Revolutionize Your Leadership Strategy with these Amazing "Rockin' Remote" Tips!

The COVID-19 pandemic opened up a Pandora's box of new working conditions and expectations. As leaders struggle to get back to normal, there has been a ton of pushback from their employees asking, why would we want to do that? Insisting that people return to the office is driving some of your best people away. And with them, of course, all their knowledge and experience. So, how can you as a leader adapt to leading a remote workforce? And that's what my guest and I will be discussing today on Marc Haine Live. Welcome to this episode. This is where small business owners and entrepreneurs pick up core skill sets to help them create the show-stopping, jaw-dropping experience that their customers and their employees deserve. I am your host, Customer and Employee Experience Expert Marc Haine, and I'm so glad that you are joining us today. My guest for this episode is organizational psychologist, Dr. Laura Hambley. And today, we will be discussing how we as leaders need to support remote workforces in this new era and how to avoid common and I dare say costly mistakes. So, stay with us. If this is your first time checking us out, welcome! I hope you get a ton of value from today's episode. If you are a fan, I want to say thank you. I'd love for you to be one of those cool cats who love to write reviews about content that they connect with. So, I hope you can go ahead and do that. This is a tenuous time for leaders and how we define leadership. As we evolved through the pandemic, we had no choice but to change. With the advent of remote work, leadership practices and leadership values have been tested. Command and control leaders were exposed and called out and even challenged. Now, with wanting to get back to normal, leaders are once again in the hot seat. So that brings us to our Question of the Day. So, how has your leadership style changed while leading remote workers? I'd love for you to put your response down wherever you're consuming this information in the comments section. Let us know what your thoughts are and make sure that you hashtag it #ExperienceLeadership. I'd love for you to be part of this conversation. I am thrilled to have Dr. Laura Hambley as today's guest. Dr. Laura is an organizational psychologist, keynote speaker, business leader, author, and the podcast host of where work meets life. Dr. Laura is a thought leader on the evolution of work and understands the intersection of business and people and is a sought-after thought leader on workplace psychology and career development. Dr. Laura's area of expertise includes things like leadership, team and culture development, organizational remote hybrid workplace successes, and mental health developing resiliency through turbulent times. She holds a PhD in Industrial Organizational Psychology from the University of Calgary, where she is an adjunct professor. Dr. Laura, welcome to the show! It's so great to have you.

Thanks for having me, Marc. It's awesome to be here with you.

Before we get into today's topic, could you just dig a little bit deeper in how you serve your clients?

Sure. So, when I think of clients, I think of 2 different types of clients. One is organizations. And I've worked I've worked for 22 years plus now with organizations small to large, public, private. And the great thing about org psychology is we have so much diversity in the types of clients we work with corporately. And I love working with corporate clients. But I also like individual clients where we can work deeply one-on-one. And one of my niches is strategic career planning for people who are in mid-career, for leaders who are navigating their own journey in terms of what they're going to do next in their career. So, how I serve my clients is I get to know them on a deep level. I get to know their pain points, their challenges, their desires, their motivations. Whether they're a corporate client, how they want to be a better culture, how they want to become better managers or leaders, or whether it's an individual, how they can be more fulfilled and find more meaning and purpose in their career. And life. And then, once I know that, then I'm able to bring about the right solutions to help them get there.

Lovely! And it's so hugely needed today. I think in no time, I think in leadership history really, when you think about like I'm a baby boomer. So, I grew up in the command and control. And then, we went into the knowledge worker age. And now, we're in a relationship leadership age. No time have I really seen such a high demand on leadership shifting and learning new skills as I have through the pandemic and in what I like to call the almost post-pandemic era. Why is today's topic so important to leaders, to the future of business, to the future of really corporate culture?

Because the skill set of a remote leader is Absolutely critical, I think. Because in order to have a hybrid workplace, for example, where you do support and believe in flexibility and trust your people, then a portion of your leader's time will be managing and leading people who are not sitting in an office. They're going to be working from home. They're going to be working from other locations. And you need to be able to be a strong remote leader. And not just during a pandemic because you have to. But because it is a set of skills that's needed moving into the future. Unless of course, you're going to call all butts back into seats. And I am absolutely adamant that that is the wrong direction to go.

And we'll get into more reasons why that is. But before we get really deep into our conversation today, could we define the differences between remote work, hybrid work, and distributed work. These are all the lexicons that are in our leadership manuscripts now. Could you define what the 3 differences are?

It's so funny. So, I'm a pioneer in this area. So, when I started my doctorate in 2002, I had actually worked on globally distributed or virtual teams, we called them back in the day, myself for a few years. So, I went into my PhD thinking we have a lot more to learn about leading and team effectiveness when we're working apart. So, my business partner and I came together and we created Work Evolution, which was a startup around how we can assess leaders, teams, and individual contributors to thrive in this way of working. And we sat down at a conference in— it was actually in Hawaii that year. So, it's the Society of Industrial Organizational Psychology. So, large crowd. Thousands of people come together. And that year, it happened to be in Hawaii. And we were sitting together at a bar with a few of our panelists. We had a panel on the future of work at that time. And we said, what should we call this? What's the term? Because everyone's using a different term for this notion of working apart from each other. And it's a real problem. And the term that the academics are using, virtual work, just seems kind of nerdy. So, we ended up with the term distributed because distributed could mean you're distributed in the same city. It could mean you're distributed across the world. Or anything in between. And that was a beautiful term. And although maybe not everyone likes that term, it's the term that we found resonated with a lot of people and captured all these ways of working, whether it was telework, activity-based work, agile work, flex work, telecommuting, virtual work, blah, blah, blah. So, we would have all of these different terms around this distributed word. pandemic hits. This term hybrid wasn't even around back in the day when we were doing all of our terminology. It's a term that's cropped up. But to us, hybrid is just like a buzzword for when people are working a mix of home office and other locations. So, to us, it's synonymous to distributed work.

I love it. So really, it's really all interchangeable really at the end of the day, except for the hybrid one where it's an actual intention. of being able to have like mixed locations. When it comes down, like I've talked to a lot of people who have now been forced back to work. They're not happy. Other people are just kicking up the heels going, wow, it's about time. I was dying to get out of my house. When it comes down to them, are there any myths about remote work that need to be busted, do you think?

Well, yeah. So, there's the myth Yeah. There's a big myth about if you're working remotely, you're not working as hard. And that myth has been refuted by a lot of data, including a big study by Microsoft that found people were something, I think it was about 20% more productive working remotely. So, we look at that and we've looked at a whole bunch of different studies actually. And we really have found that, okay, they're more productive.

On average.

But that's on average. And the thing that we need to know is not everyone is wired the same way. And when we created the Distributed Work Profiler, it was a personality profile of what makes Marc a really strong fit for remote work and what makes Laura more of a moderate fit and what makes Tom more of a poor fit. Like, what is it that differentiates The 3 of us. And we were able to nail the 11 personality traits scientifically that predict whether someone is high, moderate, or low. And then, how to navigate that. And the pandemic taught us that whether you're a strong fit or not, everyone needs to do it. And I think we've learned that people can learn to do it. But when they're their most productive and engaged, it depends on their personality and it depends on their home situation. So, the ones who have little kids at home and are working from the dining room table, etc., it's not the ideal situation ergonomically or family-wise. So again, there's a lot of factors that go into it. And my biggest learning is it's not a one-size-fits-all.

Right. But as you were saying that as well, I was thinking along the lines of where people would have to be outside their wheelhouse to work from home, this is the perfect opportunity for mentoring and coaching and support to teach people how they can be more effective in a different work environment as well.

Absolutely. But that's why I'm a fan of a hybrid though is yes, we can teach people to be more effective. But for a lot of people, a mix of home and office is the best solution. And on average, It's 2 to 3 days. So, a 2-3 day split on average, right? And people like to put things into categories because it's easier, right? It's remote work is bad. In-office is good. This and that. But again, human beings are very, very complex and there's a lot of factors at play. And I think that one of the biggest motivators is choice that you can give someone, is giving them a choice. and feeling like they have options to fit their life and work together in a way that works for them.

So, it's interesting because we've kind of ebbed into kind of what it's like for the employee. When it comes down to leadership practices and being an effective leader, how is leading remotely different than leading in the office?

Leading remotely takes more preparation and more planning. And it takes more skilled communication strategies through using different communication media. So, what that means is learning the bells and whistles of Teams or Slack and learning when to choose picking up the phone versus a text-based communication versus the overload of email that we all get. So, really understanding, okay, I have this communication or I have this task or this meeting. What platform does it belong on, including the face-to-face platform? And face-to-face definitely has its purpose. And we work a lot with organizations on that, like what meetings are meant for what purpose and being much more intentional about that. So, the days in the office are great days, are well-thought-out days. That takes more preparation for the leader. That's for sure.

Yeah, it's not a question of just come back to the office and we'll just hang out and just do your work and we'll see what happens next. I do know when the pandemic hit and remote became a big thing, one of the challenges that a lot of people were talking about was the fact that we lose kind of those fly-by-night water cooler creative collisions that happen while making coffee, or having lunch, or whatever. Do you think that that's part of that planning process you're talking about?

Oh yeah, definitely. And it's those days in the office where you do want to have those lunches, those collisions, those brainstorming sessions. I would argue though that Different people create and innovate in different ways. And some people do so. They're at their best when they have focused time to do so. And I think because we've eaten ourselves alive with meetings, we're taking away that focused time. And that to me, that's one of the biggest issues right now.

Yeah, I remember when I migrated from hospitality into municipal government. And I was in a department with municipal government. I couldn't believe how much time was actually wasted in kind of not in like meetings and constantly being pulled into something. Oh Marc, we need this. Come to the office. And it was like, when do people work? How do they get work done?

I know.

And so, to your point now, I think we've learned to be really intentional with putting together Zoom meetings or team meetings. to make absolutely sure we have agendas and that sort of thing. But I still find that the face-to-face stuff is still very much challenged.

In terms of inefficiencies?

Yes. And like, it becomes, oh, you're here. So, let's have a quick ad hoc meeting without an agenda or—

Oh yeah.

And I just find that people are pulled in so many different directions that way.

Yeah, I think so, right? And again, it's easy when I can say, hey Marc, pull you over, pull you aside and All of a sudden, your day is full of interruptions and it's not a very strategic use of time. At the same time, we need to have a bit of flexibility for the ad hoc. But one of the bigger challenges too is the leader who has Marc in the office but some of the other team members are remote, making sure that Marc's not getting treated in a different way and having sidebars that the others aren't aware of. So, I see that problem happening a lot too. And then, the response is, it's It's just easier if everyone's back. Let's get those other ones back in and go to the common denominator of being at the office, which again, I don't think it's the best solution 5 days a week. I think it's draining. It's costly. It's inefficient in a lot of ways. I think a hybrid is the way to go. Yeah.

So aside from that aspect of people being on-premise might get preferential treatment or be privy to information that's in the moment. Whereas, the people who are working remotely. Are there any other challenges leaders face with hybrid or remote workplaces?

Oh well, hybrid meetings, which are actually the most challenging type of meetings where you have some people in the room and some remote. Most of the time, those aren't well Facilitated. So, and they're very difficult for the people who are remote when they're not well facilitated because it's the easiest thing to disengage from. So, I tend to recommend avoiding those. So, if you say you have half your team in the office and half remote, I would just go with all remote. Everyone go to your computers and let's just dial in and make it remote. So, we're all on the even playing field. I get pushback on that sometimes. But I think it's a more inclusive and fair way to go in that context. And if the meeting's important enough that we all need to be together, then let's plan it so we're all together.

Yes, yeah. And nobody says it has to be in the office either. It could be for lunch at a restaurant.

Exactly, right? Exactly.

I'd like to delve into some concrete strategies that can help leaders navigate their When the spotlight shines on your business, are customers applauding or yawning?

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Welcome back! I am with keynote speaker and thought leader on the evolution of work, Dr. Laura. Leaders so badly want to go back to what they know. Are there any risks to returning to the way that things used to be? I did mention something at the beginning about labor turnover. But what else? What other consequences are there to people just saying, You know what? I liked it the way it was before. Let's get back to that.

Well, I mean, the biggest risk is losing people. And we know that flexibility is one of the top motivators and drivers. Okay, so it's definitely in the top now more than ever before. Before the pandemic, when we were evangelizing all of this and we were working with organizations and some were intentionally moving towards this as a way to engage and retain talent, or they were out-of-office And they said, office space is one of our biggest costs. If we go to this distributed model or hybrid model, the word hybrid was never used then. But if we go to this model, then we can save needing more office leases. So, how do we do it? Can you help us do it as organizational psychologists? Yes, absolutely. That was in our wheelhouse. But I would say that there really is a risk. And I've been collecting the data ongoing and speaking and writing about this a lot. The risk is losing people. And people have spoken with their feet by walking when flexibility is taken away. And with all these layoffs going on, especially in the tech sector, it's making employers I think a little more comfortable with, ah, we can call the shots again. Right? Now, it's in our wheelhouse to call the shots. It's an employer's market. But I would be very careful with that because at the same time, unemployment has been super low in the U.S. despite all those layoffs. So, what's happening is people are getting snatched up quickly into other roles. And what we're seeing is a trend where people are asking for flexibility as part of the hiring process. And if the organization's rigid, and inflexible, which I equate with distrusting as well. Usually, there's a climate of distrust. Then, I don't want to work there. So, see you later. And that's what's happening. The employees are going to call I think those shots in terms of where they end up working.

Yes, yes. We do have quite a few people on our call watching the live stream. So, if anybody does have any questions, feel free to tap it into the comments and we'll see if we can get it addressed. It's really interesting because you mentioned the trust aspect, which is something I called out early on. Like in April of 2020, I did an episode on trust just because what I found happened as soon as we went to remote, we had all these carrot and sticking leaders like jumping on, oh, what software is out there for me to be able to see what my employees are doing remotely on their computers? And And I just thought this really exacerbated the value systems of our leaders. And so now, as people are jumping and really considering how can they make this work long term, it was one thing when it was like, okay, it's just during the pandemic. As soon as it's over, we'll get back to normal. But now, people are— the demand is there. So, how do leadership skills need to differ What skill sets do they need to develop in order to manage the hybrid and remote cultures better?

They need to develop—

Little question. Sorry, I have this habit of asking these little bitty questions.

Yeah, it's a big question. There's lots of skills. I would say trust is— so trust is an interesting one because it's a personality trait that we grow up with. And depending on our Genetics and our family of origin and our culture that we grow up within, trust levels can vastly differ in terms of how we trust people or not. And in certain cultures and families, we're taught to distrust. So, we distrust people unless proven otherwise. And then on the flip side, some of us naturally trust Unless proven otherwise. And where we fall on that, imagine a continuum from distrust all the way to high trust. And on the distrust side, we have the micromanager. And how many of you like to work for a micromanager? Hands up. There's no hands up. So, it's personality. But at the same time, recognizing where you are on that continuum, which is something that we assess on. And then, what you can do about it and greater awareness of it. So, okay, I'm naturally distrusting. But how can I mitigate that so I don't totally demolish the motivation of my team?

Yes. And so, it too would require a lot of humility in understanding that that kind of trait might be ineffective in the environment.

Oh, humility is key. And I'm seeing way too much ego in the workplace. And I think the egos end up causing a lot of motivational damage to the people. So, a great culture has minimal ego at play. And we all have egos. Don't get me wrong. But when you lead with ego, you tend to lead with control, with fear, with distrust.

Yes. You and I are gonna have to do another show just on ego alone, I think. Because I think it's such a big— to your point, I think it's Such a big issue. Laura, this is fascinating. For the people who are tuning in, how can they get in contact with you if this is resonating with them and they want to reach out to you?

Oh well, thank you for asking. My website is called drlaura.live and that's where I have my podcast. And I had a series on narcissism on my podcast, which deals with ego as well. But ego at its dream. So, and I had a series about No Ego, which is by Cy Wakeman, one of my favorite business authors. So, like that's the nature of Where Work Meets Life. All kinds of episodes. And then, I have my articles. I publish regularly on the mainstream media around how to make work better. And I have some really important articles around hybrid and remote leadership on there. And I also have one coming out on should companies go on a meeting diet. And that was really fun to write because I think meetings are a huge source of wrecking people's time, energy, etc. So, I'm super excited about that article.

Lovely! So, I encourage people to go to your website, drlauralive.com, right?

Yeah, and my media section is where all my articles are. And then, I have a blog as well. But the media section's fun. I think people will enjoy it.

I love it. A lot of resources there. I did check it out this morning as I was putting together show notes and stuff. I can see that building and maintaining relationships might be a little bit of a challenge, especially within intact teams like project teams. When it comes down to driving those, how might leaders now adapt so that they can create better relationships organizationally?

Well, I think it depends on the leader. So, there's some companies that are purely or mostly remote, right? So, if I hire someone in another city, I rarely get to see them face-to-face, right?

Right.

So, there's different strategies that we use there versus in the same city, I have a 2-3 day split. We have 2 days we overlap and 3 days we don't. So, that's a different strategy as well because you have more days to work with. So, we always We like to work with the team and create a team playbook in terms of how is this team going to manage that? How are we going to communicate, collaborate, have effective meetings? How are we going to support one another's well-being and mental health given that we're dispersed or distributed? Okay? And then, each team is a bit of a different recipe. And if everybody can have a voice in the recipe, everyone, then you have a much more engaged, bought-in team rather than the manager dictating it.

And so, how about when some of those ideas clash with what other people want on the team? To your point, you said there are different people with different personality types. How does one find kind of that common place where everybody can then still work together? Even though you might have somebody who's like, I can't stand Zoom meetings, and other people like, I can't stand having to drive 45 minutes into the office just to sit and have a meeting. How does one mitigate that?

Oh, it's tricky. And that's why leadership is tricky, right? You can't please everyone. But you need to make sure everyone has a voice and their needs are considered. And you need to balance that with the needs of the business and the profitability and the performance. And we don't want to lose sight of that. So, it's about having those conversations. As a Group and then those conversations one-on-one.

Yeah.

And I always have me versus we. So, there's me. What are my needs, right? And I have 3 kids and I have this and I have a dog who needs to go out and this, like all these other things. That's me, okay? And then, there's we. And we is my team. What does my team need? Maybe I have a teammate who's isolated and lives alone and coming into the office is Huge source of social connection for them. I'd be happy working 100% remote. But my teammate thrives in having that team connectedness. So, it's not just about me. It's about we. And it's about both. So, I think through the pandemic when I noticed a lot of focus on me and organizations were really pining to that too in terms of people are fearful. People are scared. Right. People are okay. That's true, and there's a lot of anxiety, a lot of mental health issues, and there still are, by the way. That's another podcast topic. But I would say there was too much on okay. Let's try to please everyone. Let's do me, me, me, me, me. But then they found out wait a minute. We can't. We can't. We're gonna lose the focus on the collaboration that we need and the the days together that we need as a culture. So it's it's really the balance of both, and a strong leader leads to needs to have those conversations that. Yeah, no, here's why the 5 days remote isn't gonna work for our team and for your job. It's gonna create too many inefficiencies. Can we meet in the middle? What about you do 2 days? And which 2 days? And like, so you start to have those conversations.

I love that that's the way this conversation has taken us now because now, it's boiling down to this idea that leaders are the catalyst. for communication. They're the catalyst for having those conversations. I find all too often, especially pre-pandemic, leaders were given way too much on their plate to deal with that they couldn't actually work with their team members, right? That they didn't have time to do one-on-ones once a week with their team members. And now, the big focus is on especially with the changing dynamics of hybrid and remote working, that communication now is the number one skill that they are required to develop and to move forward with.

Yeah, it is. And a leader who's not doing one-on-ones at least biweekly, okay? I understand how it might not happen every week. But if you're not doing one-on-ones with your direct reports biweekly, you either have too many direct reports or you're not doing your job as a leader because you do not have a pulse on the flow of work, on the flow of life issues, on any challenges if you're not connecting one-on-one, hands down.

I love that. I love that. So, if anybody is tuning into this, that is your number one takeaway. You must communicate one-on-one with your people at least biweekly.

Yeah, I'd like to totally—

Yeah, I'd like to delve into what organizations can do to actually help their leaders adapt and become more effective in this new reality. And we'll get to that right after this.

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Welcome back! I am speaking with organizational psychologist, Dr. Laura Hambley. We're having an absolute amazing conversation. As you can tell, Dr. Laura and I are super passionate about today's topic. If you are planning an event like a conference or a leadership retreat and you know, or you know somebody who could use our services, why don't you reach out and do a connection request? Our contact information is in the show notes. Dr. Laura, are there any strategies you can share that would make the transition a little bit easier for leaders and as well as for the workers? Something that— do you have any kind of concrete framework that people can test themselves against to help push themselves forward and move them past being stuck?

Well, I mean, my biggest thing is always about continuing to gain self-insight as a leader. And what I hear sometimes is, oh, that hybrid or the hybrid workplace. Oh, we got that. We figured it out. We have a 2-day split. Everyone comes in these 3 days. It's all figured out. And it's almost like that ship has sailed. We're doing it. But to me, that's the same thing as saying, I know how to lead. I figured that out. It's all good. But a true leader is never done developing because leadership is very, very multi-pronged. It's very challenging. There are many, many layers to effective leadership. And then, the world is evolving so quickly and times are so uncertain. And then, we have a mental health pandemic. And we have a widely a wild economy right now that's unpredictable. And we have the generations that are changing over in the workplace. So, if you think you're done learning to be a leader, then that's a fundamental flaw because you should be continually gaining self-insight. So, the number one would be to try to understand where you're at with the skills of being a remote leader. So, that's something that we do a lot of. We have a lot of assessments around that. So, there's different ways that we can help you through HUMANCE, which is where all our tools reside. And so, there's ways that we can help get to the bottom of this for you. But if you want to start by just reading good content, definitely my website has some very good content on this topic to get you going.

It's interesting because What I'm finding is I'm finding that leaders are just trying to do the best that they possibly can. And in my realm, where I deal in hospitality, I deal typically in organizations that their leaders were incidental leaders. They got promoted because they were really good employees. And they would never really be given true leadership training to help them move forward. So, I see that these incidental leaders are the ones who are wallowing the worst, I think, in transitional in transitional eras. To your point, the generational stuff. And they're used to leading particularly one way. And now, Gen Z's into the workforce with all new demands. And now, we have 4 or 5 generations in the workforce. And now, we're coming out of a pandemic and so on. And people just don't have the skills. What can organizations do to help their leaders develop those skills?

Well, they need to get— I mean, training is part of it for sure. And Marc and I both being keynote speakers, you can bring in speakers, right? Then, you can bring in training. But I'd say the one-on-one is very, very important too. And that can be coaching programs. It can be mentorship programs. It can be both in tandem. But I think communities of development within organizations where you come together with other leaders and you share the challenges and you talk about what's going on. Because leadership is hard and you need almost a support group as a leader. Because just when you think everything's fine, then, oh my gosh, that person just quit. Or I'm dealing with a mental health challenge on my team. Or there's a nasty conflict going on. Or I mean, there's always something. There's never Quite a dull moment for leaders. At the same time, if you can have a sounding board and if you have good intentions and if you actively listen and you develop your empathy muscle, and those things will all go a long way in making people want to work for you.

I absolutely love that. I love the fact that you mentioned this idea of surrounding yourself with a community of people. who are in your realm. And what comes to mind right away is things like GLO in Calgary, GLO in North America, Tech Canada, Vistage in the States. All have these organizations that help bring leaders together. People who are kind of at your level and giving you a safe environment in which you can push and pull and question and challenge thoughts and processes. And then, to your point, this idea of Find a coach. Find somebody who could ask you the hard questions that you're willing to tackle so you can move forward. This has been just really brilliant. As we talk about this and people are trying, I think, to adapt and adjust, are there any cautionaries we should be aware of?

As we tackle the topic of leadership, hybrid leadership?

Hybrid and remote leadership, yeah.

Okay. Yeah. So, quick fixes. It's not a quick fix. It's an ongoing. You need to be collecting information on how it's going. So, if you say, oh, we got it all. It's going fine. Well, we do an annual engagement survey. But the engagement survey might not get at the specifics of how it's going. So, I think it's important to collect feedback from the people about leadership and about how the hybrid or remote is going. It's more of a pulse survey. It can be built into an engagement survey. But I think it's really important that you find out from your people how it's going and you adjust along the way. And too often, I feel that organizations aren't doing enough of that. They're guessing or hypothesizing on how it's going. And then, all of a sudden, they're shocked when they have a high turnover rate or something. And they could have maybe mitigated that had they asked and listened along the way.

And so, to that point, how important are stay interviews versus exit interviews?

Hugely important. Hugely. And stay interviews are also called career conversations. How's your career going here? What would make you want to stay here in 3 years? How can I help support your development? How is this hybrid thing working for you? What could I do differently as a leader? What's one thing I could do differently?

And again, it boils down to trust and humility that we don't have all the answers, right?

Yeah, and I think organizational structures are competitive. So, when I think of let's have a community of practice like a support group for leaders almost in-house, The problem is if those leaders feel competitive against each other, then they're not going to open up and trust each other. So then, it becomes a, we're in this. We're fighting over resources. We're fighting over the CEO's attention or whatever it is. And then, you just have a very dysfunctional culture. And I see this so many times out there.

Yeah, and taking one step further, I can also see that it results in bitch fests. about certain conditions that happen, especially about employees.

Sure.

I have been privy to so many different leadership conversations that were whining about how so-and-so was behaving and all that sort of stuff within intact teams. And I question that. I wrote about it in my book, this idea that how do you expect your supervisors after you've just been complaining about Donna? How do you expect your supervisors to go and lead Donna? in a way that's not tainted by the fact that you dislike this personality. And so, to your point, having— but again, I think more times than not when we're in environments and we have our heads down, we're in our own bubble. We can't see past our bubble. So, it's really so important to hire somebody like Dr. Laura to come and push and pull back the band-aid and push the wound a little bit to to test out how you're thinking and what your value systems are looking like and so on. Because I think bringing outside people in to see stuff with fresh eyes is really important. Would you concur?

I absolutely would. I think, and when things are going pretty well, it's still a good time to look at this proactively because I've seen it where things can go well and then slide very quickly. Just all you need is a couple of toxic leaders in there, even one depending on how their level in an organization. It can slide so quickly. The culture can just go downhill.

Yeah, yeah. And I have, if we had time, I'd tell you my daughter's restaurant experience, which was just ridiculous. One management decision ended up with 11 out of 17 servers quitting. It's like, good for you.

Terrible, right? When your daughter's going through that, it's like soul-sucking. It's a horrible experience.

It is absolutely like, I mean, I think a whole paper could be written on again, the lack of humility, lack of trust that is developed from situations where leaders don't include the teams in decision-making. So, this has been a fabulous conversation, Laura. Do you have any last thoughts about what we're talking about today?

Well, I think the more we talk, Marc, I mean, the more we're aligned. I feel we have similar values and appreciation for authentic leadership. And I really feel like this whole remote hybrid leadership, it's about good leadership first and foremost. Imagine a big outer circle. It's being a strong, effective leader, which is all these things: authenticity, humility, active listening, Etc. And then within it, there's this whole remote hybrid, which is some extra development and extra challenges. But the challenges are worth it.

Yes, yeah. And again, it's having the humility to look at that circle and say, where am I weakest at? What do I need to develop in order to become more effective? What are some of the recurring issues that are happening in my world that I'm blaming other people for but it keeps happening. Because chances are, if that's the case, I hate to say it, you might be the problem.

Yeah.

Could you remind everybody one more time how they can get a hold of you, Laura?

Sure. So, my website's drlaura.live. Dr. Laura, all as one word. D-R-L-A-U-R-A. And you can also find me on LinkedIn. Laura Hambley Lovett, L-O-V-E-T-T. So, that's my LinkedIn profile. And I'm always happy to connect. I love connecting. I'm very active on LinkedIn and Instagram. And I'm very active publishing articles that can help move things along in some way.

Right.

And it's a tricky time. But I'm happy to try and make a small difference through my skills and wisdom, growing wisdom. I'm still getting there. One day, I'll be there. One day, I'll be wise.

And I do challenge anybody tuning in, check out Dr. Laura's media page, especially if this is a topic that interests you. This whole idea about culture and leaders and leadership. Check it out because she's got some amazing, amazing content that's out there. Dr. Laura, thank you so much. for being on this show. This has been brilliant.

Thank you so much, Marc, for all the work you're doing to spread these important messages and for the incredible work you do with organizations.

Thank you so much. Why don't you let me know if this was of value to you? As always, my offer stands. If you would like 30 minutes of my time to brainstorm your business with you and your team, feel free to book yourself on my online calendar. The link is in the show notes. It's the one that's marked meetwith.marchaine.com. It would be my absolute honor to be of service to you. And if you haven't done so yet, why don't you go ahead and subscribe to this podcast? If you do, it'll give you first dibs whenever I bring you new content that will help you create the jaw-dropping, show-stopping experience that your employees and your customers deserve. My name is Marc Haine. I hope you stay safe, stay healthy, and I hope you dare to be the exception.