Author: Elaine Morris Palmer


Reposted from Forbes.com

WORKING REMOTE|31,081 views|Mar 10, 2020,09:52am EDT

Kevin Kruse Contributor Careers CEO of LEADx and author of Great Leaders Have No Rules

Managing remote employees has quickly become a common reality.
Managing remote employees has quickly become a common reality. GETTY

In the wake of the coronavirus and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommendation for businesses to consider “social containment” strategies, more and more companies are shifting to telework (i.e., work from home). Here are six tips to consider as you shift to a remote-first work culture. 

TIP #1: Get 3 Agreements

The most important thing you need to do as a remote team leader is to get agreement (i.e., set expectations) on three things. People feel far away from each not because of the number of physical miles, but rather by the amount of time—the delay—it takes to get answer from someone. People feel “close” when communication is predictable—not necessarily fast, just predictable. 

So the three agreements are:  

  • What are the normal working hours for the team? When will the workday begin, and when will it end?
  • How long will it take to get back to each other? If we reach out with a question, should I expect an answer immediately? Within an hour? By the end of the day? And will this change based on communication channel? Is it OK to respond to internal emails by the end of the day, but if I call you it means it’s urgent and you should pick or call me back as soon as possible?
  • How will we notify each other when will be unavailable and unable to meet these expectations (e.g., out at a doctor’s appointment)? Will we just let the boss know? Or do we send a team email? Or use a shared calendar?

TIP #2: Establish a Cadence of Communication

As goes communication, goes the team. This is true on all teams, but is especially important when leading a remote team. A cadence we use at LEADx—and one that has worked for my previous companies over the years—has three components:Today In: Careers

  • Weekly one-on-one meetings. On my calendar “Mondays Are For Meetings” and every direct report has 30-minutes with me to build our relationship, ask questions, give ideas, and to review priorities.
  • WAR meeting. A Weekly Action Review (WAR) with your direct reports should take no longer than 30-50 minutes. It’s an opportunity for everyone to share sync up on their weekly priorities, problems, and data.
  • End-of-Day Check-in. At the end of each day, every team member shares a list of things they completed that day. At LEADx we happen to use the software Basecamp to help us manage our projects and teams, and it automatically sends a daily reminder to report it on our completed tasks. This however could just as easily be done via email.

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TIP #3: Establish a Video-First Culture

“Video-first” is an organizational communication strategy that places priority on video conferencing tools, as opposed to audio-only conference calls. Whether having a one-on-one meeting or a team meeting, the benefits of video-first practice include:

  • Ability to use and observe non-verbal communication
  • Encourages people to participate in meetings from a professional, quiet location (as opposed to just dialing-in-and-muting while driving in the car)
  • Encourages people to get dressed in the morning!

TIP #4: Keep It Personal

Relationships at work are critical to a high performing team. The classic Gallup Q12 survey item, “I have a best friend at work” illustrates the power of workplace friendships on employee engagement. And personal relationships go a long way to building trust and reducing unproductive conflict. In a traditional office, water cooler chitchat and lunch time conversation happens naturally. Here are some practical tips for keeping remote teams fun and personal:

  • Use the first few minutes of your one-on-one meetings to ask about their weekend, or similar personal interest.
  • At the beginning of your weekly WAR meeting have everyone spend 20-30 seconds sharing, “what was the best part of your weekend?” Or, “what’s going on good in your world these days?”
  • Create an online area (e.g., Slack channel, Basecamp chat, etc.) to discuss things like sports, movies, or even a monthly online book club.
  • Create an online area, or group email, where people can share photos of their pets, or from recent vacations, holidays, or other events
  • Don’t forget to recognize team members for their effort and achievements. Share to the whole team positive feedback from customers, or internal customers. 

TIP #5: Invest (a Little) In Tools & Tech

Any workplace can survive a one or two-week work-from-home experiment; it’s not much different than an employee taking a vacation or sick time. But if you expect your team members to work for several months and keep their normal productivity, then you should be prepared to make at least a minimal investment in hardware and software. Consider:

  • The basics: high speed WiFi, good ergonomic chair, external keyboard, mouse, and monitor for their laptop or tablet.
  • For video-conferencing software consider many free or low-cost options to start: Zoom, Skype, Microsoft Teams. 
  • For teaming and project management software consider: Basecamp, Asana, Wrike, Monday.

TIP #6: Consider Personalities

Great leaders individualize their approach to leadership and take the time to truly understand what motivates and challenges each team member. Using any of the popular behavioral assessments you can understand who on your team might have an easier or harder time with a work from home situation.

  • Everything DiSC—your team members who have primarily an Influence or Steadiness style are more social than others and may miss the daily interpersonal connections that happen in an office. Your Dominant team members, while needing less social interaction, might struggle with productivity without the structure of the office. Your Conscientious types will make the transition most easily.
  • EQ-I 2.0—Using the Emotional Quotient Inventory you may want to provide extra assistance to those who are lower on the scales of impulse control, flexibility, and stress tolerance.
  • CliftonStrengths (formerly Clifton StrengthsFinder)—those on your team who have strengths from the Relationship Building domain (e.g., connectedness, developer, includer, relator) may need extra support while working alone remotely. Your team members who have strengths primarily from the Executing domain (e.g., discipline, focus, responsibility, achiever) will likely make the transition with little trouble.

Advantages of Adapting to Remote Management

The good news about adapting to the remote workforce? You’re adopting a trend employees already favor. In an International Workplace Group survey, 74 percent of respondents described flexible working as “the new normal.” Further, “80 percent of workers in the U.S. would choose a job which offered flexible working over a job that didn’t.”

So, while you can and should hope that the coronavirus is curtailed, remote workers are a new reality. No matter the health crisis, you can be sure that in the long-term you’re going to need to know how to effectively lead remote employees.

—

Kevin Kruse is the CEO of LEADx. LEADx offers its video training program, How To Manage Remote Employees, at no cost, to help leaders in this difficult time. Organizations are free to distribute this 30-minute video program to all of their employees, without restrictions.

 


WORK FRIEND Reposted from the NY Times By Caity Weaver January 29, 2020

How much support are employees owed? Plus: mistrusting trustees, and a work flow issue.

Around a month and a half ago, one of my mentors passed away unexpectedly. He was a former boss of mine, but also a friend, and the most supportive person in the world. He was one of the few people in my life who supported me 100 percent.

My current boss knows what I’m going through, but seems completely uninterested in supporting me through this very painful moment. He doesn’t say a word to me in person, and only talks to me through work chat to ask about upcoming tasks. I’ve told him what I’m dealing with, and he hasn’t given me much of a response aside from “I’m sorry, dude.” This is made a thousand times worse because we sit right next to each other. I’ve tried to spend as much time as possible working from home in order to avoid this anguishing office environment, but he chided me for “abusing work-from-home privileges.”

There’s a massive hole in my heart, and his complete neglect for my feelings is tearing me apart. I lost what was probably the best boss in the world, and instead of feeling supported in my office, I feel cold and isolated. Every single day in the office feels like a poisonous dagger in my heart. Nobody likes feeling ignored, but this feels so powerfully suffocating emotionally. What’s the best way to confront this? Do I need to find a new job, or is there some other way to ease all this anguish?

— Anonymous

Before doing anything else: Schedule an appointment with a therapist. Neither your boss nor your newspaper columnist is a viable substitute for a mental health care professional. Exploring your distress with a trained guide could help you recalibrate in the wake of this death. PsychologyToday.com and other sites have therapist search tools that allow you to filter by factors like location, insurance and specialization. Select “grief.”

Few environments are less conducive to grieving than the average American office, devoid of privacy and irradiated with fluorescent lighting. We do not have good norms for grieving at work. In fact, since the practice of wearing mourning garb for prolonged periods fell out of favor around World War I, we have not really had any norms for grieving anywhere. Today, employees are lucky if we receive three paid days off for the death of an immediate family member, after which we are gently expected to return to work and make our colleagues uncomfortable for the foreseeable future. (Is it O.K. yet to instant message him office gossip? Or is he still upset that his sister died?) Grief is like an injury; workplaces should make more room for it. Of course, they should also offer good parental leave. It’s all mostly dreams at this point.

It can be a source of great distress — and stress — to not feel supported by your boss. But it sounds like you’re expecting a lot from this man, and resenting him for a reasonably professional reaction to the news that an employee’s former boss died several weeks ago. (Of course, while emotional support peaks in the immediate aftermath of an event and dwindles over time, grief is not necessarily linear.) Your high-key reaction to his low-key reaction may be making your boss apprehensive to get personal with you, creating a cycle of perpetual dissatisfaction for both.

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The only person you should rely on to support you 100 percent is you. Your boss’s job is not to offer you unconditional comfort and encouragement; it’s to make sure you’re doing your job, which is to perform work tasks the way he expects. If you can’t, that’s on you to manage by, for instance, going to therapy or seeking out a grief support group. You cannot make your emotional labor a collaborative project with co-workers.

If you truly feel your workplace is cold to the degree that you can no longer handle being present, look for a new job. If you don’t want to leave, you should discuss with a therapist how to communicate with your boss before he decides independently it would be best for you to go.

I work for a tiny nonprofit. I love my job, my supervisor and the rest of our team, but I hate the very “engaged” board of trustees. They frequently interfere with my work, upset our partners and disregard the staff.

When I was hired two years ago, I made it clear to the board that I was interested in eventually pursuing a graduate degree. It looks like I’ll be doing that next fall, pending acceptance to a program, which I’ll find out in the spring. I’ve already given my supervisor a heads-up that I was sending in applications, and he was supportive. I’m nervous that if I let them know before I hear back from the programs and then don’t get in, they might end my contract anyway. If I wait too long to tell them, I’ll put my organization into a tough spot for hiring my replacement, Either way, they could make my last months with this organization miserable. What do I owe the board and my team?

— Anonymous

This is the beauty of supervisors: They run interference with scary people in exchange for better titles and salaries than their subordinates. It’s easy to prioritize an underresourced workplace’s interests over your own, especially if you admire its purpose. Work, however, will not reciprocate selflessness. It will become accustomed to it. You owe only your agreed-upon terms of notice. (Maybe your contract requires two weeks in exchange for paying out unused vacation?) It was considerate to loop your supervisor in early. Since you two have a good relationship, keep him updated. He can worry about what, when and how to tell the board.

I’m a 70-year-old man who is happy to still be employed and evolving. Almost all my co-workers are much younger than I. We have a great relationship. I enjoy (most of) their conversations and look forward to work each day.

Just one concern: Two women tell us each month when they are on their period or when it is approaching. I don’t know what to say or do when they tell me this. I never worked with other women who made their periods public.

What, if anything, should I say when my co-workers announce they’re on their period?

— Anonymous

Be grateful you are not on your period and say nothing.

Caity Weaver is a writer for the Styles section and The New York Times Magazine. Write to her at workfriend@nytimes.com.

 

Current: Forbes list of top earning actresses


The world’s 10 highest-paid actresses collectively earned about $315 million between June 1, 2018, and June 1, 2019, before fees and taxes. That’s up 69% since last year, but still far less than the almost $600 million the top 10 leading men pulled in. If these business-focused actresses have their way, that disparity won’t last forever.