 Thanks for all of you for joining us today live or watching the recording. We like to start every episode of the non-profit show saying thank you, thank you, thank you to our presenting sponsors. You can see their logos right in front of you on the screen. Many have been with us since March but been with us also means been with you because they are here to support you elevate your cause and your missions across the globe. So these are presenting sponsors that have your back and I hope that you'll check them out and find them on the internet and of course Julia has your back too. Julia Patrick is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy and I'm Jarrett Ransom CEO of the Raven Group, also known as the non-profit nerd and today I am so thrilled to have back by popular demand because we thoroughly enjoyed your previous presence on our show. Miko Marquette Whitlock, pardon me, joins me founder and CEO of Mindful Techie. Welcome back. Well thank you for having me. I'm excited to be back and I enjoyed our last conversation. I'm happy that we get to pick up on it. Yes, you know if there's been anything that has been kind of the watchword of this last you know 16 months it's tech and so in the non-profit sector it's even more important. So I'm so excited Miko to have you back because as we're talking about recovery and we're talking about a return to some normalcy or it's going to be changed forever we're looking at managing still in a virtual way. And so I thought it would be really cool to get your perspective on this and we thought if we could get you to give us the five top tips which we realize are probably going to be a five different tips in the next 10 months but really because a lot of us are struggling thinking oh my gosh how are we going to be bringing our teams back so let's get to it. What is your tip number one for managing a virtual team? So the first tip is knowing your zoom number know your zoom number. So many of you have heard of the sleep number right where there's like a number for the firm that's like your partner has a number you have a number you've already seen in commercials maybe you have the bed right and so like this whole campaign around knowing your sleep number. Well what if we had a campaign around actually knowing your zoom number right like what's your zoom cap if you will in terms of how many meetings you're going to be able to have doing a day whether you're in the office or whether you are at home because one of the things we know about the hybrid workplace is that even with people going back to work we're still probably going to see the same number if not more zoom means because they're going to be folks working from home right and so how do we actually manage that effectively can we have a conversation with our teams with our colleagues with our organizations about what's a sufficient number of zoom meetings so that we leave space for people to actually recover and to actually get the work done in between meetings. Does have a conversation about the appropriate length of meetings right does it need to be a half hour does it need to be an hour can we make it 20 minutes so 45 minutes and give people that buffer time to transition into their next activity right the other thing is does it actually need to be a meeting where it's just a bunch of talking heads right so people are are are pressed for time can we repurpose some of this meeting time into co-working time so we're actually getting the work done together right so an example of this might mean that if you find that people are perpetually showing up they haven't had time to read the materials what if you set up the first five to three minutes people to actually sit silently to review the materials to think about informed collections or points they want to raise and that's actually going to make the rest of the meeting a bit more productive right so know your zoom number this is the first tip that I have for folks whether you're going to be working in a hybrid situation whether you're working from home or in the office this is something that I encourage everyone to think about so I heard I do love that I just heard on my local news that there's one corporation and they were saying no more zoom calls on Fridays like the Fridays has become the casual like outfit day you know but more so of we are not as a company going to schedule any zoom calls for our team so that you now have a day break from this zoom fatigue unless you have a client call that requires zoom right like if you still have that interaction but I just thought wow this is really permeating our culture of how we um gosh I don't know the right word Niko but like reward or honor um being mindful right of our of our company time and that you know maybe one day a week you can say no zoom calls right so have having that balance right so um you know I would call those sort of the blackout days um another option I would add to this is one of the reasons that zoom is still taxing is that because you know us being connected this way there's a latency factor right we're not in person which is an unnatural formal communication and over time that means that our our bodies and our minds are working hard to fill in that gap that otherwise wouldn't exist if we were actually in person right so there's this increase in our cognitive load and so for many of us we are utterly exhausted even if we've just been sitting in front of our screen all day and part of this because your brain is like working overtime to fill in those gaps and so one of the things we can consider too is just going back to audio right turn off the video or just have an old-fashioned phone call or or conference call sometimes that can also lower the cognitive load and help people to be more present um in the way that you know zoom back to back to back to back um is is still taxing right I like that too okay so tip number one was great so no pressure my friend but tip number two for managing your virtual team so tip number two so I in particularly if you are managing a team but whether you're an individual you and you don't have any direct reports or you're individual and you do have a direct report having a start and stop ritual for your day right uh and we talked about this the last time tied into this concept of reclaiming your commute time for many of us if we were commuting to the office before we have repurposed that commute time to actually get more work done or to take on more personal responsibilities and that looks like for many of us we were a lot of bed and we're grabbing our phones our devices our laptops and we're working non-stop until into the evening right and so I'm encouraging folks to reclaim that commute time with and again whether you're in the office or whether you're at home or doing a combination of both having a way to start your day where you're not diving head first into the emails and into the meetings right um you know maybe that's prayer maybe that's meditation maybe that's grabbing your coffee maybe that's going for a walk maybe that's walking the dog maybe that's sort of sitting in silence you know in your car before you walk into the office whatever that is for you carving out what does it look like at the start of your day and then also at the end of your day as you transition from closing out your your work day so for me I work from home mostly and so I close my laptop like close my office door and that signals the end of my work day and it's it allows my body to have a predictable cue to know that okay it's time to shift into a different mode right so this is particularly important for people that are working for home a lot maybe even you have a small space that you're working out of something as subtle as simply putting away the laptop or closing a laptop lid putting in the drawer those small things can actually make a big difference in terms of helping you to make those shifts and also just giving you some breathing time like we're not robots right so we have to be able to allow ourselves an opportunity to recover and to have that buffer time to shift between different contexts in different roles I have a girlfriend and she was telling me that her husband twice a week gets in his car picks up coffee takes a route some random route for like 15-20 minutes and then comes back home right like that is become his cadence and the way that he starts two of his five days a week for work that it really gives him that peaceful drive commute time right maybe he's listening to a podcast and she's like and it's just as equally great for me that he's doing that yes and it's actually been written about lately it's called the fake commute so you the fake commute right so you go for that walk or you go you walk to the the take the bus or in this case you know you take the drive to go get your coffee and then you come back and you start your day and then you have something else at the end of the day that replicates that as well so absolutely so did you say you wrote about this can we find this article somewhere I did not write about this one my colleagues beth cancer you go to bethcancer.org has written about this yeah yeah I know that name I will I will definitely be looking for that yeah you know I think this would be great in terms of managing your team as well yes bring this up to your teammates and to say you know what is it you can do what is it we can do how do we honor that especially I like the ending I think a lot of times we have starts things that we that get us going but the ending it's never ending right it's just infinity kind of like your like your logo Nico I mean you have that in the glasses I see that infinity piece okay so wow step one and step two we're good again now the pressure goes and even though it's April Fool's Day we're not fooling around tip number three all right so tip number three is called establishing your rules of engagement and so for folks that are really struggling with this idea of how to create a start and stop routine and not feel guilty about that the rules of engagement hopefully will help you to do that so the rules of engagement are essentially a series of questions that you ask yourself and you can use this as a conversation tool for your team and for your loved ones for your supervisors to really have a conversation about really three basic things the first is when when are my work hours right when am I going to be available for my work and when am I going to be available for the things outside of work right and so that's going to help you to figure out when you actually pop in your start routine and your start routine the other is what are the tools or what are the communication channels that you're going to use to communicate when something is urgent versus non-urgent right so if someone has an urgent request of you should they send you a text message should they call you should they send your email or a Slack message or contact you on Teams what's the best way to reach you based on the level of urgency and what actually constitutes something that's urgent versus non-urgent and then the last basic question that you want to be able to ask yourself when it comes to your rules of engagement is what are the expectations around response times right and what happens if you're not available what's the backup plan if you're not available and something is truly urgent then what should your loved ones or what should your colleagues expect that they need to do as part of the next step and having this as part of an explicit conversation as opposed to what many of us do is we have these assumptions built in we haven't discussed them so what happens is we feel guilty for doing the fake commute maybe you're going to drive to go get your coffee you're doing your fake and you feel guilty about that because you feel like oh my god what if my boss calls or what if a client calls and I'm not available to take that when people feel like I'm a slacker or that I dropped the ball or that I'm not responsive right so thinking about what does that actually look like for you so that you can do your fake commute you can go have lunch during the day you can go change your kid's diaper and not feel guilty that you're missing something because you've had a conversation with your colleagues and they know the different ways to reach you based on level of urgency and there's some built-in conversation around expectancy in terms of response time that you've all hopefully you've come to a mutual agreement of what that can actually look like wow so I see this is an amazing workshop for a team that's going to be looking at going back to work you know if it's a hybrid if it's still maintaining the work from home piece of it yeah this is a really key thing because I can think of conversations that I've been having with leaders who are like wow there's two things my team works a lot harder and longer than I ever thought or my team's not working hard enough and I think it's the older folks that are like you know I'm used to getting up out of my chair walking down the hall and looking them in the eye versus understanding that these are the same workers that the minute they wake up they're checking their email they're looking at texts throughout the day even well after the office hours yes and so having these rules of engagement allows the you know the organization and for you know the if you're managing a team allows the the manager to say hey you know I honor you as a human being I know you're not a robot you know I know you have family responsibilities or other things that are happening but let's have our conversation about reasonable expectations and recognizing too that this this isn't something that has to be sort of one size fits all or very rigid often particularly in the nonprofit space the the work ebbs and flows with the season right you're going to have some seasons that are easier than others and so that might change some teams with even within the same organization some teams are client facing some are focused internally just on on infrastructure and so the rules of engagement might look a bit differently depending on your role in the organization and depending on the season and that's okay just see this as an opportunity to have an ongoing conversation about what this could look like for you and for your team me go I have a question when it comes to transparency right so this is in particular let's say an employee employer relationship and maybe there's a personal meeting that you need to take or you know it is there a way during this rules of engagement conversation to bring up you know this topic of hey look I don't want to tell you where I'm going to be all the time I would like to just put a block of like private time or you know personal meeting or and it could be anything right it could be going to the hairdresser or having a therapy appointment or taking your child to the doctor like for me I don't care what that personal private meeting is but how might we relay that need to our employer I think I would start by getting clear about expectations in terms of what what needs to be done and what are what are the outcomes and what are the deadlines and just focus on that right so and I think as long as you're focused on delivering on those things and you have a clear along with that you have clear understanding about the rules of engagement I'm not sure it makes sense to bring it up you know and you can and I like you know when it comes to saying yes and no one of the phrases I get people is to say like I you know no I'm not able to do that I have another commitment could we do x y and z right your commitment might be nap time right but you don't need to talk to the other person that yeah you have another commitment and generally yeah if you say you have another commitment that sounds like serious enough like someone's not going to probe generally speaking and you know but to say hey like you know I have another commitment at that time I would love to help you with x y and z how about we do a lot of like you're proposing an alternative right and so you don't have to get into the conversation about well I'm going to walk my dog or I'm going to the hairdresser or I'm going to pick up you know grandma from the airport like you don't have to get into all that yes I like that just keep it you know I have another commitment at that time but I can do this this and this what works yeah but this works this in order for this to work you have to be performing you have to be meeting that you have to be delivering on the deliverables you have to be meeting the deadlines you have to be responsive according to the rules of engagement that you have agreed upon and if you're not doing that then the the the probing questions might be okay so like what are you doing like you're not you're not meeting the benchmarks you know so what are you doing are you spending too much time at the hairdresser like are you spending too much time walking the dog let's have a conversation right is grandma visiting too often that you're picking her up from the airport exactly now that's a valid point yes so this really needs to be you know you're producing and you're really elevating so of these five top tips we're at number four and what do you have for us on number four so number four is about setting intention so I'm the mindful techie I'm all about being really intentional it's all about setting intentions and I'll describe it this way when you're setting an intention an intention is essentially your view of what a successful outcome might be for your day or for your week and so I think it's really important as we start our days in our weeks that we are setting clear intentions because they'll those then guide our priorities or our to-do lists many of us have mile-long to-do lists of things many of those things aren't necessarily relevant to actually getting us to outcomes right getting us to actually meeting some of those benchmarks that we just talked about right so setting clear intentions allows us to slow down and to actually be able to to do that and one of the analogies that I give here is about something that I learned about how first responders are trained are trained to respond to an incident so when they arrive on a scene for example for a car accident they're taught to walk and not to run so first responders are taught to walk and not to run so why is this right well one of the obvious reasons is that if you are running at the scene of an accident that you're likely to maybe fall in trip and hurt yourself and you're not able to serve the person that you've actually been called to help right but one of the other reasons is that when we're rushing and running in this in this example we actually our our cortisol levels spike our adrenaline level spike and we miss things so if you're responding to a car accident and you're running as a first responder you might notice the person in front of you that's injured but you might miss the fact that there are two other people on the other side of the car that also need your help as well you might miss the fact that there's glass in the road and you trip over and you cut yourself and again you're out of you know you're not able to help the person to your best of your ability so many times we rush into our days we rush into our weeks so I'm inviting people to take time to walk and to not run and one of the ways that you can do that is by taking an opportunity to pause and just asking yourself if you start your day if you start your week what is the what is the highest outcome that I want to achieve what's my vision for success for for today or for this week and once you've done that look at your to-do list look at your calendar and ask yourself does your calendar does your to-do list actually reflect that highest intention that you set for yourself okay I know I never heard that before I've never heard that I'm not a first responder but I have never heard that and that you know is so mind blowing right Julia like yeah not before no I haven't but I've witnessed it yeah but I think what I think about it what have you ever seen a first responder or paramedic running like darting across never but I'm always thinking why aren't they going faster yeah totally totally you know I think what I really the message here for me is looking before we get a tip number five is that intention for the week I love that as opposed to just that oh my gosh the to-do list the to-do list but really pulling that out my mother always says you know don't rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic you know because that's not helping you you've got to look at the sinking ship you know as a whole yes and figure out okay wow so you have to walk the Titanic first yeah don't run don't run and don't trip over the deck chairs you need to walk because you might need to get off the Titanic right exactly okay wow so the pressure is on my friend one through four we're damn good what about number five all right so number five is really about our technology right so we talked about some practical strategies in terms of the other ways in which we work but technology is such a big part of how we work want to give you a lasting tip here and that is around bed times and nap times so I'm a big believer in making sure that we're having a good night sleep for ourselves I'm a big believer in taking nap time if that's what you need in order to get through through your day I think that's perfectly okay but what about nap time and bedtime for our devices right so I recommend for folks that you want to those people that you wake up first thing in the morning you're grabbing your phone it's getting in the way of you actually starting your day in an intentional a mindful and a peaceful way is to reclaim some of that peace reclaim some of that space for yourself by actually charging your devices in a separate room right establishing a bedtime for your devices just like you establish a bedtime for yourself as a family you can do this by establishing a centralized charging station station and you can agree on a bedtime together as a family the other thing that you can do is nap time right so nap time for your devices that means you know during middle times that means when you're in the bathroom that means that when you're working on deadline for example and you need uninterrupted attention to whatever it is you're focusing on you know take your phone and and you know set it down for nap time just like you with your kid and then you can come back to it when you're when you're done right so nap time and bedtime for your devices so i am guilty that i use my phone as my alarm clock i also use an app on there um that's like a nighttime meditation that helps me you know go to sleep um what am i supposed to do with that right like is it okay that i still have my phone with me like how do i train myself to not check it first time in the morning after i turn off the alarm so i think this is something where if you're checking it first thing in the morning i'm actually going to recommend that you probably consider getting an alarm clock a real like a real alarm clock um and when it comes to the meditation it's interesting so i just i just practice um what is the natural day of unplugging i've been doing this for the last couple years where it's like you take essentially you know one 24 hour period away from your digital devices um and i actually bought a boombox remember the boomboxes yeah so i actually bought a boombox so i wouldn't have to use my phone or my tablet so maybe you need to buy a boombox or or some other analog um uh device if you're using that for your meditation right get you a cd or mp3 player i'm gonna get a cassette tape yes i love that though because i think so many of us have become reliant on technology um so much so that you know and they do relate this to an addiction that we continue to to you know lean on it again like i do it's an alarm for me in the morning it helps me go to sleep at night but when i wake up it's also the first thing i check yeah so that's the thing and it's if that is the thing again i'm you know get your get your real alarm clock get your boombox or some other device to help you with the sleep the sleep um meditation and um see if that helps with the attachment issue that you have with your device especially first thing in the morning okay amazon smile i hope you have something for me well you've been great and i i think that this wisdom that you've shared is really powerful because again our nonprofits are looking excitedly at recovery how we manage our teams how we manage ourselves and it starts with us as leaders and then we have to be able to communicate that to our teams and to you know create some new pathways to for success because this is a new a new time and the work certainly hasn't gone away but it has certainly changed on how we do things here's the mindful techies information it's got some great great things on your website and i love your use of video on your website along with your narratives are great nico you've done a fabulous job so quiz i took the quiz after your last um episode with us so yes check out mindful techie dot com it's fantastic yes yeah if you want the quiz really quickly so if you go to mindful techie dot com slash free mindful techie dot com slash free you can get the workbook um that they were talking about and you can get the quiz the work life balance and the digital wellness quiz um to help you really get a sense of where you are on what you can do if depending on your level of attachment to your devices i am not digitally well i am not that is a practice that i really want to be better off well when you say you know digital attachment that kind of says it all hey i'm julia patrick i've been joined by jared ranson the nonprofit nerd herself another great episode of the nonprofit show we want to remind you that the book club is launched i'm on the american nonprofit academy website it's really fun it's a lot of different books um and information that nonprofit leaders um at all levels can use and we we continue to curate this because we really believe that this type of information is just so valuable to us all again we want to thank our sponsors without you we would not be here talking with the mindful techie today and trying to refocus how we are doing things for the better um so miko it has really been a pleasure to have you join us um and our sponsors without again this this uh commitment that they've made we wouldn't be having these these enlightened articles our engagements hey everybody thank you for joining us today it's been another great episode don't you think jared absolutely and miko i have a feeling you might have a book or you might be working on one do you are you an author i i have it i have a daily planner called the intention planners you can get at the website and i'm actually i'm working on um my first long form book um although some people consider the planner book but so however i'm working on it the next book how about that let us know and we will add it to the book club would love to do that awesome absolutely well everyone as we like to end each one of our episodes we want to remind everyone to stay well so you can do well you see you back here tomorrow everyone thanks so much