What does leading a remote team have to do with Sherlock Holmes? Whether you play the violin, smoke a pipe or enjoy deerstalker hats or not, there’s one important similarity. Most of the time, when something goes wrong, we don’t witness it ourselves and have to find out what happened. I am a big fan of “the Wizard of Baker Street” (That’s me with his statue in London this … [Read more...]
3 New Mental Fitness Challenges for Remote Workers
Work-related stress and threats to our mental fitness because of our jobs aren't new. In fact, if we can take anything positive from the pandemic, it's that discussions about mental health are now out in the open in the business world. We're now able to have productive conversations about ways we can promote better mental fitness in our organizations. On the other hand, the … [Read more...]
Imposter Syndrome and the Long-Distance Leader
“I don’t know what I’m doing half the time,” “I have to look strong and in control for my team. If they ever find out I’m a fraud, it will all fall apart.” “Any day now, they’ll figure out I don’t know what I’m doing and fire me.” Odds are, most of us have said those very things to ourselves. Worse, we believe them. We shouldn’t. These thoughts and so many others are … [Read more...]
When Does Remote Bonding Go Too Far?
A few weeks back, we wrote about how showing your pets on Zoom meetings, or at least not hiding them like guilty secrets, can help the team bond and get to know each other. But can it go too far? Here’s the other side of that conversation. Apparently, some people make their pets too central to the process. A reader recently told me about his boss, a lovely lady who has taken … [Read more...]
Time to Assess Your Remote and Hybrid Team Culture
We are in an odd time when it comes to discussing work culture. Like being in the eye of a hurricane, we are stuck between the initial panicky onslaught of COVID: “Go work from home and we’ll figure it out,” and looking toward the future: “Okay, we have to figure out what we do next.” This moment is as calm as it’s going to get for a while, so we’d best do some assessing of … [Read more...]