Episode 191: Career Advancement Best Practices in the Age of Remote, Hybrid Work

Welcome to the Workplace, a podcast by Cal Chamber. I'm Matthew Roberts, Associate General Counsel at the California Chamber of Commerce. Well, listeners, some might say it's been a bit of a dark and dreary start to 2024. We're hearing more and more about layoffs and there is definitely an uptick in the number of questions involving termination issues coming into the Cal Chambers helpline staff that, as you know, I manage. Many of you are also no doubt aware of news about layoffs, especially hitting the tech industry hard. Speaking of layoff news, recently an article in the Wall Street Journal caught my eye because the headline was remote Workers bear the brunt when Layoffs Hit. So I thought to myself, huh, what's going on here? Since for the last four years we were all told, remote work is the new normal, it's here to stay. So the minute I saw this reporting, I thought, hey, this might be a great topic to delve into here on the podcast. So joining us today as a special guest, and I am telling you all this is a very special treat, is Nick Warner, a recognized expert on leadership and business success. Nick is a consultant and coach who has helped both individuals and organizations navigate through the tricky waters of change to maximize success. He is also a veteran podcaster as he is the host of Together at the Top, a great podcast that profiles business leaders from a multitude of backgrounds and their path to success. Welcome to our podcast, Nick.

Thanks Matt. Appreciate the setup.

So Nick, I gave a very, very quick summary of your current consulting work in your podcast, but I think it's really going to be beneficial for our listeners to know a bit more about the history and the expertise that you bring from your career and your passion for helping people reach their most important goals. So provide some more info about what you've done throughout your career and where you're coming from today.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity. I started my career as a Sacramento based lobbyist and I evolved into a strategic business consultant or business coach over 25 years. As I grew my business and added top talent and practitioners to my team, it allowed me to elevate and evolve into gen as a general business advisor and coach for most of my clients. I was really fortunate to work deep inside a lot of businesses and government agencies at really all levels and be able to be a successful business owner at the same time. For 25 years. Let's just say I've seen some things and those things have allowed me to partner with others and to really supercharge their operations. So now as a business coach. I work with motivated professionals really at all levels to find the highest level confluence of what they want in their life and their career. I specialize in advanced professional development, advanced executive development, and high performance leadership team training. I work with owners and executives and I'm often on site with their leadership teams. I really appreciate you mentioning the podcast. That's fun for me together at the top. Thanks for mentioning that. I host a monthly business podcast and we interview leaders like you said, emerging leaders across industries. And for me, podcasting allows me to supercharge my learning while allowing others to follow on that same pursuit. So simply put, my job as a business coach is to add value and to improve your situation. So I strive also for continual learning and to surround myself with smart, motivated and really open minded professionals. For that reason I'm discerning who I work with and in case you can't tell, I really love what I do. I'm kind of a geek for it and I'm really grateful to be in a position to help.

Awesome. Nick, I've seen some things Tagline really applies to several of us who get the pleasure of having businesses as clients. I was in private practice for about a decade before I joined the Chamber and you do you see some things. And the things that we see bring a lot of value to what we then tell clients into the future because we give the practical examples. And a lot of people who listen to the podcast here know that I am pretty geeky about this employment loss stuff as well too. So I think we're gonna make quite a pair for this episode. So let's get back to that article because I think the experience that you just put out there for us is really relevant to what this article is talking about. So it discusses data from an organization called Live Data Technologies. It indicates that workers who log in from home for work all five days of the week were about a third more likely to be laid off last year than their peers who are in the office for at least some portion of the work week. Now, the analysis showed 10% of fully remote workers were laid off last year, compared with 7% of those who worked in an office full time on a hybrid basis. So clearly there's something there to the idea that if you're fully remote, you may be more at risk of being laid off. So Nick, really, what's your hot take on this? Why do you think a manager might be more likely to lay someone off who works remotely rather than an employee who's in the office, at least on a part time basis.

I'll start with Simon Sinek from the book Leaders Eat Last. And he chronicles, well, and I'll say it in layperson's terms, but he chronicles that when somebody's in front of you, it's a lot harder to hurt them, and when they're not, it's easier to hurt them. And the study he uses is kind of graphic, but essentially somebody 30ft away from you, if you're going to give them a shock, and it's a shock strong enough to, to jolt them and like not kill them, but pretty close. About 5% of the people are willing to press that button. When you put that person on the other side of a wall and the person can't see them, it goes up to 25 or 30%. And when you put them away and the person's never. The person with the button has never seen the person, it goes up to like 90%. So I think that's the basis of it. It's a little bit out of sight, out of mind, but especially in bigger companies.

We. When you're not there and you're, as the study says, and as Simon Sin points out, the further away you are from that power source, the easier it is maybe for that power source to hurt you. My words, not his. I think that it's rooted in that, quite frankly.

So you mentioned out of sight and out of mind, and that seems to be something that might be hurting the workers. Is there some kind of impediment to the managers not being able to develop a personal relationship with their workers in that situation with remote. Because, you know, you and I, just for full disclosure, we're doing this remotely. I can see you, you can see me as we talk to each other. What's the impediment in the workplace, though, where you're having a full remote work staff that can't build a personal relationship with their managers or vice versa? A manager can't do the same thing with their co workers.

I don't think it's one thing ever. And one of the ways I try to differentiate as a coach is to put fresh eyes to the situation. And I really, I urge others to not make it one thing. And so I think it largely depends on the company. It largely depends on the circumstances. You point out it's proven it can be done. But also that doesn't mean it's the best thing to do. But I would submit to you, for some businesses it probably is, and some lines of some businesses it probably is. And then also for some people in those lines and some people in those particular businesses, it may be the best way to go. But I would really urge against any one answer. It's rarely one thing. And so, you know, as a coach and as an advisor, I try to come in and ask probative questions and understand the situation. Some businesses can and probably should do it that way. Other businesses might be able to, but they may be leaving a lot of things on the table, mentoring opportunities, people don't see the debriefs in the hallways that happen after the calls are so impactful. So I think we leave things on the table. But I really resist the urge. And I would, I frankly tell other employers, don't make it one thing. Let's be discerning, let's understand the situation, let's coach different teams in different companies, different ways based on what they need.

Now, when you've gone into these businesses, have you maybe unearthed any kind of misconceptions that managers may have about their workers? Because something that was interesting in the article is an employee was quoted who was a full time worker remotely. That said, you know, managers seem to have some weird distorted sense of how things get done on a fully remote basis. Like they expect everything to be done in 10 minutes and why isn't this done? And then it leaps into this perception that, well, remote workers are just not getting things done. Whereas when I'm a manager and I walk down the hallway and I see one of my subordinate in the office typing away on their computer, oh, well, you know, I know so and so is getting the work done. But is there a risk of a misconception or managers missing, you know, quality performers who are working remotely that way because they have this perception that things need to get done faster when you're at home, as was quoted in the article.

Yeah, I think that's especially true when you have a hybrid model, meaning some people are in the office and some people are not. I'm thinking of a couple clients I work with where the company is in the office and frankly there are four and five days a week in the office and the couple people I'm thinking of are not in the office ever. And so it's a, it's challenging. I mean, for example, this is a really rudimentary way to say it, but if a tree falls in the woods and nobody knows it fell, did it really fall? And so, you know, I urge savvy ways to make sure people know what you're doing, that you're communicating different ways offline and not just in the zoom calls or the teams calls so much I mentioned before, it gets lost in the hallways. And so it's a unique set of circumstances and challenges, I should say presented to the person that's remote, especially if the rest of the office is not remote. And I would not suggest your entire interaction with your teammates, your company, your client, be in the four square walls of that call. Probably you're going to need to see people in aggregated forms, meaning like when they're together for certain reasons, you probably should get on a plane or get in a car and be with them. Having relationships outside, even if it's one on one via Zoom because they're so far away. But I think being adult in the fact that you are in a one off situation or you're in a situation where other people are together and you're not closing your eyes to that is probably going to be perilous for the person. I think it requires extra steps and extra awareness.

So that really dovetails in My next question is the job market is weird right now. It's in flux. There's industries that are laying people off, there's industries that still can't get enough people. There's some fully remote, there's some hybrid, there's businesses that are slowly moving to five days in office. So really what are some key pieces of advice that you're providing because you've kind of alluded to it, what the workers have to do to kind of either differentiate themselves or to put their face in front of people. So what's your advice to workers as the job market changes?

I might work on the mindset a little bit. I think being in the office can be a privilege, not a punishment. And so that's one of the discussions that I might start with is like, why are you thinking that way? What's the reason you're remote? I will just tell you honestly, I tilt as a business leader, I tilt toward in the office, which is totally different than I think everybody should be in the office all the time. Or if I was running your company, I think everybody should be there all the time. But I have a predisposition and I think it's important for leaders and owners of companies. You saw the statement from UPS, for example, from their CEO in that Wall Street Journal article that said we're, forgive me, I don't have it exactly in front of me. We're essentially we're one people, we're one team and we want to be one. In order to do that, I need people to come back. So I think for the owner and this is where I'm asking probative questions and try not to bring in preconceived notions.

What's your notion? What do you tilt toward? And then tell me why? Because old school notions of like, everybody's gotta be here. I've got a lot of questions about that. I think we set it and forget it and we have to go back to the way it was, just because the way it was is a trap. And so I try to again, use probative questions to get people to think more about their why. Why do you want people to be here? What's the benefit? Does it need to be everybody? Can people start within the office and then earn into a level of trust that perhaps allows them to go back to hybrid in some form or in remote. In some form. But from a worker standpoint, again, at times I'm challenging the notion that being in the office is a punishment and that it could be a privilege. And discussing with them the things that you're leaving on the table. I mentioned before mentoring, collaboration, the debriefs that happen in the hallways. I've had really interesting discussions as a business owner with my HR representative, when I have, and I've seen this repeatedly in my coaching where the office is on site, but one of the workers, one of the, you know, let's say key team members is remote. And as soon as the meeting ends, that stops for them, but it doesn't stop for those of us in the office. We debrief, leaving the table, we debrief in the hallway, we debrief, walk into our cars and we learn things and we adjust. And so that person get stuck in a kind of a set it and forget it mindset where time stop when that call ended and they really lose a lot. So bridging the gap with employees to understand why it can be so important what they're leaving on the table. Helping business owners understand. I really counsel folks. It shouldn't be on, off, black, white, up, down. So for example, we have folks that come in hybrid. Okay, well, when do they come in? They come in kind of whenever they want to come in. And they've got to somehow get two days a week. I'm for core days and core times. So if we're going to come in, let's have it be around aggregating, like staff meetings, for example, or the clients in the office or we're having a meeting on the product. So I'm not just coming in. One of the things I hear that really confounds me is, yeah, I went in the office and nobody was there.

So core days and core times, I think is, is definitely something to talk about from an owner standpoint and a leader standpoint and also from an employee standpoint. If we're going to do it, let's do it in an organized way. That makes sense.

Yeah, and I think that does make sense because, you know, I hear from friends, family members, we've all had different work relationships with this and you know, I'll have some family members that have exactly that. We just need you to be in the office for one to two days a week. And I find that kind of confusing because in a situation different where it's we need you to be in the office Monday and Wednesday. I feel like there's, as you said, the structure behind it to get the things done that you want to do in office. The signaling of we just want you in the office because we want you in the office seems kind of weird to me. I'm not sure what the productivity is around that. So I really like the idea that if you're going to bring people in the office. Right, as you said, Nick, core times, core days to get done, why you want them in the office. I find something interesting towards the end of the article, of course, that it's not just layoffs that get impacted with this, it's also promotional opportunities or choice assignments. And I think that probably relates similarly to what you talk about, which is the meeting after the meeting. Right, Nick?

It does. In fact, I have a, a high tech client and I was going to name the company, but I probably shouldn't High tech line. And he went from the field. I work with a lot of folks that I'll call field promotions, Matt, where they come for their practitioners and they come from law or they come from technology or they come from construction. And now they're in a business office and he's remote and he's now in business meetings. Whereas before he was really just involved in the technology and he was struggling with what he called the politics of the office. And so when I just settled down and asked a bunch of probative questions, the salient question was, well, after the meeting, after the team meeting, what do you do? And he says, I go back to my computer and I continue to work. So what I urge was, especially because you're remote, call a few people that were in that meeting because he was again struggling with the politics and wasn't able to kind of get the glean what the key messages were. And the key takeaways were So I urge, have conversations with your colleagues, get a hold of Matt, see how he heard these. These core things. Call Lori and see how she heard it. If you have any questions about a specific thing. And so when he got back on the next call, he had a big smile on his face. He says, boy, you know, talking to five people after that meeting really showed me the playing field so much better. And it wasn't politics. It really dissolved the politics because it was people and he wasn't talking to enough of them.

And I think that's really kind of the thrust of this article. And the thrust, what UPS said is, you know, as one. One person, one team, as people, we do have, you know, tendencies to gravitate towards, you know, those who we see. Right. Again, you know, who are in the office. But even, as you said, remotely call afterwards. I do that actually quite frequently after calls that we have. Personally, I'll call my boss back up and be like, did I literally just hear what I thought I heard in that meeting? Or, like, you know, I heard something. Does that mean that I need to start preparing for something down the road? Because it comes into my wheelhouse. And again, that puts FaceTime for me in front of my boss, but also demonstrates that, like, hey, I'm still part of this team, even though I may have been on, like, a team's call in that situation. So, Nick, one of the reasons why I was really excited to have you on this, especially as an executive coach, is that there's a lot of people out there who listen to this podcast who are, you know, maybe middle management or maybe at the middle step of the organizational ladder, and a lot of people who want to find career advancement. Do you have any advice for listeners who may want to step things up, become leaders in their organizations more so than they may already be? And I'll tell you, a lot of people listen to this are office managers, human resources personnel, business owners. There may be other attorneys that are out there who work in firms. We do know that people down at the Capitol listen to us as well. And there's a lot of people in this listenership that probably have potential to step up to be leaders. So what's some advice for them that you might have?

A lot of my questions are around, what's your unique value proposition? What do you do really well? Where do you add value? And frankly, I might ask also, what do you hate at work? What do you love at work? Generally, we align best in our genius and the places that fire us up. And so I have usually probative questions, including, I might be really good at this, but I hate it. Okay, well, maybe let's not do that. I'm looking for areas where people suck. And the reason I say that is you can't evolve. You can't ascend to certain levels and suck at budgeting or suck at public speaking, or suck at getting back in your email, or suck at writing or suck at having tough conversations. So I'm normally asking people, and these are confidential sessions I work in, and I think it changes the game a little bit because I'm not hr, I'm not the company. I'm an independent voice here to help you, essentially. So, you know, I want to know more about what you're great at, but I also want to push you to. If you want to elevate to Matt's level, you can't suck at these things. You have to get proficient because you're going to be great at the things you're great at. And our job is to supercharge that and add unique value, but also bring up these trailing issues. For me, it was budgets, big budgets. In particular. I ran a small business for years, but a lot of my clients, as I emerge into the business coaching space are bigger businesses or running teams inside bigger businesses. And so I need to frankly work on that and be adult enough to understand at this next level, I'm going to get exposed. So again, really working in your genius, really working on defining your unique value proposition, and then being adult enough to bring up the trailing parts of your game that need to get proficient.

Yeah, I've got to add on to that because that's really how my career looked. Nick. I was a litigator for about 10 years before I joined the Chamber. Of course, I don't bring lawsuits or defend against lawsuits any further. And I thought I was pretty good at it. I had a lot of successes when I was doing it, but as you said, I hated it. And so I bounced around five jobs in the first decade of being a lawyer. And I've since been at the chamber here for almost five years now. It's like the longest job I've had since law school because I found something that supercharged what I was really good at, which was the knowledge base of this, and how can I share my knowledge base of the law with people? So I think it's important. And that was a speech that I gave as part of kind of, you know, identify a big change in your life. Nick is, you know, what did you do? And I said, well, big change was Stopping being a litigator. I was no longer what I thought being an attorney was. And I had to leap into something that was completely different than what I did. What's some advice for people to help encourage them to kind of push into those uncomfortable boundaries, to kind of move them. Because I think that's a really important part of this. Trying to advance up into leadership roles is going to find uncomfortable spaces. And how do you go into them? Because change is hard. Change is really hard for people. Being uncomfortable and awkward is really hard for people.

I mean, I think a couple things is I ask permission for sure, you know, I'd like permission to speak truth to power. Do you mind if I crawl into a sensitive space? We're in a confidential session and you're paying me good money and I think I see something, but I don't want to offend you is one way for sure.

Generally speaking, the people that call me and that work with me are open minded, successful, upwardly mobile people. I don't get calls from jerks and know it alls. To be honest with you. I just don't. They don't call business coaches, they don't want, they don't want that. They don't want that input. One of the things I see in emerging leader training and in field promotions is folks want to stay in the field and their bosses are pushing them up. And so one of the things that I will ask them to think about is some larger responsibility. Of course it can come with money and it comes with more pressure. But also you get to a stage of your career where if you don't move up, your shadow is in somebody behind you's way and you're taking all the growth there for that person and you're probably doing their job. And your job, you promoted to a certain spot and we need you in a mentoring role for this organization. Just like when you go from your 20s to 30s to 40s in your parenting, it could be very similar where I'm not saying you have a responsibility to society or company, but it can be a way of thinking about things where the value you provide to people around you is so high. Not just monetarily and business wise, but also psychically and soulfully to actually help people underneath you and you have that skill set. So let's try to move you from the field into the executive because as soon as you do that, it clears the field for people underneath you as well. So that's one thing that at times speaks to people. You know, again I urge and one of the places I try to differentiate and anybody working with a business coach, there's a lot of good business coaches and I think a lot of fly by night business and life coaches and differentiated also by programs. And they're not bad. I mean there's Vistage, there are several programs that are kind of preset, if you will, and they're theoretical and that can be great. That's not what I do. I work in the practical. And so the reason I bring it up is it's never one thing. And I show up and I listen and I ask questions and I do not presuppose because I want to know what are you trying to do in your life. Not everybody's driven by the same things. And so for managers and for me as a coach and it's really important for managers, if you think all people are driven by money and power, they're not. I've heard so many times. I actually don't want that promotion, Nick. It hurts me and my family. I can't travel. But I love this job and I'd like to professionalize it. That's something I've never thought of before. I thought everybody wanted to be upwardly mobile and wanted to go to the next stage. But I like this job and I'd like to stay in this job for a period of time. Okay, that kind of spins my head around. But let's talk about that for a minute.

All right, Nick, so let's go ahead and close out the show. Kind of wrap, put a little bow on this thing. As we had talked about workers getting laid off, you know, more so as remote workers and those who come in the office, if someone's laid off, you know, professional that maybe was working remotely a lot or otherwise, what advice do you have for them to kind of get themselves back on their feet back out there?

Yeah. So from there I might ask somebody, you know, again, tell me what you, what you really don't want, which is I don't want pure revenue based job. I, I want to have hybrid. I don't want to toxic environment. Okay, well, what do you love? I love working on a team. I love working around motivated people. I want to work in the tech sector. Okay, well, let's try to do that. And so I might have them line up. Tell me everybody you know in this space that would get back to you within 12 to 18 hours. Tell me which companies employ people in this space. But one thing we're not going to do, and I'm going to try to be a buoy for you is go back to the thing that made us so unhappy and also so so and also unsuccessful. So let's define that. Let's be adult in that. Let's move toward the things you're good at in your genius in places where people employ people like that. And that's not a theory. That's practical application of who do you know, what topics are you interested in, what value do you bring and what companies employ people like this and let's go get them.

Well, I think that's a great message to wrap the show up on. So thank you again so much for being here today. Nick. As always, if you want to check out more from Nick Warner, please check out his podcast together at the top. Nick, thank you for joining me today. Thank you and thanks to our listeners for joining us today on the workplace. As always, please comment, share and subscribe to Cal Chambers Podcasts by visiting calchamber. Com.