A few weeks back, I was leading a class on How Leaders Create and Manage Remote and Hybrid Teams. Two of the participants got into a heated exchange that was very instructive. It raised a good question: When does empathy towards your team members get in the way of managing performance? One of the participants said how much he liked seeing people when they worked from home … [Read more...]
Do You Know Why People Want to Work from Home?
Are your people chomping at the bit to get back to work? Are people so terrified of a few germs they refuse to return? Are they so happy working from home they’ll take any excuse to continue avoiding the office? Or is it something else? Here’s the tricky part: how do you know? A recent article in the Wall Street Journal suggests there is a disconnect between people returning … [Read more...]
Do You Trust the New Team Member?
When the pandemic hit, one of the more surprising things we learned was how well teams maintained existing relationships and work processes. People who were co-located and teams that functioned at a high level managed to keep it up when they were dispersed. Trust was a big part of that. But two years in, many teams have new members, and some are being completely reformed. Do … [Read more...]
The Invisible Killer of Remote Teams
When we think about remote and hybrid teams, there are a lot of things that can go wrong. First of all, everything that negatively impacts a traditional team can cause havoc. Things like a lack of alignment, or micromanagement, or unclear objectives create problems no matter where people work. But there’s one factor that's lethal for remote teams that usually isn’t a problem … [Read more...]
Which Matters More: Results or People?
By Kevin Eikenberry Which matters more, the results people are hired to do, or the people who must do that work? Some see it like the chicken and the egg riddle, while others clearly find themselves on one side of the other. We are living in a time where the tangible results of how leaders and organizations view that question will be on full display to anyone who cares to … [Read more...]