 Welcome everyone to the remote leader distance but not removed session by Alberta and Martina. So without any further ado, I will hand it over to Alberta. So let's jump straight into the session and why we did this piece of research. We did this piece of research because in case you've not noticed, the world as we know has completely changed in the last year and a half. I know that I would have never in my wildest dream thought that we would have a pandemic and the pandemic would change everything, not just about how I work but about how I live. And we were just looking at the news. It looks like we're not out of it. It's Austria just announced that they're going back into lockdown and vaccines are mandatory is COVID numbers are all over the place at the moment vaccines work vaccines don't work. I believe they work by the way, but the world is a completely different place. Martina and I, we, we started wondering the question. What's happening to to the world work. I mean organizations have had to adapt they've had to deploy tools to allow the economy to continue they've had to decide, you know whether workers could work remotely by respecting all the constraints. And we came to the conclusion that we did not have a good answer and so we decided to pull people around the world to understand how their management and how their teams how the people that actually do the transformation that do all the things that that keep the world running. And we're coping with these new changes. Now before Martina begins taking us through what we found. I want to spend a minute talking about the people that we talk to so demographic. So we have representation from all over the world, possibly, you know skewed towards the Americas and Europe, mostly because those are the places where Martin and I have worked the most. We wanted to know whether people, irrespective of the fact that now we had to work remotely. If people were in the same geography or we were talking about global teams. We wanted to understand the kind of organizations we were talking with and so there is there is a fairly distributed representation of, you know, in light blue, you know, really large multinational corporations. And then you got very small what we call cell hosts so so proprietor organizations but the spread was was interesting. We also because the aim of this research was focused at leadership we wanted to understand how many people are responded were responsible for overseeing and here to we see that there are the vast majority has teams of one to five people. Teams of 10 plus people worried us a little bit because it's very difficult to manage effectively large numbers of people and give them, you know, the attention that they require in person imagine remotely. And then we wanted to know how you know if you were to look at the org charts how many indirect reports there were and here I would say the vast majority was below below 50 overall directed indirect. Then, and this was crucial to ask certain question we wanted to know whether remote leadership was a new new experience for our respondents, or if it was something that they had dealt with because they were dealing with global teams that were dispersed geographically. And it's interesting that hybrid management so having person roughly, you know, part in person apart part remote and remote leadership were common before the pandemic. So only 30% had to start because of the pandemic and we created sets of questions that applied to the different circumstances. And finally, we wanted to know for the people who had managed remote teams before we wanted to know how long people had been managing teams remotely. And I would say about about half of them was between 25 years, and the other half was above up to, you know, more than 10 years. With that said, so this was the population we were talking to, I'll pass on to Martina to start taking us to what we found. Yeah, so we've, we've looked at, you know, what have they experienced remote leaders. What are they reporting back, then we're looking at what what a new remote leaders have found. And, and we're also looking at, you know, where do they, where do they overlap what what have both cohorts reported back similarly so let's go through the experienced remote leaders first and really first question you know what what's been working what's what's working well for you and not surprising at all that came through really strongly that you know giving people trust is is really critical. Being able to carefully improve and refine asynchronous communication across the team is as a key foundation to be able to foster that trust, being able to create social spaces in in those communications and in your daily interactions again to to foster that trust. And as a remote leader, how do you show up in all of those digital places. So the team feels your presence, even when they're not collaborating directly with you. So that notion of, you know, in the office of course they know where you are. You're all milling around the space, you know, there's easy touch points but how do you bring that into the into the digital space. And the second point is is an evergreen really. Whether it's, you know, doesn't matter what's going on within the team within the organization or in the world at large, your, your team really responds well to follow through. If you say you know if you say you're going to do something if there's an action if there's some feedback, they've really appreciate seeing you actually follow through on that being able to trust that you're going to do what you say, what you say you're going to do. That really sort of builds a lot of trust and inevitably, we don't get everything right, but you're building that social capital that when things don't go right, you're in this together as a team right you're solving the problems with the team. They're not solving problems for you and really critical in trying to solve knowledge challenges. And then of course the third one creating connection right and whether that's peer to peer amongst the team, you know, trying to recreate that feeling of being in the space together in casually, keeping, perhaps a video channel open during the day, not in a sort of direct, not as a direct meeting but just to foster that feeling of we're around each other while we're working, perhaps by ourselves. And asynchronous standups really setting an intention for the day, being able to do that even when we're not around in the same space but not even in the same time zone so. On the one hand, you know, creating that intent on the other also just getting a lovely glimpse into everyone's lives and creating that connection. I have a, I actually have a question. And thank you to Andrew for saying that I have a question for the audience right now because if you were in the room we would be doing it. We would be doing it saying show your hands so would you be able to maybe raise your hands or put in chat. I think it would be great if you could share with us what you thought about the idea of keeping a video channel open in your office and let us know if you've done that. If that has worked for you. I've tried it with my team, the very beginning of the pandemic. I personally found it terribly distracting because I didn't know if I was working looking at the screen. Oh my God, what if I put my finger in my nose or you know and so it'd be really interesting to understand from the from the attendees whether you've tried any of that and as Jitendra was saying please if you do have questions pop them in the chat. And, and we'll see and yeah, switching on the camera in each meeting goes a long way, and we're going to be talking about that right we saw something about being on camera. So positive, it's really positive because it creates connection. But, but camera on work for us as well. Yes, that's great. And to your point actually well more messages coming in. I've had both like I've had teams who've really loved having that channel open right and it's on a screen not pointing at someone in particular but at the room at large. And it's just knowing about really enjoying that, you know, between different offices. Others. Yeah, others were more feeling like this is kind of intrusive right. Yeah, I'm feeling like about on a presentation platter all day. Yeah, no absolutely leader has to be visible and approachable during team connects and sync up 100% that that's that is our, you know, as leaders, that is our main job. So let's go to the next slide because you know that there's something else that has worked for teams for experienced leaders right. Absolutely and with that being being visible and creating connection it's also about providing clarity for the team right clarity of objectives priorities and success criteria. That really helps to generate that common understanding common understanding of what we're trying to achieve and really sets up. It sets up the team for working autonomously better and to be able to make good decisions asynchronously when you're not there to help guide that decision making. The next thing came through the next point came through really strongly as well that over communicate even if you feel it's excruciatingly over emphasizing and it feels redundant. And it's really important for remote teams, and also be incredibly explicit how you're going to document conversation, how you're creating that in a, in a visible channel not in one to one interactions whether it's verbal or on direct chat. But you know document that make it clear what the communication channels are and what to use for which channel to use for what everyone knows where to look for information and which and how to best share information as well. And the third one remote collaboration of course is really underpinned by great remote sharing collaboration and communication tools I was actually really disheartened to hear about how hard it has been even at the beginning of the pandemic not just beforehand for teams to get the funding to get the approval to actually invest in the right tools to be able to do to work well together. I think we've often found that kind of challenge when we were a remote team, and the rest of the old wasn't and was like, what would you need that you know that seems But, but also, not just the technology but also you know how do you, what's the process how do you work together and don't assume that you know because it's natural or easier understandable to you or some people in the team that everyone, everyone can embrace that without, you know, onboarding and documenting that process in that Yeah, and I can see here there's some comments around creating casual connections online whiteboarding tools to the point of remote collaboration. And, and yes, I'm kit and I'm hoping that I'm not butchering your names. So I apologize in advance if I say something correct. You're right. Good collaboration tools should be needed even before the pandemic. Hari, you said in a previous comment something around come around camera off and we'll get to that in just in just a second so we're not ignoring that there's there's something specific. Yeah, in our data about that. Absolutely. And when we're looking at what's changed since Kobe and again this is for people who've been leading remotely for for quite some time beforehand. Despite having been set up for working remotely of course working remotely during a pandemic is actually quite a different experience it's much more stressful. There's so much uncertainty inside and outside of work. It's created a really high stress environment for everybody. And in terms of work processes some teams were incredibly well set up already, but like, you know what, nothing's changed for us when it comes to actually how we work. We've always been remote first and how lucky in this in the circumstance we can all learn from from that expertise and experience. You know, again, the biggest challenge has been that, you know, the team have been dealing with a lot of personal challenges so it's, it's an it's interesting to have to resolve that when you're actually not in the same space together. Yes, and to this point. I think it makes it makes your comment is absolutely spot on. Some people aren't comfortable about being visible the time as you were saying Martina. And so it becomes really difficult to address those personal challenges that you were just referring to right so that one to one communication as Biden was saying in their comment is really important especially because the novelty of being working from home and putting a lot of laundry on or, you know, dinner on the stove kind of wears off really quickly right. It doesn't that way the stress of the situation maybe. Yeah, and then you know morale goes down decision making slows down etc etc but that one to one trust, you know, in the relationship. And that's what holds it together. Absolutely. So, we're coming back and keep to your to your point, you know, people are really reporting that video call overload right I feel like I'm on screen all the time more than a professional TV presenter. It's interesting how zoom fatigue has made it into the sort of general recovery not just people like ourselves to work in tech right who've been on video calls before the pandemic but it's interesting how that's become incredibly pervasive for everybody. So, and with that. Yeah, there's actually a really good comment here from Chandan and again apologies from which are your names. I really I really am sorry. It's lovely that, you know, of course it is, it is very difficult to when you will have living in less than ideal circumstances, maybe you, you know, you're in a crowded house you have family members living with you. But, but, but bandwidth and become an issue and it's lovely that you know organizations that pay additional amounts to compensate for you know allowing someone to upgrade their bandwidth etc etc. It's, I mean it's something that honestly should be common sense. I don't know why more organizations don't do that but it is, it goes a long way right. But there aren't just challenges, I think, since COVID started right. We read something that for some experienced leaders that were struggling before pandemic with this idea that they're in person teams were way more present and way more relevant, and the remote teams felt like second class citizens. That relationship completely changed once the pandemic came because everybody was was remote right and so it did help down. It did help break down geographical boundaries and anything that as leaders in the organization model the right behaviors that becomes even more important. Absolutely and just looking at more of the chat. Absolutely and being mindful about you know different circumstances of your teams and modeling good behavior on all sides whether to actually be present but also, you know, having to deal with, you know, the challenging circumstances around, around being able to be on video or not and actually just being able to take care of your family as well in these challenging circumstances where your normal support network is not available. Yes, absolutely there's a there's a really I mean I love this interaction I love that you guys are participating so much. Okay, Harry you were saying that working remotely makes collaboration issues very explicit through that and you know what I learned a really important lesson. Yes, just yesterday. I've been going round around in circles with something and you know complaining a little bit under my breath that people were not collaborating and you know it is true people were not collaborating using the standard collaboration tools and I kept sending out PowerPoints because I was told to do PowerPoints. They said hold on a second, let me pick up the phone I didn't really pick up the phone I you know I put a team's call. And in half hour I saw something that I was going around that I've been, you know, driving me insane for a couple of weeks so yes collaboration issues come to the surface but sometimes we are the collaboration issues, and we forget that collaboration doesn't mean tools it means specifically one to one funny story. My previous company did not believe in work from home and you always had to take it off if you can make it to the office. And now they are preaching the world how to effectively work from home. I'm not going to ask you and keep what your company is. It really is a funny story. Okay, so let's talk a little bit about some other challenges that popped up since COVID. Yes, sorry. Here we go. So a couple more challenges so, and I think this gets to some of your points as well you know it's a lot harder of course, when we're not in the same space together to notice when people need support or when they actually have support to offer as well so it can go on notice for a lot longer. So the question is how are we able as leaders to provide to provide that support but also you know to balance the need for performance but also for mental health right. It's a lot harder to pick up those subtleties and and you know, keep that high level of trust. It needs a lot of nurturing and a lot of that nurturing actually comes through and will come to that and more points but it comes through in actually face to face interaction. Yeah, absolutely. And then because of that, you know, keeping morale is a maintaining team engagement is really difficult, you know, and much, much as we love being at home and much, much as it is important to be on video. It's also exhausting. You're always on, you know, you can never really switch off. And so for a leader, being present being really there becomes, you know, becomes even more draining because you can't do the impromptu. Hey, you know, let's go for a cup of coffee. Everything has to be intentional and planned and you look at your diary. In some days I look at my diary and I'm like, oh, how am I going to do this? You know, what if I want to go to the kitchen and get a glass of water and granted now we're going back to the office so it's not every day but it still is most day. And so protecting time is really difficult. All in all, I think, you know, keeping a balance, you know, we talk about work life balance, keeping a balance is trickier. It used to be that, you know, you went to the office and then you went home and yes, of course, you know, for us knowledge workers work never stops. But there was a boundary. There was a transition. You know, you got on the train, you got in your car, on your bike. Now we don't have that. Your commute is from the bedroom to the living room and sometimes from the bedroom to the bedroom. And so finding a healthy balance is bizarre. We feel the need to always be there. I've also heard from a lot of people where there's a lot of pool from the organization as well, that expectation that's always there because what else would you be doing, you know, you're at home, you better be on video in that meeting in the next one in the next one. So being a lot more intentional about setting some boundaries and some healthy boundaries has become really important. And it's important to model that kind of behavior for other people because when you model balance, you give people in your team permission to balance and that's that that is a really critical stuff. So that we wanted the question we asked is, you know, if you're we're talking here to experience leaders, if you had to change something, if you had to let go of something that you that was the one of the tenets of your practice, what was that. And here's what they had to tell us. So traditional management models don't tend to really favor trust a whole lot right so we would develop trust in our teams by a combination of seeing how they work seeing their work etc etc. But you know fundamentally every act of trust we do. So trust or we commit to. We commit to is intentional and it's a risk that we're taking right if I trust Martina to do something for me, and then I really trust her and I let her do it I'm taking a little challenge because if she messes up. So overcoming this insecurity we've got about trust is fundamental to avoid micromanaging and during the pandemic I think one of the things that we had to let go is to stop focusing so much on targets. Stop focusing so much on numbers priority has shifted from hitting an arbitrary value that was determined by someone is not as important as focusing on the mental health and well being of the people around us because if those people burn out because we're driving them to pursue those KPIs. We're going to risk to risk. You know their their mental health productivity down the line churn etc etc. And then there's something that around you know giving for granted the ability to see your work your own work recognize right you have to work a lot harder to get the team recognize because now everybody's competing for the same space it's not like you bump into your CEO and you can tell them hey by the way we won that award or we we got this project done or we got that client you actively have to signal to someone that that has happened and the space is and the space is very crowded yes I'm kid absolutely. And chundan as well empathetic leaders understand and feel for the employees and and yes leaders should always start with I trust until you prove me otherwise. 200% Martin and I do a lot of work on you know leadership and team dynamic and you know we have a workshop that we've taken around the world that that talks precisely about that you are a manager. If you don't trust and you don't care about your people true leaders are something completely different. Speaking of true leaders we spoke with new leaders. Because for them, it was a really big change, and we're going to be you know we could talk about this, you know forever but we're going to need to be a little quicker. So, Martina. Absolutely so what's been new and I think really getting back to that sort of providing greater support for your team members and giving them the freedom to feel. Oh, let me feel their feelings. Absolutely. And making sure that they don't feel that pressure in those moments to perform you know she's into the same thing. But if you need to add that as a really challenging sort of situation to be to be presented with. How do you balance that, then, you know, finding finding tools actually help the team sort of organize their work you know wanting was suggesting hey we work, we're working through sauna to make that more effective you know insert that whatever tools, helping you to connect as a group and organize yourselves together and, you know, going back to that proactive information sharing that the experienced leaders mentioned that over communicate document everything have it in a place where everyone can find it really critical. And also, of course, adopting new tools right how do we bring those in person activities into into the digital space, unsurprisingly mirror or mural or interactive workshopping whiteboarding loom to share updates with the team. You know, new integrations and slack to all your other tools to keep it all connected as well. Keep an overview of all the things that are happening. And, and of course those social chats right new new discovery for new remote leaders but how do we balance that you know, keeping those social conversations going you know when there's a formal, you know, on the surface of formal scheduled meeting, you know, figuring out how do you how do you keep that sort of. Yeah, how do you make it how do you have to make it balance effectively. And so to the previous point about the camera fatigue or zoom fatigue and and you know the body fatigue of sitting down at desk all day. My meetings are are quite why great response I during the pandemic I tried to do as many as I could where I was explicitly telling my team in my one to ones. Let's take this as a walking meeting phone only. There's no actions on the back of that I want to chat with you want to connect with you. We have a chat where while we're walking so we get some exercise right and we had like friendly competitions as to who was walking more steps etc etc. Really sweet. Yeah. Because of challenging. You know, as we've seen being being true to self being honest being personable is especially important is very important under normal circumstances, but translating that personal approach to a virtual world is very difficult and and I think it's even more so difficult if you are relatively new to leadership and so you're still trying to find the boundaries between being an individual contributor and someone who's responsible for other people's well being. One of the challenges have been that we've seen is onboarding during lockdown so I was really lucky in that my own I changed jobs during the pandemic and my my onboarding both on the technical and social side was phenomenal. We've seen a lot of responses where while the technological side of things work really well, getting a sense of the culture of the organization is a lot more difficult developing those relationships so the social, the social side of onboarding is very very challenging has been very challenging and and yes, if you're new to leadership and you're new to understanding people and reading between the lines, it is much harder to see when people are struggling if you only see them across the screen, or maybe not across the screen. And you can see that people that were new to leadership were actually struggling with communications on so building relationship. Building relationship and keeping people informed and over communicating as we've seen earlier are a lot more difficult if you don't have that muscle developed. And, not unexpectedly, they had, you know, their report having had to let go of expecting to be on top of everything. And that's something that I remember doing too when I was a when I was a new manager right and YouTube. I remember when we started you felt like you had to keep everything under control and so it was it was really hard perfection. And that's my favorite to that I had to unlearn when I started on this journey is, you know, you can't get that heavily involved in that detail you come like a man and to kind of perfection is really is really not a goal and I'm learning that is a really important lesson as a leader. Yeah. So, and then there were common, a couple of commonalities across both groups but before we go into this, you know, lot, we're getting closer to the end. I would like to forewarn everybody that we are going to have an interactive Q&A so we're going to start with a question from Martin and I to you. Yeah, that will jump start so so get ready to participate, although I see you need absolutely no encouragement. Now, both groups. You know, we asked them, what did you wish you'd known going into that that. One of the things was around letting go of the expectation that things would be done in the same way, as in the physical environment. Things are different. We can, we cannot expect and they could not expect to keep the same thing and of course that's the adjustment period. There was there was also a realization around habits ritual and practices and how they are much more important remotely than in person because they anchor those relationships, especially they're of a personal nature, especially how much more time and effort you need to put into them to actually reap the rewards. Yes, and then particularly interesting that I can not model teams, the way teams work on the back of my experience and that's all part of letting go empowering and enabling. Absolutely, but we also had a few nice surprises and, you know, for some teams that was hey, when the rest of the organization went remote it became a lot easier for us as a remote team to feel like that we belong like as a first class citizen. That the org has done a lot of small things for people to feel connected, you know, sending out little gifts to two team members, a real nice morale booster that wasn't, it wasn't a great lot of effort but a nice for for thought. And heard from a lot of people how much closer they are feeling to their coworkers now that I've had more of a sort of window in their personal lives than they've ever had before when they were working together in the office. And then we asked people, what would you, you know, you've been through this, what would you want to tell other people that may go through this in the future are starting to go through this. And then the first bit of advice I think it's spot on. There is not one way to do is right. This right. Much like, honestly, there's no one way to do in person leadership right, you know, it's all about the right approach for the right people with the right tools and the right processes and the right protocols at this specific time. The other, the second one, you know, in one of the comments we said, or someone said, oh, I wish I knew how to implement servant leadership. And I think that the flip side of that is that as leaders, we need to be able to roll up our sleeves jumping in the work and say, and show curiosity, dedication, willingness to support. And when the team sees that, that's when they learn to respect you, that's when they know that you're not going to leave them out, you know, in, in trouble. And then there was something around creating psychological safety and I know that psychological safety is something that everybody talks about these days, but really make it safe for people to share. Leave them different channels. You know, the one thing that I tell my, my team at work is, you can text me you can WhatsApp me you can send me a message on team you can send me an email you can, you know, I have an anonymous form. If there's something you want to tell me and you know, and you don't want me to know who it is. It doesn't really matter how you do it. You know, as a leader, you're at the service of others and you need to create a site, you know, a safe place for them to be able to come with you and help them design the organization that you want. And what do you wish for and I think, looking at people who've done this for a long time, you know, it's been exhausting like the pandemic has been an incredibly exhausting experience so, you know, they miss being able to, to meet people in person and of course we're coming back out of that and I have more opportunities again to do that but you know, just realizing how much those in person interactions connections hugs, sharing conversations are really fueling that your own motivation and energy as well. And actually the flip side of what we're saying earlier, you know, some people are saying like I wish I had more, but budget for fun, even if it's a very modest budget it goes a really long way, because, you know, the pandemic was also obviously tied to a lot of economic uncertainty and budget cuts for a lot of teams so, you know, having to make do with a lot less and trying to figure out, but how can I create as a leader how can I create that social connection and that, you know, that message that I care we care. I'm finding those opportunities are small alone. I'm popping the question in the chat. I love it. I love it. And then finally here, I wish organizations would share more information and this is really, you know, where we started with this with this survey as well with this research project. I wish people would share a lot more between organizations outside of my own bubble, a set of my own circle friends or a set of my own company, you know, it's really hard to figure out all the stuff by yourself or in isolation. We really want to hear about how other people are solving these problems. These are hard challenges right there is no one right answer. And I want to say an appeal also to everyone here and thank you so much for all you're sharing to share with each other how do we do this better right what's worked what's not worked and in different contexts different things work so really exciting. Yes, it's. I think that this is the biggest thing and we've heard, we've heard it from everybody. We all want to look good, we all want to look like we know what we're doing. But it'd be really refreshing to have a proper conversation at leadership level and organizational level, you know, in figuring out things that, you know, had made a difference for the people that matter which is the people that are in the organization and yes I know we are at the end of our session so the question for us from us to you I popped it in the chat is. So this was the pandemic but you know we've slowly started to return to the office. So what was it for you so a month said it's good to be back. It looks like a new planet. Oh that's that's really good can we hear more about. It looks like a new planet and conversely what people share what it feels for them if you have questions for us by all means do less now. And as the answers keep coming through. Our parting thoughts are, you know, around seven things that we invite everybody to remember seven practices, leading remotely during pandemic and leading remotely are two different things we need to invest in good tech. We need to communicate up down and sideways. We need to get creative with making space for personal connection connection remotely by all means, we need to learn to let go of perfection. Yes, and that means also productivity being reduced now that we're back to the office, you can be perfect and we need to create safe spaces to build trust. But mostly being kind to ourselves and others. And that's exactly what Bob in was saying productivity reduce because commute and connect. If you feel awesome you're being kind to yourself that's what we would like to what we want to say. Yes, few people in the office absolutely here in in the UK is the same and little by little, the truth is that we never really thought we'd have to do this, but we are doing it and somehow it's working. Thank you so much for being with us. Thank you so much for the we have time for questions. So we are, unfortunately, time right now. So, but it was a great exciting session insightful full fully energetic, and I think, even all the participants were, you know, totally engraved into the discussion. Thank you for having us to tender and everybody.