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

The Performance Paradox with Eduardo Briceño

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

Key Takeaways

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

View Full Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Timestamps

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

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Eduardo Briceno, author of The Performance Paradox

Name: Eduardo Briceño

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

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

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

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

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

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

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

Key Takeaways

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

View Full Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Time Stamps

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

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Alvaro Daza, founder of Circolo

Name: Alvaro Daza

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

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

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

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

 Order
Read More
Embracing the Johari Window for Team Success an episode of Long-Distance Worklife Podcast with Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry
Ask Wayne Anything, Leadership, Surviving Remote Work, Working Remotely

Embracing the Johari Window for Team Success

In this week's episode, Marisa and Wayne revisit a topic mentioned in a previous episode about the Johari Window. They explore how this powerful model, developed by psychologists in 1955, can enhance communication and understanding within remote and hybrid teams. Discover the four quadrants of the Johari Window and how they reveal what is known and unknown to oneself and others. Learn why transparent and intentional communication is crucial in remote work settings, as cues and non-verbal signals are often missed. Discover practical tips and best practices for leaders to utilize the Johari Window framework to improve team dynamics and foster trust. Join us for this engaging conversation as we unlock the potential of the Johari Window for remote work success!

Key Takeaways

1. The Johari Window is a powerful model that helps explain the dynamics of understanding and communication. It consists of four quadrants representing what is known to oneself, known to others, unknown to oneself, and unknown to others.

2. Effective communication is vital in remote and hybrid team environments. Without the ability to rely on non-verbal cues or in-person interactions, intentional and transparent communication becomes even more critical for understanding and avoiding misunderstandings.

3. The Johari Window can be used as a tool to foster trust and improve relationships within remote teams. By sharing knowledge, motivations, and information with team members, individuals can reduce blind spots and increase mutual understanding.

4. Leaders play a crucial role in improving communication and utilizing the Johari Window effectively. They should encourage open dialogue, ask clarifying questions, and create a transparent environment where team members feel comfortable sharing their thoughts, feelings, and concerns.

5. In remote work settings, it's essential to pay attention to changing behaviors or signs that something may be off with team members. Remote work can make it harder to notice when someone is struggling or facing challenges, so being attuned to these changes and initiating supportive conversations is crucial.

Time Stamps

00:00 Introduction
00:08 Defining the Johari Window

00:33 Understanding Remote Application

02:13 Importance of Communication

05:00 Applying the Johari Window to Remote Work

05:29 Recognizing Communication Challenges

10:22 Using the Johari Window Framework

11:18 Drawbacks and Trust

12:56 Best Practices for Leaders

15:08 Closing

Related Episodes

Additional Resources

Order The Long-Distance Team

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

 Order

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:10 - 00:00:11:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to the long distance work life where we help you lead,

00:00:11:10 - 00:00:19:13
Marisa Eikenberry
work, and thrive on 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.

00:00:19:15 - 00:00:22:05
Wayne Turmel
Hey, that would be me. Hi, Marisa.

00:00:22:07 - 00:00:23:12
Marisa Eikenberry
How are you doing today?

00:00:23:14 - 00:00:33:02
Wayne Turmel
I am swell. I. I'm excited. Today's topic is very fun and it's the kind of geeky thing that makes me happy, so.

00:00:33:04 - 00:00:48:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Awesome. Well, for those of you who have been listening for a while, or maybe you just tuned in to our Managers are the Heartbeat episode, Wayne mentioned something called the Johari Window and said we need to talk about it in future episode because we didn't have time right then. So today's the day and we're going to talk about that.

00:00:48:13 - 00:00:52:12
Marisa Eikenberry
So, Wayne, why don't we start with what is the Johari window?

00:00:52:14 - 00:00:59:23
Wayne Turmel
The January window is a model and like all successful models, it's deceptively simple.

00:01:00:01 - 00:01:00:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:01:00:15 - 00:01:46:10
Wayne Turmel
Basically a good consultant for Square. These two psychologists in about 1955 came up with this. And it's an attempt to explain why people don't always understand each other and what makes sense. And so if you picture a square and there's things that are known to our cells on the Y axis and across the bottom, you've got things that are known to others and you've got these four boxes and they're basically when it comes to yourself, there are things that you know about yourself.

00:01:46:12 - 00:01:47:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:01:47:09 - 00:02:13:22
Wayne Turmel
And then there are things that you don't know about. So it's subconscious unconscious things that we do. And then next to that, there are things others know about you. So there are things you know, and there are things that others know about you. Wayne is an extrovert, but not as much as we think he is. So if he gets tired and grumpy, leave him alone.

00:02:13:22 - 00:02:16:08
Wayne Turmel
He'll be all better. Everybody knows that.

00:02:16:12 - 00:02:28:23
Marisa Eikenberry
You're right. And for those of you who are listening on audio, we're going to have a link to what this looks like in the show notes. And those of you that are watching on video, you're actually seeing the Johari window or have already seen it in this episode.

00:02:29:00 - 00:02:50:18
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, we know that about Wayne. So if we're going to work with Wayne, he knows that it's no surprise to him that he can be a grumpy, cranky old man and everybody else knows it too. But he's harmless and so no harm, no foul. But there are also things that they might not know or that they might know that I don't.

00:02:50:20 - 00:02:51:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:02:51:06 - 00:03:18:06
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, right. So there's things I know that I know there are things that I don't know. There are things about other people that I don't know, and there are things that other people don't know about me. And that's essentially the model. And it makes sense. I think I use the cynically I used an example from the Gulf War where Donald Rumsfeld said there are things we know, there are things we know we don't know.

00:03:18:08 - 00:03:22:11
Wayne Turmel
There are things we don't know that we don't.

00:03:22:13 - 00:03:24:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. You know what you don't know.

00:03:24:19 - 00:03:44:01
Wayne Turmel
And all of this is a way of saying that any time you're in a work environment, communication is important. The more you share knowledge, the more you know and your colleagues or your boss or your customers know, the less chance there is for misunderstanding.

00:03:44:03 - 00:03:45:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:03:45:08 - 00:04:03:08
Wayne Turmel
Now, the next question, because you are nothing if not a professional and you have a list in Philadelphia. The next question. Because I know that about Marisa. You see how that works. The next obvious question is when we're talking about remote work.

00:04:03:09 - 00:04:05:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. How does this apply?

00:04:05:05 - 00:04:26:22
Wayne Turmel
Right. How does this apply? And the answer is that on one hand, like so much that we talk about here, it's exactly the same, right, when you're working on a team. If you don't share your motivations, if you don't share information that you know with your team, it makes it harder for them. There's a better chance for misunderstanding.

00:04:26:22 - 00:04:51:23
Wayne Turmel
There's a chance the quality of the work won't be as good. But of course, in a in person setting, there are cues and there are sort of things in the air that you pick up by osmosis. You know something's bugging Marisa today. What's going on? I know that because I look at you and you get that little forehead scratchy thing, and that's great.

00:04:51:23 - 00:05:00:11
Wayne Turmel
If the only contact I have with you is on Slack and you typed me a message. I may not know that your forehead is screeching.

00:05:00:12 - 00:05:01:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:05:01:08 - 00:05:17:17
Wayne Turmel
It's thing. And so that's why it's important in a remote environment to intentionally and appropriately help people get access to information that they need.

00:05:17:19 - 00:05:29:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. It's just like we talk about all the time, like communication is super important and we need to be communicating with the members of our team and our managers and our leaders and our leaders need to be communicated. The employees and you get the whole deal.

00:05:29:13 - 00:05:43:00
Wayne Turmel
Well, I do. And here's the thing that I like about models. None of them are perfect. Of course, no such thing as a perfect model. And Lord knows the human beings that the models apply to are not perfect.

00:05:43:02 - 00:05:43:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:05:43:18 - 00:05:51:22
Wayne Turmel
But what I like is anything that I can look at that stops me in my tracks and says, Hey, have you thought about this?

00:05:51:23 - 00:05:52:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes.

00:05:52:17 - 00:06:01:03
Wayne Turmel
Right. If we aren't getting the work done, if there's a lot of maybe there's a lack of trust.

00:06:01:05 - 00:06:02:19
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:06:02:21 - 00:06:23:21
Wayne Turmel
Because I've worked with Marisa a few times and it works. Okay? Doesn't you know, here's the thing. If you're looking at the window, Marisa is going, Hey, I'm working as hard as I can. I've never done this before, or I'm a little stressed. Wayne seems like a jerk. So if I screw up, you know, it's going to. It's going to.

00:06:23:21 - 00:06:25:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Be. I don't want them to yell at me.

00:06:25:07 - 00:06:45:04
Wayne Turmel
That's what's going on in your head. Mm hmm. Right. I'm in the window of. I don't know what's going on in your head. I'm only seeing the work product. And the work product. And this is obviously not true. Dear listener, the work product is not what it should be. That's what I see.

00:06:45:06 - 00:06:46:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, that makes sense.

00:06:46:17 - 00:07:10:03
Wayne Turmel
Right now, if we have a conversation and I go, you know, the work product could, it could have more detail to it. Mm hmm. What's going on? And we have a conversation and you get to. Well, I didn't want to overloaded with detail because I was in a meeting one time, and you said somebody talked too much, and so I was trying not to do that.

00:07:10:05 - 00:07:10:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:07:10:18 - 00:07:19:07
Wayne Turmel
We can have a conversation about the appropriate level of detail that I need on this. And now we both know what we know.

00:07:19:09 - 00:07:20:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Absolutely.

00:07:20:19 - 00:07:50:16
Wayne Turmel
Right. That's the thing, is that there needs to be more explicit conversations and it's about things like how does this affect you? Right. Are you confident in this? Are you I'm confident in this. Those are sometimes uncomfortable conversations depending on your work style and your personality and who you're talking to and power structure and all kinds of things.

00:07:50:17 - 00:07:51:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:07:51:15 - 00:08:30:20
Wayne Turmel
And they're critical. That's how you build trust. Because if there's a bunch of stuff in the I don't know this about her, when there is a better likelihood of there being an unpleasant surprise or, you know, I don't quite trust her because what I'm seeing isn't what she's saying. And so to me, the value of this is when at the first sign of something being off, you know, there was a famous Sherlock Holmes story.

00:08:30:21 - 00:08:43:03
Wayne Turmel
So famous, of course, I don't remember the title of it, but the idea is that he knew that the killer knew the victim because the dog didn't bark.

00:08:43:05 - 00:08:45:10
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. Because it wasn't a stranger. Okay.

00:08:45:12 - 00:09:01:02
Wayne Turmel
Right. It wasn't a stranger. And so the fact that there wasn't a dog bark was actually the clue. And very often in remote work, it's what you don't see, you know, And usually that takes the form of changed behavior.

00:09:01:04 - 00:09:08:06
Marisa Eikenberry
I think we've talked about this a little bit before where it's like everything is fine and then something changes and it's like, oh, what happened here?

00:09:08:08 - 00:09:17:14
Wayne Turmel
And the problem is that when it changes radically and dramatically, your brain goes, Hey, wait a minute, there's something here.

00:09:17:16 - 00:09:18:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

00:09:18:09 - 00:09:32:03
Wayne Turmel
It's when you get that frog in a pot. Thing and the analogy, as most of you know and I don't know who conducted this experiment because it's really nasty.

00:09:32:08 - 00:09:33:14
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm just like the poor frog.

00:09:33:17 - 00:10:00:08
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, the poor. How many frogs did they have to boil? The point is that the adage goes that if you put a frog in a pot of boiling water, the frog will jump out going, Hey, that's hot, you idiot. And if you put a frog in a pot of regular water and slowly turn up the heat, the frog will boil to death because he's not smart enough to realize that things have changed until it's too late.

00:10:00:10 - 00:10:12:01
Wayne Turmel
And on remote teams and in hybrid teams to a degree as well. Very often the frog is thoroughly cooked before we know there's a problem.

00:10:12:03 - 00:10:16:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. We've talked about this on a previous episode about burnout, especially.

00:10:16:10 - 00:10:22:15
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, exactly right. You don't know that somebody has passed their limit until.

00:10:22:17 - 00:10:24:04
Marisa Eikenberry
They put in another two weeks.

00:10:24:06 - 00:10:27:13
Wayne Turmel
Or a third notice or whatever it is. Exactly right.

00:10:27:18 - 00:10:42:09
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So do you have any examples of like how the Johari window can be used to improve communication? I mean, I know we just talked about like if you do improve your communication in general, this is going to make all of this better because you're going to know stuff. But like, is there something specifically that leaders can do?

00:10:42:12 - 00:11:05:14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think that it's really about asking questions, right? If, you know, there are two things asking questions and being transparent, you have to ask questions because and Kevin is well known for saying this, and I have plagiarized him shamelessly, which is your boss has a lot of talents. Reading your mind is not one of them.

00:11:05:17 - 00:11:08:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Yeah. We are not mind readers. I say that a lot.

00:11:09:04 - 00:11:18:05
Wayne Turmel
In my view, some of us are better than others. Some of us pick up vibes or or do. The others are completely oblivious and we're going about our business.

00:11:18:08 - 00:11:21:04
Marisa Eikenberry
And some of that takes years to develop to.

00:11:21:05 - 00:11:34:18
Wayne Turmel
It does. And it's partly having your improving your radar in general. There's the length of the relationship and the depth and the solidity of the relationship with that individual person. Mm hmm.

00:11:34:20 - 00:11:41:22
Marisa Eikenberry
And sometimes it's also. Do you like them? Because if you like them, you're more willing to work on that relationship. And if you don't. Well.

00:11:42:01 - 00:11:54:16
Wayne Turmel
Well, exactly right. And here, you know, when it goes to confirmation bias so-and-so did that because they're having a bad day versus so-and-so did that because of course they did. Because they are.

00:11:54:18 - 00:11:55:13
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:11:55:14 - 00:12:17:20
Wayne Turmel
So, you know, we need to get better at asking questions and you have to be very careful. Tone is critical when you're asking these questions. There is a fundamental difference between what were you thinking when you did that, What was going on right, versus what were you thinking?

00:12:17:22 - 00:12:21:14
Marisa Eikenberry
It's the goblet of. Harry, did you put your name on the Goblet of Fire?

00:12:21:16 - 00:12:46:23
Wayne Turmel
It's two separate. You know, there are two separate approaches to the exact same words. Right. You know, I because I tend to be grumpy and snarky. I try to avoid. What were you thinking? Even though that's. That's a perfectly legitimate question. I want to know what led you to that decision or to take that action.

00:12:47:04 - 00:12:47:14
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:12:47:14 - 00:12:51:18
Wayne Turmel
And it's a legitimate question, but it's very easily misinterpreted.

00:12:51:18 - 00:12:56:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. Way to say something like what was going on in your mind when this was happening?

00:12:56:03 - 00:12:58:20
Wayne Turmel
I don't even go there. I try to really what happened?

00:12:58:22 - 00:13:01:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Oh, that makes sense. You have done that with me now?

00:13:01:04 - 00:13:05:01
Wayne Turmel
Just one year. It's like what happened?

00:13:05:02 - 00:13:07:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. It's like I screwed up.

00:13:07:22 - 00:13:34:11
Wayne Turmel
Well, but here's the thing, right? If I say what happened, your response gives me way more information than the question itself. Actually warrants. Right. What you said. Oh, well, I screwed up. Okay. So she knows that she did something wrong. I don't have to come down on her like it, right? I have to figure out what happened. And how do we help her do that better?

00:13:34:13 - 00:13:35:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Mm hmm.

00:13:35:17 - 00:13:47:19
Wayne Turmel
Right. But if I say what happened and you start with the excuses, you know, it was all Marlene's fault, and you know how she is, and it made me mad. Okay, let's break that down.

00:13:47:23 - 00:13:53:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. So I'm going to change gears a little bit. But are there drawbacks to using this framework in a remote setting?

00:13:54:00 - 00:14:20:19
Wayne Turmel
I don't know that there are actual drawbacks to using it. I think that like so many things, we can use it to confirm what we already believe you when you're looking at any model. Right. The Johari window is a very simple example of that. You need to be really honest about what you know and what you don't know.

00:14:20:21 - 00:14:47:02
Wayne Turmel
Okay. Right. And, well, they should know that because I told them. Well, does she always carry a lot of weight? This gets to the transparency part of this, Right? Which is, yes, I need to know what they're thinking and I want as much information as I can glean so that I can treat this person appropriately. But are they trusting me?

00:14:47:02 - 00:15:08:22
Wayne Turmel
Have I made myself available? Have I given them enough information and evidence? You know, it goes to the trust model that we've talked about so much on this show. That's such an important part of our courseware that, you know, for trust to exist, you need to have proof of alignment and purpose, proof of competence and proof of motives.

00:15:08:22 - 00:15:23:23
Wayne Turmel
And if you're not providing those things and being transparent, it's really easy for people to not pick up on signals or not interpret your actions correctly.

00:15:24:01 - 00:15:38:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, no, that totally makes sense. So I know we're coming up on our time, but are there, you know, best practices or tips for leaders who might be listening to this going, okay, I need to use this model? How do I start?

00:15:38:02 - 00:15:58:02
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, The first thing is take a look at the model and, you know, just kind of get it in your, you know, bring it into your cortex so that you can recall it when needed or keeping, you know, keep a copy handy somewhere. Mm hmm. You know, a simple. Keep it on your computer so that you can call it.

00:15:58:06 - 00:16:00:11
Wayne Turmel
Call the graphic up when you need it.

00:16:00:12 - 00:16:02:11
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Tape it to your wall. Whatever you need to do.

00:16:02:12 - 00:16:29:09
Wayne Turmel
Whatever it takes. Right. Whatever you got to do. I think that once you've done that, take a an example. Take something that you're having trouble communicating with somebody on and fill in the blanks. That makes sense. What do I know? What do I know for a fact? Mm hmm. What do I think? I know, but I'm not entirely sure.

00:16:29:11 - 00:16:40:12
Wayne Turmel
All right. What haven't I told that person? And maybe what information in my missing. And then use that to guide the conversation.

00:16:40:14 - 00:16:41:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, that makes.

00:16:41:05 - 00:17:03:18
Wayne Turmel
A you know, we've. We hear so much about constructive inquiry and and all of those things, crucial conversations. It it's just a way to identify what do I need to share and what do I need to find out in order to understand and communicate with this person better.

00:17:03:20 - 00:17:10:05
Marisa Eikenberry
That makes sense, as always. Communication is the key to remote teams and remote work and so many things.

00:17:10:05 - 00:17:17:22
Wayne Turmel
And that's why we need things like models, right? Because we can say, Well, you need to communicate better. Okay, Wayne, I'll get right on that.

00:17:18:00 - 00:17:27:12
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I was going to say I have a whole story about what I learned about the desk model and blew my ever loving mind. But that's for a different day. Well, maybe.

00:17:27:12 - 00:17:29:21
Wayne Turmel
We need to tell that story soon.

00:17:29:23 - 00:17:49:02
Marisa Eikenberry
I will add it to the list and listeners, I want to thank you so much for listening to long distance work life. Wayne, thank you for this conversation, too. I really hope that it was beneficial for our listeners for show notes, transcripts and other resources. Make sure to visit long distance work life. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won't miss any future episodes.

00:17:49:07 - 00:18:08:14
Marisa Eikenberry
And while you're there, be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes and let us know you listen to this episode or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode. If you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry's new book, The Long-Distance Team.

00:18:08:16 - 00:18:14:20
Marisa Eikenberry
You can learn more at longdistanceteambook.com. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let the weasels get too down.

Read More
The Gen Z Effect and the Future of Work: Insights from Dan Keldsen - Episode of Long-Distance Worklife Podcast with Wayne Turmel
Guests, Hybrid Work, Leadership, Working Remotely

The Gen Z Effect and the Future of Work: Insights from Dan Keldsen

Wayne Turmel engages in an insightful conversation with Dan Keldsen, co-founder of PlexiCam and the host of Next Future Today, who calls himself a pragmatic futurist. They explore the shifting landscape of remote and hybrid work, particularly in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dan shares his expertise on future trends and offers practical insights on onboarding new hires, incorporating Gen Z in the workplace, and fostering effective communication and collaboration. The discussion emphasizes the importance of treating people as they want to be treated and finding a balance between leveraging individual strengths and establishing clear expectations. Join Wayne and Dan as they provide valuable perspectives on embracing the future of work and building resilient teams in a rapidly evolving world.

Key Takeaways 

1. Embracing the future of work: The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of remote and hybrid work models. Organizations must adapt to the changing landscape and recognize the long-term effects of this shift.

2. The role of a pragmatic futurist: A pragmatic futurist like Dan Keldsen focuses on identifying future trends and guiding individuals and organizations in navigating them effectively, rather than indulging in extreme optimism or pessimism.

3. Leveraging Gen Z in the workplace: As Gen Z enters the workforce, organizations should recognize their unique strengths and experiences. Collaboration, mentorship, and cross-generational learning are crucial for creating a cohesive and productive team environment.

4. Effective onboarding in remote/hybrid settings: Onboarding new hires requires thoughtful processes that go beyond basic orientation. Drawing inspiration from successful onboarding techniques in other domains, such as video games, can help engage and retain new employees.

5. Communication and connection: Understanding the communication preferences of different generations, such as video calls, text messaging, or email, is vital for fostering effective collaboration. Treating people as they want to be treated and establishing clear expectations are key to building strong, adaptable teams.

6. Balancing individual strengths and expectations: Organizations should leverage the strengths of each team member while establishing guidelines for collaboration. By finding a balance between individual preferences and organizational objectives, teams can thrive in a changing work landscape.

7. Embracing the opportunities: Rather than viewing the future as entirely positive or negative, individuals and organizations should actively participate in shaping it. Embracing new work models and adapting to emerging trends can lead to growth and success.

Time Stamps

00:00 - Introduction
00:08 - Pragmatic Futurism and the Changing Work Landscape
01:16 - The Gen Z Effect and Integrating Gen Z in the Workplace
06:45 - Effective Onboarding in Remote and Hybrid Work Environments
10:33 - Communication and Connection in the Workplace
14:45 - Balancing Individual Strengths and Expectations
17:30 - Embracing the Future of Work and the Opportunities Ahead

Related Episodes

Featured Guest

Name: Dan Keldsen

What He Does: Co-founder of Plexi-Cam, host of Next Future Today podcast and consultancy, and co-author of The Gen Z Effect.

Notable: Dan has extensive experience working with companies like Wasabi Technologies, Google, Lowe's Home Improvement, AstraZeneca, and the Federal Reserve Bank of NY. He has also led workshops and training sessions on information architecture, user experience, and findability resulting in increased understanding and adoption of best practices.

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

View Full Transcript

00:00:08:11 - 00:00:33:16
Wayne Turmel
Hi, everybody. Welcome once again to the Long-Distance WorkLife podcast. The podcast where we try to help you thrive, survive. Make some kind of sense out of remote and hybrid work and the way the world is going. I am Wayne Turmel and Marisa is not here this week, which means we have a very cool, smart person to talk to besides me.

00:00:33:18 - 00:00:51:09
Wayne Turmel
And in this case I am going to bring in Dan Keldsen. He is the co-founder of PlexiCam. He is also the host and guiding mind behind Next Future Today the podcast and the consultancy. Dan, how are you, man?

00:00:51:12 - 00:00:52:12
Dan Keldsen
Great. Wayne, How's it going?

00:00:52:14 - 00:01:16:17
Wayne Turmel
Pretty well in the great cosmic scheme of things, but we'll see if we can't mess that up. Dan, you are you call yourself a pragmatic futurist and that's kind of where we want to go today is we're in this weird maelstrom of returning to work, not returning to work, hybrid work. you know, it's kind of goofy at the moment.

00:01:16:23 - 00:01:27:03
Wayne Turmel
So what I'm wondering is where the heck is this going? But first of all, you call yourself a pragmatic futurist. What the heck does that mean? Yeah.

00:01:27:05 - 00:01:35:16
Dan Keldsen
So that's that's exactly why I call myself a pragmatic futurist. As then we can have a conversation. So to me.

00:01:35:18 - 00:01:38:03
Wayne Turmel
You've drawn me into your little web.

00:01:38:05 - 00:02:07:02
Dan Keldsen
Isn't that nice? A little hook. Gotcha. So I think there are a lot of there are a lot of futurists who are more sort of extreme optimism. And I'm not totally pessimistic, but I think that as much as I enjoy what the future has brought me from, you know, if I think back to my ten year old self, my 20 year old self and my 30 year old, and now I'm getting up there, you know what I thought the future would bring to me, especially from technology, is a lot more than I You know, the reality is actually much bigger than what I had expected.

00:02:07:02 - 00:02:28:20
Dan Keldsen
I mean, I've read a lot of science fiction and I've seen plenty of dystopian novels and movies and all that kind of stuff. But in general, I think what my strength is in finding future trends that I see early signs of, and then I can help guide people into, Look, there are some futures that maybe you need to care about as a person or professionally or for your organization.

00:02:28:22 - 00:02:52:03
Dan Keldsen
You should be aware of them. There's others that who cares? It's not it's not relevant to you. And there are others that you know. The reason I created Next Future today is sometimes things happen like COVID and you need to very rapidly adapt to something that that next feature needs to start right now. So I think the pragmatic side is don't just think about the future else, and the future are going to be awful or wonderful, depending on you.

00:02:52:04 - 00:02:56:23
Dan Keldsen
You're saying we've got what can you do about it and actually take a role in actually playing a part in that?

00:02:57:01 - 00:03:29:21
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, it's interesting that you mention COVID because certainly in the world of remote and hybrid work, that was one of those 911 bombing of Hiroshima just moments in time that you can point to and go, oh, nothing is ever going to be the same after that. Right. And it wasn't that things weren't trending towards remote work and all of those things, but it pushed us across the Rubicon way quicker when most people were ready for.

00:03:30:00 - 00:03:39:07
Wayne Turmel
What do you because you and I were talking beforehand that we haven't even begun to figure out what the real long term effects of the last three years are going to be.

00:03:39:09 - 00:03:40:02
Dan Keldsen
Right.

00:03:40:04 - 00:03:46:12
Wayne Turmel
What do you see coming down the pipe that maybe we're not paying attention to?

00:03:46:13 - 00:04:16:15
Dan Keldsen
Well, I mean, you know, I've watched some of your episodes read some of what you've been doing. There's this sort of a backlash towards, you know, remote, remote anything or being on camera all the time is we need to be done with that, which, you know, some days I feel the same. So I've done a lot of innovation consulting in my life, which is really so again, like to the pragmatic features side, how do you take advantage when you know that it's time to take advantage of something and remote work has been possible?

00:04:16:15 - 00:04:32:22
Dan Keldsen
I mean, I remember installing dial up modems, I don't remember what speed, but we installed a bank of dial up modems for our consultant to be able to, you know, being back to the mothership. And I used to be able to make the sound of the bebop of the of the modems, which younger people don't know what we're talking about.

00:04:33:01 - 00:04:51:10
Dan Keldsen
That was the late nineties, mid late nineties. So and that was it's not like we were the first ones in the world to ever do that either. So there are like, like we said before, the before hit record, I like William Gibson's quote, The future is already here. It's just unevenly distributed. So there are it's been possible to do remote work.

00:04:51:12 - 00:05:14:03
Dan Keldsen
Even people like me probably you who did it early, Philomene or Masters, and that we are infallible. And we you know, we always get it right and we're the best people to ever possibly work with remotely. You know, it doesn't work that way, but the more you have exposure to it, you know, it's hard to learn things with technology if you're not actively participating.

00:05:14:03 - 00:05:33:04
Dan Keldsen
Like you could hear remote work as possible, but until you actually know it, it's a very different thing. And with COVID, you had no choice. So it's all right. Now you're on camera. Congratulations. You weren't expecting that to you don't have a you probably don't have a space in your house where you want to be on camera, where there's not noise or weird things behind you.

00:05:33:04 - 00:06:03:09
Dan Keldsen
Like, I certainly didn't have my background setup until COVID happened. So, you know, it's until you actively take a part in that you really can't know what you should be participating in and how to take advantage of it until you're in the moment. I think that that that acceleration that happened with COVID because, you know, we had Friday the 13th lockdown and then poof, then in three years, you know, it's it forced people to, whether they wanted to or not, they needed to figure out how to work in a new and different way.

00:06:03:11 - 00:06:10:19
Dan Keldsen
And always, I think that's very useful because it actually got people to take a step that it was long overdue in a lot of ways.

00:06:10:21 - 00:06:32:05
Wayne Turmel
Okay. So as we think about the future, you are also the author of a book called The Gen Z Effect. And it's kind of a radical notion. If you're going to talk about the future, maybe pay some attention to people who still have one, as opposed to those of us who are near the end of our journey. And I'm not being facetious about that.

00:06:32:05 - 00:07:05:12
Wayne Turmel
I mean, a lot of the sturm und drang around return to work has been driven by senior leadership management, business people who are pining for the before times. Right. But one of the things and when I say this, I get these horrified looks on people's faces. We're now going into, you know, used to be youngins. You taught them how to work in an office and and that's how they got interned and everything else.

00:07:05:12 - 00:07:30:02
Wayne Turmel
Well, we now have four, four years of new hires coming out of college who don't know what it means to have worked in an office or right in the way that you and I did back in the day. So tell me real quick, what did you kind of discover in the Gen Z effect and what does this mean going forward for the workplace?

00:07:30:05 - 00:07:53:14
Dan Keldsen
Yeah, so we wrote the Gen Z effects in 2014. So there was way before COVID, well before, I don't think Zoom existed or it was it was incredibly early. So the it is one of the topics that we talked about in the book. I interviewed a buddy of mine, Justin Levy, who I believe was at Citrix at the time about remote work and what that meant.

00:07:53:14 - 00:08:17:22
Dan Keldsen
You know, like I didn't grow up in in a manufacturing role like, you know, earlier generations might have done it, you know, where you got to get you have to get dirty and dusty and in loud environments and all. And I think that's generally a good thing because we're moving towards, you know, knowledge work and more experiential things that don't necessarily threaten your life by, you know, losing a limb from some massive machine.

00:08:18:00 - 00:08:40:15
Dan Keldsen
So I do think there's you know, there's unfortunate I mean, my my oldest daughter turns 21 in a month. My youngest is 18. So they had to live in school settings in a very different world than I certainly had or you had in the very formative years of high school or college. On the one hand, it was terrible and there's probably a whole bunch of damage that's been done to them behaviorally.

00:08:40:16 - 00:09:05:19
Dan Keldsen
And, you know, in otherwise, on the other hand, the younger generations have been taught that teamwork is a thing, that you need to be good at it, that, you know, if you do larger projects with other people and therefore you need to know how to do that. So I think in a lot of ways they're much better equipped to as far as what they've experience in team based work that they're going to be needing to do in the in the future.

00:09:05:19 - 00:09:23:12
Dan Keldsen
Because nobody, you know, things are moving so fast, everything's accelerating. No one person knows everything. You can do everything. So you really need to to me, a part of an underpinning of the Gen Z effects is you need to leverage the strengths of whoever is part of your team, young or old. You know, it doesn't matter where they are in the planet.

00:09:23:14 - 00:09:37:12
Dan Keldsen
How do you bring out the best out of them and then use that as a wedge to drive forward into the future instead of just, you know, you're you're too old, you're too young, you're too you know, that doesn't work very well. So maybe we can do better things together.

00:09:37:13 - 00:10:01:23
Wayne Turmel
Absolutely. So let me hold your feet to the fire a little bit. I mean, it's wonderful to say, Oh, don't we all have these fabulous strengths and we do. And we should learn from each other. And we should. But purely practical basis in a world where you are in the office 24, seven, five days a week. Mm hmm.

00:10:02:01 - 00:10:17:18
Wayne Turmel
How do we bring the new hires of the world on? How do we onboard them? How do we incorporate and orient them so that they become productive, fabulous members of our teams quicker?

00:10:17:19 - 00:10:33:12
Dan Keldsen
Yeah. Yeah. So I so one of the things I hope is a strength for me is I like to take a look at what's happening in sort of the consumer world and bring it to the enterprise. Most of my work has been on the enterprise side, so how do those things and the sort of bridge between both sides.

00:10:33:15 - 00:11:01:11
Dan Keldsen
So I've paid a lot of attention to what is onboarding like from like I happen to be a gamer video games to a really great job of onboarding people because if they don't, they don't make money. You know, the the long game is you have a subscription or you buy, you know, a season or whatever. And if you have not engaged your people to get over that hump, to be onboarded and have some idea what they're doing, you can't milk them for money over a very long period or.

00:11:01:13 - 00:11:05:21
Wayne Turmel
Exploit their blood, sweat and tears for years as employees. Yeah.

00:11:05:23 - 00:11:30:00
Dan Keldsen
Exactly. Yes. No, that's. Wait, you're you're the you're the pessimistic futurist. I'm supposed to be the pragmatic summing up. But so from an AI, you know, I think unfortunately for enterprises there's not a lot of you know we've we got lazy in doing onboarding for new hires. When you're there in person, you can sort of, you know, you can make up for not really a formal onboarding process by just being there.

00:11:30:00 - 00:12:01:00
Dan Keldsen
So they can ask questions of the person in a cubicle next to them or whatever, you know, in the lunchroom outside, whatever. And it's definitely harder to do that if it's purely virtual unless you put some thought into to making that happen. And it doesn't have to be hideously formal, like I'm not a big fan of like governance teams that have 30 people that meet once a quarter or something really intense like that just set some baseline of, you know, like we do like standups from the Agile world totally applied.

00:12:01:00 - 00:12:20:09
Dan Keldsen
They can fit. It's not only for developers. You could do that with your marketing team or your finance team or whatever, and that's one way to get people to know each other, which I think is the biggest piece of onboarding, is you need to get to know other people in your organization. And by virtue of that happening, you will figure things out on your own.

00:12:20:14 - 00:12:56:14
Dan Keldsen
I think that's it shouldn't be on the employee to have to figure it out. It should be supported by smarter than usual managers and policies that have at least some bare bones to them. But it's, you know, you got to put pieces in there where you can connect people. It doesn't matter if they're in the office online or some situation where they're doing both and, you know, working in an office two or three days a week and not all the time, but you need to build little bridges so that you can get people out of, you know, maybe a maybe they had a bad experience right out of college and, you know, their first job

00:12:56:14 - 00:13:15:00
Dan Keldsen
was terrible, you know, just whatever it was didn't work out. So that experience is going to color them. Coming to your organization some way is good and bad, probably. So what can you do to give them an expectation of of what it's supposed to be like and how and not just what it's supposed to be like you would find in an interview.

00:13:15:00 - 00:13:33:15
Dan Keldsen
But the reality is, you know, we do have meetings that are on Monday afternoons and we are expected to talk about what happened in the last week and anything that we ran into, you know, anything that gives you some some structure. So that it's not totally up to the individual to try to figure out the probably ungodly mess that's your organization.

00:13:33:17 - 00:13:59:14
Wayne Turmel
Well, it's interesting, too, because I think we make some assumptions about Gen Z and millennials. My daughter is, you know, the poster child for millennial, at least age wise, right? She turns 30 this year. And I think we make some assumptions, you know, because these darn kids text instead of talking that they don't want in-person or in fact, that's not true.

00:13:59:14 - 00:14:22:09
Wayne Turmel
What we're finding is and it makes perfect sense in the beginning stage of your career, when you're young, when you don't know anything, you want more human contact, you want mentorship, and you want socialization and you want to meet people and all that stuff, right? When you're a middle aged goof who's near the end of his career and you want to be left alone to get your work done.

00:14:22:09 - 00:14:25:09
Wayne Turmel
Remote work is a beautiful thing.

00:14:25:11 - 00:14:29:20
Dan Keldsen
Right? Yeah. Yeah. So you can be a hermit in your virtual world.

00:14:29:22 - 00:14:45:14
Wayne Turmel
Exactly. But. But talk to me about what Gen Z thinks of, you know, socialization in the workplace. What are they looking for that we need to give them if we want them to be good, when we want them to stick around and all of that stuff.

00:14:45:16 - 00:15:16:20
Dan Keldsen
Yeah, all of that's a multi-hour conversation potentially. Have you heard of the Golden Rule that you should treat people as you'd like to be treated? There's a platinum rule that you should treat people as they want to be treated, which is unfortunately not done all that often in my opinion. You know, like there's you know, I've watched some of your recent episodes, the question of should your camera be on or not when you're in a meeting or a conference or whatever it happens to be, there's different situations where absolutely you should always you can't wrong probably.

00:15:16:20 - 00:15:33:17
Dan Keldsen
And there are certain situations where it's it's optional and maybe it's useful to have an official. David Nobody has to be on camera. It just takes a little burden off of people. So to the point of those darn kids, all they do is talk to each other and send means and, you know, you know, and they're just want to talk all that kind of stuff.

00:15:33:20 - 00:15:52:05
Dan Keldsen
That's true. Older people are as well. You know, we're all addicted to our smartphones. What would we do without them? I don't I don't know how I would ever get anywhere I needed to drive to if I didn't have GPS that told me exactly where to go, like a voice in my head. But that doesn't mean that they're, you know, it's a different channel to communicate through.

00:15:52:07 - 00:16:14:02
Dan Keldsen
That is maybe foreign and weird for older generations. And one of the aside from the plan, one of the things that we talk about in the book is reverse mentorship, as we normally talk about mentors as the old mentoring, the young, which is very useful, also doesn't happen nearly as often as it should. But, you know, I can learn from my kids, you can learn from your kids, you can learn from other people's kids.

00:16:14:04 - 00:16:35:20
Dan Keldsen
You know, what is their experience? What is some piece of that that might apply to you? Maybe it's actually more effective to just text somebody than to send an email or give them a call because maybe they're already on another call. Why not learn from all these pieces that are possible and then purposely decide this is how like if you and I were working together, how do we want to communicate?

00:16:35:20 - 00:16:56:05
Dan Keldsen
That was one of the videos you guys posted most recently is what are the rules anyhow? You know, Kim, can we agree on you know, look, we we need to have a, you know, a video camera on one on one conversation on a monthly basis. So we know how I'm doing my job and you can give me feedback.

00:16:56:07 - 00:17:06:15
Dan Keldsen
If we don't state that ever, then it's going to be a surprise, especially on the part of the employee. And that's usually not a it's not a great feeling. I don't think it's really the right kind of tender.

00:17:06:17 - 00:17:28:17
Wayne Turmel
Well, and I think that whole notion of the platinum rule and I'm passionate believer in that. I think the flip side of that is, yes, we need to understand what they want. And it's incumbent on us to explain why we want what we want. Right. We're not doing it because we're old and we're always right and we're not doing it because we're inflexible.

00:17:28:21 - 00:17:54:03
Wayne Turmel
Sometimes that's the right thing to do, and here's why. Right. But I think those conversations are what we aren't having. So, Dan, thank you very much. As I mentioned, Dan is the coauthor, to be fair, of Gen Z Effect. He's also the host of Next Future Today, we will have links to all of that in our show notes.

00:17:54:05 - 00:18:21:11
Wayne Turmel
So, Dan, I'm going to bid you a quick adieu for a moment and just remind everybody that those show notes are available at longdistanceworklife.com. If you have enjoyed the show, if you are a long time listener, please like and subscribe. You know how this stuff works. It's important for us to show up on search engines and the like, so help us out like and subscribe.

00:18:21:16 - 00:18:51:18
Wayne Turmel
You can also reach out to either Marisa or myself, LinkedIn, email, whatever works for you. We are also always looking for pet peeves and questions for future episodes. And of course, if you have not yet checked out Kevin Eikenberry in my new book, The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success, you might want to check that out and you can get more information that longdistanceteambook.com.

00:18:53:05 - 00:19:08:07
Wayne Turmel
All right. That is it. Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, thank you for listening. We will be back in our next episode with Marisa. Thank you so much for joining us. We appreciate your support. And don't let the weasels get you down.

Read More
Ask Wayne Anything, Leadership

Managers Are the Heart of an Organization

Marisa Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel delve into the vital role of managers as the heart of an organization. Wayne introduces the analogy of a heart, explaining how managers serve as the crucial link between senior leadership and their teams. They discuss the flow of information, the importance of effective communication, and the challenges faced by middle managers in maintaining trust and authenticity. Wayne emphasizes the need for transparency, honesty, and gathering accurate information to fulfill the role effectively. He shares insights on navigating the delicate balance between supporting decisions and expressing personal disagreements, all while ensuring the smooth functioning of the organization. Tune in to gain valuable insights and practical tips for middle managers aiming to create a strong heartbeat within their teams and organizations.

Key Takeaways

1. Managers are the heartbeat of an organization: The analogy of a heart highlights the critical role managers play in processing and communicating information between senior leadership and their teams.
2. Gather accurate information: Managers should actively seek information from both above and below to ensure they have a comprehensive understanding of the organization and can effectively communicate it to their teams.
3. Transparency and authenticity build trust: Being honest about what you know, what you don't know, and the assumptions being made fosters trust within the team and reduces the risk of being seen as deceptive.
4. Communicate decisions with clarity: Even if managers personally disagree with certain decisions, it is their responsibility to communicate them clearly and provide the rationale behind them to maintain trust and credibility.
5. Balance between supporting decisions and expressing personal opinions: Managers must strike a delicate balance between aligning with leadership decisions and expressing their personal disagreements, all while maintaining their role as effective communicators and leaders.
6. Effective communication is essential in remote and hybrid teams: In virtual work environments, managers must be intentional about communication, actively seeking and sharing information, and leveraging transparent communication channels to ensure the smooth flow of information.

Timestamps

00:00:00 - Introduction
00:00:46 - Managers as the heartbeat of an organization.
00:02:18 - Importance of effective communication and processing information.
00:03:22 - Navigating the balance between upper management and the team.
00:05:06 - The challenge of supporting decisions one may personally disagree with.
00:06:15 - Being honest about what you don't know and avoiding making things up.
00:08:06 - Importance of transparency and authenticity in maintaining trust.
00:09:24 - Being honest about what you know and don't know to avoid damaging trust.
00:12:00 - Challenges of being a middle manager and delivering difficult news.
00:13:06 - Actionable step for middle managers: Gathering accurate information.
00:15:46 - Balancing support for decisions with personal opinions.
00:16:24 - Recap of the heartbeat analogy and the importance of managers in organizations.

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

View Full Transcript

00:00:07:21 - 00:00:18:16
Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to The Long-Distance Worklife where we help you lead, work and thrive on 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.

00:00:18:18 - 00:00:20:09
Wayne Turmel
Hi, Marisa. How the heck are you?

00:00:20:12 - 00:00:22:04
Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

00:00:22:06 - 00:00:25:22
Wayne Turmel
I am well. I am well. I'm looking forward to our discussion today.

00:00:26:03 - 00:00:46:00
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. So today we're actually going to talk about a subject that Wayne mentioned in a previous episode about managers are the heartbeat of an organization. I'd never heard that before. And we definitely decided this is going to be a highlight. That could be its own episode. So we're going to talk about it today. So, Wayne, let's just start with what did you mean by managers are the heartbeat of an organization?

00:00:46:02 - 00:00:54:13
Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I don't mean it, although I suppose it could have some of that in an Oprah soft and mushy kind of way.

00:00:54:15 - 00:00:55:08
Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

00:00:55:09 - 00:01:04:00
Wayne Turmel
I actually am not talking about like, a Valentine heart. I'm talking about a Grey’s Anatomy. Hold it in your hand during surgery kind of heart.

00:01:04:02 - 00:01:07:04
Marisa Eikenberry
Cristina Yang is about to operate. Yeah. Okay.

00:01:07:06 - 00:01:34:11
Wayne Turmel
So here's here's the thing. Think about what a heart does. Right. It's in your chest. And blood comes from different parts of the body, and it goes into the heart and it gets oxygenated and processed and then sent back out to the rest of the body. That's what managers do. Okay. We have information coming in from senior leadership.

00:01:34:11 - 00:01:47:01
Wayne Turmel
We have directions. We have guidance. We have marching orders. Right. And it's got to come down and we need to process that information and send it out to our teams.

00:01:47:03 - 00:01:48:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. That makes sense.

00:01:48:07 - 00:02:18:08
Wayne Turmel
Conversely, it comes from our team. We process it and it is our job to send it out to the senior leadership. All of this communication travels through what people sneeringly call middle managers, but it's what we do. And think about it. If one of those lines of communication, if had those arteries gets clogged.

00:02:18:10 - 00:02:21:04
Marisa Eikenberry
What happens? Yeah, you're going to have Rob.

00:02:21:06 - 00:02:45:16
Wayne Turmel
You're going to have a problem. And so I thought of this image. There are a few things that throughout my career I've kind of been, Oh, I liked that one. And this is one of them. Right. This notion of the manager as the heart and what it does, if you break that down to what we do, it means that there are responsibilities that we have.

00:02:45:17 - 00:02:59:14
Wayne Turmel
Right? One of those responsibilities is to make sure that we are oxygenating and processing right stuff just doesn't come from one part of the body shoot through the heart. Now the risk value is added.

00:02:59:16 - 00:03:00:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Or we would hope.

00:03:00:23 - 00:03:17:04
Wayne Turmel
One would hope, right? Oxygen gets added, stuff gets sent to the lungs for expulsion, all of that stuff. But it's up to us to process filter oxygen, aid the information. And that's both ways upstream and downstream, of course.

00:03:17:04 - 00:03:22:13
Marisa Eikenberry
So I guess how do you avoid feeling like you're like in a vise between upper management and your team?

00:03:22:15 - 00:03:44:23
Wayne Turmel
Well, this is the the thing, right? When we talk about middle managers, you are kind of stuck in between. And where this this manifests itself in a number of ways. One and this is particularly true on remote teams where you can't always pick up the vibe in the office.

00:03:45:01 - 00:03:46:00
Marisa Eikenberry
That makes sense.

00:03:46:02 - 00:04:22:02
Wayne Turmel
Right. Senior leadership has no clue what's going on out in the field. Right. A case like that. And so it is our job to sometimes tackle uncomfortable situations. We need to actively solicit information from the field so that we're getting good information so that we are passing accurate data about what's going on. Right. Both data and attitude. And how are they doing and don't they how are they feeling and all of that.

00:04:22:04 - 00:04:56:06
Wayne Turmel
We need to pass that on. We also very often get uncomfortable news or things that are unpleasant and we need to process that and send that out right to the field. And the thing about being a manager, if we're really honest, is that we don't always agree with or even understand some of the decisions and things that are happening.

00:04:56:10 - 00:05:06:08
Wayne Turmel
And yet it is our job to communicate, enforce, try to get people to engage with whatever the marching orders are.

00:05:06:09 - 00:05:09:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, we almost have to feel like we support it, even if we don't.

00:05:10:00 - 00:05:38:21
Wayne Turmel
And that is the single hardest thing. I mean, in my career, more than once I have known that bad news is coming and being told, Share this and you will be added to the list of people who will be gone. Gotcha. That's a very common situation that as a manager you have access to information that people don't have and you are actually not allowed to share it.

00:05:38:23 - 00:05:54:16
Wayne Turmel
So it can be hard to do that and maintain trust because you become a mouthpiece for the boss. Right? Right. So you're just a corporate weasel and you don't care about us. No, I really do.

00:05:54:18 - 00:05:57:01
Marisa Eikenberry
And this is what I have to do.

00:05:57:03 - 00:05:59:08
Wayne Turmel
And this is literally the job.

00:05:59:13 - 00:06:15:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it's the hard part about leadership, right? The stuff that you know, and you might understand why a decision got made, because you have the data of why that decision was made. But other people don't. So they just get mad. Like I said, I mean, even small stuff.

00:06:15:05 - 00:06:20:08
Wayne Turmel
Sure. I mean, you've been in, you know, social groups and things that you might.

00:06:20:13 - 00:06:20:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Also.

00:06:20:22 - 00:06:21:05
Wayne Turmel
I mean.

00:06:21:05 - 00:06:21:19
Marisa Eikenberry
You work.

00:06:21:21 - 00:06:36:12
Wayne Turmel
You work for Kevin. There are times that he tells you everything. Boss is hard and there are times when he tells you what you think you need to know. And there are times when it's none of your darn business.

00:06:36:13 - 00:06:38:05
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00:06:38:07 - 00:06:52:12
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. That's something that leaders have to get comfortable with in a remote or a hybrid team. Of course, it's harder because you have to work harder to get the information. You have to work harder to make sure that you're getting good information.

00:06:52:16 - 00:07:14:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, be intentional about that communication like we've talked about in previous episodes, talking about like, you know, giving out the information from upper management and stuff and, you know, maybe it's not something that you necessarily feel comfortable with or you, you know, don't disagree with You disagree with that decision. So like, how do you avoid just being a parent for the company when you disagree?

00:07:14:08 - 00:07:41:16
Wayne Turmel
This is where man trust depends so much on authenticity. And I actually have come to appreciate something that I never thought I would appreciate. At the beginning of the Gulf War, Donald Rumsfeld was secretary of state. And if you ever told me, I would agree with anything Donald Rumsfeld ever said, I would fight you. But this happens to be true.

00:07:41:18 - 00:08:06:18
Wayne Turmel
They were asking about, you know, what do we know? Is this going to happen? Is this not going to happen? And the way that he explained it is quite brilliant. He said there are no notes. There are things that we know, Right. Things that we know to be true. There are things that we think we know. There are things that we don't know and there are things we don't know that we don't know.

00:08:06:19 - 00:08:08:21
Marisa Eikenberry
Yes. Right.

00:08:08:23 - 00:08:26:06
Wayne Turmel
Right. And if you explain it as these are the things that we know, these are the assumptions we're making that may impact how this goes. We don't know what this is going to do. We don't know what this is going to do to our customers.

00:08:26:08 - 00:08:26:20
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course.

00:08:27:01 - 00:08:52:14
Wayne Turmel
Right. If you are honest about what you know, what you don't know what you think you know but can't prove. If you do that, General, really speaking, people will look at you less like you are lying through your teeth. It's very tempting as a leader to put a happy face on everything. And here's we're going and we're positive and we're sure.

00:08:52:14 - 00:08:58:00
Wayne Turmel
And. And what happens is when one of those unknowns.

00:08:58:01 - 00:08:58:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:08:59:00 - 00:09:04:18
Wayne Turmel
Or something that we didn't see coming happens, we look like liars.

00:09:04:20 - 00:09:24:15
Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, and I've always been a big proponent of this idea of like, being honest about what you don't know. I don't know if it's just because I'm a lot younger. I don't know if it's just because I worked in I.T. department for a while after high school. Like, I don't know, literally. But this this concept of, you know, Hey, Marissa, I need to ask you about X, Y, Z.

00:09:24:15 - 00:09:37:05
Marisa Eikenberry
What do you know about it? I don't know. And I'll be honest about it, because I think so many times leaders, we feel like we have to give an answer. So that way we look competent, even though sometimes trying to make something up can get you in trouble.

00:09:37:08 - 00:09:51:20
Wayne Turmel
Well, it does. That's the problem, is, you know, not only are you wrong, which is embarrassing and, you know, makes you lose a little bit of credibility, But if people are already a little bit on edge, it's. No, you lied to us.

00:09:51:22 - 00:09:52:23
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely.

00:09:53:01 - 00:10:12:22
Wayne Turmel
So we've seen this, for example, in the return to office where people said, no, this is it. This is how this is going to work. Covid's over. Get your butt back into the office. And then we had somebody that we've worked with in the past. They brought everybody back. And two weeks later, COVID ripped through the office and everybody got sent home.

00:10:13:04 - 00:10:14:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:10:14:08 - 00:10:28:00
Wayne Turmel
Right. You told us it was safe. You told us that we had to come back. And now I'm coughing up blood. Right. Right. That's going to damage credibility.

00:10:28:01 - 00:10:29:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it's going to damage trust a lot, too.

00:10:30:00 - 00:11:02:21
Wayne Turmel
And this concept of this concept of what you know, what and being able to share that in a competent, transparent manner that doesn't destroy trust is a very big deal. And it applies to a lot more than just this. It applies to how you work with your team. There's a a wonderful tool called a Johari Window, which is designed to help you uncover biases.

00:11:02:21 - 00:11:21:13
Wayne Turmel
Right. Are you making stuff up? Are you really seeing the world as it is? And we'll probably do an episode on this because it's so important, especially in a remote environment, because there are things, you know, things you don't know. There are things other people know that you don't know. And there are things that none of you know.

00:11:21:16 - 00:11:46:20
Wayne Turmel
Right? Right. It can't go ever. And if you're not really clear on what those are, though, you don't know how to ask the right questions and you don't know how to do how to assess situations and you don't know if it's just you or if everybody feels the same way. But that notion of transparency and honesty and authenticity is really important.

00:11:46:20 - 00:11:57:05
Wayne Turmel
If we go back to the to the heart thing. That's the oxygenation that you're doing. You know, here's the data that we're being given. Here's where this number comes from.

00:11:57:07 - 00:12:00:07
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. Trying to give them an idea of why the decision was made.

00:12:00:09 - 00:12:24:14
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And Kevin does this extremely well. He shares the numbers and he says, here's what's happening and here's why we think this is happening. But again, here's what's happening is a hard and fast number, right? Here's why we think it's happening is interpretation, which leads to here's what we think that means. And we might be wrong.

00:12:24:15 - 00:12:27:17
Marisa Eikenberry
Of course, that that's going to be true for so many things.

00:12:27:19 - 00:12:46:17
Wayne Turmel
But if we don't do that right, if our heart doesn't do its job, if we as middle managers don't do that job well, we are basically controlling tasks and not adding the value to the process both upstream and downstream that we should.

00:12:46:19 - 00:13:06:20
Marisa Eikenberry
So for middle managers who are listening to this episode right now, maybe they don't feel like they're doing this super well or they know that they could improve on this idea of being the heartbeat of the organization. So what's one thing that they could do today immediately after they stop listening to this episode to set themselves on the path of creating a stronger heartbeat for their organization?

00:13:06:23 - 00:13:28:01
Wayne Turmel
I think it's really start by gathering information, and I think that's both above and below you on the food chain. When you get marching orders, information and data from senior leadership. Ask the questions that you have.

00:13:28:03 - 00:13:29:01
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

00:13:29:03 - 00:13:56:18
Wayne Turmel
Right. Not only the questions that your people are going to have, but what do you as somebody who has a little different view than your direct reports? What are the questions you have and find out is it something they know? Is it something they think they know? Is it right? Because you can't accurately process and translate that? And same thing coming back, right, when you hear things from the team.

00:13:56:20 - 00:14:24:06
Wayne Turmel
Is this a fact? Is this gossip? Is this you need to be able to process and deal with that, which means asking some questions and having some conversations. And that is going to then help you figure out how to communicate in a transparent, authentic way. Now, there's always the problem of here's what I'm being told. I think this sucks, but I have to make you do this right.

00:14:24:10 - 00:14:33:17
Wayne Turmel
Right. And that's a tricky thing to do because you want to keep your job.

00:14:33:19 - 00:14:35:04
Marisa Eikenberry
100%.

00:14:35:06 - 00:14:58:07
Wayne Turmel
Let's let's not kid ourselves. This is we want to remain gainfully employed. And part of being a manager is sometimes you have to deliver crappy news to people. You want to be not throwing the leadership under the bus. Absolutely right. I think this is a terrible idea, but I have to lay five of you off. It might make you feel better.

00:14:58:09 - 00:14:59:20
Marisa Eikenberry
It doesn't change anything for them.

00:14:59:21 - 00:15:21:22
Wayne Turmel
What is not changing and it makes you look ineffective. So, again, here's what I know. Here's what I know to be true. You know, yes, we are having a really bad year and we are losing money, and hard decisions have to be made. There were options. This is the one the company decided to make. And this is where we're going.

00:15:21:23 - 00:15:25:10
Wayne Turmel
Just lay it out. Here's what we know. Here's what we don't know.

00:15:25:12 - 00:15:26:03
Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

00:15:26:05 - 00:15:46:00
Wayne Turmel
Right. This is where this decision came from. Do not say it's not. It's not me. Because that's very tempting. I remember after some bad news at a place that I worked, and we had to let a couple of people go, and I kept saying, It's not me. I don't want to do this. And they said, Then what good are you?

00:15:46:03 - 00:15:50:06
Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, I could see that. Just like, just because it's not you. That doesn't change anything for them.

00:15:50:08 - 00:15:52:20
Wayne Turmel
Yeah. It makes me no less fired. Thank you.

00:15:53:00 - 00:15:53:18
Marisa Eikenberry
Exactly.

00:15:53:20 - 00:16:24:10
Wayne Turmel
So that's when we talk about the heartbeat. It's a it's a cute model. And it's it's a good kind of mnemonic device to think about, but that's what I mean by that. And I really believe it. I think that what we call middle managers are crucial to effective organizations, and only if they add that oxygen and that. Okay, that makes it work.

00:16:24:14 - 00:16:40:22
Marisa Eikenberry
Absolutely. Wayne, thank you so much for talking to us about this. I know you know, we talked about it in a previous episode, so I'm so glad that we finally got a chance to go into it and see like, what is this really mean? And listeners, thank you so much for listening to the Long-Distance Worklife. For shownotes, transcripts, and other resources

00:16:41:02 - 00:17:00:02
Marisa Eikenberry
make sure to visit longdistanceworklife.com. If you haven't yet, subscribe to the podcast so you won’t miss any future episodes. While you're there, be sure to like and review. This helps us know what you love about our show. Feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our shownotes. Let us know you listened to this episode or even suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

00:17:00:03 - 00:17:13:05
Marisa Eikenberry
We'd love to hear from you. If you'd like to learn more about remote teams, order Wayne and Kevin Eikenberry’s new book, The Long-Distance Team. You can learn more about the book at LongDistanceTeamBook.com. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne like to say, don't let the weasels get you down.

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Designing a Winning Culture for Remote Teams: Insights from the Authors of The Long-Distance Team

This episode is a recording from this year's Virtual LeaderCon event that was all about culture on remote and hybrid teams. As more and more teams are working remotely, it's important to understand how to build successful remote teams. Jeff Brown sits down with Kevin Eikenberry and Wayne Turmel, authors of The Long-Distance Team, as they share their insights and experiences on the challenges of leading and managing culture on remote teams, as well as practical tips and strategies for building strong teams, the difference between microculture and macroculture, and how to design a team in a virtual work environment. Whether you're a team leader, a remote worker, or just interested in learning more about remote work, you won't want to miss this engaging and informative conversation. Tune in to discover how to make remote work work for you!

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!

 Pre-order
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Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry revisit the topic of ethical visibility thanks to some feedback from listeners. They discuss the difference between ethical visibility and self-promotion as well as sharing some practical strategies for creating ethical visibility in your organization.

They also discuss the role of leaders in encouraging ethical visibility within the organization and the potential costs of not prioritizing it. Wayne Turmel highlights the importance of conscious effort in creating ethical visibility, particularly in remote or hybrid work settings. 

Tune in to learn how to create a culture of ethical visibility in your organization and become a leader who values and prioritizes ethical visibility in the workplace.

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Theresa Destrebecq

Name: Theresa Destrebecq

What She Does: Founder of Emerge Book Circles and co-host of The Leader Learner Podcast

Notable: Theresa Destrebecq is a passionate learner and leader, who loves to read, so she started Emerge Book Circles to bring book learning to companies to make it more social and transformational. It’s about moving beyond just consuming ideas in isolation, to connecting those ideas to yourself, your colleagues, and your work.

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

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View Full Transcript

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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