James: Welcome to another episode of the Future of Team podcast. My name is James Giroux, and I am joined, as always, by my lovely co-host Dee Teal. Happy new year, Dee. How are you?
Dee: Happy New Year. I am so well, thank you, and I’m really glad to be here.
James: So we’re recording this Just after New Year’s, obviously, as with the Happy New Year, we’ll be releasing it later on.
So, so don’t get too freaked out if you’re hearing this in June or something and, and you’re like, why are they saying Happy New Year to each other? But one of the great things about the New Year is it’s this opportunity to Reflect, rest, relax, take a break. And Dee, you just were on a bit of a holiday yourself, weren’t you?
A couple of weeks of holiday? Yeah,
Dee: took the opportunity to do a little bit of a road trip from Melbourne to Sydney. And then I drove home via, and spent Christmas with a friend up there. It was great. Visiting some of the old haunts, which was lovely, and then drove back via the coast, which is a little bit more of a scenic route, and had a couple of days at the beach, which is never, you know, never painful when you live in Australia, the country of beaches.
It’s so funny. I was just gonna say,
James: the beaches there, obviously, you get some good beaches, you get some great beaches. But it is such a part of life, having lived there for a few years, you don’t really think about it. Now I’m from Canada originally, I’m back here now, we don’t have beaches, we, we, like, at all.
And it’s just such a culture shift to, to go to a beach and, and sit there and do that. But. Yeah. It sounds like you had a good time.
Dee: It was pretty great. How was yours? Holidays,
James: visiting, you know, family, doing all the things that you do during the new year and holiday season. We had some friends.
We were. Going to spend some time with over new years, but unfortunately one of them caught COVID. So at the very last minute, we ended up with a no plan new years, which for some people, yeah, for some people that’s like a let down. And for people like me who are introverted, it’s like, you see these memes all over like Tik TOK and Instagram stories where it’s like, you know, like the cancellation of plans for the introvert and they’re like doing the little happy dance and all that kind of stuff.
I’m not quite that bad, right? Like I can go out, I can talk to folks, but it is definitely one of those things where, where it takes a lot of energy for me to commit to going somewhere. And funnily enough, that’s probably an interesting segue. Into what we’re going to be talking about this week. Now we had originally planned to do this last time or last episode.
We got our, our, our things mixed up, but we are talking about the art of remote leadership. And I will be the first to put up my hand and say when remote leadership became the thing during the pandemic. I was so happy. I was doing a hybrid thing where I was working two days from home and three days from the office and the back and forth was fine and but it’s a lot of disruption to go from, you know, an office setting back to home setting and having to do all of that sort of like set up tear down every day.
So when, when remote leadership really became the thing I was all for it because of my introvertedness. But We’ve come a little bit of a way from there. Now we we’re all kind of settled into this idea of remote as being like the primary thing, most of us, at least in tech are probably remote first, but we find ourselves in this interesting spot now, at least at the beginning of the new year here in 2024, where conversations are still going on about.
Some companies wanting to bring folks back to the office. We’re not going to talk about that. That’s a whole different thing.
Dee: But
James: if you are doing a remote as a, as a priority for your company or, or you’re, are aiming for remote first, this is a talk where we hope. To kind of cover off some of the things you might want to consider as it relates to the changes that you need to make in your approach to leadership when you are going from maybe a more standard working from the office, that type of environment to a remote environment.
I can’t
Dee: wait to get into it. I know. It’s such a funny thing. I think too, because my history has. prior to, I mean, we sort of think of this as happening because of, or since COVID. Oh, we’re much more thoughtful about this now. And but I’m like, I’ve, the roles that I’ve been in have been remote first for, so we did COVID 2020 for at least four years, but probably six and I think it’s really interesting to kind of hear some of the things that people are struggling with and go, Oh, well, here’s some strategies around that and I’m looking forward to, to digging into that today.
James: Well, I think probably the first question that often will come to people’s minds is, is it. Like how, how is remote leadership different from regular leadership? Cause I know for me, I have my thoughts, I have lots of thoughts on it, but I’m curious Dee like you’ve been doing it a little bit longer than I have.
So, you know, like how is it different or what have you noticed in your time doing remote work? That’s been some of the big differences.
Dee: I’m going to just go right out there and say it as I don’t think it’s different. It depends on which bit of the phrase you focus on, right? If you focus on the remote part, well, obviously there are different, definitely things around being in a remote environment that are going to be different from a practical level.
But when you focus on leadership, what is leadership? It’s, it’s qualities that will inspire or influence people to follow you. That doesn’t change regardless. You know, it’s character. It’s for me, you know, it’s probably character is a, is a big part around that. It’s, it’s all of those elements of what are the things in you that make you a leader or a good leader.
Are those going to be any different in a remote setting than a an in person setting? And for me, the answer is no, if I wouldn’t follow you and I’m sitting next to you in the office, or I wouldn’t feel, or if there are elements around your leadership that make that follow you, that there’s dissonance around it, I would.
I think that would be the same in a remote context. So it’s, for me, it’s just the practical ways that you demonstrate that character, or you demonstrate that trust, or that you, it’s the practical ways that make. remote leadership different, but the leadership part or the way that you are that encourages people to follow you doesn’t change for me.
James: Am
Dee: I right? You’re like, no, you’re completely wrong.
James: I think you’re completely right. Principles are the same, but the tactics are different. One of the things you have said a number of times in our conversations is, is that leadership is intentional. It is not something that happens to you. It is something that you have to be proactive about.
And I mean, it’s the difference really between a bad leader and a great leader is the level of intentionality they take with their approach to leadership. So I think you’re absolutely right. If you are not somebody that people want to work with when you’re in the office together, if they can’t stand being near you or go to lunch with you, right?
If there are things about who you are that make you unsafe or whatever, those kinds of things are probably not going to go away. Just because you’re no longer in physical proximity to each other, right?
Dee: I hear, yeah, exactly, but, and I also hear, but those just feel also like extreme ends of the strip, extreme ends, right?
Or it’s even the sense of if the person that is someone who’s tasked with being your leader doesn’t know how to connect with you, that’s as As big of a challenge to kind of overcome, you know, if they don’t connect with you while sitting next to you, then also going to struggle connecting with you. And, and you know, I think one of those kinds of baseline things about, you know, what makes a leader, let alone what makes a good or great leader is.
Their ability to connect with the people that are leading. And so yeah, so I hear all those things like, Oh, is it unsafe? Yes, absolutely. But it’s like, for that comment, you know, for everybody, what is some of those first things? And that’s one of them was like, how do you connect with people and, and do you see the people that you’re wanting to connect with?
James: The one caveat or like the one, maybe exception that I think might apply here. And I’ll bring it back to me being a ridiculous introvert is energy levels because you potentially could be in a situation where somebody who, for whom going to the office is an energy drain, being at home is an energy recharge, right?
Or they’re, they’re, they’re able to self recharge. And so their ability to actually connect and interact might actually improve. And then on the flip side, those people who are extroverts and need other people or need an environment where there’s other people around in order to be energized are going to suffer.
So you might have a complete dynamic change in your team. That’s
Dee: a whole other element. Yeah, that’s a whole other element that I hadn’t kind of considered around that. I’m an introvert too. I hide it really well, but, but I, yeah, I have my struggles about, you know, Yeah. And, and I’m like, I could be doing this at home, but yeah, no, so I, so I totally get that as well.
That would be an interesting topic of conversation. I don’t know whether it’s for here is, is How do introverted leaders make connections with people? You know, if you’re a leader and your natural tendency is to, you know, draw your energy, you know, on your own, how does, how does, anyway, I don’t know if that’s a, that’s a thing for today, but that would be an interesting deep dive too.
James: I think it speaks to A characteristic of leadership that I think is important for anyone who’s going to be a leader and lead people, which is this idea of self awareness and self understanding, right? Knowing enough about who you are and where your energy comes from or what you need in order to, you know, do your role and, and move forward from that.
And different teams will have different approaches to this. And, and maybe you’re new to leadership personality tests or doing a group. Personality profile with your team is can often be a really pivotal moment for your team as far as getting an understanding of, you know, how you communicate or how you get energy or what your stressor behaviors look like.
But all of that I think is designed around two things that you and I have have talked about before we started this call that we feel are really, really important when it comes to remote leadership and that’s communication, right? Our ability to communicate and our ability to build trust, whether that’s remotely or on site.
And so yeah, so I guess maybe, you know, like, well, personality profiles might be a method or a tool that you can use. And not everyone’s on board with that. Some people don’t like to be typecast into things or, or like be told you’re this, or you’re that I, I spend a lot of time watching Korean dramas, and one of the things Koreans do is they are obsessed with MBTI personality profile files, the Myers-Briggs.
Okay. And like, oh, okay. Yeah. And, and, and so like, you know, oh, you’re a, you’re a T you’re an I, you know, you’re an, you’re an ENTJ or whatever it is, or an INFP or whatever the the thing is, and it’s like, oh, that’s who you are. Which, you know, not everyone buys that. I actually. I can remember a side note.
Dee: I’ve done it. I, yeah, I’ve got mine. I remember what mine is. I’ve read so much that debunks them since then. I’ve got other, like if we were going to do a section on that, I could talk about some of the other ones that I think have more value, but I get it like it’s really, it makes things a lot easier.
Right? Oh, I can put them in a box and say they’re an ISTJ, which is what I am. And then and yeah, that’s it. Great, well then I have all of these expectations about how you’re going to behave and, and I am very skeptical now, but anyway.
James: Which is interesting because like, you know, the, the personality profile thing, the goal I think of it is to unlock communication or unlock trust.
It’s actually a bit of both. So it’s trying to build that connection with people. And that’s, that’s ultimately what as a leader, where I think we would both agree is really valuable in a remote setting, is you as a leader being intentional in how you approach the way your team is going to communicate with each other, the way your team builds trust.
But I want to pause there. So we’ll talk about communication in a second, but I think. You know, you and I have spoken a little bit about this over the last couple of episodes as well as this idea of trust and that trust, building trust in a virtual environment is absolutely mission critical, especially now where we’re in a situation where you could be hiring folks on your team that you never physically meet in person.
Yeah, right. Yeah. Like it is like, I guess there’s a couple of questions I have and maybe D you can take a crack at it. But what do you think are the signals that leaders can be sending to their teams about trust and like, how can leaders communicate what they need in order for what I call the trust account to receive its deposits.
Dee: Well, there’s two ways of looking at this, right? You can either start with an empty account and fill it up and, and, and have a, you know, series of expectations that will fill that bank up, or you can start with a full bank and assume. And start with trust and then have people maintain that account and that, you know, and watch and see how things go, put, create the environment that allows them to keep that bank full and, and address issues when the bank gets diminished, right?
When people make withdrawals. To use that analogy, which actually I think is a really good analogy. My preference is start with trust. Make the bank full. Communicate to the team. You know, we trust you. You’re here. Here’s your equipment. Here is the the outcomes that we expect to see. How you get those outcomes.
Absolutely fine. We’re here to put guardrails. We’re here to kind of talk you through or work how things go. But the difference in the environment when you are starting with a full bank and starting with an empty bank at night and day. And I’ve worked in both environments. And I have to say, I mean, it took me a while in one of my workplaces when I took me a while to figure out why am I so unsettled?
Why am I so irritated every time my manager slides into my DMS? Because every time I was assuming that there was something wrong and I was going to get, My knuckle’s wrapped.
James: Yeah.
Dee: So that sense of when you know that the people who are leading you or the people that you’re reporting to trust you already, you’re not, you don’t have that expectation every time that the conversation is going to be a negative one.
It’s like, it could be that they’re wanting to deliver feedback, but the environment around that before you even start is, is. You’re a hundred percent more respond receptive to hearing what they have to say when you know that they trust you from the out. Whereas if you’re a con, if you’re spending your first six months in your 12 months in your job, having to build up that bank of trust, you’re on the back.
From my perspective, you’re on the back foot already.
James: That is a really interesting way of looking at it because you know, like just thinking back to some of the roles that I’ve had there is. The lip service of, Oh, we hire great people and we trust you to do your job. I say it, but they say it, but they don’t, they don’t mean it.
Or they say it and they do mean it. And like you, I’ve had those experiences too, where, you know, the difference in your team, in the dynamic and the culture, when it starts from trust. And, and when it doesn’t, and that, that concept of starting with the bank account full is a really, really good one for me to take away from this, because I like, if I go into a new role, the first thing I think about is what are the deposits I need to make in order to build trust with my manager?
What do I need to do with my teammates? What do I need to do here and there? And so everything is like, Let me hurry up and get something done so that there’s a deposit in the account. Right? Like, and it’s constantly thinking that way and you’re right. You end up on the back foot right away. And for those of you, not from Australia, being on the back foot is a bit of a yeah,
Dee: it’s, it’s this idea
James: of like being on the defensive.
Right. So it’s
Dee: what the thing, it’s where the risk is, right?
James: Yeah. If
Dee: you start with trust as a leader and a new, in an organization, you’re bringing new people in and you’re starting with trust, the risk is on you.
James: Yeah.
Dee: If you’re the new person and you’re coming in and you’re having to build up an empty bank, the risk is on you.
And I think if you’re a leader and you’re wanting to create an environment where people can do the best work. You take the risk.
James: That’s right. You
Dee: hold that. You create that space so that the people can get in there and, and not have to worry about that whole time of going, am I going to put a foot wrong?
There’s always going to be an element of that when you come into a new, but if you can alleviate that, you’re going to get great work from the get, because you just, because there’s not always that panic of, I’m not doing well here, or I don’t know what I have to do next. It’s like, Hey, you’re okay. You’re going to spend the first month.
We don’t have these expectations on you. You’re fine, which changes everything for a, for a newbie, at least at the beginning of an engagement.
James: And, and, you know, like you think about the, you know, the six month probation period, right. Or the, the three month probation period or whatever, a lot of companies have, you know, before you make that transition from, you know, probate to, you know, actually you’re, you’re in some of that is a legal thing as well.
Right. Like it gives them that legal out. So we need to be cognizant of that, but you know, like, We talked about this in our last chat as well about, you know, even in the interview process, my job is to help you win, right? I want to help you get this job. And when you take that flip approach to, I’m not here to catch you.
Making a mistake. I’m here to give you everything you need so we can make the best possible choice. You can make the best possible choice. I can make the best possible choice and we can figure out if this dynamic is gonna work because you know I’m investing the time in the process to get you here. Like we want this to work.
Yeah. And that whole setting is different. And I think that is foundational and you will hear us talk about trust probably until the cows come home, no matter what the topic happens to be, because it is so foundational to that relationship between a manager and a direct report that it, it creates the conditions for things like better communication or the kind of communication that’s valuable building rapport, right?
Like if, if I am worried. That I haven’t put enough deposits in the account. How am I approaching a one on one conversation? I’m starting from fear. I’m starting on the back foot. I’m starting from worry and anxiety And that’s not a way to build an environment where you have collaboration, where you have, you know, the healthy risk taking or or even the willingness to take ownership of decision making.
Because you, you are operating out of fear. So I think absolutely that that trust and, and so we can look at that. So in a virtual environment, there’s a default level of trust. That’s generally higher than what you would get in an in person environment. When you’re in person, you’re sitting beside someone, you’re looking over their shoulder.
You’re able to see what they’re doing. Right. The kind of, The kind of management you do, at least on a day to day task level is a bit like we all do it, whether we admit it or not, is that micromanaging. Okay. I can see you’re working, right? I can see you’re working. Yeah. Right. I know how many times
Dee: you’ve got up to make coffee,
James: right?
Like those kinds of things you have to put away in remote leadership and that’s actually a really healthy thing for everyone when we’re no longer worried about that. That’s a big deal. So, so we’re, we’re starting from a different level of trust there, but I think I think what can happen though, and, and what we have to be careful of is that if we are not building rapport, if we are not being intentional about our communication and looking for those opportunities, we can actually create.
Isolation amongst our team. That’s a big risk.
Dee: Yeah,
James: I think
Dee: so if you’re thinking about building rapport, because this is another area that I’m quite interested in, and, and can, depending on the people that you’re working with can be quite different. What do you think is some of the first steps?
Principles of building rapport in a remote context.
James: That’s a good one. I, one of the things I did in my last role that I was really happy about was I created a manager readme. That was the first thing I did. And so it was, it was a document that was like. Here’s what my energy level looks like throughout the day, right? If you catch me in the morning, I’m going to be high energy.
I’m going to give you all my attention. I try not to schedule meetings in the afternoon because I’m low energy and you’re not going to get my best. Right. Yeah, I have two kids. So I, at, at, you know, the busing hours, I’m, I’m, Not very fun to be around cause I’m totally distracted. I don’t like it, you know, like, and even little things that, that for me as a manager, I are like signs of respect.
I expect you to show up to a meeting having read the agenda. Right. That’s just a thing that for me shows respect. Right. And I will do that for you. I will come prepared. I will, if you provide something in a meeting, I will show up having read it beforehand. So that I can be productive and we’re not spending the meeting going over the content that you shared ahead of time Like those kind of things
Dee: Yeah, that whole I mean we had we had briefings in one of my roles in the past is that that sense of I am able to be known.
You can know me here and be an open and that I also want to know you. I think one of the things, I think one of the things that is difficult, not difficult with rapport, but one of the things that I see happening is. It’s people going, I want to know enough about you, about your job and how you get done.
But I’m less concerned about the rest of your world. And I think if you’re wanting to build rapport, I think one of the best examples I had of building rapport, it wasn’t actually within my team, it was with a client and I had struggled. He’s a really quiet introverted guy. I did not know how to make that first connection and it was weeks and weeks we’ve been going on.
And then. I was sending an email and I had copied in his boss who happened to be out of office and his boss is an absolute riot. And in his out of office, he had this list of if you need. Such and such, you need to speak to this person and he had basically named his whole team. If you need, if you need this guy, if you need something done with this part of the website, or you want to talk about formula one, this person is the one you need.
And I’m like, formula one, I’ve got a point of connection here. I have a, I have a classic car. I like cars. I watch drive to survive. That’s about the limit of my formula one knowledge. But I had this moment where I could say, I hear, I can talk to you about the formula one. Well, it was on for young and old.
We were sharing photos and it was like, so it’s just that sense of. Making yourself available to be known and being interested in knowing, and it’s not just knowing the work, it’s knowing the person, I think, is some of, and so that sense of building rapport has become a really critical thing in my management practice around where are those, and I’m looking for the hooks all the time, and so when my team says, you know, the other, I’m Project managers that I’m with, but how do you do that day?
Cause I watched my works, you know, with my whip meetings or my standups and they’re like, how do you do that? And I’m like, I’m looking for the hooks. All the time. How do you make those hooks? And you have to be interested. It’s not lip service.
James: I think one of the interesting things that that’s a really important thing.
And for somebody like me, like I’m very tactic oriented. So if I, if I was on a spectrum of, of people in tactic, I will lean very heavily into tactic. Right. And so when I get into meetings, it’s, it’s, it’s business, right? Like I’m, that’s what I’m thinking about. So what I have found for myself. Is creating space in those meetings for people things can go one of two ways.
One, I can get really frustrated with it and just be paying it lip service to try to get it over with and get to the meat of what I want to talk about. Or, I can see it as an opportunity to slow down. And to take that breather and the, the more I’ve matured as a leader, the more I’ve realized it becomes this, this reminder or this cue to me to take off my tactic hat, put on my people hat and, and go, okay, no, I know there’s lots of stuff to talk about, but I will get much more out of my team.
If I invest 15 minutes of this hour long team meeting to actually get to know them and to talk about what they did at the weekend or to do like, personally, I hate icebreakers. Like they just drive me crazy.
Dee: But, but
James: at the same time, I, I recognize the value of them. So it’s like, you know, but find those people that love those and that gives them energy and let them lead that section.
Let them be the one that does that and drives that. Yeah. The thing I’m always careful of is you should never, if something becomes a ritual without thinking or feeling, then it’s time to pause it. Right? So if you’re just paying lip service to a routine or, or a part of something that you’re doing just because it’s what you always do, and it’s not actually serving the purpose that you’ve designed it for, get rid of it or pause it and, you know, come back to it later.
Shift it
Dee: up, change it up, change it up, find some other way of actually getting that result because that top 15 minutes and I mean, we, I’ve worked quite a bit in agile and a lot of those have funny little ceremonies and stuff that they, you know, that, Geared towards kind of getting some of those results.
And I think you’re on the nail when you say, if it’s getting stale, then shift it up so that you’re focusing on the results and not on the, the actual process itself.
James: Yep. And and again, we’re talking about building rapport. We’re talking about approachability and you as a leader have to be willing to engage.
So if, if you’re going into something and there’s an icebreaker. Like, I don’t like icebreakers, but I am going to play at 110%. When we are doing the icebreaker, even though I don’t like them because I have to do that as the leader and I need to be willing to be open and vulnerable and approachable and do that and, and take that on.
So that’s why like, you know, sometimes I get nervous when I mentioned my love of K dramas or like how into K pop I am and things like that because I’m nervous about how people are going to receive that. Cause they’re going to, it doesn’t relate to me at all, but that’s a part of my story that hopefully opens up an opportunity for you to talk about.
Yeah. You’re passionate about like, right. Well, yeah,
Dee: I can talk about my, my, my classic car or the, I, I build tiny one of the hangover hobbies that I had from COVID when we were spent, you know, in Melbourne spent all of this time inside was building these model kits. You know, back in the day, I remember my brother’s building my brother building, you know, model planes or whatever.
I build little tiny houses that are like one 24 scale. And I’m like, that’s kind of a weird thing. And I call it my ridiculous hobby. And I’ve had so many people call me out going, it’s not ridiculous. Dina, how awesome. But you know, I’m running out of room now to start to show off these ridiculous things.
But you know, it’s that sense of, being known. And I think as leaders, I’ve seen so many times where there’s this artificial perspex wall in between the leader and the team’s like, oh, I’m the leader. I have to preserve this kind of professional distance. I think you have to be respectful and create an environment where people kind of respect that position.
But you, if you were wanting to build trust and building rapport and we’re talking about this, what does it mean to do remote leadership? Well, you have to be ready to be known. You have to be open enough to be known and you have to be open to know. The people that you’re working with because it isn’t just about the work and I’m not talking about this artificial sense of what we’re creating a family.
I don’t I think workplaces and workplaces and they should have sensible boundaries around them. But I think you’re spending. I saw some graphs recently. About, you know, the kind of time with people. That you spent how much time and across your lifetime and you know, and where are you on this timeline now?
How much time left do you have with your parents or with your kids before they leave home? And one of them was, how much time do you have with your workplace? And it was like, you know, of course the scale on that is higher than the time that you have left or the number of visits you have left with your parents.
So what do you do? And the thing that struck me is what am I doing about My workplace and the people that I’m working with and and making that an environment that I want to work in, which is probably a separate topic, but it is that sense of creating an environment that people want to be in that people are going to be productive and it’s.
about being vulnerable and allowing people to know you, I think is probably one of the really critical things to this element that we’re talking about. So to
James: give people a really practical sense of, you know, this, like we’ve, we’ve talked a lot about being vulnerable, about being approachable and, and some, some of that kind of stuff, but it comes down to you know, the difference of being in person and being remote in person, someone can look over my shoulder and see the TikTok video that I’m playing, right?
Or they can see me at lunch, you know, knitting at whatever the project is I’m doing or looking at a craft thing or, you know, whatever it is that I’m into or having that sport conversation, you know, about you know, the Essendon Bombers because they are the only Australian rules football team that anyone should pay attention to.
Oh my God.
Dee: Could you have picked any other team? Anyway, carry on. I’m not an Aussie rules girl. If we’re talking sport, I’m always going to be talking about the rugby. But but, but I hear what you’re saying, right? What are the practical elements around how, you know, how to build that? But those are things,
James: those are things you capture.
In in presence in people’s presence that you as a leader have to figure out how to be intentional about when you’re remote. Those things don’t come across the same way. So you know, could be something as change your virtual background to a sport ball team. You know, that you’re into whatever that sport ball is, right?
Basketball, ice hockey, you know, whatever it could be.
Dee: Fencing. Fencing,
James: right? Or, or, you know, find ways to create those moments of against each other virtually that allow for those conversations to happen a bit more naturally, right? Like if you always are having to create those things and force people to, to talk, sometimes that can come off wrong as well.
Right. But if it can be a little bit more natural, you know, like that’s kind of fun. I love it when what was one thing we did We did think it was at Envato when I was there and we had a team kind of distributed around the world and we did like, like MTV cribs. But it was like Envato Cribs.
I do not
Dee: know what that is. MTV Cribs is this
James: TV show where celebrities would rent out homes and pretend that they lived there. And then they would invite MTV in to go through the house and show like, you know, like this is my living room, this is my bedroom, blah, blah, blah. And so they did this thing, you know, Envato Cribs, where, where they do these virtual, you know, Tours of people’s houses and where they live, right?
And it’s kind of neat, but what’s actually neat is not necessarily seeing somebody’s bedroom or seeing somebody’s living room But it’s looking at the art that they have on their walls or the little nicknames and tchotchkes They have around or the the sport You know, team that they are, are for, right.
Or the, the, the size of the barbecue that they have in their backyard. Think those kinds of things that allow you to pick up a little bit more of who they are or, you know, like in, in the case of one person who did it, they live on a farm in Utah. And you know, like they raise chickens and they do all these different kinds of things.
Like, like those are the kinds of things where you’re like, okay, there’s more to you than just what I see. You know on on the screen and that’s that’s that part of of building rapport and and you know growing as a leader But again you as the leader you have to lead you have to be intentional and do it
Dee: and participate in that It’s like it’s all very well to go.
Hey, we’re going to do this thing but if the lead is not also being involved in it, you’re, you’re creating that again, that artificial sense of distance. I think, I mean, there’s a bunch of tools and stuff that I think of some of the things that we’ve done. We didn’t do you know, human made cribs, but we would do intro videos.
Whenever we did get everybody together, we would all, one of the features of our annual retreat every year was that we would do a five minute lightning talk where you, and you could talk about anything. And so I did one on health plants one year. I did one on my ridiculous car one year. I did one on the tiny houses that I build one year, you know, it’s like, And we did them virtually as well.
So if you’re not in the space where you, as, as your team are getting together, you know, every so often, which I do highly recommend I appreciate that that’s not always accessible for everybody, but can you recreate some of those moments and doing lightning talks where I go, Hey, we’re going to set aside some time.
And I think this is the thing is that taking those opportunities to set aside time in the work week, maybe not every work week, but starting To actually do things that are not focused on the work. One of the things that we’ve just started doing with our team, we, we would do trivia once a fortnight or once a month and you know, just set up a cahoot and, and whoever was choosing to do trivia that week would create the, create, we had, we had some wild themed trivia night.
somebody did on the apocalypse. I think there was an apocalyptic news story and he’s like, let’s do trivia on the apocalypse. I was, it was, it was utter nonsense. And it was
James: it’s brilliant,
Dee: but he was, it was basically just taking apocalyptic stories out of the news and writing, you know, nobody got any of the questions right.
But it just created the sense of, but we got a sense of who this person is, that he’s just got this wild, crazy sense of humor. I mean, the other thing, some of the other things that we do, we play Scribblio. Scribble? Scribble? Or there’s a, where you’re basically playing hangman crossed with depictionary.
Where, where you’re sitting there remotely and you’ve got 30 seconds or a minute to draw something and the team has to get what you drew. Guess what you drew? It’s though, it’s funny isn’t it? But it’s those ridiculous moments where there’s glue or where there’s oil on the dynamic within the team. And so, I know you talked about the, the icebreakers and I was in charge of icebreakers for, you know, our, one of our regional meetings where the, where the APAC team would get together and I had this document with, you know, A couple of hundred different icebreakers and you would kind of pull one and but it was fascinating to see.
And you know, there was always a grumble. There was always the introverts going, Oh, I have to do this. But when everybody participated, you were getting the sense of who are the people that you’re working
James: with.
Dee: And it was, and it’s absolutely makes all the difference. So there are so many ways, I mean, you can Google and there are so many different resources out there for different things to try, but it’s the try and experiment.
But be focused on that goal of what I’m trying to do here is put oil in between the gears and, and, and just moving towards that sense of, and I think for me, the critical thing, because again, we’re talking about remote leadership is, How you approach that and how you participate in that is one of the keys around creating that space where people will go, I respect this person.
They are one of us, you know, they have this role. I respect that role, but they’re interested in me that, and they, you know, I can see things about them that is not just, you’re my boss. And and it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, Those are some of the things that keep putting more of those deposits in the bank on both sides.
James: Well, I want to end it there. We’re gonna move on to a new segment. We’re gonna try this thing out in the podcast where we have like some of our main topic and then we do the secondary segment where we Do something different. And so this one, we’re going to keep it a little bit connected, but it’s, it’s a segment called toolbox talk and the idea here, we’re talking about remote leadership.
And so I thought, well, what are some of those tools out there to help leaders navigate remote leadership better? And we’re going to talk about a couple of different things. We’ll talk about technology toolbox, and then we’re going to talk about a teaming toolbox. So I’m curious D what your technology toolbox looks like when it comes to remote leadership?
Dee: Zoom, zoom, zoom. I haven’t used Ms teams or, or some of those other extensions out there, but somewhere where there is. The capacity to have asynchronous conversation.
James: Mm.
Dee: I think I, I think most people would say that that’s mission critical in any kind of remote environment, because you can’t always rely on people actually being in the same place.
And so I just said that, but what I, I said Zoom, but what I actually meant was Slack. I was Slack, picturing Slack in my head. Mm-Hmm. . And then it was, zoom was the word that came out because that’s what I’m looking at on my screen. But yeah, so Slack, obviously video comms as well because there are those moments when you want to try and create that sense of we are all in the same place when you are wanting to do similar stuff, but there are additions and things you can add.
To slack like donut where you’re getting a, you know, kind of randomly generated meeting suggestion every couple of weeks where you’ve got opportunity, you know, it says, Hi, I’m just going to throw D you and James in a room. You’ve got 30 minutes to talk and you can talk about anything. Just the sense of creating spaces where people can.
Meet each other that isn’t specific to the work. I see. You’re wagging your finger there. What? You had a thought. What’s your thought?
James: I just think that’s a brilliant idea. I used to do that like myself, right? Like I would go randomly to different people across the company and say, Hey, let’s just have a one-on-one.
Right? Like, I wanna know more about you. I wanna know more More about what you’re working on. Yeah. Right. Like, I can tell you a little bit about me because when you are working remote. You don’t often know who’s doing what, where, when, and why especially when you’re a new starter. And so you need to figure out how to have those conversations and build that Rolodex of, of the team in your head.
Ah, I love that. Yeah. Ah, so that’s a good, so it’s called Donut.
Dee: Donut. Yeah. So that’s an addition that you can put into Slack and it manages all of that for you. It can also do, I mean, we did some funny things. I’m not sure quite how it happened, I think, but there’s a newspaper or a, it’s not really a paper actually, cause it’s online, but there’s a publication in New Zealand called stuff, stuff.
co. nz and they do a daily quiz. And for, for a season, it lasted for a good couple of months, I would post the stuff quiz and then everybody who was interested in playing along would do the quiz and then post their score and we would gripe about which, you know, I had one person at one point come up and say, Oh, it’s very New Zealand focused.
And I was like, Yeah, and it’s a New Zealand publication, but it’s so funny because they’re just so used to the privilege of everything being American, everything we consume being American, and you can’t, I’m like, hello, we’re in a remote workplace, you’re getting to see culture from somewhere else. And you know, you can’t win the quiz because you don’t know what color the 20 bill is.
I mean, I think this is hysterical. So, so but there are so many different little elements that you can pull into something like Slack that kind of creates those spaces, whether it’s synchronously or, or asynchronously, it’s just not always. All about the work.
James: I love that. As far as technology goes slack.
I mean, that’s that’s the king I think for for a lot of folks and and the extensibility of it is what makes it good. I one of the One of the things from a technology point of view that i’m always cautious of is forcing technology on teams or or or technology becoming Existing The instead of right instead of doing this with so and so I’m going to use this so I don’t actually have to engage with the I can use the technology to, to solve that problem.
I see, I see this a lot in employee engagement, right? Where you have people, teams that are, you know, they want data. They want to know how everybody’s feeling about their work. And so they might introduce a system where every Friday you have to fill in a scorecard of how you’re feeling about your work, right?
Or, or, you know, every, every month you’ve got to do an engagement survey, right? Like an, and, or you’ve got to do five or three different high fives to folks. Right. And, and, and they force you to do it and you can’t actually, you know, like they give you reminders if you don’t do it. And your, your manager gets a report.
If you don’t, you don’t fill in this, the scorecard kind of thing to me. I understand the positive intention of those kinds of tools, right? Where the goal is to help keep track of people. And so nobody falls through the cracks or things, things are going well. When they are a replacement for actual connection and a replacement for actual interaction, where you as an individual or as a manager are doing that interacting with your team.
I don’t know that that’s necessarily the best. I would say find a balance of that, right? Because again, like we were talking about with icebreakers or rituals or, or ceremonies,if they become too, you know, mundane or like we’re, you know, we’re just doing them because that’s what we’ve always done, then they’ve lost the intentionality.
They’ve lost the outcome around what they’re doing.
Dee: Well, they just used the exact same word that I was going to sort of go. Come back with is what are the outcomes that you’re actually after? Because we get so focused on the output or we get that, hang on. This is not achieving the goals that we want anymore.
And I’ve been on the subject end of all of those surveys. And they, we use, and they were instituted to solve a problem. It’s like when, when our weekly meeting was turning into just a report on the work that we were doing. It’s like, oh, can we capture that information, that work in progress some other way?
Okay, we’ll put it into, you know, a form or a workflow in Slack and gather that data that way. And then we can focus on other things in the course. And, and so the form became redundant because people get completely blind to it. And it’s like, ah, how do we, so it’s this con you have to be in this constant state of what are the outcomes, how are we going to achieve those outcomes?
It’s not just setting it and forgetting it. It’s always been on top of kind of monitoring how those.
James: That’s exactly right one of the I heard this at a leadership conference once this concept that vision leaks, right that vision Vision is a leaky bucket, right or it’s a holy bucket And so you pour vision into that bucket, but it’s always going to fall out the bottom Which means you’ve always got to be refilling that bucket.
Yeah, and when it comes to things like You know, hey, we we use a form to do These weekly updates because it frees up our time to have You More valuable conversations when we’re together, right? So we’re not doing three meetings. We’re only doing one. You’ve got to go back and remind people. About that because the value of that that reasoning will leak out over time.
Yeah. So yeah. Oh
Dee: good catch. Yeah That is cool
James: Well, we’re not gonna we’re not gonna spend too much more time because we’re already at like almost an hour on this call Oh, yeah, I have to go back. I have to go to work But we’ll we’ll end maybe with a couple just a couple of teaming toolboxes that you may or may not know about That I I wrote down here.
There’s the atlassian playbook which I highly recommend if you’re an agile team, especially the lasting playbook is fantastic. And if you’re not as a, as a leader looking for ideas on how to start different types of conversations with your team or. Increase that kind of affinity or you know, like I guess presence with your team.
That’s, that’s a great place to start. And we’re starting to roll some out ourselves with the future of team toolkit, so you can do things like team norms and ways of working. And there’s other little workshop things that you can throw in there as well. So definitely check those out. Dee, thank you very much.
What a, this was a good chat. Yeah, this is
Dee: my favorite thing to do on a Friday morning.
James: Well for everyone, thank you. This has been not so brief talk on the art of remote leadership. Hopefully you got something out of it. We talk a lot again about intentionality, about starting with trust, about having a trust account that starts full rather than empty.
Yeah. And Yeah, lots, lots of good things. I have no idea what we’re going to talk about next week, but we will, we will talk about something fun. But if you are enjoying these, we would love your comments. We would love to hear your thoughts. Find us on Twitter, find us on wherever we’re doing the socials, Mastodon, I’m not on Mastodon.
Are you on Mastodon Dee? I don’t know. I am. I’m on X. So that’s where I live. But we would love, we would love to have you participate. And if you are somebody who is passionate about this kind of stuff and you would like to join us for a conversation, you know, we would love to have you on as well. We talk about all these kinds of things and we are going to keep talking about them because as I said, vision leaks.
So you got to keep refilling that bucket. Thanks everyone. Have a great
Dee: week. Thanks. Thanks James. Goodbye.