Mastering Hybrid Coaching: Avoiding Proximity Bias in Remote Teams

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Marisa Eikenberry
Welcome back to.

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Marisa Eikenberry
The Long-Distance worksite, where we help you live, work, and thrive in remote and hybrid teams. I'm Russ, I can be a fellow remote worker. And joining me is my co-host and remote work expert, Wayne Trimble. Hi, Lynn.

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Wayne Turmel
Hello, Marissa. How are you?

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Marisa Eikenberry
I'm great. How are you?

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Wayne Turmel
I'm fine. Even though we're nowhere near each other.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right, right. You in Vegas and me in Indianapolis said we're going to kind of talk about that today, as we do every time on our remote show. But today, specifically, we're talking about coaching and differences between coaching in-person and remote and how to try to make those similar and avoiding proximity bias. So one of the first things that I do want to start with, and we've talked about this a lot on the show, but for people who have never listened to an episode of ours before, maybe we should define what is proximity bias.

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Wayne Turmel
Proximity bias as it relates to leaders. Okay, is and I'm looking at this very fancy I generated definition and okay, like all I generated definitions I want to go. That's not entirely it. It says and I quote proximity bias is a cognitive bias that occurs when people have positions of power, favor employees who are physically closer to them, and that includes things like promotions and coaching opportunities and an unintentional exclusion for those who aren't there, and all of that good stuff.

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Wayne Turmel
The problem with this definition, of course, is that it happens not just in leadership, it happens in life, and it happens among peers. On teams. So when we're talking proximity bias, yes, in this case, because we're going to be discussing coaching its leaders, but it's also peers and colleagues and stuff like that.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. So how does proximity bias specifically like affect the coaching experiences of remote employees as opposed to ones in person?

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah, well, proximity bias affects coaching in some obvious ways, right? An obvious way is if I'm in the office and I see somebody doing something incorrectly or wrong or even really well, and I want to give them some coaching and some feedback on that, my brain says, I see this happening and I should respond, the problem, of course, with remote workers is you often don't see things happening in real time.

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Wayne Turmel
You see them long after the fact, and they generally need to be pretty dramatic in order for your brain to go, you know, I should pick up the phone. I should type them a message. I should make a point of mentioning this. So coaching happens much more spontaneously, much more frequently, and often better in person than it does remotely.

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Wayne Turmel
And the ultimate impact of that is more than you would think. Because when you are remote and you perceive that other people are getting coaching and attention that you are not getting, it can be rather disheartening. And the. Well, of course, but when you're the one who is guilty of the bias, you often don't see that. For example, you know, out of sight, out of mind to a lot of leaders is, you know, unless there's a problem, I'm just going to let Marissa do her thing.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And for some reason, you're okay with that.

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Wayne Turmel
For some people, they're okay with that. But even people who are really good at their jobs and prefer to be left alone to do them need a little love. They need some attention. They need positive reinforcement and and occasionally correction. Because a lot of us who work remotely and we've talked before about the Wiley Coyote moments, where, you know, it's like the Roadrunner cartoons where you run, run, run, run, run and you're way off the cliff before you realize that you're off the cliff.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. But if you would have had, you know, weekly or biweekly meetings, you may have if.

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Wayne Turmel
You were getting regular feedback, which is ultimately what all of this comes down to is feedback loops, right? And proximity bias tends to have really strong feedback loops with the people with whom you are physically proximate and weaker, and less frequent feedback loops with people that you do not interact with in a rich way nearly as often.

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Marisa Eikenberry
So what are some signs that a manager might be showing proximity bias during one on one? So if they are, you know, actually meeting. But how might those one on ones differ a little bit if they're showing proximity bias?

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think there are a bunch of ways. And I'll just tell you because everything ultimately is about me. It used to make me crazy with managers who, if they were in the office, would call people in. They'd have a cup of coffee, they'd sit across the desk, they do their thing. But because I was usually on the other end of the country or traveling or they were traveling, I would get my coaching conversations on a staticky cell phone in a busy airport lobby.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah, it was an afterthought.

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Wayne Turmel
It was, well, we got to do this. It's schedule. Let's do it. And so there wasn't time to connect. There wasn't the visual component where you could see that somebody was stressed or not. You basically because you're trying to drown out the distractions around you run from a checklist. And so a lot of those one on ones were not coaching opportunities so much as they were check ins on tasks.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

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Wayne Turmel
Which is important.

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Marisa Eikenberry
But it's not the whole.

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Wayne Turmel
Coaching. Coaching is more than that. Coaching is not just having a one on one coaching conversation or conversation. Coaching is a very specific thing. It involves feedback. It involves both performance and development. So it's not just this is what you're doing, but what would you like to be doing right? What would you like to be doing better? How can I help you do that?

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Wayne Turmel
Is true coaching. It's not just feedback right. So and that's one that's a very obvious one. I think the other thing is that coaching remotely by definition is going to be more formal and needs to be planned, which means there are big coaching moments. Okay. But there's not a lot of that spontaneous in the hallway giving somebody a thumbs up when you hear them on the phone, doing a great job with a customer.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah. That's fair. So, you know, you were talking a second ago about your old coaching conversations where, you know, staticky cell phones and things like that. And obviously we now have tools like Zoom and Slack huddles and Microsoft Teams that give that visual and help make things a little bit easier, even if it isn't quite the same way.

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Marisa Eikenberry
So how can technology help to kind of create a level playing field during one on ones between remote and in-office employees?

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Wayne Turmel
Sure. Well, we have talked a lot on this show about the importance of richness and scope and understanding when you use which right. It's fair to say that coaching should be an extremely rich experience. It doesn't mean you can't send an ad a girl over over slack or something like that. But in general, coaching, requires a little bit more attention.

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Wayne Turmel
And, and so that's part of it. So so the richer technologies are probably helpful. The other thing and not enough coaches do this, I think, is when you're on teams or whatever you're on, is the ability to share data so that you are not just staring at each other's faces, but you're actually looking at numbers and saying, you know, if I say you're not hitting your numbers or you were a little off this month, that's very different than looking at a spreadsheet that shows exactly how much you were off relative to the month before or the last couple of months, and it makes it more real when it's just face to face.

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Wayne Turmel
It's very easy for coaching to become emotional.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Okay.

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Wayne Turmel
And emotional in good ways, but also emotional in ways of becoming defensive or, you know, putting on a front or whatever. And and that's for both the coach and the coach.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Coach, of course.

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Wayne Turmel
The person being coached. Okay.

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Marisa Eikenberry
With that. You know, are there some things that managers can be doing, like to, enhance that a little bit during one on ones.

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And I'm not going to make this whole thing a shameless plug for the new book, the new old book, but in the Long Distance Leader Revised Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership, which is the updated version. One of the things that isn't updated a whole lot is the section on coaching, because it's the same as it's been. It's funny, one of the critiques we got of the book is, well, there's all this stuff about coaching, but it's not specific to remote and hybrid.

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Wayne Turmel
And that is correct, because one of the things that we don't do well enough, even in person, is coaching. And there's no evidence that says we're going to do it better without the visual and approximation cues. And those sorts of things.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
But there are some things that need to happen. And a big one is when you are coaching, you need to check your beliefs because it's very easy to. And this is part of proximity bias. If you see people busily working, you assume that they're always busily working. And that tells you something about that person, right? If you feel positive towards them, you are inclined to cut them slack when something goes wrong because you see them working.

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Wayne Turmel
When you are dealing with somebody who is surrounded by white space and you don't see everything that's going on around them. While we want to assume positive intent.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right.

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Wayne Turmel
We don't always. Because if I've worked with Morris a long enough, there is a part of me that goes, you know what she's like. And and that colors how we approach our coaching. And over time, if we don't check those beliefs, if we don't stop and ask ourselves if the information we're getting or the impression we're getting is accurate, we start to act on those beliefs by default.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Well, we've talked about this in previous episodes too, but because, you know, you can't see somebody, maybe their performance is down this month. And you know, you notice that. So you just assume, oh, they're lazy. But if you had been seeing them you would notice like they're stressed out, they're overworked, they're burned out. They've got something going on at home that's affecting stuff.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And you have no idea if you're not checking in like that.

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Wayne Turmel
Yeah. And so, you know, a coaching conversation actually has several parts. And one of the most important, you just said it and we kind of glossed over that part, okay. Is at the beginning of the conversation when we say, how are you? We made the correct response with the correct response is, oh, I am fine. Let us please get to this meeting that I don't really want to have.

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Wayne Turmel
But you have called.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right?

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Wayne Turmel
Right.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Yeah.

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Wayne Turmel
And, and and so and I'm sure I've said this before because I'm mildly obsessed with it. How are you? Is both a greeting and a request for information. Right. And a good coaching conversation starts with the request for information. Yes. The second thing that the coaching conversation does, and hopefully over time, the person understands that that is a legit request for information, right?

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Wayne Turmel
When I say to you, how are you doing? You are generally pretty forthcoming with me about how are you doing?

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Marisa Eikenberry
I mean, we have that trust established, right? Like, I just I don't have to trust anybody.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. But we have that trust established. I have demonstrated in the past that I am actually willing to listen. I give a hoot. And and so, I mean, we started we start every conversation with how's it going? How you doing? Is, you know, what's going on in your world. But the other thing that a good coaching conversation does, this is different than the sports model coaching that we often think of, where the coach tells you stuff right.

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Marisa Eikenberry


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Wayne Turmel
Nobody sees Phil Jackson. Ask Michael Jordan what's going on out there. You see Phil talking to Jordan right. You have these guys that was maybe the oldest white guy reference I could have made there. But but a good coaching conversation lets the other person speak first. Yeah right. What's going on. What would you like to talk about?

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Wayne Turmel
And the reason is very simple. I can come in saying I need to give Billy Bob feedback on this thing that isn't work, and that's fine, right? Because we need to get his performance up. So I'm going to coach him. But as you alluded to earlier, let's find out what's going on with Billy Bob. And one of the really important things is does Billy Bob know there's a problem?

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Wayne Turmel
That's right. If I say, tell me about your numbers last week, oh, it's no big deal, blah, blah, blah. If I say, tell me about your numbers last month. And Billy Bob goes, oh, God, you wouldn't believe it. It's such a okay. Until he events, he is not going to be able to hear my feedback. If I think that he's in denial, I'm going to give him different feedback than I would if he is guilt ridden and knows that there is a problem, right?

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Wayne Turmel
Because he is guilt ridden and knows that there is a problem, he probably wants to get better. And I am going to approach that coaching conversation different than I will. If he doesn't think there's a problem at all. Well, it's really important for me to know where the coached person is psychologically, mentally in terms of the problem, because that's going to radically dictate how we have that conversation.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, it's interesting that you're saying this too, because it's one of those things that like, I, I mean, I've been working for the Kevin like Burger for ten years, right? And I did not realize that almost every conversation I've had with any manager that I've had has been like that. The one on one started off with, okay, I have some things for you, but let's start with you first.

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Marisa Eikenberry
What do you have for me? And then and sometimes it's the same stuff that's on their list. But it was just, you know, I mean, I have a biweekly meeting with, you know, my manager now, and it's always what's on your list first. And it didn't occur to me until now that it's like, oh, yeah, well, like that let me lead the conversation first for a little bit.

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Wayne Turmel
Well, you know, we both have lists, right? Right. The manager here has a Kevin has a waiting list. Right. These are the things I need to talk to Wayne about. And Wayne has a Kevin list. And it is an actual physical running list that I keep. And if what is on the top of Kevin's list is not what's on the top of mine, I'm going to be responsive to what Kevin's telling me.

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Wayne Turmel
But in the back of my head I'm going, yeah, but what I really want to talk about is right, right, right. Or what I really think is important is this. And I may not be fully in the game.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right. Well, it may be something that's not on Kevin's radar.

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Wayne Turmel
Right. So here we are running radically out of time. And most of what we have talked about is coaching, because coaching is coaching. And the nuances of doing it remotely are important. There not the biggest things in the world, but they matter. The only thing before we wrap up is that in hybrid hybrid coaching, if you've got people couple days in the week, blah blah blah, choose when to do it in person.

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Wayne Turmel
And coaching in person is almost always more valuable than coaching at a distance. So if you can schedule your time and arrange your schedules so that if you are in the office together, that's when that stuff happens.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Right? Have it be as rich as possible. Of course. So Wayne, thank you so much for this. And I really hope that our listeners got a lot out of this. But before we go, the second edition of The Long Distance Leader is now available, and this updated guide is perfect for navigating today's remote and hybrid work environments with new principles and proven strategies.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Kevin and Wayne show you how to lead effectively no matter where your team is located. Don't miss out on the latest insights and exercises designed to boost productivity and morale, and order your copy now! At long distance work life.com/l d l and strengthen your remote leadership skills today. And thank you so much for listening to the long distance work life for Shownotes transcripts and other resources, make sure to visit Long Distance Work life.com and if you haven't yet, subscribe to the show so you don't miss any future episodes.

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Marisa Eikenberry
And while you're there, make sure to give us a rating and review your feedback helps us improve and reach more listeners just like you. And feel free to contact us via email or LinkedIn with the links in our show notes. Let us know you listen to this episode, or suggest a topic for Wayne and I to tackle in a future episode.

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Marisa Eikenberry
We would love to hear from you. Thanks for joining us. And as Wayne likes to say, don't let his weasels get you down.

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Marisa Eikenberry
Hey.

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Marisa Eikenberry
There.

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Marisa Eikenberry
You.