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Brandon Laws: The world that we live in right now, the technology, is so fascinating where people are working in distributed workforces. They’re working from home and I think we’re only going to see more and more of that. The challenge that I see with it is how do you coach and lead people from afar. What’s your perspective on that?
Suzi Wear: I agree with you. It’s definitely not going to be decreasing in the near future. It’s only going to become more of a prevalent thing where people are working remotely and not at a centralized location. So I think there are two ways to look at it. There are teams that are remote and then there are individuals who are working in their home office. So there are obviously culture, workplace implications around that and then also individual performance, results, implications to that. So I think you need to look at it in both of those ways.
Brandon Laws: Has anything changed about the way we’re leading people? So like if – let’s say I’m leading a team that’s in my same office. Is there anything different about leadership when you have a bunch of people working next to you versus OK, I’m coaching and leading people that are in 10 different cities across the United States? Is anything about leadership different?
Suzi Wear: Yes. I think you actually have to work harder.
Brandon Laws: Yeah.
Suzi Wear: You have to leverage technology like you alluded to earlier. So the benefit of having people in close proximity is that there are conversations that are going on all the time and people are gleaning information about what’s going on in the organization. They’re leveraging each other for expertise and support and we forget sometimes that the folks who are not physically in the office are not getting that same benefit. So they’re not getting the knowledge-sharing. They’re also not necessarily feeling the social connection and if that’s really important to someone and their motivation, then we have to look at alternate ways to include them and engage them. So it is the leader’s responsibility. So the person who is supervising those folks to work even harder at engaging them. So that’s where the technology, like the video chat and meetings, are really, really important because communication is not just verbal. It’s a large part non-verbal and it’s hard to understand others and what they need and how to best communicate with them if we can’t see them.
Brandon Laws: Exactly. I think the connectedness is really important to like see somebody and what was interesting about that, yesterday we had one of our culture meetings with the XCITE team and most people are here in the office. But we have several XCITE members that are remote. So we started offering this GoToMeeting option where we broadcasted via webcam, have a microphone sit on the table and they can broadcast webcam too. But I remember getting a note back from one of our XCITE members Michelle and she’s like, “Thank you for including me. It was nice just to be part of the meeting and to see you.” I think in this topic, with leading people, it really – with the technology, there’s no excuse anymore. We can coach and lead people using the tools. We just have to be comfortable with using video. I think it really does come down to the video.
Suzi Wear: Yeah, video and audio.
Brandon Laws: Yeah, for sure.
Suzi Wear: The full experience. Yeah, and I think this is where the meeting management skills and process are really important, whether it’s a one-on-one meeting talking about performance and progress or development or even a company meeting. So rolling out a new product launch or discussing company financials or training. So I think the important things to remember are that we have to figure out how to engage those folks and pull them into the conversation versus just having them listening in. So that is how you structure those meetings. So giving those folks something to prepare and giving them the time and space during that meeting to participate is really important.
Brandon Laws: Talk about on a one-on-one basis. How do you make sure that you’re constantly building trust and including them in the culture when it’s a remote workforce?
Suzi Wear: Yeah. So in a one-on-one meeting, having a process that’s baked where the employee knows OK, here’s what I’m going to come prepared to talk about and maybe having a plan that you’re referencing as well as seeing someone’s face is really important. I think the positive feedback and recognition is really important for leaders with their one-on-one direct reports. So sending thank-you notes, sending company swag in the mail to these folks, to help them feel valued and connected is one way. On the meeting side of things, there are fun things you can do to engage folks. So having some game that everybody participates in. We’ve leveraged the Kahoot! App to create a game and it doesn’t matter where you are. If you have a phone, you can participate in that game or having people share a success at that meeting so that others can learn OK, these are what these people are doing and adding value or even something as trivial as sharing a favorite recipe. So that’s a way to again pull people in the conversation and engage them.
Brandon Laws: So I think the bottom line is, just to wrap up this conversation, I think the fundamentals of leadership have not changed. It’s the delivery of it.
Suzi Wear: Yes, and I think even working harder at making sure that you have frequent interactions and leveraging video is really important.