The only thing that has really helped to bridge the virtual gap between employees and managers is communication. However, both over-communicating and under-communicating — the extreme ends of optimal communication — come with their downsides. If there’s poor communication from the manager, there’s a risk of a wide gap in meeting team goals, delays in project completion, and duplication of work. On the other hand, if a manager is over-communicating, they risk wasting time, demotivating their team, and micromanaging their direct reports to the point of burnout

Finding Balance In Your Communication Frequency

1-on-1 meetings are a great opportunity for managers to talk candidly with their direct reports. They are also opportunities for managers to grow as leaders of a remote team, to reflect on their own mentoring skills, their ability to give feedback and listen to constructive criticism. Some questions that managers can ask during these meetings:<ul><li>What’s on your mind this week?</li><li>Last time we spoke, you said X was a challenge for you. How is that going?</li><li>What are your plans and priorities for this week?</li><li>How aligned do you feel with where the company is going?</li><li>What feedback do you have for me?</li></ul>

Host Frequent 1:1 Meetings And Be Open To Feedback 

It’s really important for remote leaders to set rules around how, when, and which communication tools to use when working in virtual teams. When to use Slack? Which situations call for an email? Under what circumstances should an ad-hoc meeting be scheduled? Set up project collaboration tools to track project updates. If a project would benefit from creative and energetic exchange of ideas, then schedule a call for clarity. Complement video calls with traditional emails for company-wide communication.

Set Up Communication Guidelines

Micromanagement can be a costly management style that can lead to low employee morale, high staff turnover, reduction of productivity, and overall dissatisfaction. Avoid constantly asking for status updates as this can come across as having a lack of trust in the team to do their work, and that’s a slippery slope no manager wants to be on.Micromanagement can lead to impostor syndrome, and also lead to disappointment and lack of motivation for certain employees, so watch out for those common signals that managers may need to take a step back.

Make An Effort To Not Micromanage

<ul><li>Synchronous communication includes every form of communication that happens in real-time, and there’s an immediate response.</li><li>Asynchronous communication includes every form of communication that doesn’t happen in real-time, and responses can occur intermittently. Asynchronous communication is impactful for teams that work across time zones, as there’s no expectation of an immediate response.</li></ul>It’s down to the managers on how and what tools they want to implement with the team.

Asynchronous and Synchronous communication.

Discover how to strike the balance between over-communicating and under-communicating as the manager of a remote team. 

remotework

Remote Work

career

Career

communication

Communication

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

4 Ways To Balance Under And Over-Communication As A Remote Work Manager

<ul><li>Managers should map each team member’s work back to the bigger picture of why what they do matters to the world. </li><li>When assigning tasks, managers should consistently outline answers to: Why is this project important? How will it impact others? How does it fit into the company’s broader mission?</li><li>CommonSpirit, the largest nonprofit health system in America, starts important meetings with “reflections,” stories or videos recognizing how hard it is to be a health care worker in a pandemic while also connecting to all the good they do for their patients and communities. </li></ul>

 Make work purpose driven

<ul><li>To help hybrid teams succeed, managers should clearly outline the milestones they’d like their reports to hit — and then let them figure out how to get there</li></ul>

Trust your people more than feels comfortable

<ul><li>For example, if team members are eager for opportunities to learn and their manager would like to build mentorship abilities, we might deliver a nudge to the manager ahead of their next 1:1 that offers recommendations for how to have a growth-focused conversation with a report.</li></ul>

Learn in the small moments. Send people — and yourself — nudges

<ul><li>Encourage managers to take notice of who often dominates the conversation in meetings or receives the most recognition for a project’s success. Make the evaluation criteria for projects as clear as possible: The more explicit the rubric, the less room for bias.</li></ul>

Include everyone. Take a long hard look in the mirror.

for leaders who want to create a suitable remote working culture. 

Some of the pre-pandemic rules still apply — but not all of them.

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

teamwork

Teamwork

5 New Rules for Leading a Hybrid Team

<ul>
<li>Toxic leadership is the main reason why employees leave their jobs. In order to become truly exceptional, those in charge must practice empathetic leadership.</li>
<li>Empathy is the ability to feel what another person is feeling. It is the ability to put yourself in the other person’s shoes in a big and meaningful way. It is to experience their emotions.</li>
<li>Emotional intelligence is the ability to understand and manage your own emotions, as well as the emotions of others. Empathy is absolutely critical to emotional intelligence.</li>
</ul>

Empathy in a Remote Team

We live in an era filled with information. Thus, without emotions and the ability to sense, understand, and respond to these emotions, any level of understanding and connection is impossible. In today’s business world, we have tools and methods for the efficient exchange of information, but these leave out a massive amount of what makes people human. Research has shown that empathy is essential at work, and when it comes to remote work, the critical need for developing both emotional intelligence–and expressing it in the form of empathy–is imperative to its success.

Why Empathy Is Important

Encourage formal and informal meetings, demonstrate your listening abilities and show care. You can use technology to enhance virtual meetings to feel more close and connected. One has to assume a positive intent and work closely with the team, getting a full idea of their workday, life and the challenges they face.

How To Be A More Empathetic Leader

We are all biased. People tend to approach situations with preconceived notions. It helps people feel prepared for situations. It helps people to feel in control and more comfortable. But preconceived notions, assumptions, or biases make it difficult to listen fully. Work on identifying them and challenging these biases to improve empathy and become more inclusive of different perspectives.

Identify And Challenge Your Biases

The highest-performing teams have one thing in common: psychological safety. It is the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. <ul><li>Approach conflict as a collaborator, not an adversary.</li><li>Ask for feedback to illuminate your own blind spots. Open up for suggestions and ideas from your team and take time to reflect on them.</li><li>Commit to developing a psychologically safe culture. Discuss shared “team rules” openly.</li></ul>

A Safe Place

With technology, you can scale empathetic leadership development to optimize collaboration for stronger team effectiveness.

loveandrelationships

Love & Relationships

3 Ways to Practice Empathetic Leadership with a Virtual Team

For more Inspiring content for algorithms

Follow on Medium 

It’s impossible to be healthy if you sit in the same posture all day, leaning over your computer. Not to say that if your body isn’t in good shape, you’ll be significantly less productive.

 Take care of your body.

Anyone who has attempted remote work knows what I’m talking about. It’s easier to put things off when you don’t have a typical 9–5 job since you can do it tonight.

Remote work makes it more difficult to strike a work-life balance.

This is the most difficult of all the remote working advice to accept. We don't want to drive people away who are important to us.However, if you have roommates or relatives in the same area as you, it might be increasingly challenging to keep the focus that a remote work lifestyle necessitates.

People may get in your way.

Every day brings new choices.

What’s up, it’s @hackedongrowth here, When you hear the term “remote work,” what comes to mind first? Do you see yourself in your pajamas, relaxing in the coziness of your living room, or on a beach in Bali, soaking up the sun?

What’s up, it’s @hackedongrowth here, When you hear the term “remote work,” what comes to mind first? Do you see yourself in your pajamas, relaxing in the coziness of your living room, or on a beach…

productivity

Productivity

health

Health

timemanagement

Time Management

Nobody tells you these 5 facts about working remotely.

A meeting cadence is how often a meeting is held. For example, if you and a direct report check in every Friday morning, that’s a weekly cadence. If you have a request to meet every other month, that’s a bimonthly cadence.
The challenge for every company is how frequently meetings should take place. In an increasingly distributed workforce where a face-to-face Zoom is sometimes the only interactions you’ll have with your team, these are often overscheduled in the hopes that these “in person” meetings will be beneficial to building relationships and team morale.

Meeting Cadence

You want your team to know what everyone is working on, but you also want to allow for enough freedom for everyone to work autonomously.  Here are a few examples of some common meetings and how frequently they might meet. <ul><li>One-on-One Meetings: Weekly meeting cadence</li><li>All Hands: Quarterly meeting cadence</li><li>Daily standup meeting: Every day</li><li>Leadership Teams: Monthly meeting cadence</li></ul>

Different Companies, Different Needs

<ol><li>What is the goal of this meeting?</li><li>Can this meeting happen asynchronously?</li><li>Is this a high-priority or urgent task?</li><li>Do these types of meetings regularly run over the allotted time?</li><li>Do we run out of items to discuss in these types of meetings?</li></ol>

Five Questions To Ask Before Making a New Meeting Request

Once you’ve determined that you’ve got a weekly cadence for one project and another weekly cadence for an all-staff check-in, that doesn’t mean these have to be formatted in the same way. You have to decide if the meeting is information seeking or information giving, which we alluded to earlier. This matters a lot when you’re determining how to best check-in.

Change Your Cadence: Asynchronous vs Synchronous Meetings

These meetings fall into any of the following categories:Seeking Information<ul><li>A kickoff meeting for a new project</li><li>A project team meeting to discuss next steps</li><li>Management meeting to check in on how teams are running</li><li>A one-on-one with a direct report to check in on goals and tasks</li></ul> For information giving meetings, those might be: <ul><li>A daily standup</li><li>A project update</li><li>A company’s annual report</li></ul>

Information Seeking And Giving

Research shows that 15% of an organization's time is spent in meetings. Imagine moving that 15% towards actionable tasks that can increase revenue in your business? Less meetings and more money? An easy win. A whopping 73% of people admit to multitasking during meetings. Let your employees spend more time doing their work and less time passively listening in.

Fewer Meetings = Better Meetings

<ol><li>Do create an agenda. Make sure everyone knows what will be covered in advance so they can attend better prepared.</li><li>Don’t leave room for questions at the end. Instead, use Slack or email for any follow-ups since there’s never enough time at the end of the meeting to get to everyone’s questions.</li><li>Do invite-only key players to a meeting. It’s much easier to communicate in smaller groups.</li><li>Don’t go over the allocated meeting time.</li></ol>

Four Do’s and Don’ts For Your Meetings

How often should you meet with your remote team? What can be an asynchronous update vs a synchronous meeting?  Here's how to decide how many meetings you need.

Meeting Cadence: What’s Right For Your Remote Team?

Our brains want to feel in control, and physical proximity is one way we can have that control. So even though we have the tools to bridge any virtual distance, it's still a natural tendency to give preferential treatment to those in arm's reach, or at least a few desks down. As a leader working to make all your team members develop and grow, you need to be careful that you aren't falling into this all-too-human trap, especially if you work in a hybrid environment where some workers are in the office and others aren't.

Proximity/distance bias

Similarity bias draws us to people who are like us, causing us to miss out on new, diverse relationships at work. It can even lead us to hire, promote, or offer more career development to people we can see ourselves in. Not good. We need to go out of our way to feel connected to everyone, not just people like us. So, try to create shared experiences. It can be harder to create shared experiences in a remote environment, which means you need to be intentional about it.

Similarity bias

One trick our minds use to sift through everything thrown at us is to latch onto the first piece of information we get about a particular topic, decision, pattern. When the American workforce went remote in March 2020, it was sudden—and not necessarily smooth. Even though systems have since been implemented to address all these things, lots of people still latch onto that anchor.

Anchoring bias

When we know what to expect, we know how to respond—and our brains like knowing how to respond. That's part of why shifting to remote work can be difficult: we've been working in person for years, decades in some cases, and it's hard for us to think of work in any other setting.<ul><li>﻿Be aware of your preferences toward how you've done things in the past. Ask yourself:</li><li>What's a process that made sense in person but may be holding you back? </li><li>Who on your team would enjoy brainstorming ways to make remote work more fulfilling and productive?</li><li>How can you involve your team in creating new remote traditions?</li></ul>

Status quo bias

This is the mental shortcut that results in us seeking out, preferring, and remembering things in a way that suits what we already believe. The term has been particularly popular over the past several years, in reference to how people choose their news sources.If you or your team don't love remote work, this means you're less likely to spot remote work successes—and more likely to spot shortfalls that you believe arise from your new working environment. We need to get away from this tendency to use remote work as a scapegoat.

Confirmation bias

Understand yourself and those around you.

psychology

Psychology

humanresources

Human Resources

5 cognitive biases to conquer in remote work

<ul><li>Remote work lacks the distractions, annoyances, and soft abuses that come with co-workers and middle managers.</li><li> They don’t have to commute </li><li>Can be evaluated mostly on their actual work rather than on the optics-driven albatross of “office culture”. </li></ul>

Why do people like working from home?

<ul><li>When we are all in the same physical space, we are oftentimes evaluated not on the execution of our role but on our diplomacy—by which I mean our ability to kiss up to the right people rather than actually being a decent person.</li><li>It’s much harder to be a jerk over Slack, email, and text when someone can screenshot it and send it to HR (<a href="https://www.theverge.com/2019/12/5/20995453/away-luggage-ceo-steph-korey-toxic-work-environment-travel-inclusion">or to a journalist</a>).</li></ul>

The necessity to be nice

<ul><li>The anti-remote crowd seems to believe that the responsibility of a 9-to-5 employee isn’t simply the work but the appearance, optics, and ceremony of the work.</li><li>Making people work late is much harder when you can’t trap them in one place with free food, a Ping-Pong table, a kegerator, or laundry services—benefits that you champion instead of monetary compensation.</li></ul>

Why are people still compelled to come back to offices?

to understand why organisations compel their employees back to work despite enough evidence against it. 

Like it or not, the way we work has already evolved.

Why Managers Fear a Remote-Work Future

1 on 1 meetings offer 10x return on investment, according to former Intel CEO Andy Grove. They should be something you look forward to. Done well, effective 1 on 1 meetings are an opportunity for: <ul><li>Feedback</li><li>Coaching</li><li>Rapport building</li><li>And talking about all the things important to you that seem to always slip.</li></ul> They’re a chance for you and your manager to strengthen your working relationship, and get out of the day-to-day task grind.

1:1 Meetings

One of the biggest sins preventing managers from having effective 1 on 1 meetings is frequently canceling them. Don’t let the manager cancel. Ask to reschedule if possible. It’s hard to get into a good rhythm if you go weeks (or months) without talking. Even worse, it can cause a backup of issues to discuss that get worse as they go unaddressed. No one likes seeing a problem coming and then having to watch it blow up. Without a 1 on 1 meeting, you may not get a chance to talk about it before it’s too late.

Effective 1 On 1 Meetings With You: No Cancellations

It’s hard to say no to your manager when they come to you asking to cancel your 1 on 1 meeting. They probably came to you with a good reason. And they are your manager, after all. It’s hard to say no to them for anything they ask. Try saying: “Okay. I understand you have something pressing, and these meetings are important to me. When can we reschedule our 1 on 1 meeting to?”

Don’t Let The Manager Off The Hook

<ul><li>Reciprocity: You’re agreeing to what they want, and immediately set them up to then feel obligated to return the favour by rescheduling in exchange for not meeting now.</li><li>And, not but: By framing your response using “and” instead of “but”, you build on the discussion instead of feeling like you’re disagreeing.</li><li>Immediacy: By immediately requesting to schedule a different time you ensure they don’t forget about it.</li></ul>

The Three Golden Persuasive Techniques

When a manager or team member says they don’t see the value of effective 1 on 1 meetings, it’s a virtual certainty they spend most of the meeting talking about projects and status updates. That’s a huge waste.For your manager, it can be so tempting: they finally have a chance in an otherwise hectic week to talk to you about your work. If you’re on a big team, this may be one of the few times they meet with you alone.

Avoid Status Updates

Your manager needs a status update, even if you don’t talk about it in your 1 on 1 meeting. The best way to get them out of your 1 on 1 meeting then is to find ways to get them a status update another time. Here are a few techniques: <ul><li>Email Update: Simply send them an email at a frequency you agree makes sense with some basic updates from you on your work.</li><li>Stand Up Meeting: Suggest to your manager you and the team start having a standup meeting to provide daily, bite-size updates. </li><li>Use a Tool to Help: There are quite a few tools out there like IDoneThis and StandupJack. </li></ul>

Don’t Let Status Updates Hijack a 1:1 Meeting

<ul><li>It’s not your manager’s fault if you have nothing to talk about in your 1 on 1 meeting.</li><li>In fact, every time you come to your meeting with nothing to discuss, it makes them dread their 1 on 1 meeting with you a little more. It also gives them another reason to want to cancel or fill the time with status updates.</li><li>No one likes pulling teeth, and it can be excruciating to try to draw everything out of you. This is why it’s important for you to think about what you want to talk about.</li></ul>

Bring Things You Want To Talk About

Your Career/Growth Goals: If you have an aspiration, don’t assume your manager knows it. Bring it up.Team Improvement: Have ideas to help the team improve, or work better? Effective 1 on 1 meetings are a great time to discuss them and either come up with ways to apply them or understand why you can’t do them.Self Improvement: Want help, feedback, or coaching on something? Ask!Personal Topics: Any personal thing like family stress or sickness bothering you? Talk about it. You will gain empathy and get assistance as well.

Make Your Agenda 

Career growth and development conversations are an essential part of how to have effective 1 on 1 meetings.Your manager likely knows about opportunities in the company that you don’t. If you make your career and skills growth part of your 1 on 1 meetings, they’re much more likely to recognize a role you could fit when openings come up. It also creates an opportunity for you to make regular progress between review cycles. By breaking down challenges into steps you can accomplish between 1 on 1 meetings, you tap into the best way to stay motivated at work, according to Harvard research.

Your Career Goals

Whether your manager is afraid they’ll interrupt the flow of your meeting, or they just don’t have a habit of doing so, you need to convince them to take notes. Studies show it will have a major impact on their memory and preparation for your future 1 on 1 meetings. If something is important to you, and you want them to remember it, don’t be afraid to pause and say: “This is important to me. If you want to take a minute to write this down, we can pause for a moment.”

Encourage Your Manager To Take Notes

Without action, there is no progress. Without progress, there’s no change. And if nothing changes, you’re going to get discouraged. You will start to see little point in continuing to talk about issues and ideas important to you. If you’ve had a good discussion in your 1 on 1 meeting, then the crucial follow-up step is to establish what can be done about it. Ask, “What do you think we can both do for next time based on what we talked about?” By presenting it as a question, you make your manager feel like part of the solution.

An Actionable Meeting

<ul><li>In the loop: Find out what they feel out of the loop on related to your work. Create a lightweight way to keep them updated.</li><li>Take the lead: If they’re managing many projects at once, offer to take the lead on one part so it’s not on them to lead every meeting, decision, or deliverable. This is also a great way for you to build leadership skills.</li><li>Learn their style: Simply adapting some of your deliverables to fit a style that makes their life easier can be a lifesaver. This could be a summary page, a certain template they prefer, or the timing of when to request feedback.</li></ul>

Your Managers View: How You Can Support Your Manager

Effective 1 on 1 meetings are easier than you think. We share key tips how employees like you can help your manager have effective 1 on 1 meetings with you.

7 Essential Tips for Effective 1 on 1 Meetings with Your Manager

Working from home is steadily becoming the new norm. However, you may be unsure how to adjust to it, or, even after working from home for some time, may still not have a suitable routine. Following a 5-step routine may increase your working experience.

Working from home is the new norm

Dedicate 10 minutes to prioritise your tasks for the day. <ul><li>First complete time-sensitive tasks</li><li>Allocate a larger amount of time to the biggest tasks</li><li>Leave your easiest tasks for last.</li></ul> This will help you be organised and in control of all your work and lessen your stress. Use a free organisation app if you struggle to be organised.

Prioritise your tasks in the morning

Ensure you give yourself frequent breaks. Get out of your chair and do some fun activities, such as going for a walk outside or playing a video game.

Take frequent breaks

It is important to dress professionally when working from home. Dressing more casually could lower your standards. Dress how you usually would at the office for at least half of your working day.

Dress professionally

Make an effort to stay in contact with your colleagues throughout the day. You can keep in contact via messaging or video platforms and can casually check in on one another.

Stay in contact with colleagues

As your day winds down, reward yourself by putting a playlist, podcast, or audiobook on while you finish up. This will ensure you have a positive and relaxing end to the day.

How to finish the day

Working from home may be a challenge. However, using these five steps may increase your enjoyment.

habits

Habits

business

Business

How to Enjoy Working from Home: 5-Step Routine - The European Business Review

<ul><li>Podcasts are traditionally only audio. It is essential to grab your listener's attention immediately.</li><li>Audio is not as easy to share as text or video.</li><li>Discovering podcasts is a slower process and based on word-of-mouth recommendations and personal tastes.</li></ul> It means you have to be strategic about how you get your show heard. Having guests on your show can help with exposure as they will share your podcast with their audience.

Why growing a podcast audience seems difficult

One way to impress your guest is to demonstrate that you've done your homework on them. It will increase the chance that your guest will share the episode with their audience or refer you to other guests.<ul><li>Use Twitter advanced search. Filter by min. faves or replies to find which topics started a conversation.</li><li>Use search hacks to pull up your guests best content. Use search operators in Google or BuzzSumo to find content associated with a person.</li><li>Research your guest's LinkedIn profile.</li><li>Quora answers. If your guest is active on Quora, search through their answers for ideas or questions to ask.</li></ul>

Do extensive research

Once you've set a time, send over a list of questions or topics to help them prepare. Add a package of marketing material they can use to promote your episode. Giving your guests time to prepare their thoughts on questions and topics will impress your guest and add value to your listeners with thoughtful answers.

Send your guest a prep email

Use a scheduling tool that allows guests to book a time directly on your calendar. Impress your guests and avoid offence by personalising your scheduling links. Pre-fill your guest's name and email address to make it easier to book a time with you.

Personalise the scheduling link

Make the guest experience as seamless as possible so that they don't feel confused at any stage. One way is to provide a "Guest Page" with essential details, such as contact and recording information.

Create a guest page on your podcast website

Provide your guest with a link to your Google Drive or Dropbox so they can upload any audio recorded locally on their end. Once you've scheduled the episode to publish, ensure to send your guest a note about which day they can expect it to go live. This will help to amplify it and to grow your audience.

Streamline production follow-up

Guest interviews are one of the best ways to grow your podcast. Here are 5 tips to bag the best podcast guests and impress them at the interview!

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

writing

Reading & Writing

podcasts

Podcasts

videos

Videos

Schedule Podcast Guests Like The Pros: 5 Easy Ways to Impress – Smart Passive Income

Find 100+ Remote Work Tips & Ideas - Curated from inspiring sources like Books, Podcasts & Articles - Genuine Insights from like-minded Users like You!