How to Manage Remote Teams with Jason Lauritsen

It is Wednesday, the 11th of November. Welcome to the Christmas edition of the Shortlist. I promise you it's not the Christmas edition. Don't panic. We're not there yet. We've got like six weeks to go. There's loads of time. You can go on Amazon, do all your shopping. You'll be fine with. We'll count down and we'll do a Christmas special. But we're not going to do it now because you shouldn't be putting up your Christmas trees. It's too early. We are today going to be talking about something that I think affects all of us right now. Certainly all of us who are professional workers, white collar workers, whatever you want to call the category. You're the type of person who's probably logged into LinkedIn and watching this live, right? You're probably in the category. If you're listening to this podcast, I guess you could be in any category. Maybe you work with somebody or so you live with somebody who is this kind of worker, but workers who work remotely or working from home or working from anywhere since this pandemic kicked in. And that's going to be our theme today. I want to talk about how do we manage remote teams? How does remote working work? What are the secret sauce ingredients? What's it going to look like in a year from now? Will it be different? What can we learn from examples out there today? And to hear from our guest today who's really, really passionate about this topic. This topic, by the way, not being necessarily remote, but being leadership and someone who's talked about that for a long time. Before I dig into the meet and introduce our speaker for today, our guest speaker, he'd kill me if I called him a speaker. He's going to have a conversation with us, maybe even an argument, which would be fantastic. I want to remind everybody that the Shortlist is a weekly show. It's a podcast and live broadcast. You can subscribe to our podcast on Apple, Spotify or wherever you listen to your podcast as you go for your walk with your dog or your run. And please do subscribe and give us a five star rating while you're at it. We'd really appreciate that. We can't send you bags of goodies for doing that, but we'll give you love and more content over the coming weeks. But you can also watch us live on LinkedIn or YouTube and you can find links to all our previous shows and you can sign up for emails that will tell you about our future guests by going to SocialTalent.com for forward/ the shortlist where our lovely nice people will write up lots of things on our website to tell you all about the fantastic shortlist and what we have coming. So those of you listening live, by the way, we love you, the live listeners. We want to hear your comments and opinions. We know this is a topic that affects you. We know you might be bored talking about it. But you know what, we're going to take a new angle on it. We want to hear what you have to say. I want to hear your questions for our guest. Which brings me to our fantastic guest. The topic though, let me just talk about the change we've gone through in 2020. It's felt dramatic for many of us, right? Many of us are still not coping well with this, right? Having to work from home or work from a remote office. And many companies and organizations around the world have really scrambled to adapt to this new way of working, as it's called disconnected teams working asynchronously, schedules all over the place, little ones coming in, older ones maybe coming in on your calls. But others have really loved this. They've embraced it. It's like the best thing that's ever happened to them in their work life. They're cutting their commute by three hours. They're getting so much time back. They love the, the, the, the ability to move to a different location may, but the difference between the two, you know, when you look at it, you look at the people who are struggling and the companies are struggling, the companies who aren't typically comes down to leadership. That seems to be the big, big difference between the organizations that are making it work and not making it work. And our guest today is a friend of mine. We've known each other for many years and he's my go to person on the topic of leadership. And that is Jason Larson. And Jason hails from Omaha in the US but he's a thought leader and award winning author who really focused on helping companies deliver an incredible employee experience. That's what he's always done, always spoken about. He's passionate about bringing humanity back to the workplace and I've seen him speak in person. The first time I ever met Jason, he was leading a room of 5000 hr folks in some massive conference center in Chicago. And he's here to talk to us today about what bringing humanity back to the workplace looks like in a virtual workplace. Jason, maybe you can tell us more about why this is the topic you ended up making your career out of. Why, why are you so passionate about this subject?

I think it's because my early career was working for really bad managers and having really terrible work experiences, largely. I think that's where, where this came from. I, as you know, you and I have talked a little bit about this in the past. But you know, my early career I was in sales and then I got into recruiting and I worked in some pretty terrible workplaces. And then even as a recruiter, I started seeing inside of other organizations and I started to realize that like there's a lot of people having suboptimal work experiences and they didn't like their job, they might hate their job. It was miserable. And then I had an opportunity. I joined corporate hr. I went inside with an awesome team and we proved what was possible. I saw that it didn't have to suck. And then I was hooked on it like forever. I wanted to, I wanted to, I knew it could be fixed and so I wanted to go fix it. And so that's what I dedicated my life to doing.

So I'm a talker, Jason. I like to talk about these things. You write about these things like what I think is an amazing features. The feat of writing a book is fantastic. You've written several books, Social Gravity. You've talked about unlocking high performance. Just going to give a quick plug to your books. I think they're, they're amazing and you write so well and you have some amazing insights in this topic. Right. But I want to maybe kick off with just a sample of what's out there. I want to try and look to other writers and see what they're talking about, good and bad. And this is the section we call in the show, Jason, the news. I don't know if it's news per se because it's not exactly something brand new happened this week, not like what happened last week in the US and we won't go there. But let's talk about this article in Forbes that I want to bring to your attention. Jason, I know you read through this as well. And Forbes wrote last week Matt Ranta wrote about three leadership skills necessary for managing remote employees. I want to get your thoughts on this article. We'll share the link in the in the show notes and also live here as well. And he wants to check it out. What did you get from this? If anything, what did you agree with, disagree with in this article?

You know, it's hard to disagree with what's in this because it's, I mean, so that the, the gist of it is they're like, okay, here's what you need to do, Empathy, have empathy, communicate and give more feedback. It's like, okay, sure. Same advice that we've been giving managers for the last, you know, 20 years. If you know those that really are trying to improve management or prove leadership, this is what we should have been doing. I, for me it was, it was, it's like, yeah, of course. And then there wasn't a whole lot of how to. So I mean it was sort of just another reminder of. And I think leaders are getting a lot of. I don't know what you think, but it seems like there's a lot of articles out there that are saying the same things, like be more empathetic, communicate more. And managers are hearing it. But like how to do it is an entirely different thing.

Without that tactical how to. Right. Can you give me an example from your experience that you've heard of where people like completely mess it up. They take the verbatim kind of headline like you get in these three tips and go, yeah, I got that. You know, like maybe communicating more. And they just mock it up completely.

I think that they're, you're seeing a lot of that right now where they're, they think, you know, our, traditionally when we as managers we hear communicate more. What we think is push out more information. Like I need to get more information to my people, be pushing out. And so they sit behind their desk and send emails, right? Send email, send email, send email, send email, send a lot of information. It ends up being overkill. And, and the employees are already overwhelmed. They're already trying to like they're, they're under, you know, underwater and it just is like an avalanche. And so it's actually counterproductive because so instead of it being push, it's. I think what they mean to say in communication is be in conversation. Right? Be in two way communication with your people, not one way.

I heard at the very start of this, I was in some leadership groups with other business leaders that I do educational programs and with a bunch of folks who run companies and we chat. And I remember on one of those early calls, maybe in March time, somebody sharing that and this phrase I saw many times elsewhere afterwards. Right. So it wasn't theirs, but we talked about the monthly became weekly, the weekly became daily. And that, you know, just as a simple example, you know, the types of meetings that again would have been a weekly meeting, you're now doing daily, you know, daily standups weren't done by many, many companies. Maybe tech companies, maybe software teams. Right. But it's kind of like, you know, let's talk every day. Just a short, quick, quick, quick, sharp conversation. Right? And we do this in social talent, in our leadership team. We got a 30 minute call at 8:30am every day. Right. But can that be. Sorry, better question is, what is the purpose of that kind of a meeting, in your opinion? Like, what are the different things you're trying to achieve to make that meeting work?

I think the purpose depends on context. I mean, that's the problem with any of these articles that you see online or any of the advice you get generally is that every bit of this advice depends on context and it depends on what your team needs and what you're trying to accomplish right now. I think the reason we're doing 30 minute daily meetings is different than the 15 minute standups that used to happen when we were all in the office together. Right? Different purpose, different need. I think right now those daily meetings in a lot of cases are trying to compensate for the loss of the, you know, the loss of the hallway conversations, the loss of the sort of unplanned social interaction. So on some level it's, it's a sort of, the primary function of it is to start the day with a sense of connectedness. Like we all connect together. Common, you know, let's reset, let's connect. I see you, makes me feel part of. And then I go do my work right by myself at my, at my, you know, dining room table or whatever that looks like. And so, so I think that's where a lot of it, the purpose right now is different. I think the purpose is, you know, it's connection. The purpose is checking in with people. It's sort of a pulse check with people to see where they're at. And then I think the third purpose right now, a lot of people are using it for, is alignment. Like, are we, do we like every day? Let's make sure we're pointed at the thing that matters the most. As a, as a team.

I found it really interesting when I watched the trailer for your new employee Performance Academy. We'll send a link out at the end. Jason, it was really interesting when you mentioned, because I hadn't thought about it, like more, whatever. Eight months into this, you talked about how those crucial moments when someone walks into an office and it's like, hey, Jason, Hey Johnny, how was your whatever? And that time when you walk into hanging up your jacket, maybe getting your breakfast, sitting down at your desk, that's a really important time from that social perspective. And you actually have to deliberately replace that to your point around one of the objectives perhaps of that daily sign up is to say, well, we lost that time. We don't have it. It was how we used to start the day. So let's try and bring some of that back, but in a more formal, structured way. And it hit me like, yeah, that's, that's a really good point. Like, because I was finding myself in my daily standups doing a lot of what you call, Michael, non business conversations. And you know, some people don't like that and they go, what are we here for? Like, come on out. Can we just align and talk about work? And I agree with you. I think it's, it's an important element. I think alignment is really important and it's really good to have. I think that, that, that deliberate replacement of those social interactions is equally important.

Yeah. And remembering that, like, even those people that, people that say, like, can we just get to the business? You know, like, why are we, why are we spending all this time social chatting Are also the same people that didn't stand around in the office chatting with people when they were getting coffee. Right. It's just sometimes they're just different personality styles need things. But it doesn't mean that we would strip out all of the social connectedness activities we have in the organization. Right. Stop talking to people because this guy doesn't like it or this lady doesn't like it. So there's always going to be differences in styles. But I think understanding that we have to replace things that we didn't have to think about before they happened by sort of by accident or naturally that we have to design for now, and it connects and that connects back to things that are fundamentally human. Right. Things like belonging and acknowledgement and connection. And those kinds of things aren't going to happen on their own when we're all separated.

I'm going to bring us to our second article of the week. This is from Business Insider. And again, it's a list of not three, it's five this time, right? Surprise, surprise. Five overlooked ways business leaders can support remote workers. Ask you again on this one, anything that is not obvious to think from this article, anything that I actually get one, one thing from this now I'm going to take away and try and try and actually do. But did you get anything new from this or is again, similar to like most of the articles out there? It's the same old stuff.

This was a little bit different, I guess, in the sense that it was a little more tactical and it was, it was more focused on what not to do than what to do. And I think that's, you know, that's also interesting. I don't know that in the absence of the context of what you should be doing, it's like, okay, I know I shouldn't do that, but what should I be doing instead? The thing that I really like about this, and I don't know, I love they, they talk about. One of the things they talk about is using asynchronous video, number one. Asynchronous. Like, I'm not sure why we're using that word because it seems like an unnecessary complication of things. But it's basically just like if you're just getting people together for a meeting to share some information, then just sit down, record it on video and send the video out, right? If there's no need for discussion, then just put it on video and send it out so then people can pick it up when they want to, as opposed to having to disrupt their entire schedule to try to align in a synchronous fashion. I guess around that meeting. I thought that was a pretty, a pretty smart suggestion that I, you know, I haven't seen that in a lot of places.

Yeah, I like that. I'm going to just do a shout out to our live audience on LinkedIn or YouTube. I'd love to hear your tips about what your company is doing, your team's doing, you're doing. That works, right? I think the more practical, tactical tips we have to share is going to be really, really important. So please do jump into the comment section and let myself and Jason know, or ask Jason the question. I agree that with that. It's, it's a good tactical thing. It's like, hey, you know, rather than, hey, communicate. Which is what the first article said, this is saying, actually, no, do an asynchronous video in this particular situation and do it this way and you go, oh, that makes sense. I can do that. I can slack that out to people. They can watch it in their own times. It's a big theme, actually. This, this whole idea of, of asynchronous versus synchronous. And one thing I've noticed, Jason, that most teams, what they've done is if they haven't been virtual before or work from anywhere, work from home before. What they've done is they tried to replicate as much of the office environment online. And one of the things that you replicate is the structure, which is a certain workday on hours and you have meetings and you're Synchronous. The world is synchronous. But everything I've read, I don't know if you're the same. Everything I've read from organizations who've done this for a long time, pre pandemic and doing this right, they say that, you know, a distributed workforce cannot over time, you don't work in the same time zone the same times. You have to move much more towards asynchronous. Synchronous is for certain things, only very certain things. And you are again focused more on people will just get the work done in their own times or time zones. And communication is actually when you over communicate. It's actually about documentation and communication and it's about communicating not necessarily in real time because people think let's call a meeting and communicate. It is like that example. It's like, well, they'll post the information, document it, make it super clear and then I can go back and read it and reread it or rewatch it and I can find out information really in a well structured, transparent way. There are things that I think most organizations who are doing this right now haven't quite got there yet. Would you agree with that summary?

Yeah, I agree. I mean, I think that that is exactly what happened is, you know, that I think the effort was how do we continue to do exactly what we were doing, just move it online. And you know, that the problem was that what we were doing wasn't optimal. I mean that, that's been in, in doing some, in doing some research around how, you know, remote work or remote managing was working. One of the people that I talked to in an organization, he said something that stuck with me and I, and I love it. I wish I would have said it is. He said, you know, this, this remote work or work from home, he said it's, it's just, it's held up a mirror to our dysfunction. And, and I think that so much of what we're talking about right now are things that like we had a dysfunctional environment in person, but we had some things that were working for us to help us kind of overcome that. The natural social, the natural kind of interactions, the over the cubicle or popping your head in on someone thing that was compensating sort of. And then all of a sudden we took that broken system and we put it here where all of that, all that stuff that was helping make up for it, it's just shown what was broken before. So you're right. And I think fundamentally what I keep coming back to and I feel like a broken record on this, but I think ultimately it, everything boils down to getting far more clear about expectation and intention almost entirely. When you're really clear on expectations and intentions, you know what, what matters, you've got a plan, everybody knows what's expected of them and there's, and there's clear intentions about that. And you put some mechanisms for communication around that. That frees you up from everything like that frees you up from, becomes clear which meetings need to be live and which meetings don't, which meetings are even needed or not, what work needs to happen, how all of that starts to get clear. But we've been so sloppy about clarity of expectation and planning of work that it makes everything more complicated.

One of the analogies that's worked for me in the last 10 years or so, I haven't always been successful at achieving this. I'll be the first one to admit it, is that leadership is, it's like sports coaching an Olympic team. To me, the leader is the coach. The coach is there not to win the gold medal. She, she doesn't do that. Her job is to let her athletes shine. Her job is to support them, give them the resources, make sure we have the right team going to the Olympics and then encouraging them, listen to them getting through the heartache, all that stuff. And then when they win the gold medal, she's done her job right and she kind of disappears in the background in some respects. Do you think that's why people get into leadership, to get into management, to be that kind of a person?

I wish I could say yes. I think some people do. I, you know, I know even, I mean, I don't know about, for you, but for me, even early on, I didn't, I didn't get into leadership because I had some grand desire to, you know, change people's lives. Like I, I took an, I took a promotion that was offered to me because I was a high performing loudmouth, right, that wasn't afraid to speak up. And I was like, yeah, I'll take more responsibility, more money, sure, why not? I didn't have any idea what I was doing. In fact, one of my early management jobs, I'll never forget it, one of my employees, I mean, I was doing something right because she walked into my office, she sat down, she closed the door, sat down, and she's like, you know, you're being a real a hole lately. And like that was, and she was absolutely right. She didn't say a hole. She used a very more colorful word than that. But she was absolutely right. I wasn't doing anything right. I mean, I just kept stumbling along, screwing things up. And so I wish I could say people get into it for the right reasons. I think some do. But I think it's just like coaches, like, people aren't born coaches. They have to. They find that calling and then they master skills that turn them into a coach over time. And I think leadership is often the same way. Like, you get. You should kind of have a calling towards leadership that then you can build upon by learning the skills you need.

So you mentioned earlier on survey, and I know that you recently surveyed several hundred leaders to understand what's going through their brain right now. What are their problems? How are they solving it? Like, can you share some insight as to what you've been learning recently about leadership in this kind of pandemic environment?

Yeah, it's. There were some things that were expected and some things that I guess maybe were a little bit unexpected. I think that what I saw predominantly, or what we heard back, I mean, we were asking kind of what are the biggest challenges you're having or biggest questions that you are having right now? And the biggest one was, how do I keep my team connected? Or at least that was one of the most commonly cited, is that there's a real. Like. Which was interesting. There's a real sense that people need to be connected. We know that. And I think managers are feeling themselves, what the absence of feeling connected does, how that impacts your ability to stay engaged and optimistic and energetic. And so they're worrying about that for their team. So that was one. They're worried about communication, not surprisingly. Like, how do I communicate effectively? One of the things that came up that I thought was super interesting and maybe made me even a little hopeful was managers. One of the primary things that they. Now, I should say this with a caveat that this survey went out to my list of people that follow me, so they're predisposed probably more towards a humanistic mindset about work. So I don't want to get overly optimistic, but one of the things they said was they're stuck between how do I make sure I'm checking in with my people and making sure they're productive without being a micromanager. Like, what does that look like? That's the tension. And I thought that was super interesting. That was a pretty, pretty key thing.

So what is the secret there? Like, what do you think? To answer that question, that's a concern that's out there. What do you think is the Way to think about solving that. Or back to tactical advice. What tactical advice would you give that anonymous responder?

Yeah, so I would say that so much of it boils down to, I mean it actually is very similar, I think, to the issue around connection is that so much of this is about establishing a foundation of trust and strengthening the relationship with your people and you've got to spend time with them. And so that's where you know, daily, if not weekly, check ins and check ins not, you know, not in the sense of tell me what you're working on today, what'd you get done yesterday? But check ins on, you know, tell me what, what is, you know, how are you doing? I love one to ten scale questions. So like, you know, what's your energy level 1 to 10 this morning? Or what level of distraction are you dealing with at home right now? From 1 to 10 just to give them some dials to set, you know, those kinds of conversations. And then when they say it's a three, it's like, well, tell me what, what's going on? Tell me about that, how can I help? You know, it's those kinds of conversations that when you can get it to that relational level and if you understand that people, employees, experience work like a relationship, which I've got tons of data we can talk about that tells us that that is absolutely true, then you have to think about it as a relationship. Like how would you make sure that a long distance relationship right now was going well? Well, you'd talk a lot and you'd ask and you'd have conversations and when someone said it's not going well, you'd ask them about that and you'd try to fix it. And so I think that's at the heart of it, is that if you can get that relationship and trust then and, and in that you're asking for feedback like you're asking like, how's this going? And you give them permission to tell you when it's too much. Right. That's the same way you would in a relationship that matters. Like, tell me when it's too much. I said, my wife, Johnny, you know this. My wife was running, running for mayor in our town election last week and she lost unexpectedly. Like, I'm still blown away that that happened. And as a result, like that's been a pretty devastating week at our house. And so I've been trying to check in with her and be supportive as much as possible, but there's been a couple of times where I've said to her, like, I don't know exactly what you need right now. And I know that I might be asking too much or maybe not enough or I don't know what you want. So I'm like, just tell me to shut up if you need to, or tell me that it's too much or tell me that you need a hug or just. I'm like, whatever you need, I'm here. But I'm like, tell me when I need to dial it back or dial it up or help me. Just. And so I just asked for feedback about that interaction too. And so I think the key to not being a micromanager is always, you know, being in a conversation with your people about what they need from you as a manager and then responding to that.

We got some great comments from Peter Hogg. Peter, great to have you join us on the comments live. And Peter's know commented, I think that many people have a dated stereotype of what leadership is and to stop being a leader and start showing leadership. And it reminds me of like, I know when I was in university, Jack Welch was the great leadership role model. And that evolved into Steve Jobs, that evolved into Sheryl Sandberg. And each of those individuals, you know, in their own rights, you know, maybe were good leaders, bad leaders. But I think to your point, Peter, it's like people kind of think I have to be that as opposed to just show leadership. Right? To your point, show friendship, show show love, show that you care. Like, you know, it's. Stop trying to be Cheryl Samber or being Steve Jobs. Just do these things. Just, you know, like, to me, I use the analogy of my kids. How do I good leaders, like, well, I with my kids, like, sit down, have a conversation with them, ask them how they are, ask them are they okay, build trust and keep going back and probing. They'll think I'm a good dad if I'm taking an interest in them and I'm asking the questions. You're a good leader if you're taking an interest in your team, supporting them, asking questions again and listening and doing stuff with that. Like, is that how you do it? Like, Peter again, asking, how do you develop trust remotely? Like, what are your tips around doing that remotely? Specifically? Jason?

Yeah, well, I mean, I think there's some foundational, I mean there's some foundational things that you, that you can learn from. And if there's anybody that's looking for, you know, to answer that question or resource, the one that I use or I lean on, there's a. The Steven Covey, the Speed of Trust book, to me, is one of the most helpful tools that there is out there, because there's this and there's a section in there where he breaks down the behaviors that build trust. And there's some things that are pretty straightforward, but there's things like being clear about what your intentions are, being, you know, upfront, so making sure people understand, like, what, you know, saying to your people. And I used to, I used to say to my people when I brought new people on to work for me in an organization or work on my team, I would tell them up front, like, my goal is to be the best possible manager I can be for you, is to be the best manager you've ever had. But the only way I'm going to be able to do that is if you will give me feedback. I'm going to ask you for feedback, and I need you to be honest with me, because if you tell me what you need, I will do everything I can to, to, to deliver that for you. But, like, when I put that intention out, it builds trust. When you tell people, you know, when you make commitments, you got to follow through. You got to be there. You know, you've got to find. And that's the most foundational thing. It's. Integrity and trust are intertwined. You have to follow through. You have to tell them the truth in a verifiable way. I love that is, you know, that's one of the pieces of advice that comes from him is, you know, make sure that the way you're communicating with them is a way that they don't have to take your word for it. Right? There's not a, like, trust me, I, you know, I got. There's all these kinds of things, and these aren't in a remote environment. More than anything else, I think, I think that the foundational thing, though, it goes back to relationship. One of the, one of the things I say all the time in my training is that time is the currency of relationships. You cannot build a relationship and you cannot build trust without investing time. Like, you have to spend time with people to build trust. It's just the reality. And so make time and be consistent and be, you know, do what you say you're going to do. That goes a long ways. It's pretty simple.

Another great question from John Matobe. I think that's my correct pronunciation, John, but who's asking about. Do you have any specific suggestions or tactical advice leading across generations or what is your, your thought about leading across generations?

So let me start by saying That I, as a general rule, I think most of the generational stuff is nonsense. I think there's some things we can learn from it, but I think what we can do. This is what I think. All this advice about empathy that's out there, you know, like the first article, you know, have more empathy. Well, I think what, what that boils down to is recognizing that, you know, how do you. It's sort of like specific suggestions for generations is. What about specific suggestions for gender? What about specific suggestions for whatever it's like, well, you have to be really curious and want to understand that person. Right? It's not, not all millennials behave the same way. Not all Gen Xers want the same things. There's some core things as humans that we want, we need, we all need belonging and crave belonging as a, as human beings. We all crave belonging. We all crave acknowledgments and appreciation. We all crave, you know, being cared for, somebody caring for us. Like there are some general human things. So right now I would say lean into that and then have conversations with people to try to understand their circumstance, what's going on in their world, what's going on in their, you know, like, can you understand what's happening in their workspace, which is their dining room or their kitchen, what's happening there? And how can you help support them in making them feel more whole and well and confident and supported so that they can do better work and manage their life better. Like that's, I think, the key underneath it, regardless of generations.

I think that's an excellent point in terms of going, you know, if you, if you totally understand your key word curious. I love their. Jason, you're curious about the person. You demonstrate that. Get to know them, get to know their perspective. You'll see all the different flavors that are there and you're, you're down to going, it doesn't matter what Gen Z do. It matters what, you know, Michelle and my team wants and how she acts because she's in my team and she's my real person. I understand what drives her, what motivates her, what she's into, her styles, etc, in terms of, you know, the way she works. That's what's key. The Gen Z article doesn't really matter a damn. If I just was curious about Michelle, I'll get to know that. Stuff like that, that, that really resonates. It probably brings us back to a bigger point, which is that a lot of leaders, managers, that's, that's safe at the Moment because maybe that's a more familiar term for some folks. You know, they haven't quite realized that they're not the producer anymore. Their job is to get production from the people that are in their team. That is their sole job. It's a difficult transition to make from being to your point because I was the same as you, Jason, a top producer and I was given responsibility for a team and I just, what I did was I knew how to produce. So I kept producing and hopefully kind of thought, well, if I do this really hard and fast and well, everyone will just copy me. It's, it's just not the job of a manager or leaders to just produce more. The job is, as you said, is to go, how do I get these individuals to produce whatever that is, right? Design, work, creativity, output, sales support. And you'll only figure that out by getting to the heart of what motivates, what drives them, creating an environment of trust for them, feeling like, like the reward and giving them feedback. And that's your full time job. Like, do you think people get that as a manager, as a leader, that's your full time job. Not to produce, it's to let others produce or enable them to produce.

The challenge is that. And actually this thought sort of flew through my mind as we were talking earlier too when you talked about the, you know, how you think about your role as a coach and that like you can't, like a coach doesn't actually go on the field or you know, go on the court to perform. Like the coach's work is done sort of around. I don't, I would say that, I think fundamentally, do managers know that? I don't think they often do because the reason they're getting promoted is because of individual productivity or performance. Right. Some kind of technical skill or whatever it was, you're really good at the thing that the people you're going to now manage are really good at. And so you're promoted for that reason, which sends a really weird message. Like the first message you get is, well, obviously like Johnny, you're a super performer, so just keep doing what you're doing. Instead of like there's. Nobody sits you down and says, okay, you're going to actually need to stop doing that thing that you're really good at and do something completely different. And I think so. I think that's problematic. I think our model of management and leadership in organizations, like that's one of the interesting thing that came up in the, in the research that I did, is there would, there were Comments in there. Like, some of the challenges that people. Managers are having is they're like, you know, they're having a struggle finding the time to check in with their people and spend all that time with that and then get their work done. And I'm like, your work is checking in with your people. Like that is, that's your job. And so that's the part that drives me insane about like organizations wonder why managers aren't spending more time with their people. It's like, well, because you've, you took, they have a job and then you piled another job on top of it. Which one do you want them to do? Because what they're going to end up doing is a poor job of both. And that's the reality. And it sucks from being a middle manager. And most of corporate America is the worst, hardest job there is because you've got two jobs that they're asking you to do. And no wonder they're tired. And so, so I don't think. No. It's a long winded answer. Say no. I don't think they understand it because that's not the message that's being sent to them when they get promoted.

I love that you get people going. I'm always in so many meetings. I need to get out of meetings. For some people, that's your job. Again, if you call a meeting and interaction with somebody, communication, it's like your job is to do that. Your job is to check in to talk and then what do they want? You got to go to a different person in the organization and influence them to get what you need. It's your job to probably be in meetings. It's that, that switch the producers, get them out of meetings for sure. The minimal amount. Well, your job is probably just a whole lot of meetings. And if you don't like that, don't be a manager, don't be that leader. I want to come back to the virtual element of this, right. The remote element. Jason, for a sec, right. Because you know, I'm sensing that this remote experiment that that many of us are going through is highlighting crap leaders, right. And shining a spotlight on people who maybe just got away with not not being a good leader. And I don't mean that they intended to be a bad leader. They just didn't. No any better. No one ever showed them the way they want to be a better leader. They don't know how difficult to kind of be that kind of a leader anymore. Right. Because there's so much of a focus on helping your team and that's where you're, you know, some people are crumbling. You know, part of me says this is brilliant because the world's going to be fixed and leadership will be fixed because of this experiment. But as came out today, I think there's promises that people in the U.S. you know, Fauci's promising maybe vaccines for everybody in the US by April 2021. Does that mean that this will all come grinding to a halt midway through next year and then we go back to where we used to be?

I hope not. I, I don't know. It depends on the day you catch me. I guess if you, if, you know, catch me on my optimistic moments, you know, I'll, I'll maybe say no. We're, we're going to see, you know, we've, we've changed too much. But then I've also seen, you know, our capacity to snap back on things and break, you know, old habits are hard to break. Here's one of the things I think about a lot relative to this question is regardless of what happens, regardless of, there's going to be leaders that want to pull people. We've already started to see it. People want to pull people back into the office as fast as they can. There's other, you know, there's a bunch of organizations in Silicon Valley that have said, we're not going back to the office ever. We're staying in this forever. There's going to be a bunch of in between. I think the thing that's being, that's being overlooked is that assuming that economically we don't descend into ruin, I mean, assuming that the, the global economy hangs in and stay and starts to, you know, continues to recover and gets back to a healthy place. The thing that has changed is us as people, as employees, as human beings. What we know is possible, what we know we are capable of, what we know, like, you know, pre pandemic, there's a bunch of organizations around the world that were telling employees, like, it is not possible for you to do your job remotely, so stop asking. Not even for one day a week, not for two days a week, not part time, not nothing. You have to be in the office. And then along came the pandemic and illustrated that those were all lies. It was all lies. It was all based in fear or laziness or whatever. We just didn't want to do it. Now it's happened, it's proven that it can happen. And so we can never go back to a world where we can say, if you tell me, I can't then I know you're lying to me and I know it's just because you don't want to. And so I think, I think, to me, I think that's a more. I think that's a more important underlying trend that has moved is that the companies are going to think, are going to behave like they're in charge of this, but I don't think, like, I don't think they're in charge of it anymore. I think talent now knows what's possible and what's capable. And so now organizations have to start to, at least I think are going to need to step back and really think about their business and, and, and what role place and space and time plays in it. So, so do we. I don't think we ever go back to the way it was. I don't. I. I'm curious what you think. I mean, you, you see it from a lot of different organizations. I think, I think we're going to land somewhere in the middle. I think it's going to be super messy for a while.

Yeah. And I'm keen to hear what our audience thinks. Quick poll, if you're listening live, tell us what you think. Is it going to go back to where it was fully? Is it going to stay with the way we are? Somewhere in the middle? I'd love to hear your thoughts. Sue Hyland's on YouTube and saying for, for. Certainly for him, my take is this work from home sucks. I might take. You know, I think that's a good, It's a good, It's a good quote because it highlights the fact that whilst there are benefits, like, not everyone likes this stuff. And what I've been putting on my mind, Jason, more than anything else, whether it goes one way or the other, I think isn't so much the thing. It's like we're sitting here recording this in November and, you know, there's talk of maybe a vaccine in April and there's talk, most companies have said, hey, this is what we're doing till July. I just want people to make it, make a call now asap for the, for their talent acquisition teams, for their employees. Like, well, which way are you going to go after April or after July or after whenever? Like, tell us you're going to go back to a full on. We're going to. Everyone's got to work in the office. Everyone's got to work remotely. Everyone's going to have to mainly be in the office. Everyone's got to mainly be online. Right. Just pick one and Communicate that and be consistent and just plan for that. This, I don't know what we're going to do past X date for massive organizations, appoint 400,000 people, going, well until July, we're going to do this. Like, what about after that? Like, I need to make plans. Do I, do I move home? Do I not move home? Will I have to come out to the office five days a week? Will I not? Like, it isn't actually that difficult to make a decision like this whole, well, we got to wait to find out what's going to happen. What are you waiting for? I don't know what organizations are waiting for. I commend organizations like Siemens, a 400,000 person organization who came out in July and said, we are going to allow our employees, our office employees, of which there's 140,000 of them to work up to three days a week from anywhere, forever from now, forever. That's just going to be our policy. They said we're not waiting for to figure out there's a vaccine or when this ends. Like we've learned to your point that there's a new way of doing this for office workers. We're going to take that information and update our policy. And what. We don't need to wait. I love that. Right? Like why that? So my thing is why, why aren't more companies doing that? Because I just don't understand what they're waiting for. What are you waiting to find out? Make a commitment. Okay, I might disagree on the, on the direction they go. Maybe they should be more virtual, less virtual, but like just, just decide.

Well, I think, I think part of that in my, I mean it, it illustrates the fact that that's happening. Illustrates a whole bunch of thing. I mean, number one, we generally are really bad at planning. We're really bad at like organizationally like just casting out and saying, let's look at what we think is going to happen and make decisions. Like, I think that's pretty clear. But I also think they're not talking to their people to find out what their people want or don't want. Right. Because at the end of the day that should be an important factor. You know, what do your people want going forward? Are they, do they want to, are they anxious to get back to the office? Are they not? And I personally think that a majority of the reason they're not making a decision is because I honestly think it's capital overhead, it's all the buildings and all of the expense they have tied up. I don't think it has anything to do with people and they'd rather say nothing than to say something and then have to. We live in a world where we can't ever admit we're wrong. And so we'd rather say nothing than make a commitment and then have to come back and say, well, actually, maybe we should do something. You know, we're going to do this instead of that. I wish that, you know, one of the, one of the things I was really fortunate to do is I. I attended something called futurist camp with one of my mentors, Rebecca Ryan. She's a futurist and she, she teaches like, not. And this isn't like the BS futurist stuff you see out there. It's like real futuring skills. There's a set of skills that you can learn. But the biggest thing about futurists is that they look at trends and project sort of like a cone of reality that says, here's what you know, on this end, worst case, on this end is best case. And then here's what probably happens. And then we can plan for that range of things, right? We start planning. What are the common things that are happening within this that we can plan for, that we can prepare for. It's back to like, we just are so bad at that. So I'm with you. That. And as a result of that, it's creating uncertainty. Uncertainty absolutely undermines and kills engagement and performance and productivity and everything else. And so I think you're right that that lack of a clear decision is undermining everything.

And we've got some great comments coming in. Lisa Carbonara. I don't know that's correct pronunciation, but I, I love the dish and I love your name, Lisa. She's saying there will be a hybrid model, corporate real estate will diminish and more workspaces like we work will be the norm for in office needs as in the best in both worlds. Totally agree. Peter Hogg saying the housing markets are already telling an interesting story. I know I've heard anecdotally from folks in the housing in the kind of real estate market saying commercial real estate has gone to the floor, but you're finding the private homes, that market's gone way up because people are kind of going, hey, I might need an extra room that I didn't know I needed to have. And I'm rethinking my housing arrangements for the future. And you know, certainly in Ireland, where I'm based, you're seeing an increase in house prices outside Dublin city. These people are leaving. So I think companies may not be willing to make a decision. Right. And you've got the likes of Peter Hogg saying poor leaders can't admit they're wrong. That's the problem at a time like this. I agree on your point. That's the indecision. Employees aren't actually waiting. They're going to go, well, screw you, I'm leaving the city, I'm moving home. Because to your point, you can't make me go back. Good luck trying. John Matobe, who asked some great questions earlier on has come back to say that their employee engagement survey lands slap back in the middle flex week split. I think that's. I agree that the extremes are not good. I don't think fully virtual is a good idea. I don't think fully office is a good idea. I think you have to have flexibility. But one thing I'd say, John, to your point, your organization land in the middle. Not too sure what the organization is, but I think you do as a business have to decide which are you mainly, are you a mainly office business? Are you mainly virtual business? Because that will dictate your, your, your meeting schedules, all these things. I do think you have to make that decision. And then we've got Abhishek saying offsite working for recruiters is working well. I see recruiters focused, they get time to research. I do see that they need to be available in office occasionally as required and able to communicate faster and raise challenges real time. So again, back to the idea of something in the middle seems to be what works and that's the consensus we're getting from here. And last, I'm going to just call out Rachel's comment here. Thanks, Rachel. It's a permanent change for the future of work for global companies. Those companies and leaders that have led their teams well, those that know and trust their staff can offer that flexibility dependent what happens in the future? I think we're going to be selling this story. What did your company do and decide in 2020 as the employer, vampire, employee, employee kind of brand proposition for the next five years? Jason, what do you think?

I, I agree. Although I think, I think that what will quickly become more important is what, you know, where are you now right in June or in November of 2021? Where are you and what does it look like and how did you get there? I think we have a really short memory and I think one of the things that I think is, is not being discussed enough yet is that once, I mean we, we won't be in a pandemic forever, at least, knock on wood. Let's hope, right? We won't. The pandemic conditions won't be here forever, which means eventually we get to go back to traveling and being together. And I think there's a, that's the part that we're not really talking about right now that we need to be thinking about is like, what does a hybrid work environment look like going forward? What does people want to come together? What does that mean and how do they want to come together and what kind of office environment do they want? Because it's probably not what it used to be and it's probably not what you think it is. It's something in the middle. So go ask them and get some research. There's also some really significant, I think, you know, I don't know. I mean, I think there's, there's, I can't cite it directly, but anecdotally, I know there's a number of companies that have talked about the importance of, even if you are mostly remote, the importance of bringing everyone together for certain period, you know, like for a week, a year or for a couple of weeks. Like if you're not going to have the overhead and the expense of the big corporate offices and buildings, then spend that money on travel and get people together and foster that, that face to face connectedness because those relationships then make the rest of it work. That's been a really interesting. I don't know how you found that for your organization, Johnny, but the, a lot of the organizations that are doing this really well and have, have gone through it really well, had great relationships in place before it happened.

Yeah. And for us, you know, we've taken that, that, that, that advice and we've scheduled what we've put in place a monthly, the first Monday of every month. We, we planned, we, we missed two of them because in Ireland we're on lockdown at the moment. But again, we're going to meet or, sorry, when I say we're going to give people the opportunity to meet the first Monday of every month we're going to have a two hour extended co kind of breakfast and we're going to have a remote speaker dial in on Zoom that's kind of talking to our values and it's an opportunity to hear a speaker that's about our values. And I know, I know we've got some great speakers in so far. We had a fantastic speaker this, this month, fantastic one last month was about, it's connecting over breakfast. Right. Really simple. But again, it's Optional. It's not nothing forced. It's like. But we want to create the opportunity for that. And then we have, we have scheduling for the next year, our quarterly event where we'll have a team building thing. Again, optional, which is for those who, who really want to just connect with the whole company to meet up and then each team trying to do that regularly as well. But again because we're going to be virtual first. Everything's optional but you do have to create the opportunity. I think there was a real comfort felt by having them diary in to go. Okay, there could be an opportunity where I could, if I chose to meet up with my colleagues, really important. I'm going to call it two last comments and then then come to a close with you, Jason. And whilst whilst I'm reading these comments, you can be thinking about the piece of advice you want to share with our audience. But Peter's just put an interesting, Peter Hogg, interesting commenting there about Dubai where Peter's based at the moment. They've just launched. I didn't know this, a remote workers visa. You don't have to have a job in the Emirates. It's a great opportunity for remote workers to benefit from tax free. Very interesting. That's kind of, I love this idea of countries now competing for talent by getting there first with new employment legislation. That's an interesting development. I think we'll see more of that. And then Simon Johnson, I think is a really important point maybe to close on Jason because it follows up from your points. If it takes time to build a relationship, it'll be interesting to understand at what point the trust is built and whether it's done on site or remotely first. And if it takes longer to be done remotely, will remote workers feel a sense of detachment, thus spending less time at employers? It's a really interesting thing. You know, when, when we've so many more people who've onboarded virtually and never actually met. What does that look like in an organization? I think we'll find out, but we've run way over because we some great comments and questions and thank you to our live listeners for those. It's been fantastic, Jason. To add to our shortlist, we like to close every show with a piece of advice. Either you want to share with our audience that's yours or what's been given to you in the past you think is worth passing on.

So I'm going to give it's a piece of advice but it's also a tactic or a tool that I think people can use right now it addresses the questions about how to build trust or how to do things remotely. And I, you know, as I mentioned earlier, I think the key is understanding work is a relationship for the employee. The employee experiences work as a relationship. The things that engage people are things like feeling valued and cared for and trusted and appreciated and seen all of those things. And so the advice I would give you is to use something I describe as the relationship test. And the short version of this is that as a manager, when you're thinking about something you have to do with your people, whether it's a one on one meeting, whether it's giving some feedback, whether it's, you know, planning a team meeting, whether it's, whatever it is, is mentally to think about the approach that you're about to use and to in your mind, put on the other side of this interaction rather than an employee or a random group of employees, your best friend or your spouse or someone that you care deeply about, who you know would just tell you straight if it was if you were really making a mess of it or if you were doing something terrible and someone who you don't want to violate that relationship with and then run, run through what you're about to do and think about how that person would react if it was your best friend on the other side of it, how would they react? You know, the way we handle performance appraisals or performance reviews, or the way we handle one on one meetings, or the way that we provide feedback to someone, how would they react if it was, you know, if it was your best friend at the end of it, would they be like, dude, have you lost your mind? Or like what's the matter with you? Or do you even care about me? Because if it doesn't build the relationship with that person, then why would you do it to anybody else? And that's kind of the bottom line. Use the relationship test.

I love that I, I heard first for that many years ago from you and I stuck with me as a brilliant way to understand leadership and understand how do you how to think about this stuff. Jason, it's been just a pleasure. I'm being a longer show than expected, but hopefully for those listening, you really got great value from Jason's advice and the discussion today. Jason, I'm just going to make one last, last column for those of you listening. Enjoy Jason's perspective. There's so much more. I know that you've got a program that you're launching online for employee performance@the EmployeePerformanceAcademy.com and you've got a preview of that that's free if people can go on today managing virtual teams. You got a 20 minute course I watched it, I thought was awesome. We're sharing the link there. So just look up that it's employeeperformanceacademy.com and you can check out the free free first course and sign up for that if you're interested in this topic. Jason's an awesome guy, great expertise on this area and we're hopefully going to be working with Jason Moore in the new year on the Silvertown platform for our leadership content as well. Thanks for joining me today, Jason. I wish you well, I wish your country well with everything that's going to hopefully continue over the next couple of weeks.

Thanks Johnny. Thanks for having me.

So we going to be back. We're going to be back next week with another brilliant show. I'm really excited about next week's show as well. We've got a fantastic guest joining me, someone I got to know over the last few years actually first met on a show, a show I did in France of all places for called Top Recruiter. Google that and find that in YouTube folks. That is the fantastic Salma El Wardani and Salma is a host of a radio show on Radio London. She's a fantastic online celebrity talking about empowerment around diversity, equity, inclusion. And Salma's going to be joining me for what I think is going to be a quite, you know, heated debate on how those with power and privilege can help others. Really hot topic at the moment in the diversity kind of conversations. And just to kind of how does equity, how does privilege play out? Who has the power in these roles? How are they using it? How are they not using it? Join us next week, that's Wednesday the 18th of November. You can find it if you subscribe to our podcast. It'll pop up in your podcast next Wednesday evening and you want to listen to us live and join the conversation. That's at 4pm UK time. That's going to be 11am in the east coast United States, 8am on the west coast, 11pm in Singapore. And if you want to see what else we've got coming up for the next month and when that Christmas show happens, you can check us out@SocialTown.com thanks for joining me. Hopefully that's given you some insight in terms of future of remote work and particularly around leadership. I want to leave you with this one last thought is that as a leader your job is to make others successful. It is to lead it is not to do. I hope if you're a leader or thinking about being a leader, you're going to hold true to that desire, to that instinct. So thanks for joining us. We'll see you next week. And take care.