 Welcome. Thank you for joining us today. It was a brand new start to a week and we are starting with Mary Gleason. Back by popular demand, Mary joined us last year for an episode and we were just enamored with your wisdom and expertise. So Mary is a consultant and a coach. She's got some woo-woo in her, which I love. And the book across Mary's shoulder on her right shoulder is exactly the book in which she authored that talks about her woo-woo. But Mary is joining us today to talk to us about the secrets to building the cohesive remote teams that we are all experiencing. So before we do start into this conversation, we want to make sure you know who we are if we haven't met you yet. Julia Patrick, thank you so much for coming up with this wonderful idea. Julia is the CEO of the American Nonprofit Academy. I'm Jarrett Ransom, your non-profit nerd, CEO of the Raven Group and grateful to serve alongside Julia as the co-host of this national broadcast each and every weekday. Thanks to our presenting sponsors. Please do check them out. If you are looking to do anything differently in the new year, you want to make sure that you know exactly what these sponsors can do to help you fulfill and forward your mission-driven goals. So again, thank you. Thank you. Thank you to our sponsors that keep these conversations with people like Mary going strong. Welcome back, Mary. Thank you. I was excited to be invited. I'm glad you find my content useful. Oh, yeah. We do. And it's going to become even more important because we were talking in the green room chatter. You know, this working remotely and managing remote teams, I believe is here to stay. And I think that it doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out that the American, if not global workforce, is really leaning into this. And so it has a lot of opportunity, but it has a little bit of a challenge. And so that's really why we wanted to have you on because it's a new year. A lot of us when we're managing teams think about, okay, this is when we institute new change or we institute new policy. And so we wanted to get you on first and foremost, shifting our brains to knowing that we have a remote team, number one. But how do we know when they're not cohesive? Like, what does that look like? Well, I think when you're not sure you can trust your team, I mean, and I guess I want to say that these comments are for anybody, not just leaders and managers, but from your perspective, possibly as an employee or a member of the team. But some of the things that things aren't cohesive is you're taking things personally, possibly because they're out of context in ways they never were before. You have a feeling of resistance. Somebody said to me once, as the manager, and she made her point quite effectively, she said, why is it that information from the top down is called communication, but information from the bottom up is called resistance. So are you resisting hearing things in a new way? Are you resisting the information that might actually solve some issues for you? You need to understand where that resistance is coming from. No, and when I talk about the trust, one of the little things somebody told me is they have a timer on their mouth. So if it's idle for more than 10 minutes, they get a call saying, what's up? Why aren't you working? I'm sorry, that stuff's just got to go. It's just not going to work right now. That's absolutely devoid of understanding in addition to where your desk is located has changed. Everything that's happening around your desk has changed. So that kind of stuff is just not helpful. And it really gets in the way of team cohesion. You don't feel like a participating member. You feel like sort of an entity or a resource for a goal that somehow is impersonal to you. When people dread, and I said, coming to work, that's a sign that things are really off. Like, oh, I want to log in. It's just going to be the same old same old. Things are not cohesive if there's no flexibility for individuals or changing circumstances. People compare their work others in unhealthy ways. It's like, we really got to get a grasp on where you are, where you are in this process, and how you're making this work for you. Because even though we're all working from home now, what's happening around us again is not the same. And so sometimes lack of cohesion is people can't even agree with the goal is, which is a really big problem in communications. And that the big thing that I find is when there's been no change in one's approach to management, when in fact, everything has changed. Does that make sense? It does. And I'm curious if you can tell us more about that. And I'm still stuck on the communication is communication, but it's resistance bottom up. I'm still stuck on that, but I'm curious how you can talk to us and educate us now that this work. And again, we might call it work from home, but let's be honest, people aren't always at home. They could be with family, they could be who knows where, right? So it's really this remote workforce. And Julia, you shared a statistic that it used to be one in so many and now it's, can you repeat that statistic? So one in 67 people could have been work could have been identified as working remotely pre pandemic. That's like one in seven. It's like one in seven. And, and what we were talking about in the green room chatter is that, you know, there are a lot of things driving this. But one of the things that I think is apparent is that there are a lot of people in the workplace that this is their preferred method. I mean, they, it's not been easy and they've had to learn, we've all had to adapt everything from technology to work environments to work spaces within our homes, all of the stuff. But the reality is it's isn't just going to be a snap of the fingers and we're all back to sitting in our cubicles. I mean, the changes to our structural part of workforce is phenomenal. It's phenomenal. And so I think Mary, why it's so interesting to have you on today is that we've got to get a grip on this because this is not just a stop gap situation. You know, it's not. And I think the differences and the dichotomies in our days as employees of the same organization are different. If you're a nonprofit and you have frontline workers who are out with people every day and you're in the safety of your home, we have to remember the people who are out there working face to face with these people are undergoing an even greater threat to their own health than you or I sitting at our kitchen tables or wherever we are in our home doing our job. And so it's not just that they're out there anymore, it's that there is a real extra threat that they are having to face. You know, there is a lot of stress with wearing a face mask all day long. My children all work in settings where they have to wear masks all day long and said there are times when it's just so hot or things just aren't right or you know and and it's really stressful. If you are at all hearing impaired and people have their mouth covered up, that's a great stressor to wear is before you were relying perhaps more on expression and maybe even lip reading to get you through. So we're not all having the same day. That is so true. I went to the bank the other day and not only are we wearing masks, but there's that plexiglass in front of us. So not only could I and I'm a lip reader, right? I'm a huge lip reader thanks to my mom. I swear I got it from her hereditary and genetics. And so then it's also muffled and I find myself like pressing to the to the you know plexiglass and it still doesn't help but all of that plays a role in our stress, our demeanor, how we're showing up and I'm imagining that's coming through by way of either being cohesive or a lack of cohesion within our workplace. And I'm let's talk about how we can build or rebuild this culture within our teams because I also hope you will address for me, Mary. This isn't just about working remotely but perhaps teams that have multi geographic locations. And so how do we build a cohesive culture with these dynamics in play? Yeah, and I hope I can say some things that are all of those elements. But I think the bottom line is relationships have always been important. Now they are absolutely the icon of what we have to strive for. I mean, they are just the pinnacle and where we use to manage a group, we are managing individuals and the and also a group. That makes sense. Wow, you know, I never I never thought of it that way. But yeah, I see what you're saying. Yeah, that's smart. We're in different locations. I might be snowed in and you might be having a heat wave. We're dealing with different things. And if I'm snowed in and I have kids in school, that means I have a very busy household, right? I mean, so just allowing for differences, you don't necessarily have to be experiencing them. You don't even have to have ever experienced them. I think my big thing is when people tell you what's happening for them, believe them. If it ends up not being true down the road, it's different, but believe them. Give them some wiggle room. Allow them to be accurate reporters of their own reality. Build in time for real communication one on one with your team members whenever possible. Practice active listening. And that's really very basic. It's listen, repeat, and then reply. So I'm listening to you. I hear, I say back to you, if I heard you correctly, here's what you said. Now I'm going to respond. And it's a lovely thing to model because you will find people will do that back. If they've been heard, they will listen to you too. That's not anything new, but sometimes a helpful reminder. My friend's husband leads the team at Microsoft and he has a 3-H approach. It's heard. You want to be heard? Do you want to be helped? Or do you want to be handled? So you just want to tell me something. Do you want help accomplishing something, which is the collaborative approach? Or do you want somebody else to do this instead? You want it to be handled for you. So if you can be really clear about what it is you're asking of your manager or your colleague, that would be really helpful. Not just whining, not just complaining, but communicating with a purpose. It would really help me if I could just walk through this out loud with somebody or I'm not sure here what I'm asking for. Maybe I need some help, whatever it is, or I just can't handle one more thing. But being really clear about what it is you want from the person that you're talking to. I want to interject. I love the 3-Hs. I wrote that down and I have to be honest. I do that in my personal life. If it's a close friend or family member and I'll say, how would you like for me to show up in this conversation? Do you want me to listen? Are you asking for suggestion? But I don't necessarily do that in the work environment, Mary. So I find exactly what you just said. I do it somewhat naturally in my personal space and it's like as soon as that hat comes on with work, I don't think about, is that empathy? Is that being a little bit more empathetic than in the workplace? Yes, and empathy is where all of this is leading. Let me just make a couple more points before we get there if I can. More time for managing each person is really what we're talking about here and I want to be clear. I'm not talking about a therapy session. I'm not talking about having to accommodate the fact that your co-worker's mother isn't feeling well and they had to put their pet down this morning stuff like that. That's good information for you to hear because otherwise you might hear it as resistance to work rather than saying, how would you feel if you took a couple hours and then let's come back and have that conversation? I mean, that's just plain being human being and we are really shifting in this world being more human centered. We were there for a while, then we went to information, then we went to bottom line and we found it really works best when it's more heart centered and we actually deal with humans that are involved. One thing I would like to tell people and I used to tell this to my employees all the time is how much I value manage upward and this can be seen as resistance if it's not handled well but I loved it when people don't assume I remember everything that's on your desk. I don't. I probably remember the latest thing I gave you. That's about it. So you can respectfully say here are all the things I'm working on which is the priority for you. Manage upward. Here are all the things I'm working on. Is this one still real? That sort of thing. That is so helpful when you manage upward. Then again, it's just recognizing that even if everybody is working from home or working remotely, they're not in the same setting. They are at the kitchen table or maybe they have their home office or maybe they're at Starbucks because they don't have Wi-Fi, whatever it is. Just remembering it's different. So I think empathy takes us right into steps to keep the team moving forward. I like that you're saying really let's get back to let's let them have their reality. Let's stay human centered. I'm curious. I'm going to throw the curve ball or put the elephant in the room. This is non-gender specific, correct? This is and I'm curious if you've seen that's a good question, right? Very typically the men that are like, no, that's not how I work. I'm not emotionally driven, but this is really the core values and beliefs of all people. How have you seen that navigated through this time, Mary? I would say that emotional intelligence is not reserved to a gender. It's a responsibility for all of us, especially if you're managing people. If you're managing people and you don't think emotions count, you are in the wrong line of work because that's the big piece that makes us human, right? So I would say nobody's off the hook from developing empathy and from gaining emotional intelligence and I would say none of us have thrived at incredibly emotionally intelligent. We've all got learning and work to do and each person can teach us something about that. We let them. I love that answer. I really think it's important for us to keep in mind. Now tell us about these steps because I'm sure many of our listeners, including myself, are like, okay, we need to rebuild that cohesion within our team, but how the heck do we do it? Okay, no problem. Take notes. I've got all the answers. Actually, I've got some suggestions and what I would say is, and this is what I said in my newsletter, which is you will go a long way to build productive remote games if you can understand how empathy works. And you do that by increasing your intuition or intuitive relationship skills. And that just means being in tune with what's happening for other people. And I found this great quote by the son, the man who founded Motorola. He said, Ed once looked down an assembly line of women employees and thought, these are like my own mom. They have kids homes to take care of people who need them. And it motivated him to work hard to give them a better life because he saw his mom and all of them. And that's how it begins with fundamental respect. And I just thought that is perfect. You have to respect people that you're managing and you have to respect their perspectives are as true as yours. I love that. Yeah. I mean, how many of us have cookie cutter job descriptions, right? They're out there. We're filling them with individuals who bring different things to that position. And that's the next layer that we're talking about. And this other quote, I'll just throw out there that I loved it says, depending on the circumstances, you should be hard as a diamond, flexible as a willow, smooth flowing like water or as empty as space. So one size management is not fit all never has, it really doesn't now. What does the situation call for? Does it call for you to step in and be the boss? This is the way we're going to do it. Does it call for you to step in and say, okay, I understand it's hard over here and it's easier over here. And how can we hold the timeline to accommodate some of these things that are happening, you know, that flexibility, smooth flowing like water, like, you know, let's just keep it going and see how this works for a little while longer. Everybody's doing good. Maybe I don't need to manage right now. Maybe I need to get out of the way. Or as empty as space, you know, and that can mean so many things. But the idea being, not everything needs you to touch it. Sometimes you just need to let things work themselves out and takes great intuition, know when to do those things. So, wow, go ahead. Well, I think it's fascinating because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, you know, we have to be, we have to be empathetic, but we have to change the way we're viewing that. And it used to be we could walk through from the parking lot to the lobby to the lunch room and pick up a lot of these social cues and see people and make a judgment and then make a judgment on ourselves of how we're going to engage. Wow, Sally looks like she could need, you know, some positivity, you know, all of whatever these things are. But now when we don't have that and we have to glean that from maybe a Zoom call or an email or a tone in a communication, it's really changing not only the concept of how we have to be more empathetic, but how we pull these messages in. That's pretty daunting. It is daunting and it's the only way. It's the only way. So, I love what you're saying. We are missing the cues that we used to rely on. Yeah. And so this is where it goes from the aggregate and the congregate to the individual. And it's a much more demanding way of managing a team or an organization or being a member of a team. It's doable. You just have to build in that time. And I think that's the biggest thing is we are on timelines all the time. We have to span those timelines to allow for the human interaction because without it we're sunk. And we think there's a resistance to the goal when in fact, you know, other things are happening for people that line between home and work has been permanently blurred. And you had mentioned that in our green room chatter a little bit about how, you know, some employees are saying you can have my early mornings, my late evenings, but there's this, you know, window of, I'm going to call it chaos because I live that as well. And it's particularly when I pick up my child and then it's that middle, middle of the day chaos. And then it gets back to some normalcy. Talk to us about how you're seeing that in this workflow of remote and having, you know, I'm thinking now of the water, maybe we just need to flip to the flow. How do, how should we manage our teams like that? You know, I think it's looking less at when they're doing the work. And are they doing the work? Is it getting done? Is it getting done well? Is it getting done on time? Then leave it alone. If it's not getting done, fuck it. What's happening for you? You know, there's a lot of people who would go to work and they didn't say boo about what was happening at home. And now they can't ignore it. There's a lot of people who are working from home who miss to the office and having that distinct line that's been blurred. So, you know, I had one manager who said, I never knew that my employee to teenage disabled children. And I saw that on a Zoom call once and I was shocked and I thought, well, no wonder they have to be somewhere every day at a certain time. I thought that they were just drawing acceptable boundaries when in fact that's what their home life required. So it was easier for her to build in a little more flexibility, let this person who was otherwise very good at their job to do it when they could. It's a fascinating thing because in some ways, I'm thinking back to this misconception that we had. And I know that I've been guilty of that myself is if you see somebody at their desk and they're in their chair, you think, okay, they're working here. But that's not really the case. And we have to rediscover what productivity is because our teams have not all been working to their best ability when they were in their cubicle. What we thought was the environment that would make them achieve what they need to achieve. Absolutely. Excuse me. And many of us work better from home. I work better from home where it's an undistracted environment. I started this long time ago as a grant writer for a nonprofit where I needed the time to sit and write the proposal. And there were times that I would close the office, I closed the door to my office and put it in the book that said, writing, please don't disturb. But now I have that ability to find my groove in my workflow and to know really what are those hours of efficiency. Mary, all of this has been fantastic. And I know you have many more resources for us. As we begin to end out today's episode, I really would like to share where people can find more about you and the resources that you have, services that you provide. Thank you. My website, marygleasonconsulting.com, I have a tab on there called blogs and such. And there's kind of all kinds of white papers to download. And please help yourself. That's what they're there for. A lot of them talk about how to build your intuition. That will help you lead to greater empathy. And I want to just take a second to say empathy doesn't mean you take on their problems. That's a different thing. So there's lots there. You are also very welcome to schedule a 30 minute call with me and ask me more questions. I love nothing more than talking about all this stuff. It's been great. Yeah, the website really is amazing. Your content is great, Mary. Check that out because it's a really fascinating look at something that is here to stay, moving forward. And those of us that jump in on it more quickly are going to be a lot more successful and be better people for it. Again, this has been another great episode. We have more than 450 episodes. You can find us on Roku, YouTube TV or YouTube, excuse me, Amazon Fire TV and Vimeo. And so there's a lot of content, especially as we navigate these different things. Again, we want to thank all of our presenting sponsors who've been with us on this journey who continue to help us have the nation's only daily broadcast dedicated solely to the nonprofit sector. It's truly an amazing thing. Okay, Jared, I'm ready to be a better leader. What about you? Well, I'm definitely going to do more of who I am in my personal space, into my workspace. Again, my big takeaway, Mary, and I'm a bit woo-woo as well, but truly is this 3-H approach and to see how I can implement that more into my professional conversations. Such a joy to have you back on. I appreciate all that you do. When you and I first connected, my intuition took over and I was like, okay, I'm resonating with this woman. I feel like it's reciprocal and I want to know more about you and your services. So thank you for joining us again to share with us some more tips on building a cohesive. Well, go forth and be an out and proud woo-woo executive. That's what I am and I love others to join me. I love it. Hey, that's great and it's been a remarkable way to start the week. We have a lot of exciting things ahead of us in the new year and we have a lot of challenges because we like to end every episode of the nonprofit show. We want to remind you to stay well so you can do well. We'll see you back here tomorrow, everyone.