Laura Goodrich leads leaders from Sweden, Wisconsin, Bahrain, and Poland through the shock of remote work during COVID-19. They identify three leader types—ambassador, neutral, detractor—and argue that traditional goal-setting fails in crisis. Instead, leaders need rituals, video calls over text, and the empathy to co-create realistic goals with their teams.
Chapters
Welcome to the town hall. Andreas, are you there?
I am here. Now my audio works. Hey, how are you doing?
Great.
I was doing some troubleshooting myself, so, uh, oh my goodness, it's all kinds of things that we have to sort of think about and, and keep straight, right?
Exactly.
How are you?
I'm fine, thank you. I've been, uh, Easter celebration starts early in Sweden, so we started off yesterday.
Yesterday. Well, well, good for you. Are you able to gather with family?
Nope, not at all.
Right, right, right. We were—
here we go.
But today is a bank holiday in Sweden and so is Monday.
Okay, excellent.
And great weather.
And great weather. Well, that's, you know, I'll tell you what, we have never appreciated that more. Isn't that the truth?
Exactly, especially for us when we have bad weather at least half of the year.
Fantastic. Welcome everyone. Joshua, welcome to you. I—
hi.
Hi, Osha. Good evening.
Hello, hello. I want to make sure that I can keep everybody— get everybody in. I've got so many things going on here. I have more screens in front of me than a person should, but I'm glad that you're here. Will, are you there? Can you hear us? Hey, Laura.
Good morning.
Good morning to you. All right, go ahead and say hello, everyone, in chat. If you'll jump over to chat, say hello, let us all know where you're coming in from, and Kind of what industry that you're in so that we can have a sense of who's in the room. Lots of people will be a part of this conversation, you know, or be— see and hear this after the fact. But go ahead and jump into chat and into group chat just so that we can get acquainted there. But welcome. I'm so glad that you've taken the time to be here. Joshua, can you hear us? Can you hear me?
I can, yes. There we go.
Fantastic. Welcome to you. Jump on chat, folks. I want to make sure that we're in the game here. Coming in from Sweden with that. Come on in with Mike. Pronounce your name for me so I say it correctly. Andreas?
Yeah, you're correct. Andreas.
Andreas, beautiful, from Sweden, fantastic. Joshua, Central Wisconsin, welcome, working in HR, all right. And Will from Bahrain, fantastic, great. We're gonna lean on Zoom chat here, so keep that front and center so that we can interact with one another in our time. I wanna be absolutely respectful of your time. So we'll try to keep in our 30-minute timeline. I see that Therese has jumped in. Happy to have you, Therese, and welcome. Go ahead and type in— welcome, Therese. Type in where you're coming in from and also your industry. I'm really, really excited that you are all here. I think this is a critically important conversation. I think the timing is critical. So welcome to you. Theresa, are you— can you hear us? Are you in the game with us?
I am.
I can hear you.
All right. And she's got mountains behind her.
Fantastic. I've been on Zoom a little bit.
That's right.
That's right. It's a great trick.
Yes, absolutely.
To start off with, like I said, we will, you know, let's jump in. We are small and mighty, so we can certainly, you know, speak up. If you've got background noise, of course, go to mute, but do not hesitate to jump into the conversation as we're having it here. I'd also like to introduce you to another technology, communication and connection technology, and that is Slido, which you'll see on the lower screen. Right now, I use Slido a lot, and you may say to yourself, "Why do you have another way to connect and communicate with people other than how we we could connect with the chat, run polls on Zoom?" And the reason that I really like Slido is that it enables me to potentially pose some questions to a team beforehand, potentially during a session, and afterwards. And one of the things that we're really seeing is that a lot of leaders are talking to us about people on their team that are less expressive and the struggles that they're facing when they're actually coming together for sessions, in their sessions. And what I've found is that if we can engage people and we can ask questions before and after, we can really set the table for much more open exchange. So I share that as an option for you. All right, so as we've talked about before, there are 3, 4 areas that we're going to lean on to address the challenges that we're facing in remote leadership. One is leading significant change. The next is leading through crisis. Third is virtual tools, and I'll be sprinkling in some ideas and tools and ways to use those tools as we're talking today. And fourth, and really the foundation on all of this, is how do we ultimately lead through significant change, lead through crisis, lean on virtual tools to help us connect, assess, and understand where our teams are at, and ultimately so that we are effective and successful at leading through a time of disruptive, in fact revolutionary change. We're going to— this will be dynamic. What we're focusing on and the challenges that we face every Friday for 30 minutes will be dynamic. I want the challenges to be relevant to you, and that's why, as you saw in the sign-up, I'm asking for you to share the challenges that you're facing, and we'll get in and we'll reckon with those as we go along. I mentioned that when we are working on projects, and for 2 and a half decades we have worked with leaders that are leading change, the first group that we want to know about and identify is the ambassador leaders. Those are the innovative, forward-leading leaders. Who are they? So I believe those that are going to be drawn to this conversation indeed are ambassador leaders, so I'm gonna, right out of the chutes, I'm going to say welcome ambassador leaders. Welcome ambassador leaders. Ambassador leaders. The next group of leaders are more neutral, they're neither negative nor positive, they're just more neutral, very often very task-oriented, and then the other group is we have our detractor leaders. They are very critical of this time and they are often those that kind of get people stirred up about the you know, the sort of dangers of the time. All right, so before we move in any further, I wanna check in and get a sense. You have been now leading for a couple of weeks remotely. How are you feeling? And I have you step over to chat and just sort of weigh in. How are you feeling at this time? You know, our sense is that things are changing a bit. They might have felt different 2 weeks ago, but How are you feeling now? Go ahead and go step into chat and let, you know, let us know as a group how you're feeling. I, you know, you can also, you could also go to Slido, but you can just, you can go right into chat here. You already started off there, so we can certainly do that. I wanted to use Slido, but I wasn't able to project it on the screen. I don't know why. I've used it a lot, but for whatever reason, It wasn't wanting to do that. So I'm going to wait for you to sort of step in and let me know how you're feeling. And while you do, I want to share a story. So 2 weeks ago, I was working with a leader, and this was a leader with adult children, and both of her adult children had returned home. One of her adult children had been working with the Peace Corps, and another one of her adult children was You know, had returned from college. And 2 weeks ago she said, well, this is wonderful, we love being together, you know, I mean, what could be better? We're all together, we're in this on our own. And just this week I checked in with her and it was an interesting story. She was talking about the fact that they are together, that the tensions are high, that she's sitting Still in back-to-back meetings and that, you know, that it's, it's an entirely different situation altogether. So how are you feeling? Okay, I'm gonna step into this. Feeling inspired to help those that are struggling and need assistance. I am so glad that you were feeling that and you were recognizing that need. We're going to talk about this in a moment because in a lot of cases people are leaning on the business as usual and it looks like you are paying attention to, want to be paying attention to the struggle that people are experiencing. That brings us to leading through crisis, such an important piece, and we cannot underestimate that. So important. Feeling awesome as remote work is something that you've been advocating, and I know this about you, Will, which is it is unique and exciting timing when you have The real opportunity. And we're going to talk about this also. How will this evolve and how will this experience where we are all around the world are now in a remote officing situation and how will this affect things going forward? Using working remote, although there are so many that are not using working at home. Also recognize that this is a different norm at working remote. Therese, come on off mute for a second and share your thoughts a little bit on that.
So I have— I am used to— I've worked remotely my whole career pretty much. I've also worked in office because I've been in sales my entire career. But what I shared with my colleagues when we had a leadership call yesterday is to not think that those individuals that are used to working remote, that this is the same.
Right.
'Cause this is a different type of working remote. This is where you still have that anxiousness because of the time that we're in with the pandemic, et cetera. And so I have a team of inside sales individuals that again are saying, oh yeah, we're used to working remote. But when I got on with them with a virtual happy hour on Friday, it was pretty obvious to me though that they still had a lot of anxiousness. And the anxiousness isn't necessarily coming from their world. The anxiousness is coming from the leadership, this executive leadership, and how they are projecting how they are handling it onto others. And so I say, that's what I'm saying. It's like, in my cryptic way of how I answered you, is that it is different. So how I'm trying to grapple with this is, how do I shield my team away from the anxiousness Of executive leadership because they really do not have the control and, and they want to know what's going on with the people at the front lines at all times. You know, right, because they don't have it. Like, okay, what are they doing? What's their activity level? So it's really interesting because they said, well, they're used to working inside, so they should have higher activities. But yeah, but the customers that they're calling on, they're not responding back. So it's not going to be the same.
It isn't the same. Thank you so much, Therese. You're absolutely right. It isn't the same. It is dynamic, and we have to be really aware of that, and we have to recognize when we need to shield our team from the anxiousness that's going on, because all of these things are at play, and we're hearing many, many stories about this that's That's at play. So I want to make sure in our time together we don't try to cover a lot of territory, but rather that we drill down in a particular area and we dig into a particular challenge rather than trying to cover so much territory. Today I'd like to address the challenge of establishing goals. And this again is one of those places where we might think to ourselves, well, we establish goals in the same way that we've always established goals, it's business as usual. And one of the things I think you'll find in our conversations, and I know that you're likely experiencing in your leadership role, is that business as usual is no longer. And if we lean on those methods that have served us Well, without really questioning those methods, that's going to be challenging for us. So what we're finding is that one of the reasons, one of the impetus for coming together was that people would assume, all right, we're going to be remote, that's exactly the same thing as working in the office, it's just green rather than yellow. And as you noted, Therese, and others have noted, it isn't. It is different. It is not business So what do we need to do? Well, one is in our work, in working with leaders leading through change, in my work as a volunteer crisis counselor, one of the most incredibly important things that we do is become keen observers of human behavior. We are all in this space where we are able to observe human behavior and Being observational is critical because, as we talked about when we last got together, there are a lot of things that are changing. Our routines are changing, our habits are changing, and we need to be establishing rituals to create the connection on the human side as well as the business continuity side. Joshua, as you've noted, we've got to have that compassion for the pain and the angst and the nervousness that is at play. Also, it's really important that we are strategic in how we're operating based upon those observations and that we really set the table for innovative solutions. At the same time, in our work, what we have long said is that when we are facing times of revolutionary change and disruptive change like we are now, Agility has to be baked into the culture of our organizations. How do we ensure that we have the agility to steer toward opportunities and away from threats? So that is key. So here we are, the question is establishing goals. Well, what if our natural tendency, and the natural tendency with a lot of people is business as usual, we're going to establish goals in the same way that we've done it before. And at the same time, what the future of work really requires is that we're creative and imaginative, that we are really identifying opportunities and solutions to unforeseen problems. That's where that keen observation comes into play. It will be and continue to be our work for the next decade, is How are we able to lead our teams to be dynamic, ever-evolving, never done, and how do we come up with the right solutions? So I ask this question because it's so critical of us before we move into establishing a goal. I think we've got to take a really hard look at what that goal might be. And the reality is that we have a tendency to look at business as usual. If it works, don't fix it. You know, I'll have the usual and this change won't affect us. And we're already seeing a lot of people moving into that space. Yesterday I was in a session where people were talking about returning to work. And they were putting together plans that were as if we're going to return to work and it is business as usual. And I honestly don't think it will. It will not be business as usual. So, and Theresa, as you noted, senior leaders are really nervous about this space. There is a sense that if we put a lot of control bases around people that we know where they're at. And at the same time, one of the biggest concerns that CEOs face right now is agility. How do we ensure that our leaders are creating accountability for not only innovating but having the agility to steer toward opportunities and away from threats? So in this time, one of the things that we've found is that when we're in a change dynamic environment and things are uncertain, that our thoughts naturally go to what we fear. That is naturally where we're at. So I want you to begin thinking about this in the fact that We are considering to operate as business as usual. On the down low, we realize that our focus is focused on fear and all kinds of things. We have fear as it relates to the pandemic, we have fear as it relates to our job security, we have fear as it relates to— and it's literally paralyzing us at the very moment That as leaders we need to be confident in how we lead and extremely focused on those things that we can control and the outcomes that we want. What we're seeing, and I'm guessing you're beginning to recognize, is that in this dynamic environment there's often a real resistance to anything different. That's why we're going back to that business as usual. There is a lot of anxiety, and that anxiety is coming out in ways that are likely surprising, and then habits that are going to get in the way of what we create in the future. So I want to jump back to chat and ask a question. I'm going to ask you to just share if you, you know, a comment or a thought on where or how you've seen this in your interactions? How have you seen the resistance, anxiety, or habits that are getting in the way of it? What have you seen bubbling up in your communication along the way in the last couple of weeks? Go ahead and jump in. I'd love to hear your thoughts. And while you are beginning to gather your thoughts, you know, share a couple examples in terms of anxiety. What does anxiety look like? We heard a recent story of a very calm and measured employee, someone who had worked with the team for a long period of time, that came into a virtual session with expletives in a very Very, very agitated way and ultimately departed from that session. Now, when the leader, that remote leader, that ambassador leader, was able to just check in with them and say, I'm here, I understand that, you know, that there's likely a lot of things that are going on with you, you know, talk to me about what's happening. That employee came in and indicated that, that his wife has severe, you know, autoimmune disease, 2 young children, and there's just so much underlying pressure. So go ahead, I'd love to see in chat, and I'm watching for your responses. What have you been seeing as it relates to resistance to things new, anxiety, how is that sort of bubbling up, and also habits that make it really difficult to bring in or introduce new solutions or new ways. Otherwise, somebody just jumps— you want to jump in and talk, otherwise I'll call you out. I'm not afraid to do Andreas, how about you? What are your observations? Can you come off mute?
I was hiding my screen, so I didn't find the button. Yeah, so I would say like most of my leadership is regarding to the anxiety about the unknown, basically. I have the main part of my colleagues are in Poland and they're put home in small apartments with children and like everyone is put home. And if you have a balcony, then you will see the sunlight basically or get some fresh air. Otherwise, you're more or less trapped. And for them, it's also, I mean, it's very uncertain, the whole situation. Will we as a company overcome the virus, for example? And yes, we will, of course, and we will be stronger than ever. But it's more about motivating them in the, in the current state, basically. I mean, the world doesn't end right now, basically. We still do business, but we need to respect that a lot of deals and companies, they're put on hold now. But once we open up again, honestly, I think it will be even more crazy than being trapped, basically.
Right, and I— it's really important. I'm glad that you brought it up. It's really important to create the space and the opportunity for this expression where people can honestly express what their situation is, even what their anxiety is. Oftentimes, if we can express that, get that out on the table, and one of the things that we find really important in the midst of that is that I hear you and I hear what's making it very difficult to focus on work, right?
Yep.
Not only focus on— first of all, focus on business continuity because there's a great bit of distraction out there. And at the same time, when you've got small living spaces and you've got young family members around, I mean, I have heard amazing stories, a single parent with 4 children in a small I have heard stories about people that are actually officing in closets, tiny closets, just because they can get some, some quiet. I mean, all kinds of things. So that expression of the anxiety and acknowledgement of the anxiety is really important, but it's also one of the most important things that we can do is to make sure we keep our focus on what can we control. And ultimately, what outcomes do we want? And that conversation about what can we control and what outcomes do we want—
My— sorry for interrupting you, but my biggest issue is that I'm too lazy to someone take the call instead of typing. I mean, we work with so many different digital platforms.
Yes.
And you can have like 5 chats or even more at the same time. So you rather type instead of calling someone. And I think right now putting the video on and have a conversation that is not always work-related, I think that's now it's more important than ever.
Thank you for bringing that up. I think that that's really an important piece. That's another observation that I have had in virtually all of the conversations that I've had in the last week is the conversation is starting with Personal. It is starting with what the experience is, whether it's anxiety about children or families or that work environment or workspace, is that people are beginning the conversation there. And I think that's a good and important observation that we have. And Andreas, I'm glad that you brought up when we have all these tools, we can tend to to text message a lot, or we can send messaging, but I think it's really nice that we can see each other's eyes. We can look into one another's eyes. So let's jump onto Zoom if we can, FaceTime, whatever the platform is. Really, really important. All right, I want to jump over here. I feel that some of the biggest issues are created from the lack of communication and lack of compassion from leaders. Leaders cannot expect issues and anxieties to get better with time, and I've seen more than once that anxiety has risen from leaders and supervisors from not being flexible. Okay, so this is the piece where I, as we have talked about, this is more than leading through a remote team, it's leading a remote team through crisis. And we need to make sure that we have the human side of engaging the team in lockstep with the business continuity side, and that does not mean that we're driving both equally. It means that we are assessing that human side next to that business continuity, continuity side with that particular Joshua, come on off mute and let's talk a little bit about this.
Yeah, absolutely.
So I think what you're seeing is very, very common, and I think it's actually going to become more problematic for us. And the reason that I say that is that we are seeing this— all of these numbers that are really scary for people, right? The business continuity numbers are scary, and so the natural instinct is to muscle our way through the business continuity piece. What are your thoughts on that?
Well, I think, I think that's exactly right. I think some of what I've seen with some of the businesses I work with and the conversations I've had is right now we have— it's very common for the driver personality to be in those leadership roles, and that personality style really struggles with empathy in what we're going through now. And now when people are more scared than ever, scared of losing their jobs, scared of, you know, I have to perform at a certain level now, some of those things just aren't possible. So yeah, I've written on there, you'd mentioned earlier about goal setting. I think right now it really has to be very realistic and collaborative, and those drivers need to really kind of show a little more of their expressive side to be more of a compassionate leader through this. You know, people want to perform and people are scared, scared, and that has to be understood whenever we're trying to lead them through this. As well as, you know, from an accountability standpoint, I think there also has to be some understanding there as well. And as you mentioned also, that we're learning here, we're evaluating. So the only way you can truly evaluate is to ask a lot of questions and to really understand what those people are going through and if those goals were realistic in the first place at this point in time. You know, and I've seen a lot of great examples from some wonderful companies that have realized that and have made the adjustments. Unfortunately, we also see where some companies are really struggling to make those adjustments. Right.
Perfect points. And, you know, one of the things that I would offer is that if you are seeing great examples of leaders really demonstrating what it means to have empathy and on the human side of engaging the team. Also, in the business continuity, how can these 2 things come together? If you're gathering examples of these good examples, write those examples out and share them. One of the things that we've learned is that story is one— it is a powerful way to influence behavior, so if you've got great stories, gather it, write it, You know, record a Zoom conversation where someone shares the story and find ways to share those stories, because as you know, we are finding our way here. The answers are not written. There is not a roadmap for this road. We are trying to figure this out and it is absolutely dynamic, but important to identify those stories where things are working because we can influence We can, by sharing an example, in particularly those individuals that are really driving that business continuity so hard that they're underestimating the challenges that their individual team members are experiencing. I also want to speak to addressing the crisis side, because I know that people are actually experiencing team members that have real crisis. that have had losses, illnesses, and fears that their team members are experiencing now. One of the things that I've learned as a crisis volunteer crisis counselor is an important, in particular, to bring forth with that driver is you don't have to have the answers to show compassion or empathy with people. You simply need to say, I'm here. I'm here to support you. I'm sorry that you're experiencing this. Talk to me about what you're experiencing. You do not need to have the answers. You're not— we're not going to be in a position to solve many of these challenges, but empathy really begins with being there and being comfortable, and that can be a side conversation about a crisis, Or the fear that people have, and in lockstep. So you brought up, Joshua, a really important piece, and I think it's critical for us, is that how do we ensure that we are asking the right questions that will help us establish the right goals? My worry right now is that we're— we are leaning on going back to the business as usual. Yesterday I was in a session where people were putting together their plan for return to the office, and it was as if we're going to go back and nothing has changed. And I think that going back to nothing has changed is very unlikely. So how do we ensure that we're asking the right questions? Here is, you know, as I mentioned, and I really believe that we are at a time of revolutionary So imagine back in the day where the steam engine and railroads and factories and everything was brand new, and imagine that transition people were making to these new places. And realize that one year from now— and I hope you continue to join in— one year from now, we're going to be telling stories and we're going to be sharing realities that would be difficult for us to even imagine right now. Businesses emerging, you know, opportunities that we didn't know. And of course there will be hardship in there, especially for those that really struggle with these changes. But I am, I am so passionate about working with the ambassador leaders to lead the way. I believe that, you know, your team and those that work for you need you and your organizations need you, we need more of this. So here's what I want to do, I want to come back to this as we close in our time together. Please, before you leave, please share one important question that can be asked, a question that you have either encountered or that you've come up with. What is a critical question that we can ask That relates to the process of establishing goals, a question that will help us ensure that we are establishing the right goals, that we are understanding how things are changing. Jump into chat if you will and do this for— so that we together can be coming up with really important questions that we can ask. What are, what are your ideas of questions that we can ask? Now, one of the thoughts that I have while you're collecting your thoughts is, is how will this experience of being remote impact how businesses look at how we work going forward? How will this experience affect how businesses look at remote going forward? I think there is a lot of answers to this question, by the way. Andreas, do you have the tools needed to be the— to be your best right now? What an important question. This came up in a session yesterday. Where people were talking about, you know, having back issues because they don't have the right chairs that they're using, having challenges with their technology. I think many of us have— I went in and upgraded to a 1 gig Wi-Fi coming in because our entire community is using, you know, internet. So what are the technology pieces? All right, Therese, how can we embrace agility and not be scared of it, right? How do we see the opportunity in this time? One of the very interesting things to do is take a look at the businesses that have actually emerged out of times of change like this. So very important. Well, do we have a strategy execution system that helps cascade down and monitor goals and objectives? That's hard, right? Do we have a strategy for this? And I would offer that perhaps another question that we can ask is, how do we ensure that that strategy is dynamic, that we're continuing to assess the strategy for its effectiveness, but similarly we're at the ready to change that strategy should we need to? And I think a lot of us are going to need To do that. Okay, so in our last question— thanks, Therese, for joining in, have a beautiful weekend to you too. Joshua, how can we better seek feedback from customers and team members concerning business goals and long-term strategy? This is a really important piece. If we are not leading with questions to our customers and our team members, how are you feeling, how are you doing, What is the status of sort of the team dynamic right now? What are your ideas of how we can do better with that? All right, so just past our 30 minutes, we're going to close for now, but I'm, I'm so grateful that you've joined in. I hope that you come back. We're going to address another challenge. Well, I know that I saw a challenge that you put into our question process, so Be sure to keep sharing. I'm going to come back right here. Go ahead and share your challenges on Slido at meeting 9817. Let's keep this dynamic. Let's keep connecting and conversing with one another. I wish you a restful and restorative weekend. I hope that you have a chance to connect with your loved ones and really restore yourself to come into next week with, with fresh breath and ready. to hit it again. Um, thank you again for joining me at Remote Leadership Town Hall. See you next week. Bye for now.
