Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

Because of the pandemic over the last couple of years, our virtual work world seems to be here to stay. One thing the pandemic has caused organizations to rethink is how work is done. What people do has remained pretty consistent over these couple of years, but how they get it done has made some seismic shifts, causing in part what some are calling a “talent migration.” 

From my vantage point, an overwhelming part of the great talent migration has to do with workplace flexibility. I also think that this movement is away from what we all knew as a traditional flex model to hybrid work. In the traditional flex model, an employee could work (wink, wink) a day or so from home when needed. Some organizations even went as far as to declare a specified work-from-home day. The shift that employees started asking for, or perhaps even requiring through this crisis, is that they want to work from home indefinitely or want to only come into an office only when absolutely necessary.

This shift evolves as workers reprioritize what is important in their lives. Organizations need to brace themselves for new levels of competition and get used to not having as much talent around to compete with each other. At the end of the day, what wins this tug of war is the culture of the organization. Those organizations with great cultures will have much less migration than those that merely think they have a great culture. 

There will always be a story of a person who leaves and triples his/her salary. I think we all tip our hats to them and say “good for you.” However, as leaders, let's not be fooled into thinking that people always leave just for money. Employees want to be fairly compensated for what they do. The leadership and cultural battle is going to be waged not on what the associate is asked to do, but on how they can do it.

I think the call for us as leaders is to engage strategic thinking around flexible, hybrid work. In leadership, the future belongs to the curious and flexible. Those who can engage a growth mindset, be curious about what the talent is looking for, and be agile with the changing business landscape will evolve and win.  Those with a fixed mindset may get their way. The question is for how long.  Like it or not, hybrid work is here to stay, in some form or fashion. Even long after all the viruses have mutated away or herd immunity is achieved, some mix of working from home for knowledge workers is here to stay.

Like many of you, I also had to learn to adapt to this new business reality. Everything from virtual doctor appointments, to picking out tile for a remodeled bathroom, to individual and group coaching sessions have gone from face-to-face interactions to options for a virtual environment. I am realizing that no matter how much I want work to go back to the way it was before the pandemic, it will not.

Since I am imploring leaders to have a growth mindset around hybrid work, I have been challenging myself to see what encouragement I could offer to enhance the skills of leaders to retain talent. This has led me to observe how people are interacting virtually. 

Most of us have long gotten past some of the initial communication disruptions like dogs barking in the background, or cats climbing on keyboards, or people walking in the background of a video chat. The struggle became about being more effective with people when you are not in the same room.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

1. Focus on Energy. Judith Glaser in her book "Conversational Intelligence" encourages leaders to make communication about the exchange of energy and not information. She calls this Transformational Communication and it is a Share-Discover model versus an Ask-Tell dynamic. When you focus on the energy in the conversation, you create space by exploring others' perspectives, innovating, and creating. As a leader, you move from listening to the other person to protect yourself and your idea to instead listening to ensure you connect with the other person and they feel heard. The skill to develop here as a leader is for you to ask questions you don’t have answers to and to help the other person feel heard.

2. Principle of Physicality. This is a term I coined some years ago when working with sales professionals who had to be ready at a moment's notice to communicate with a customer. Pay attention to your physical environment. Get some good feedback from others on what your physical environment looks like on a video call.

   What is your background? It doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should be professional.

   1. How is your camera positioned? Are you looking at it or is it pointing down at the top of your head? 

   2. What kind of lighting do you have? If you are not well lit, people can't see you very well.

   3. How are you connecting with audio? Can you maintain a consistent audio connection for an entire call?

3. Give Trust. Many of us, with this hybrid model, have to rethink what trust means to us. The employment agreement we have had with folks has always been built on trust. The difference is we thought as long as we were coming into an office and could see the employees was that they were working. With the knowledge workers of today, leaders need to learn to set clear expectations for what and how work is to be approached and then trust that people are doing it. If there is a problem or a gap, then create psychological safety to address the gap. Don’t fall into the trap that the performance gap is the hybrid work model. You don’t know if this gap would not have existed if the person was coming into an office every day. Remember, the employment agreement is still built on trust. As leaders, we may need to spend some time thinking about what this means for us. If assumptions in how people work have been changing, what do we need to change to accommodate?

Flexibility is a significant part of a leader's emotional intelligence. Understanding and being flexible with how you feel about things prevents you from developing a fixed mindset. Stay open. Stay curious. If people are migrating away from your organization, work hard to find the real reason why.

5 Tips Based on Over 15 Years of Working From Home

The Coronavirus pandemic caused and is still causing many of us to rethink assumptions we never thought we would have to consider.  As a result, many of you who have maybe worked a day or two from home now and then might find yourself working from home more often, or even indefinitely now.

Some schools have even decided to move to online formats and are requiring students to stay home, forcing many workers into new scenarios that they had never faced before when it comes to working remotely, and many parents have had to make the decision to homeschool their kids.

There is some good news in all of this. A Harvard study in 2019 stated that people who can work from wherever they choose were 4.4% more productive than those who had fixed, rigid work requirements.  I actually was a bit shocked and thought this might be higher, but my fear is that not everyone who chooses where they work from will follow the same discipline that they would in an office environment. 

So, I thought I would give you some of my thoughts on how I have navigated these “free to choose your workspace” waters for myself (although for some this may be a forced choice).  

These tips are not based on any specific research. I will typically spend several hours researching and crafting a blog post, but this post is different. It is just my opinion.  What I write may not fit you or your style, and that’s okay.

5 Tips Based on 15+ Years of Working From Home:

1. Guard Your Attitude Against Loneliness.  

   I am starting with attitude because many of you really enjoy the social aspect of work.  If you had a question about something, you were used to popping your head into someone’s office to get an answer  When you are working from home, the feeling of loneliness can be very real.  I like to intentionally schedule meetings early in the morning and in the late afternoon that have a “check-in” social component to them.  I always have a cup of coffee (you substitute your social non-alcoholic beverage of choice) in the morning and my seltzer water (love that fizz) in the afternoon. There is something that just feels social for me about sharing a beverage with someone while we are talking.  I also try, if at all possible, to do these calls over video chat.  I just love Zoom, it is so easy to use and within 30 seconds I can schedule the meeting, put it on my calendar, and send the invite to someone.  

2. Carve Out Dedicated Work Space.

   I realize that this work-from-home scenario many are facing may not have given you a completely dedicated office with a door and a desk and a comfy leather chair. You really don’t need all of that, anyway, but you do need a place that is going to be your designated work space. It is important that you dedicate that space to work and that it is not in front of the TV while the news stations broadcast all of the latest news. Having a dedicated space will tell your brain this is now where you work. If you can avoid it, try not to make the kitchen table your office, because this is likely a grand central station in your house, if it is at all like mine, and it is really hard to have meetings and concentrate with a lot of traffic. 

3. Keep Your Routine.

   If you are used to being at the office by 7:30 am, continue to get up at the same time. If you shower in the morning, then by all means continue this habit. Get dressed like you are going to work and be at your desk by 7:30 am, ready to engage.  What you may find is that when you don’t have your normal commute, you can put that time to good use and do something like starting that book you have always wanted to get to but just never had the time.  If you eat lunch, take a lunch break. You can still schedule lunch meetings if you want, just warm up your soup or make your sandwich and do the meeting over video conference.  One thing I find about working from home is that I have to get up and take more frequent stretches and walks.  I try and keep them around 5 or 10 minutes, but I try and get up at least every 60 to 90 minutes and stretch.  Then, end your day when you would typically leave your office.  Pick up your book and read another chapter to account for your commute.  When you are finished working, then close your device and be finished.  

   WARNING: Working from home is not a time to “sort of work” while you clean the shower that has not been cleaned in a while. Your organization is still expecting full work productivity. Don’t fall into the trap of half-working and half-doing whatever else needs to be done at home. 

4. Communicate Expectations.  

   Most people who you work with will understand that everyone has probably adapted to a new normal. Your family and friends may not understand this still. They may see this as, well, “mom and dad are home, so it must be like the weekend”.  I have found it really important to communicate with my wife that when I am working, it is like I am not here. Now, if there is an emergency, then by all means come get me. But this should be rare like a total eclipse of the sun. If you clearly establish boundaries I think you will find you will be just as, if not more, productive. Running out of mac and cheese or paper towels will have to wait until you would normally get home to resolve the issue.  I have found that kind words like, “Is this an emergency, or can it wait until I am finished working?” works well for me and helps establish appropriate boundaries.  

5. Pay Attention to Habits.

   You are in an interesting space of getting to form some new habits when you work from home. For this, we turn to the research. Wendy Wood, in her book “Good Habits/Bad Habits”, reviewed 64 studies and found that for some behaviors, people’s actions aligned with their intentions. For example, if they intended to get a flu shot or enroll in a class, they did as they intended. The stronger the plan for these one-off types of things, the more likely they were to do them. But for other behaviors and actions that are repeated more often, intentions didn’t matter that much. Things like taking a bus or recycling, for example. People might want to recycle but it turns out that intention doesn’t matter that much here. Persistence and the formation of habit have little to do with willpower or the mere desire to accomplish something.  What is needed is the repetition of the desired behavior. So, as you think about working from home, put all your good intentions aside and practice what it is that you want your behavior to be.

I hope you found this interesting to think through as we all navigate a new age of a lot of people working from home.   If you know someone who works from home or is going to be in the future, why not forward this post to them and encourage them to sign up for the blog?

 If you have ideas on how to be successful working from home, please send me a note with your thoughts. I promise to give you credit for your idea if I do a “reader’s hacks” type post in the future.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

Omicron.

Like it or not we are all either learning the Greek alphabet for the first time or being reminded of a time when we first tried to master the 24 letters.

Whether Omicron wreaks havoc on society or fizzles out as fast as it came, our virtual work world seems to be here to stay. One thing the Coronavirus pandemic has caused organizations to rethink is how work is done. What people do has remained pretty consistent, but how they get it done has made some seismic shifts, causing in part what some are calling a “talent migration.” 

From my vantage point, an overwhelming part of the great talent migration has to do with workplace flexibility. I also think that this movement is away from what we all knew as a traditional flex model to hybrid work. In the traditional flex model, an employee could work (wink, wink) a day or so from home when needed. Some organizations even went as far as to declare a specified ‘work from home’ day. The shift that employees are asking for, or perhaps even requiring, is that they want to work from home indefinitely, or want to only come into an office only when absolutely necessary.

This shift is only in its infancy as workers reprioritize what is important in their lives. Organizations need to brace themselves for new levels of competition and not having as much talent around to compete. 

At the end of the day, what will win this tug of war is the culture of the organization. Those organizations with great cultures will have much less migration than those that merely think they have a great culture. 

There will always be a story of a person who leaves and triples his/her salary. I think we all tip our hat to them and say “good for you.” However, as leaders, let's not be fooled into thinking that people always leave for money. 

Employees want to be fairly compensated for what they do. The leadership and cultural battle is going to be waged not on what the associate is asked to do, but on how they can do it.

I think the call for us as leaders is to engage strategic thinking around flexible, hybrid work. In leadership, the future belongs to the curious and flexible. Those who can engage a growth mindset, be curious about what the talent is looking for, and be agile with the changing business landscape will evolve and win. 

Those with a fixed mindset may get their way. The question is for how long. 

Like it or not, hybrid work is here to stay, in some form or fashion. Even long after all the Greek SARs viruses have mutated away or herd immunity is achieved, some mix of working from home for knowledge workers is a new reality.

Like many of you, I have had to learn to adapt to this new business reality. Everything from virtual doctor appointments, to picking out tile for a remodeled bathroom, to individual and group coaching sessions have gone from face-to-face interactions to a virtual environment. I am realizing that no matter how much I want work to go back to the way it was before COVID, it will not.

Since I am imploring leaders to have a growth mindset around hybrid work, I have been challenging myself to see what encouragement I could offer to enhance the skills of leaders to retain talent. This has led me to observe how people are interacting virtually. 

Most of us have gotten past some of the initial communication disruptions like dogs barking in the background, or cats climbing on keyboards, or people walking in the background of a video chat. The struggle has become about being more effective with people when you are not in the same room.

Three Ways to Improve Communication in a Hybrid Work World

1. Focus on Energy. Judith Glaser in her book "Conversational Intelligence" encourages leaders to make communication about the exchange of energy and not information. She calls this Transformational Communication and it is a Share-Discover model versus an Ask-Tell dynamic. When you focus on the energy in the conversation, you create space by exploring others' perspectives, innovating, and creating. As a leader, you move from listening to the other person to protect yourself and your idea to instead listening to ensure you connect with the other person and they feel heard. The skill to develop here as a leader is for you to ask questions you don’t have answers to and to help the other person feel heard.
   

2. Principle of Physicality. This is a term I coined some years ago when working with sales professionals who had to be ready at a moment's notice to communicate with a customer. Pay attention to your physical environment. Get some good feedback from others on what your physical environment looks like on a video call.

   1. What is your background? It doesn’t have to be perfect; it should be professional.

   2. How is your camera positioned; are you looking at it or is it pointing down at the top of your head? 

   3. What kind of lighting do you have? If you are not well lit, people can't see you and it is hard to develop the energy needed.

   4. How are you connecting with audio? Can you maintain a consistent audio connection for an entire call?
      

3. Give Trust. Many of us, with a new hybrid model, are going to have to rethink what trust means to us. The employment agreement we have had with folks has always been built on trust. The difference is we thought as long as we were coming into an office and could see them that they were working. With the knowledge workers of today, leaders need to learn to set clear expectations for what and how work is to be approached and then trust that people are doing it. If there is a problem or a gap, then create psychological safety to address the gap. Don’t fall into the trap that the performance gap is the hybrid work model. You don’t know this gap would not have existed if the person was coming into an office every day. Remember, the employment agreement is still built on trust. As leaders, we may need to spend some time thinking about what this means for us. If assumptions in how people work are changing, what do we need to change to accommodate?

Flexibility is a significant part of a leader's emotional intelligence. Understanding and being flexible with how you feel about things prevents you from developing a fixed mindset. Stay open. Stay curious. If people are migrating away from your organization, work hard to find the real reason why.

5 Tips Based on 15 Years of Working from Home

We are all entering some very interesting times as knowledge workers. The Coronavirus pandemic is causing many of us to rethink assumptions we never thought we would have to consider.  As a result, many of you who have maybe worked a day or two from home now and then might find yourself working from home for the next several weeks.

This is especially true as schools decide to move to online formats and are requiring students to stay home, forcing many workers into new scenarios that they have never faced before when it comes to working remotely.

There is some good news in this. A Harvard study in 2019 stated that people who can work from when they choose were 4.4% more productive than those who had fixed, rigid work requirements.  I actually was a bit shocked and thought this might be higher, but my fear is that not everyone who does choose where they work from follows the same discipline they would in an office environment. 

So, I thought I would give some of my thoughts on how I have navigated these “free to choose your workspace” waters for myself (although for some this may be a forced free choice).  

These are not based on any research. I will typically spend several hours researching and crafting a blog post, but this post is different. It is just my opinion.  What I write may not fit you or your style, and that’s okay.

1. Guard Your Attitude Against Loneliness.  I am starting with attitude because many of you really enjoy the social aspect of work.  If you had a question about something you were used to popping your head in someone’s office to get an answer  When you are working from home, the feeling of loneliness can be very real.  I like to intentionally schedule meetings early in the morning and in the late afternoon that have a “check in” social component to them.  I always have a cup of coffee (you substitute your social non-alcoholic beverage of choice) in the morning and my seltzer water (love that fizz) in the afternoon. There is something that just feels social for me about sharing a beverage with someone while we are talking.  I also try, if at all possible, to do these calls over video chat.  I just love Zoom, it is so easy to use and within 30 seconds I can schedule the meeting, put it on my calendar, and send the invite to someone.  

2. Carve Out Dedicated Work Space. I realize this work from home scenario many are facing may not have given you time to put together a complete dedicated office with a door and a desk and comfy leather chair. You really don’t need all of that, anyway, but you do need a place that is going to be your designated work space. It is important that you dedicate that space and that it is not in front of the TV while Fox News broadcasts all the latest scare news. Having a dedicated space will tell your brain this is now where you work. If you can avoid it, try not to make the kitchen table your office, because this is likely grand central station in your house, if it is at all like mine, and it is really hard to have meetings and concentrate with a lot of traffic. 

3. Keep Your Routine. If you are used to being at the office by 7:30am, continue to get up at the same time. If you shower in the morning, then by all means continue this habit. Get dressed like you are going to work and be at your desk by 7:30am, ready to engage.  What you may find is that when you don’t have the 15 or 30 or 60 or 90 minute commute, you can put that time to good use and start that book you have always wanted to get to but just never had the time.  If you eat lunch, take a lunch break. You can still schedule lunch meetings if you want, just warm up your soup or make your sandwich and do the meeting over video conference.  One thing I find about working from home is that I have to get up and take more frequent stretches and walks.  I try and keep them around 5 or 10 minutes, but I try and get up at least every 60 to 90 minutes and stretch.  Then, end your day when you would typically leave your office.  Pick up your book and do another chapter to account for your commute.  When you are finished working, then close your device and be finished.  WARNING: Working from home is not a time to sort of work while you clean the shower that has not been cleaned in a while. Your organization is still expecting full work productivity. Don’t fall into the trap of half-working half-whatever else needs done. 

4. Communicate Expectations.  Most people who you work with will understand that everyone is in a new normal. Your family and friends may not. They may see this as, well, mom and dad are home, so it must be like the weekend.  I have found it really important to communicate with my wife that when I am working, it is like I am not here. Now, if there is an emergency, then by all means come get me. But this should be more rare than a total eclipse of the sun. If you clearly establish boundaries I think you will find you will be just as, if not more, productive. Running out of Mac and Cheese or toilet paper has to wait until you would normally get home to resolve the issue.  I have found that a kind word like, “Is this an emergency or can it wait until I am finished working” works well for me and helps establish appropriate boundaries.  

5. Pay Attention to Habits. You are in an interesting space of getting to form some new habits. For this, I think we do turn to the research. Wendy Wood, in her book Good Habits/Bad Habits, reviewed 64 studies and found that for some behaviors, people’s actions aligned with their intentions. For example, if they intended to get a flu shot or enroll in a class, they did as they intended. The stronger the plan for these one off type things the more likely they were to do them. But for other behaviors and actions that are repeated more often, intentions didn’t matter that much. Things like taking a bus or recycling, for example. People might want to recycle, but turns out that intention doesn’t matter that much. Persistence and the formation of habit have little to do with will power or the mere desire to accomplish.  What is needed is repetition of the desired behavior. So, as you think about working from home, put all your good intentions aside and practice what it is that you want your behavior to be.

I hope you found this interesting to think through as we all navigate these most difficult of days.   If you know someone who is going to be working from home why not forward this post to them and encourage them to sign up for the blog?

 If you have ideas on how to be successful working from home, please send me a note with your thoughts. I promise to give you credit for your idea if I do a “reader’s hacks” type post in the future.

Best Hopes,

Scott