know this or they never asked.

00;15;59;29 - 00;16;02;18
Marisa Eikenberry
So it never came up again.

00;16;02;21 - 00;16;18;21
Wayne Turmel
I would be a beautiful thing right there on a meeting. And we're all talking about the LDL series and blah, blah, blah, and they can go on and go, what in the name of everything that's holy is the LDL series. Right. And they can get the answer without looking like idiots.

00;16;18;28 - 00;16;19;26
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay, There.

00;16;20;00 - 00;16;49;03
Wayne Turmel
This is this is where now. So some of this is information gap. Right. But the other thing is, are there tasks that they can and should be doing that they can't do their entire job, but they can start to go through their lead list. They can start to compile a list of there are things that they can do so that as soon as possible they are doing some valuable work and adding value to the team.

00;16;49;04 - 00;17;07;25
Marisa Eikenberry
Well, and it sounds like, too, there's there's a responsibility for the people who have been working there for a while to inform the new people about things. And there's a responsibility of the new person. Ask questions, too. Now, granted, I realize if they can't ask what they don't know, but there's also stuff they can't ask.

00;17;08;02 - 00;17;36;16
Wayne Turmel
But there is. It's funny when you talk about company culture and company handbooks and that kind of thing, there's explicit knowledge and there's tacit knowledge. Okay. Explicit knowledge is stuff that's on the page. If you want to know how to do X, go to this website, turn to this page. There is a process for this, right? If I'm working and I have a question, well, everybody knows Alice is the Excel wizard.

00;17;36;21 - 00;17;49;04
Wayne Turmel
Where does it say that we should say, If I have an Excel question, I have to go to Alice because I'm going to Marisa because she's the only person I know. And Marisa is completely useless when it comes to excel.

00;17;49;06 - 00;17;56;03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Well, which also means that I need to be really good about saying I'm not the Excel expert. Alice It.

00;17;56;05 - 00;18;21;19
Wayne Turmel
Exactly right. So one of the things that's helpful is if you have people with specific knowledge or skill sets, get them involved early, particularly if they are remote from each other because I might be unwilling to reach out to Marisa with a question. But that's Marisa's job, right? Marisa knows that I am.

00;18;21;21 - 00;18;25;17
Marisa Eikenberry
I am the keeper of the email. You have to talk to me at some point, right?

00;18;25;20 - 00;18;47;22
Wayne Turmel
Two things are going to happen. One is that I feel less resistance to reaching out to Marisa because I know that. And the other thing is Marisa might be a little more proactive about checking in with me, about how I'm doing with that thing, because that's the piece of knowledge that Marisa is responsible for.

00;18;47;24 - 00;18;48;21
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00;18;48;23 - 00;19;12;07
Wayne Turmel
Right. And this all sounds very complicated, but it really is critical to getting people on board. I mean, we talk about, well, people need to be comfortable and how well, how do they do that exposure to the people on their team getting to know them socially, developing trust very quickly, doing meaningful work and demonstrating that you can do meaningful work.

00;19;12;07 - 00;19;19;07
Wayne Turmel
Right. Maybe what this person needs is to be invited to a couple of meetings that they are completely unqualified to be in.

00;19;19;11 - 00;19;20;03
Marisa Eikenberry
That's fair.

00;19;20;06 - 00;19;45;09
Wayne Turmel
But they might have an idea, right? Hey, at my old company we did that and they'll hear the acronyms flying around and they'll hear how we work together. So parceling out their day and figuring out when they do actual work, when can other people be involved in this so that we are creating the social networks and the bonds and the relationships?

00;19;45;12 - 00;20;06;19
Wayne Turmel
And then what useless work can we eliminate? Right, Right. So they're not spending five days filling out forms before they even talk to another human being. That will go a long way to making the onboarding process more pleasant, more useful and more consistent with the way we're working.

00;20;06;26 - 00;20;26;04
Marisa Eikenberry
That totally makes sense. And unfortunately, we are out of time. I know that we could probably continue to talk about this for much longer than this, but I want to thank Katrina and Rachel for sending in your suggestion about talking about onboarding, because I think this was a really important conversation, and I'm sure this is not the only time that we're going to talk about onboarding in the future.

00;20;26;06 - 00;20;42;13
Marisa Eikenberry
And thank you so much for listening to the longest work life for Shownotes Transcripts and other resources make sure to visit long distance work like that. Tom If you haven't yet subscribe to the podcast, you won't miss any future episodes while you're there. Be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show.

00;20;42;15 - 00;20;57;27
Marisa Eikenberry
Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. We'd love to hear from you if you'd like to learn more about remote teams. Order Wayne and Kevin Eisenberg's new book, The Long Distance Team.

00;20;57;29 - 00;21;04;09
Marisa Eikenberry
You can learn more about the book at Long Distance Team Book Tor.com. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get too down.

Timestamps

00:00 Intro to Remote Onboarding
01:13 Challenges & Turnover in Onboarding
02:24 Addressing Remote Onboarding
03:11 Traditional vs. Remote Onboarding
04:25 Replicating In-Person Onboarding
05:20 Webcam Conversations Best Practices
06:08 Building Remote Rapport
06:56 Tackling Time Wastage in Onboarding
07:39 Overcoming Onboarding Delays
07:59 Asynchronous Video for Onboarding
08:45 Short Messages for Daily Tasks
09:12 Traditional Methods & Retention
10:31 Building Relationships in Onboarding
11:06 Searchable Online Handbooks
13:38 Hybrid Onboarding Strategies
14:05 Diverse Roles in Onboarding
15:39 Navigating Company Jargon
16:18 Encouraging Questions from New Hires
16:49 Engaging New Hires in Valuable Tasks
17:36 Sharing Explicit and Tacit Knowledge
18:21 Involving Skilled Team Members
19:12 Building Trust and Exposure
19:45 Creating Social Networks
20:06 Streamlining the Onboarding Process
20:26 Closing

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

Guests, Leadership, Working Remotely

Voices of Diversity: Embracing Accents in the Workplace with Heather Hansen

Heather Hansen, founder of the Global Speech Academy, discusses the issue of accent bias in the workplace and the importance of effective communication in a globalized world. She challenges the notion of "good" and "bad" English, emphasizing that successful communication is about getting the message across, regardless of accent. Heather highlights the need for leaders to understand and address accent bias, as well as the cultural differences that impact communication. She also emphasizes the importance of listening and valuing diverse perspectives. Overall, Heather advocates for a shift in mindset and a more inclusive approach to communication.

Key Takeaways

1. Accent bias exists in the workplace and can hinder effective communication.
2. Communication is not a skills problem but involves cultural intelligence and active listening.
3. Non-native English speakers face challenges in a global economy dominated by English speakers.
4. Organizations need to create a culture of acceptance and understanding for diverse communication styles.
5. Accent bias is not limited to non-native speakers and can affect individuals with regional accents within the same country.

View Full Transcript

00;00;07;27 - 00;00;40;04
Wayne Turmel
Hello everyone, and welcome once again to the Long Distance Work WorkLife, the podcast where we try to make sense of remote and hybrid work in people not being in the same place at the same time and helping people thrive through all of that. My name is Wayne Turmel. My usual co-host, Marisa is not here today. It's an interview show and I'm very, very happy and fortunate to be talking to Heather Hansen.

00;00;40;06 - 00;00;53;15
Wayne Turmel
And we're going to be talking about accents and working across languages and all kinds of good stuff, and she knows of which she speaks because she is joining us from Singapore. Hi Heather.

00;00;53;17 - 00;00;56;18
Heather Hansen
I Wayne great to be here. Thanks for having me.

00;00;56;21 - 00;01;06;01
Wayne Turmel
Well, as always, thank you for being had. Tell me, what does the Global Speech Academy do?

00;01;06;03 - 00;01;27;01
Heather Hansen
We are a global communication training company working with Multination is primarily headquartered here in Singapore, in the region, but working internationally. So we focus on everything from presentation skills to cross-cultural communication to articulation, training and clear speech, anything that can help us be better communicators in global environments.

00;01;27;03 - 00;01;54;01
Wayne Turmel
Well, that sounds like worthy work and important stuff. Now you are a little bit of a disturber because I see that. I see that with great affection. As somebody who has been accused of disturbing more than my share of stuff. You're in a talk recently called How to Speak Bad English, perfectly in which calm.

00;01;54;03 - 00;02;23;06
Heather Hansen
Yeah, people don't like hearing that. They don't want to hear, Well, why would you want to speak bad English? The whole point of that talk is the fact that there is no such thing as good or bad English. There's only communication that works. So either you get your message across successfully or you don't. And I it just pains me that so many people come to me and say, Oh, my English is so bad, my pronunciation is so bad, and we're having a full on conversation in actually fully grammatical English.

00;02;23;06 - 00;02;53;23
Heather Hansen
And I'm thinking, Who made you think that you don't speak well? What kind of perfectionism are you searching for and looking for? Because as far as I can tell, you speak just fine. But there's so much bias, so much negativity. We use power. We use language as a power for maintaining privilege in the world. And so as as native English speakers, it's very easy to maintain our privilege and power in the global economy by focusing on how bad people speak English.

00;02;53;23 - 00;03;35;21
Wayne Turmel
And well, this is all part of that. You know, you need to lighten your skin and not cover your mouth when you laugh and and make all of that cultural stuff that that goes with being and all of that imperialist that's going to go, Yeah, yeah. But one of the things that I know that you feel very passionate about is besides all of those other things, this notion of having to eliminate accents and the idea of accent bias, tell us what that looks like right in the workplace and then why does that make you so crazy?

00;03;35;24 - 00;04;00;29
Heather Hansen
Yeah. So we'll never eliminate accents so it's not so much that it's more of a bias against them, Right? Because first of all, we have to understand every single person in the world has an accent. I mean, I grew up in central California believing I didn't have an accent. It was everyone else with an accent. Right. And those of us who think that way have actually never experienced the bias that is there for people who sound different than the culturally accepted, prestigious norm.

00;04;00;29 - 00;04;22;13
Heather Hansen
So I hit the lottery, right? Being born into this variety of English that's globally recognized, seen as educated and eloquent. And I've based the whole business off of it, and I've been very successful due to the fact that I speak a type of English that people recognize and and believe is prestigious. And now it's not like that for everyone.

00;04;22;13 - 00;04;43;10
Heather Hansen
When when I went abroad, I first started learning about accent bias because I was living in German speaking society and Danish speaking. I'm fluent in both languages. My German is very rusty now, my Danish. I'm married to a Dane, so we speak it daily. And living in Denmark, for example, speaking fluent Danish, I'd be stopped in the middle of business meetings like, Oh, how are your accent?

00;04;43;10 - 00;05;05;21
Heather Hansen
So cute. Oh, more. Oh, I love you and your accent. It's like we're in a business meeting. Why aren't you listening to what I say and taking me seriously? You would never say that to me if we were speaking English right now. Right. But that shows the privilege that I have because I would say we can do this in English if you want, you know, and then like, Oh, no, no, no, it's okay, it's okay, because that would give me my power back, my respect back.

00;05;05;23 - 00;05;44;03
Heather Hansen
But what about the people who speak Mandarin or Tamil or Malay or Indonesian or languages that aren't global languages? They don't have that option. They're dealing with this every single day, day in and day out, trying to compete in a world that is dominated and run by English speakers. So that's what fuels all of my work. It's how can I help these people to better compete, to feel just as confident and to get the rest of the world to actually start listening to what they are saying and accepting them for who they are instead of constantly thinking about, Oh, that's funny the way they said that, Oh, their English is so bad and oh, why

00;05;44;03 - 00;05;53;04
Heather Hansen
don't they speak better? And oh, you've lived in America 40 years. Why do you still have an accent? All of these kinds of biases that come to the surface.

00;05;53;06 - 00;06;10;29
Wayne Turmel
And I know I'm not trying to steal your thunder, but one of the things that occurs to me is with the rise of asynchronous work, you know, you encounter a little bit less of that because as you know, in cyberspace, no. One, you don't type with an ex.

00;06;11;02 - 00;06;47;20
Heather Hansen
Yes and no. Right? Because the type of English is spoken globally. There are there isn't just one global English. And that's one of the problems. Singapore English has its own rules, its own grammatical structures, its own vocabulary. Indian English has many different varieties, English spoken in the Philippines, slightly different, and some are more British English, some are more American based, depending on who colonized them first and so even in the writing, when you when you write with someone from India, the terminology they use, maybe some of the different grammar markers that you find will be different.

00;06;47;22 - 00;07;13;14
Heather Hansen
And so if you think of it that way, there's is almost a written accent as well where we're thinking, Oh, why can they never put an F on the third person singular key works. Not he work like, Oh, their English is so annoying. It comes up both in writing and in and in speech. I mean, just look at the comments section of any social media site and the way people will will break down the writing of what someone said, usually because they have no real argument.

00;07;13;14 - 00;07;31;25
Heather Hansen
So they go to the language as the way to make themselves superior. So the grammar police I'm talking to you, it's that is not necessary because if you understood the message, then communication happens and that's where we have to start approaching all of our communication, especially in the working world.

00;07;31;28 - 00;07;45;13
Wayne Turmel
Well, and I love that you are not trying to educate the individual workers so much as the leaders and the organizations who.

00;07;45;16 - 00;08;11;07
Heather Hansen
It really does start from the top. It needs to the leaders need to fully understand this in order to make it quite clear that, listen, we're accepting of everyone. Now, the problem in organizations is that we talk about everything. And I from age to race to gender, to sexuality, Abel is an all of these things, but language is never discussed, and it's the foundation for all of them.

00;08;11;07 - 00;08;33;10
Heather Hansen
When you hear of someone on the phone, you're immediately categorizing. You're giving them the gender you believe they have, not how they identify you are deciding what race they probably are. You are deciding their education levels, probably where in the world they're from. You have decided all this information and created a vision of that person without even seeing them, without knowing them.

00;08;33;13 - 00;08;53;21
Heather Hansen
And and this is not discussed in the workplace. It's not included in the policy. It's not protected by law unless you can link accent, bias and discrimination to national origin. So that means, okay, if you're a foreign language speaker in America and someone is discriminating against you and saying, Oh, you can't speak English, go back where you're from.

00;08;53;23 - 00;09;17;08
Heather Hansen
Well, that's an easy link to national origin and you have a court case. But what about the the white American man from Alabama who is going up to work on Wall Street and is being made fun of because of his accent or isn't taken seriously? What kind of national origin clause can he fall back on? So this is not only a native non-native foreign speaker.

00;09;17;08 - 00;09;34;04
Heather Hansen
We experience this within the United States. And if I say, you know, the South, New York, New Jersey, Boston, California, Valley Girl, Florida, we have immediate ideas of what these accents sound like and what the characteristics for those groups of people are.

00;09;34;05 - 00;09;36;28
Wayne Turmel
Right. And the humans attached to them.

00;09;37;01 - 00;09;50;09
Heather Hansen
Yeah. And so this is this is an issue for everyone. It isn't only a native non-Native, although we see it happening even more when we're trying to deal with people from a different culture and background as well.

00;09;50;12 - 00;10;25;06
Wayne Turmel
Well, that obviously gets to the point of in an increasingly global world, right? This notion that, you know, you can't really you can't get the benefits of globalism without dealing with other humans from other places, and it goes with the territory. And you said something and I'm dying to get into what the heck you mean by this, because as somebody who has spent 30 years teaching communication skills, your big battle cry is communication is not a skills problem.

00;10;25;13 - 00;10;28;00
Wayne Turmel
And what?

00;10;28;03 - 00;10;47;24
Heather Hansen
Well, that statement comes from my frustration as a corporate trainer where every october i get phone calls from h.r. Saying we really want to commit to changing the communication culture in the company. Can you come and do a two day program on presentation skills? And it's like, that's not going to cut it. That's not going to change anything.

00;10;47;24 - 00;11;17;14
Heather Hansen
That's not going to move the needle even a little bit. And this is not simply a skills problem. It's much more than that. It has to do with the entire culture of the work environment. Are people conscious communicators? Do we have cultural intelligence, cross-cultural skills? Are we good listeners? Are we aware of our environment? And when we have the loud voices and we're dominating and when we aren't letting people in, when we're interrupting and do we have connection in the company?

00;11;17;14 - 00;11;42;09
Heather Hansen
So is there psychological safety? Are we building strong relationships? What do those social networks look like inside the company itself? And, you know, do people have a fear of failure? They're not speaking up because they're always ridiculed or they're put back down. So they press mute and they they don't want to contribute. And then the last piece of the puzzle is the confidence piece, and that's both skills, confidence and self confidence, self-worth.

00;11;42;11 - 00;12;10;25
Heather Hansen
So it's only that very little sliver of the skills, confidence if you truly don't know how to communicate, you truly have such a heavy accent. No one on earth can understand you. Then we do need to work on some skills, but that is a very small part of the puzzle. I could teach you everything I know about a great presentation being a good presenter, but if you're in a toxic environment with a boss who doesn't listen, you could give the best presentation in the world and it's not going to do anything for you.

00;12;10;27 - 00;12;26;23
Heather Hansen
So. So the skills is just one teeny little piece of the puzzle, and we like to focus all of our attention there and place all of the responsibility on the individual to say you're not a good enough communicator when really so much more is based on how those messages are being received.

00;12;26;26 - 00;12;54;23
Wayne Turmel
I'm going to take us off topic for a moment because I'm fascinated by this. Having taught presentation skills in your corner of the world, does the expectation of what makes a good presentation from the leadership standpoint, how much work is it to take somebody from a what's called South east Southeast Asian culture and have them present to the white guy from New York?

00;12;54;25 - 00;12;59;01
Wayne Turmel
You know how traumatic and dramatic is that?

00;12;59;04 - 00;13;35;24
Heather Hansen
This is the entire problem because and this is why I run a successful business in the whole hypocrisy of my career is that why should that individual from Southeast Asia have to change the way they communicate their style of communication, their their personality, even to fit the expectations of the white westerner sitting in New York? Will that white Westerner ever even consider ever in a million years changing the way they speak, adapting their style, being more adaptable in general to cultural difference when they come to Southeast Asia?

00;13;35;29 - 00;14;18;14
Heather Hansen
And this is exactly the problem in the world right now, is that this Western ideal, the way leadership ideas, communication, you name it, business strategy is very Western dominated and we don't value the different styles that are coming from the East. So my whole job is trying to help these people to fit in to this global expectation that is a very western, western world and completely move them away from who they are, how they normally communicate it, how they articulate sounds to fit that picture, because that is the goal and it still is, especially in these countries that are old colonies that have just grown up with this feeling of somehow being inferior.

00;14;18;17 - 00;14;42;20
Heather Hansen
And Singapore itself has a government campaign called Speak Good English, implying that Singapore English is not good and it is a native variety. They grow up, they grow up speaking it, they're fully educated in English, they work fully in English. The government is run in English. And I don't think people outside Singapore really understand that the English is their language, but it sounds very different and their cultures.

00;14;42;21 - 00;15;06;07
Wayne Turmel
And so I'm giving you 10 minutes in a room with the average white Anglo American, Canadian project manager or division manager, you have 5 minutes and we have duct tape him or her. Yeah. So you will not be interrupted.

00;15;06;10 - 00;15;10;07
Heather Hansen
Captive audience So the mouth is duct tape. That's the most important.

00;15;10;09 - 00;15;18;21
Wayne Turmel
Oh, yes. Oh, yes. I'm giving you every advantage for the next 5 minutes. What do you tell this person?

00;15;18;23 - 00;15;48;01
Heather Hansen
Oh, it's about shifting our entire view of the world, of us not being in the dominant position. First of all, understanding that we do not own the English language. We speak one variety of it. We also have an accent that is different from everywhere else in the world. We have to completely change that mindset that we're walking into global conversations in the powerful position and look at people as our peers and listen for understanding.

00;15;48;04 - 00;16;15;22
Heather Hansen
So the focus has now shifted that when we go into a global environment, we are also speaking a foreign language. The way that English is used, the way that we communicate in global settings is not the same as how we communicate with each other. Over coffee at home, we must learn how to adapt, how to change our speech, to drop idioms, to try to remove as many phrasal verbs as possible, which is incredibly challenging.

00;16;15;25 - 00;16;16;15
Heather Hansen
It's hard for me.

00;16;16;15 - 00;16;18;10
Wayne Turmel
To do over, not be.

00;16;18;13 - 00;16;37;16
Heather Hansen
A verb, plus a preposition that has a completely different meaning. So for example, I pass out verses, pass on verses, pass over one woman was an immigrant, and I believe this is in the UK. The story I heard called from the school. The school says your son is passed out on the playground, you need to come pick him up.

00;16;37;18 - 00;16;57;11
Heather Hansen
She didn't know what pass that was that she knew passed on and so she was distraught. She thought she was picking up her dead child at school. So this is how easily misunderstandings can happen. And we don't think of this as a native speaker born and raised in America, you know, we rule the world. We're so amazing and and to a degree, that's very true.

00;16;57;11 - 00;17;19;04
Heather Hansen
Globally, we have a huge reputation. We do have a lot of power in the world, but we can't abuse it. And we need to remember that there are people all over the world just as well-educated with us who have grown up speaking English, who sound different, but are just as educated, have just as many good ideas. And if we don't start closing our mouths and listening to them, we're losing so much potential.

00;17;19;04 - 00;17;38;14
Heather Hansen
We're losing our talent. We aren't taking advantage of the skills that are right in front of us. And because we have this chip on our shoulder that we think that now while you sound different, you must not be as good. And this comes from all the way back to the movies we watch as children, Disney movies, the bad guys all have accents and people are other.

00;17;38;14 - 00;17;43;14
Heather Hansen
We we try to create that distance and we make an enemy out of them.

00;17;43;16 - 00;18;07;06
Wayne Turmel
You know, this is so important and we can keep going forever. It occurs to me that Kevin and I have said for all of these many years that managers of whatever help, wherever they are, often forget that there is an inherent power difference. Yes. Even on your team between you and your direct reports, you can be as benevolent in kind of thinking.

00;18;07;06 - 00;18;39;23
Wayne Turmel
You're being open and understanding, and that exists anyway when you add the complications of working overseas accents. Not really listening to understand it only becomes that much more complicated and in a perfect world, the responsibility falls on us as leaders. So, Heather, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much. We are going to you says pushing the right button.

00;18;39;25 - 00;19;00;26
Wayne Turmel
We are going to have links to heather and global speech academy and all that good stuff in the transcript of the show on long distance work life icon. Heather, I'm going to remove you from the room just long enough to finish wrapping up here, but thank you so much for being with us. It's been a fascinating conversation.

00;19;00;28 - 00;19;03;19
Heather Hansen
Yeah, thank you. Really fun to be here. Thanks so much.

00;19;03;24 - 00;19;46;04
Wayne Turmel
And if you didn't fact like this show and with this one, there wasn't much not to like. I found this fascinating. Please like subscribe to your podcast listeners. You're seeing this on YouTube. You know how this works. By now, I was delighted to come across this topic and if you have a topic that you would like us to talk about or interview somebody about, or you just have a pet peeve that you want Marisa and I to riff about while we're at it, contact us on LinkedIn, Wayne Turmel, Marisa Eikenberry or Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry dot com, or Marisa and Kevin Eikenberry dot com.

00;19;46;07 - 00;20;09;27
Wayne Turmel
And of course, if you are putting together a team please contact us and Kevin Eikenberry group or you can pick up in my new book The long distance Team Designing your team for Everyone success that is it. Thank you for joining us on the long distance work life. Don't let the weasel ski get you down. We will see you next episode.

Timestamps

00:00 Meet Heather Hansen
01:06 Exploring Global Speech Academy's Communication Training
01:54 Rethinking "Bad" English and Accent Bias
03:35 Unveiling Accent Bias in the Workplace
04:22 Diverse Language Experiences: A Personal Journey
06:11 The Realities of Written Accents and Language Prejudices
07:31 Tackling Language Bias in Organizations
08:11 The Role of Accents in Categorization and Discrimination
09:17 Beyond Non-Native Speakers: Accent Bias Affects Everyone
10:25 Beyond Skills Training: Enacting Real Communication Change
10:47 The Overemphasis on Presentation Skills in Communication
11:17 The Pillars of Communication: Culture, Listening, Connection
11:42 Overcoming Communication Barriers: Confidence and Fear of Failure
12:10 Communication: More Than Just Skills
12:26 Questioning Western Communication and Leadership Norms
13:35 Embracing Diverse Communication Styles
15:06 Adapting Speech in Global Contexts
16:15 Navigating the Complexities of Phrasal Verbs
17:19 Confronting Western Bias Against Non-Native English Speakers
18:07 Leadership's Role in Bridging Communication Gaps
19:00 Closing Thoughts

Featured Guest

Name: Heather Hansen

Bio: Heather helps multinational companies enhance collaboration, innovation and inclusion
across their global teams through greater understanding and stronger, more efficient
communication policies. She focuses on fostering unmuted communication cultures where
every voice is heard, resulting in greater inclusion, innovation and efficiency across remote
and global teams.
Along with private leadership communication coaching, Heather facilitates group training
courses and consults on a number of topics related to global communication. Heather is also
an External Industry Expert for NUS Business School’s Executive Education programs
where she runs modules on communication, presentation, and storytelling skills.

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

Guests, Leadership, Working Remotely

Mastering Meetings: Building Great Teams in Remote Work with Rich Maltzman

Wayne Turmel and Richard Maltzman about the importance of meetings in building great teams. Richard emphasizes the role of project leaders in facilitating effective meetings and discusses the principles of project management and Agile methodology. He also introduces the concept of "meeting goblins," which are different personalities that can emerge during meetings. Richard highlights the need for leaders to manage these personalities and create a safe and productive meeting environment.

Key Takeaways

1. Meetings are a crucial touchpoint where strategy meets operations in a project.
2. The purpose of a kickoff meeting is to build the project team and ensure everyone understands the project's goals and importance.
3. Agile methodology has brought new meeting techniques, such as stand-up meetings and information radiators, that can be beneficial in any project.
4. Meeting goblins are different personalities that can emerge during meetings, such as the reticent person or the bully. Leaders must manage these personalities to create a productive meeting environment.

Featured Guest

Name: Rich Maltzman

About: Richard Maltzman is a master lecturer at Boston University and previously had a career at Nokia. He is an expert in project management and has co-authored books on facilitating great project meetings and building great teams.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
02:35 The Unspoken Power of Meetings in Project Leadership
03:11 Bridging Remote Work with Project Management
04:06 Meetings: More Than Just Info Sharing
05:03 Kickoff Meetings: The Team Builder's Starter Pack
06:03 Sustaining the Team Vibe Throughout the Project
07:07 The Facilitator: A Project Leader's Hat
08:21 Embracing the Agile Mindset
09:25 The Agile-Waterfall Blend: Taking the Best of Both Worlds
11:24 Agile Meeting Techniques Unpacked
12:17 Virtual Meeting Facilitation 101
14:09 Meet the Meeting Goblins
15:05 The Meeting Ensemble: Handling Different Personalities
16:12 Inclusion Matters: Giving Everyone a Voice
17:21 Leading Through Dominating Meeting Moments
18:14 Going Off-Script for Urgent Issues
19:09 Facilitation & Its Influence on Project Leadership
20:30 The Notetaker & Whiteboard Artist: Unsung Heroes
21:11 Closing

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

Guests, Leadership, Technology, Working Remotely

Keeping Teams Engaged in the Digital Age with Vivek Nigam

Vivek Nigam, of ReTeam, discusses the challenges organizations face with team engagement and retention in the changing work landscape. He emphasizes the importance of building a culture of engagement, participation, and belonging to improve productivity, innovation, and retention. ReTeam offers a platform and service model that helps leaders and individual contributors enhance team dynamics and make engagement easier. Vivek also highlights the value of natural intelligence in combination with AI tools to augment human interactions and improve communication.

Key Takeaways

1. Organizations need to adapt to the changing work landscape and focus on improving team engagement, participation, and a sense of belonging.
2. ReTeam provides a platform and service model to help leaders and individual contributors enhance team dynamics and make engagement easier.
3. Natural intelligence, combined with AI tools, can augment human interactions and improve communication.
4. ReTeam's AI tools can assist with tasks such as drafting recognition messages, sentiment analysis, and providing personalized suggestions based on individual profiles.

Featured Guest

Name: Vivek Nigam

About Vivek: Founder and CEO of BeRemote. With over 25 years of experience in software architecture, design, and development, he has a passion for creating innovative solutions that improve engagement, collaboration, and inclusion in the workplace.

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:05 - 00:00:09:02
Wayne Turmel
Hello there, buddy.

00:00:09:03 - 00:00:35:11
Wayne Turmel
Welcome once again to the Long Distance Work Life podcast, where we try to make sense of remote and hybrid work and just generally how the world of how we make a living is changing on a regular basis. My name is Wayne Terminal. I am a master trainer here at the Kevin Eikenberry Group. This is sadly an episode without Marissa.

00:00:35:13 - 00:00:53:23
Wayne Turmel
But the good news when we don't have Marissa is we generally have somebody else really smart and interesting. And that certainly happens to be the case today. Vivek Nigam is with a company called Re Team. He is going to tell you all about it right now. Vivek, how are you, ma'am?

00:00:54:01 - 00:00:56:17
Vivek Nigam
I'm doing great. Wayne, Hey, great to talk to you again. All right.

00:00:56:21 - 00:01:06:08
Wayne Turmel
Well, you say that now. I generally find that wears off. So who are you? What's re team? Sure. What the heck is the deal?

00:01:06:09 - 00:01:27:23
Vivek Nigam
Yeah. So my name is Vivek among the founder of the companies. Copy, Remo. We also go by re team, their product called Re Team in the market. We work with companies who are experiencing challenges with team engagement as they adapt to this change of work, work, work, working place and retention has been strained with 20 to 30% turnover.

00:01:28:01 - 00:01:52:23
Vivek Nigam
Team engagement is lower by 15%, innovation is low by 25%, and traditional methods of getting people engaged just aren't working the same way. Right thing. We need some different methods. And with the new inflationary climate, you find that companies are, you know, revenues are even getting strained as well. So we want to work with companies who are looking to change their engagement culture, improve team participation, and build a better sense of belonging.

00:01:53:01 - 00:02:10:05
Vivek Nigam
Those to us are the foundations of how do you improve productivity, innovation and retention. So that's who we are all about. We have a platform, we have a service model, and we engage with people and we've got some AI that we've been integrating, although we're really big fans of what we call natural intelligence.

00:02:10:07 - 00:02:37:13
Wayne Turmel
Okay, so let's hold it right there and what you just said there. And we will have links, of course, to Vivek's Company and all kinds of good stuff on our show notes on long distance work life dot com. Okay, So let's get back because obviously when I have ten people on the show, my question is always what was the problem you were solving?

00:02:37:13 - 00:02:49:18
Wayne Turmel
Yes. Yes. What what was going on or what is going on that in your case, team leaders in particular need assistance doing?

00:02:49:20 - 00:03:10:01
Vivek Nigam
Yeah. So I'll tell a quick story and then delve into a few more of those things. So Genesis for this whole thing was actually growing up and watching my dad and how he how he went through his life. My dad was born in India. You were super smart guy, but running through the organizations here, he never attained that sense of belonging.

00:03:10:03 - 00:03:27:16
Vivek Nigam
And I remember the conversations in the kitchen between my my mom and dad. And I knew exactly what they were. Is my dad capacity for promotion yet again. And it wasn't like, say, the Met. He had three master's degrees and he worked hard and I thought he was out of the house all the time, but he never quite felt like he belonged.

00:03:27:18 - 00:03:55:17
Vivek Nigam
So as I was growing up, he gave me some advice and he would say, you know, when you start working, I want you to go out for a beer with everybody. Those are the things I didn't do and I never fit in. So when I started working out, find people that reminded me of my dad and people who are smart, quiet, hard workers, but just never really participated in team meetings, never really engaged with the team and wanted to find ways to get them to be more participative, give them a better opportunity.

00:03:55:19 - 00:04:05:14
Vivek Nigam
So I always made it my personal mission to help them. And I'll tell you, 100% of the time, when I gave them a stretch goal and they had that opportunity, they were absolutely brilliant.

00:04:05:15 - 00:04:28:16
Wayne Turmel
And so I love that you said that, Vivek, because that's actually my mission as well. I got into this crazy business because I knew so many smart, talented people with communication skills were holding them back. So whether they lacked the skills or they lacked the ability or confidence to use them effectively.

00:04:28:18 - 00:04:43:19
Vivek Nigam
Exactly. And sometimes you just don't know. It's not that you don't have the skills. You don't know what to say, how to how to use those. And so we built a platform around those trying to increase engagement, and we're finding some great results and robust mission of of a team.

00:04:43:21 - 00:05:08:22
Wayne Turmel
And I love that. Now, help me out because in our book, The Long Distance Leader, and what started this whole craziness for us is this notion that you think leadership first location second, right. That good leaders, people who are really good proactive leaders are making this remote thing work because they're doing all the things leaders have to do.

00:05:09:00 - 00:05:23:19
Wayne Turmel
What is the point of your technology and the work that you do? Is the point to reinforce those folks or is it to help everybody else who kind of isn't?

00:05:23:21 - 00:05:24:08
Vivek Nigam
Yeah.

00:05:24:10 - 00:05:25:18
Wayne Turmel
Doing so great.

00:05:25:20 - 00:05:42:09
Vivek Nigam
Yeah. Yes. And yes. What we find, a lot of times we'll run into people that say, hey, we got these recognition programs, we're doing these things, we're doing this stuff, engagement. And and I just love that. And especially somebody who says to me, Yeah, we built psychological safety and starts using those terms like, this is a kindred spirit.

00:05:42:09 - 00:06:07:17
Vivek Nigam
These are the people that really are making a lot of effort to do all the right things. So how do we help them? They're doing all the right things. They don't necessarily need what we provide, and that's okay. They're already achieving the mission that we're on. What we can do is make that easier for them, right? They're doing a lot of activities, doing a lot of preparation, and we can provide them some tools and some processes that just facilitate and make that easier.

00:06:07:19 - 00:06:24:08
Vivek Nigam
AS Yeah, so for example, a lot of our our tools are all about getting to know each other. And so these are things that you can use in the platform with one click and say, Hey, I'm just checking in to see how you're doing and get, get some responses and start to see a trend. Or I want to say thank you.

00:06:24:08 - 00:06:41:17
Vivek Nigam
And instead of having to do a formal event and make a big thank you, you can do it in one click. Record your voice and record your video and make it very authentic. Say, Hey guys, I just want to thank you for the work you guys did last week. And it's amazing how how impactful that is for people.

00:06:41:19 - 00:07:05:15
Vivek Nigam
So those are the things we want to get people into the habit of, of being being recognition based and thankful culture. And it just helps those people do that. For the remaining, I would say 95, 96% of people who have the right intentions and are doing these things but are so busy doing other things, we provide a platform to really help them build engagement and make this make this easy for them.

00:07:05:15 - 00:07:28:02
Vivek Nigam
So it doesn't is not something that has to take 20 or 30 hours a week to really engage your people. And we've heard numbers like that from a lot of people. So we do want to help that that that other, you know, I think is about 95% of people who know they want to do this, do some pieces of it and all, they generally feel like they could do this better.

00:07:28:04 - 00:07:54:22
Wayne Turmel
Now, you spend a lot of time talking about natural intelligence versus artificial intelligence. And I know the minute I said artificial intelligence, about half the audience's eyes rolled up in the back of their head, and the other half are, you know, willfully submitting to the robot overlords. But what is in your mind? What's the difference and how do they work together or compete?

00:07:55:00 - 00:07:57:14
Wayne Turmel
Help me with that. Yeah.

00:07:57:16 - 00:08:17:00
Vivek Nigam
Anybody who's played with chatbots or some other A.I. technologies and boy is just exploding right now. Right. These things have come a long way in a very short period of time. It'll give you the sense that human beings are going to be replaced and completely obsolete in a matter of years. It just feels that way. And we don't think that's the case.

00:08:17:01 - 00:08:39:10
Vivek Nigam
Right. So these tools are absolutely amazing. But we talk about when I talk about natural intelligence is the stuff that you and I, human beings can infer that we can see from each other. A.I. can pick up some of those things, and it's great at that. But it gives us the insights. It helps us be better. So we believe in taking A.I. and constraining it.

00:08:39:12 - 00:08:59:04
Vivek Nigam
So it's not just an open ended, you know, solve all the problems of the universe. It really starts to be okay. Let's go straight down to let's solve this problem. And the first one that we rolled out with, which we absolutely love find a better way to say something. It could be anything. Let's say I want to say thank you, Wayne.

00:08:59:04 - 00:09:16:03
Vivek Nigam
Thank you, Wayne, for for giving me this platform, letting me be on your show and people who are very good at it, they'll come up with something beautifully eloquent and it's wonderful people who aren't. And we have a person on our team. She's from Brazil and she says, Looking is my second language. And sometimes I struggle with this.

00:09:16:05 - 00:09:33:00
Vivek Nigam
They can go back to what we call the reaching assistant, leverage some AI, and say, Hey, I want to say thank you to Wayne and I want to make it sincere. How do I do that? And we'll come up with a nice paragraph that sounds really formal, sounds very businesslike. It's really nicely written. And they can use that and make some minor edits and boom.

00:09:33:00 - 00:09:42:23
Vivek Nigam
Now what you've done is you've taken I made it in a way that will enhance what we do interpersonally, and we think that's very valuable.

00:09:43:01 - 00:10:21:16
Wayne Turmel
So just so I catch this as a leader, you say I need to reward and recognize this person and I want to do that. I'm not really sure how you use a AI to give you that first draft to put it together, and then you can tweak and adjust that or you can say, Yeah, that's great. Zuckerberg I think that's the thing with A.I. and my fear is not that I exist, it's that people are inherently either lazy or rushed for time, depending on how generous you feel.

00:10:21:18 - 00:10:44:02
Wayne Turmel
For example, you know, the first thing I did with Shaggy and I don't know if I've ever said this on the show, first thing I did with Chad JP was write me a one paragraph bio for author Wayne Turmel, because I hate when people say, Send me your bio. And it sent me this very lovely, concise bio, which also gave me a degree I do not possess.

00:10:44:08 - 00:11:07:11
Wayne Turmel
And I did not write. Yeah, yeah. Now, you know, if I'm rushed and in a hurry, it would be really easy. And by the way, since Chatbot thinks I'm smarter than I am, cool, It's cool to just use that without using the the human thinking up front and then on the back end. Right.

00:11:07:13 - 00:11:23:16
Vivek Nigam
Right. Yeah. You know, and and as you as you recognized earlier. So I came from the tech world and it actually reminds me a lot of when I was in college, at one point, someone said to me it was a professor who said it said to give us all these software tools to analyze how do you do this?

00:11:23:20 - 00:11:46:20
Vivek Nigam
This an electrical engineering class, I think was and I said, remember, design happens here, right? So the thought process has to happen here and you have to strategize here. Everything else is a tool. And so in our minds, we take A.I. in the same way, even as fascinating and as amazing as it can be as much of a time server as can be.

00:11:46:22 - 00:12:16:16
Vivek Nigam
We also believe that the human capital, the human condition, the human intelligence that national intelligence is really critical. And we use that as a tool to augment what we're doing. And, you know, my lesson learned back then was I went to no cool software and I relied on that only tool. And sure enough, I didn't realize what I was doing and spare you the details, but I saturated a circuit and and handed in really proud, got back F and Y because guess what you did?

00:12:16:17 - 00:12:37:19
Vivek Nigam
You relied on the tool and not on on your thought process and your human condition. We think it's the same way. If we rely completely on AI, it is going to bite you at some point. We think the combination of what you do, what you think about that, you know, focus on human experience and that interpersonal experience, plus A.I. is really powerful.

00:12:37:20 - 00:13:07:12
Wayne Turmel
AI That's great, and thank you for that explanation. This is really in the weeds and I really don't want to spend a lot of time there. But does the AI I yeah, I take into account things like work stats. So for example. Yeah. You know, Bob is an introvert and Rajesh is you know really out there will is Taylor and adjust some of that to.

00:13:07:18 - 00:13:30:05
Vivek Nigam
Yeah exactly exactly right so what we do when you're kind of say something and say a thank you it does not right It tries to give you a level thank you. And that's done on purpose. One of our missions is to level the social playing field work to help people who aren't as comfortable and people are comfortable give them a little bit more of a closer.

00:13:30:07 - 00:13:49:16
Vivek Nigam
We never wanted to be everybody equal and one line, but get it, get the plane feel a little bit closer. So for things like that, it does not, however, we do a lot of other things. We do sentiment analysis. We do a lot of other components. Actually today we just talk about one that's going to be rolling out very shortly.

00:13:49:18 - 00:14:12:22
Vivek Nigam
We're based on the speech that you use. Like, you know, we do a lot of video. If you post something in a video, it is not going to take that and extract from it some to do some natural actions that we should take as a team based on what was being proposed. A lot of we would do is share ideas for innovation and based on the ideas in fact out what those are.

00:14:13:00 - 00:14:41:03
Vivek Nigam
When we do that, we actually feed in profiles for the user. And the reason we do that, if I'm talking and it knows when I talk, I, I talk all over the place, right? My, my mind will go this way and that way of, you know, kind of, kind of have a little bit of a tree of thought sometimes it will give me a series that may be a little bit lengthier, but one of the guys on our team really smart, much more reserved, much more organized.

00:14:41:06 - 00:14:56:19
Vivek Nigam
It's going to give them a shorter list. That is something that he can really manage and that the team can manage according to his profile. So, yeah, there is a combination of feeding in behavioral information and of an information perspective.

00:14:56:21 - 00:15:04:09
Wayne Turmel
One of the coolest and also scariest things I have heard in a long time is the notion of sentiment analysis.

00:15:04:10 - 00:15:04:23
Vivek Nigam
Oh yeah.

00:15:05:04 - 00:15:12:00
Wayne Turmel
That that is. And in the fiction writer in me is fascinated by yeah.

00:15:12:02 - 00:15:34:18
Vivek Nigam
It's it's really powerful we've got an engagement where we you know we working with the company that started out actually back in December and rolled out a whole new process and we were just there just to help build the engagement as well. And at the same time, watch the comments and the behaviors in the platform. You can see in December everything was very negative.

00:15:34:21 - 00:15:56:08
Vivek Nigam
People were not happy. People don't always react to change very well, but there's a lot of factors why. But then but the condition was that people were not happy. That's just sentiment. That's just based on what they're saying, what they're posting, what the things that they're doing was to see as as the company engaged and spent the time investing in the engagement month over month.

00:15:56:13 - 00:16:15:09
Vivek Nigam
Little by little, it got better and better. And I remember we had a little celebration when it hit neutral and said, Hey, now they're neutral this great today, they're positive, which was a great thing. And just use it as a as a tool. Like what am I dealing with? Like, how are people feeling? I think that's I think it's actually very powerful.

00:16:15:11 - 00:16:29:21
Wayne Turmel
So let's flip this. We don't have a lot of time left. Sure. Fascinated because this started with your father, the individual contributor who is feeling it. Let's put this on its head as an individual contributor.

00:16:29:23 - 00:16:30:02
Vivek Nigam
Yeah.

00:16:30:05 - 00:16:39:09
Wayne Turmel
How will I and the different tools that are available to us make their life our life easier?

00:16:39:11 - 00:16:58:21
Vivek Nigam
And so I'm going to jump to the grandiose vision piece here and you will see this and I'll give you a prime use case in working at a corporation years ago and and working with a woman I work with, she she'd been working at the same company for 30 years, 30 plus years, and she was a vice president.

00:16:58:22 - 00:17:18:00
Vivek Nigam
She heard her career was great. But she told me the story that she had started with another woman who's still at the company, same number of times. They started the same week. Both started as engineers, but the other woman was still an engineer. 30 years later and said, well, why is that case? And we spent a lot of time talking about this.

00:17:18:00 - 00:17:40:08
Vivek Nigam
And in in the traditional world it was that somebody from higher up grabbed her and said, You're coming with me. Let me teach you how to do these things right. So now think about that. She got a lot of attention and and her career blossomed and she grew through the organization. But the other one, her her peer did not get all that and didn't blossom.

00:17:40:08 - 00:17:59:13
Vivek Nigam
So what we want to offer to people who are individual contributors were maybe a little bit on the quieter side. Let us show you how these things are done. Let us give you some tools that let you contribute and be noticed and be heard a little bit more so that your career can also advance the way others do.

00:17:59:15 - 00:18:07:03
Vivek Nigam
You have that that opportunity? That's our goal. That's our mission. We've seen some great success with it and we're hoping to see a lot more.

00:18:07:05 - 00:18:35:14
Wayne Turmel
I love that because I know that went in 25 years of talking to managers. Yeah, the one thing that we feel like we don't do as well as we might, but is the coaching and mentoring piece and the fact that this allows support and encouragement on both ends. So this is really fascinating and it'll be interesting to see how all of this works out.

00:18:35:16 - 00:18:59:14
Wayne Turmel
Vivek, thank you so much as always. Folks, we will have the show notes links if you are intrigued and I can't believe you're not and want to check all of this out, please look at long distance work like Dot com. I am going to boot Vivek out of here just long enough to wrap up the show and say thank you for listening.

00:18:59:14 - 00:19:18:17
Wayne Turmel
You all are podcast veterans. You understand how this works, right? So please like subscribe, tell others about the show. We think we're developing a really great community of people who are interested in the future of the workplace.

00:19:18:18 - 00:19:25:23
Unknown
If you are interested. 4949 30.

00:19:26:01 - 00:19:51:17
Wayne Turmel
Check out Kevin in my new book, The Long Distance Team Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success. And please, please, please don't be shy. Marissa is doing a wonderful job with the show on Social media, particularly on LinkedIn. We are looking for your questions, topics, people that we should talk to and your pet peeves. Quite frankly, we're having a blast with that.

00:19:51:22 - 00:20:15:17
Wayne Turmel
So you can reach myself or Marissa through email or through LinkedIn. The links are in the show notes. That's it. Thank you so much for joining us. We are really, really excited to bring this show to you. We're excited to bring you very, very smart people like Vivek and our other guests. Thank you for joining us. Talk to you soon.

00:20:15:21 - 00:20:17:12
Wayne Turmel
Don't let the weasels get you down.

Timestamps

00:00 Introduction
05:23 Supporting proactive leaders and helping others improve
07:05 Differentiating between natural intelligence and artificial intelligence
08:17 The belief that humans won't be replaced by AI
08:59 Constraining AI to solve specific problems
09:16 Using AI to find better ways to communicate
09:33 AI enhances interpersonal interactions and is valuable.
09:43 AI can be used to save time and effort.
10:21 AI can make people lazy or rushed for time.
10:44 AI can generate a concise and impressive bio.
11:23 Human thought process and intelligence are critical alongside AI.
12:16 Relying solely on AI can lead to negative outcomes.
13:07 AI takes into account behavioral information and sentiment analysis.
15:04 Sentiment analysis is powerful and can track changes in attitudes.
16:29 AI tools can help individual contributors advance their careers.
18:59 Conclusion

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

Order

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

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

Order

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

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

Order

Page 1 of 8

First

Last