 We were almost born ready Born ready cool. Hi everyone and welcome to today's webinar Very nice to see a lot of you here and some are still dropping in so Feel free to to sit down and relax and enjoy for for a while My name is Sofia and I'm from Agile 42 today Acting a little bit as your host and I'm gonna take care of all the good questions and comments that you're gonna provide to us today during the webinar With me today, I have Jeff Watts from inspect and adopt He's gonna join Andrea Tomassini from Agile 42 and speak a little bit about leading remotely today And we wanted to do this webinar a little bit in a different way to the previous ones for you guys who have been in the Agile 42 webinar Before we want to have this more as a conversation today than a lecture if I may use that word So we are very much looking forward to you being very active with us today asking a lot of questions in the Q&A and Also using the chat to to communicate with us So yeah, and before we're gonna start I will also mention that in the chat You should set the settings to panelists and attendees so that it's fun for everyone in the room to take part of your Comments so that we're also transparent in that way And we are recording this session for anyone who is missing out on today's live session You can always have a look at it also later on and you can share it with friends and colleagues as well and I think I should start off with the poll that we prepared now so that we See where to where to start off the discussions today So I'm gonna launch the poll now and then I'm gonna give over to Jeff and Andrea Does the poll come up on that? Yeah, there's a poll right now. You're not allowed to vote mate Don't cheat Polling card today, so we have some elections in the UK. This is first time she's gonna be able to vote. She's very cool She has no idea who she's gonna vote for what it's all about, but she has the chance to vote for the first time So we think we're probably gonna talk about a few topics and maybe Just figure out where you want to start and then once we've started we'll see where it goes see if there's any chat or questions and follow the flow High participation right turn out right? Majority Majority seems to be wanting to start off with the well-being part today. Yeah Hmm Big topic, how's your well-being Andrea at the moment pretty squished Are we just saying this this morning? I realize in the last seven days. I've been training five So I should complain with you Sophia and the other spices to sorry Nasty planner and put me five days of training in seven It's One of the big topics well-being right now not just from a leadership perspective, but just yeah And I've got physical aches and pains from from being here and we've talked about we were talking today What we about whether we have a little Many treadmill underneath our desks things because we're not getting in the steps that we used to No, so you're already going Jeff go ahead keep on talking about well-being But there's there's the physical side of things. Yeah Even when we were in offices We were going up and down flights of stairs and we were going from the train station or the car park or whatever But now we're doing much less physical movement, which which has an impact But I think the bigger aspect is the mental well-being and we were touching on a little bit such as social exclusion The more we the more we've disconnected from people The more it affects our Mindset our positivity of feeling action and we start to it quickly becomes a negative spiral Where we start thinking the worst of the situation we start getting really suspicious about what people are saying about us Or what's going on with everyone's talking to accept us and that kind of thing and from a leadership perspective just knowing that you people are out there feeling that kind of stuff and Really not knowing how you can really really help That's that's why I'm getting a lot from How can I help people? Yeah, I think that is definitely I mean there's really two aspect about well-being is a psychological one, which isn't Ricky and Also the physical one I mean the fact that we are forced to watch to the camera and to the monitor and we tend to keep the same distance All the time is is tiring the eyes and it in the long term We're probably in also reduce our capability to adjust focus and and you know and see things from close or far away So the eyes get also very tired and lazy because we always have the same distance So we should really build into our daily routine when we work Probably every hour at least a minute where we just stand up and and do something else Which doesn't mean looking at your mobile phone because then we don't solve the problem But really try to go what watch outside look in the distance or try to read books and things like that Yeah, so we've already put got something in there at the chat window about moving from meeting room to meeting room But that's a big thing and who was a comment before was talking to you the day Somebody said a strange situation where these meetings are 50 minutes long Rather hour But even even in the physical world I started seeing people actually building in buffer breaks Ashton's on the course used to call it shuffle time Just building that into your day consciously So I'm not going to have back to back to back to back to back to back meeting even more important when you're here From a leadership perspective role modeling that And being quite explicit that that is a good thing Using Parkinson's law if you like Yeah, rather than letting it rule you of if you've only got 50 minutes We're gonna do the best we can in 50 minutes rather than just going for an hour of making it last Yeah, I think also at Google they call this speedy meeting and it means basically you can't book The whole hour you can maximum book 50 minutes in an hour So you always have the 10 minutes lack that you that you can pile up And I think I mean think when we were in physical environment We had the chance really to move go to the meeting room Maybe pick up water or coffee cheaty chat in the corridor So all of this time also from a psychological perspective allows you to actually disconnect From the topic and your brain has the time to adapt to the context switching so it's probably changing also helping you adapt new behavior and different attitude before you jump into the next topic and Today the risk is really with the remote meeting that you are continuously Online and you never have a time to disconnect and this creates a lot of stress a mental and psychological stress Also the lack of changing context. I think is Very hard for us in terms of well-being being so we spend I don't know you guys But I remember the 13th of March 2020 the lockdown started in Germany and Since then I only traveled twice and my normal schedule would include around 200 days a year of traveling for work reason in the since the 13th of March 2020 I only traveled two times and If you if you are used to it and you fear Having building our routine around I am alone on the plane I am offline nobody can interact me then I have my maybe even 30 minutes 40 minute quality time So I had the time to read books to do all those type of things even during the day And now all of that is gone. It's not you know, it's not anymore there So you need to build another routine that allows you to have those 30 minutes like putting blockers in your calendar or making sure that nobody takes away That time from you. Yeah, I think those is just an example and other things that I miss a lot or is affecting me Significantly is the fact that Before we were used to to move around and change environments So in terms of adapting behavior and attitude and understanding what my role in our relationship would be I always had the chance to look at people and understand based on the context even the closing Which type of role I am and subconsciously I was able to adapt and now I mean We are at home in our four walls and we work and live with our family in the same four walls So it always take a while before you get off of this Thing and wow, we also have friends and colleague who actually dress up like they will go in the office They go down they walk around the building. They come up again. They go in the office room They work the whole day and then in the end they close down the computer. They go again down They walk around the building they come up They change themselves as house closes and then that Going up and down and having this five minutes walking around is helping unwinding and Adopting to the context change again, which is kind of interesting those rituals are really really powerful Just getting yourself into a different mindset. Yeah, we've lost a lot of those rituals those triggers And it's very easy to just let things blur They might seem a little bit a little bit strange, but I think that again is where from a leadership perspective We can role model these things by sharing that You know that that we might think might think I'm a little bit weird if I if I get dressed up or if I deliberately walk around the block Just but no, it's it's saying that this is something that's working for me Why it's working for me and you have a mission to do something Yeah The we've got things coming through in the chat window about standing desks around these different different things that you can do monitors moving around Even even little things like a bit of indeed tablets and things like that just make sure you're getting enough vitamins that you're not Well something that that really works for a lot of the leaders that I've been working with is this this difference between checking in and checking up and That's I think for a lot of people. It's been quite an eye-opener In terms of how much do I actually trust my people? It's really forced them to think do I trust my people Not are they trustworthy? Do I actually trust them? I might say I do but now I can't see them now I can't just go over and hover now. I can't call them into my office do I and When I'm when I'm calling them up, what am I asking them? Am I looking for progress reports? I'm looking for status reports or am I checking that they're okay because if I genuinely trust my people I don't need status because they are doing as well as they can do and I can only get them to do better by helping them be better So if I can make sure they're okay, then I will get better results But that's quite a bigger and genuinely have people with with little Sort of affirmations if you like behind their monitor behind their screen that says check in not check up Just a reminder because it's so easy. It's how we do and how we do and if the pressure is coming on me To me to transfer that pressure on sort of people Yeah, we even try in some cases to encourage people to have informal conversation and Just to change the environment Even perhaps just take the phone and go out with your mobile phone and have a 30-minute walk while you talk to another person just to change the Scenery just to give you a little bit of movement and we try even to forbid to talk about job topics and Some leader. I'm coaching. They say well, it's great. But as soon as we start talking immediately people Ask things about the work even if I don't want to talk about it and and I say well it's normal because they don't know you other Then as a boss or as a leader in the organization So they don't have any other topic So you should ask question like what is your OB what you like to do outside of the work Do you have a family or things like that? So you should try to create a little bit more of a check-in feeling of you know I want to know who you are and also I want to know how you are and that's it's very difficult I mean the thing I think working remotely requires us to be much more Capable and much more focused in using our human skill as opposed to our art skill for work It's even even if theoretically you would say we are not physically present So we don't have that human contact and we don't need to use much our human interrelationship skill Actually working remotely require us to use a lot more because we lack senses to perceive We don't even see the old body language So we only see you know this piece or even sometimes that piece and sometimes we don't even see that because people are not comfortable Having a video on so it's extremely difficult to gauge What is that person doing? How is that person doing? How is she feeling? And we have to be very expeditious about that off you go Just you mentioned about cameras on and that's the conversation I was having the other day About cameras on because it's something that really I was doing a workshop for it for a client And there's 120 people on there or something. It was mostly around retrospectives But the one topic that they couldn't get past was most of our people really resist putting their cameras on and So we'll tell me a little bit more about you know, why do you want people to have their cameras and see? Well, you can see them you get the body language that you don't pick up you got a richer band with the communication You know, you can have a little bit of eye contact and I couldn't get all that stuff And but don't you think that says more about you than it says more about them And so what do you mean? So why is it so important for you? That their cameras are on do you believe that it's possible to have an effective retrospective or meeting without cameras being on No, no, I don't know. I don't think so. Well, if I told you that I've had Effective meetings without cameras on Even with people that I've never met and yet we still have a successful meeting. Would you believe me? So I'll give you the benefit of the doubt Thanks, don't call me a liar That's good. That's a good start But think about it take it to a really extreme right even if you were physically in a in a meeting room together and you've got someone who's blind Do you think that meeting can no longer be successful? This is effectively the same kind of thing. It's a lack of visual Communication It's not but that focus on the meeting Needing cameras on was letting them was misleading and effectively taking them down a different path To well, what is it about that? And actually if they're away from the consumers put in the chat here people are physically there But they're on their emails or that they're on slack or whatever at the same time Whereas if you're not if you're out walking with your phones in whatever you've got to listen to the words, right? So deep in your listening Yeah, I suppose is is really more about Staying focused and there and that's very difficult I mean when we used to be in physical meeting and we had our laptop down and we were even standing or interacting with the Physical object like markers or post-its or things like that was 100% focused there, right? Sometimes someone will pull out the phone and you immediately will go like put it away It's not the break time, but now we are sitting in front of The monitor and the computer is on and you get outlook pop-ups and kind of that reminder and chat here and chat there And it's almost impossible to pay attention for a long Timespan and this is also what is contributing to higher level of stress There's a lot of people are used to work with their computer the whole day Think about developers or stuff like that But I think is a bit different because it's a lot self-managed is a lot kind of self-contained and controlled There's a lot of chat going on But it's more like it's all focused on the same we have to develop the product type of thing while leader get Continuously interrupted and pulled in in different things even unattended and that creates a significantly higher Amount of stress also not being able to follow a conversation because continuously a pop-up goes around and this is for many people very very stressing lately So and I don't really know if there is anything we can do about that and you know and saying just shut down all the application and and focus only on what is happening online and look at the person on the other side, but I think a Part of what you said and I was the same before having 30 meeting Minute meeting and take your mobile phone and walk around You can't be distracted you have your a phone you are walking you are maybe looking at the video That's the only thing you have so you you can't really you know have millions of pop-up and interruptions and all those Kind of things so there's a lot of stuff that are Increasing significantly the mental stress and over time. I think what we are not realizing yet Is that is taxing on us? So even if we think now we are more used to it because we went through it for a long time in reality I think We are developing a lot of of stress which might not be manifesting in way We are used to but in different ways like difficulties in sleeping probably or being more on the edge for many things or just becoming a Pathic because you are so much in this routine. Hey guys What different is there between a Friday and a Saturday or a Sunday? Who is enjoying weekends? I mean what the hell can you do? You can't we can't do we can't do really much, right? And it's so is I know a sentence that Jeff used to say is it what difference does it make? It's just another day in the week So you said a minute. I'm not sure what we can do about it. Well, the one thing that I really implore Leaders that I coach to do about it is to really really think about what they're role modeling So for example, are they sending emails on a Saturday? Are they are they sending emails eight o'clock on a Friday night? Are they multitasking during a meeting? Because people people pay a lot more attention to what people do than what they say And it's it's kind of one of those things where Leaders in the past have almost worn it as a badge of of honor No, I I work 14 hour days or a 16 hour days or whatever But now it's so difficult for people to to separate those home and work life Lines that it's really important that they role model that kind of stuff And and actually the vulnerability side of things as well I'm saying do you know what it is it is tough and I've always used the The airline analogy of fit your oxygen mask before you fit other people as a leader You can't care for somebody else if you if you haven't got the energy yourself if you want if you're not feeling okay And while it might feel a bit selfish actually role modeling that self-care Is a good thing to do For you people How quick do you have to be to respond to things that distract you during the day because some people probably remotely want you to react Like this on something and some people understand that you're doing something else, right? So how quick do you need to be? Well, that's a really good point and there's no real In many ways I I tend to start with there's not really that much difference between now and then I mean obviously there is but if you if you really strip it back There isn't really because there would be times in the old days bc when I was sat at my desk in an office And I dare comes over and he interrupts me and I said shut up. I'm in the middle of something But he would know or I've got a little flag on my monitor that says I'm okay right now or I'm you know I'm in the zone. I've got my headphones on so I've got little signals that I can put out to people to Yeah, this is fun and so teams have developed their own little rituals whether it's their own status in slack or collaboration times between this this time and this time but you know The point of what I'm waffling on about there is it's even more important for us to have those conversations about So how do I know that if I'm just checking in with you that I'm not actually interrupting you and ruining your your day and your flow That because you don't get as many pull requests or as many visual Signals that you used to so how about conversations? I'm not Yes, and I think there is also another component Especially for people who weren't used to work remotely at all And they're getting familiar with all these new tools and so on the expectation is and that's the problem is that You you are using slack is a chat client. You're expecting you writing a check a slack message And someone replies you immediately. Otherwise, you would write an email if he wasn't urgent, right? and there is this expectation of immediate response and This creates also a significant amount of stress and is interrupting a lot So you cannot have slack and switch off notification because people go like what are you doing? Why why are you doing that? Right? We have slack because we want to have immediate response but then it becomes a Kind of addiction that you you communicate very quickly and we used to have a rule when we still Had in the past a physical environment It was with email and we said every time you you reach three Email reply in the thread then pick up the bloody phone and call each other and solve the problem because probably There is something which isn't really clear. So instead of going on endlessly bouncing conversation here and there Probably understanding also in this remote time if we want to stay focused and be able to achieve value And it's important to deliver value because it gives us satisfaction from a human perspective Saying, ah, I did it great and gives you this this feeling of gratification We need to have explicit rule. We need to agree. How are we using these tools? And we have more and more tools to use there is a education thing But it's never the tool the problem is always with sitting behind it and we need to to find ways in which we can use the tools for what they can do and For example, one thing that I always advocate and I really Struggle to do it myself Is to switch as much as we can on a synchronous Communication when it comes to work and use synchronous communication instead for checking in for example For having human contact and relationship for having creative session and things like that, but everything related to Work and all this stuff can be done asynchronously can be done through creating more transparency And allowing people to access information and use channels in slack where you know, okay I can go there. I missed I was three hour in a workshop. I come back and I go like, oh my god There's like 200 messages. How am I going to ever catch up with it? Right? So if people don't use thread don't Make sure that there is a summary at the end. They don't pin the message to the channel So, you know, this is a decision-making But it's just messy In and out. Then it's just a massive waste of time You go there and you try to find information out of a tool because you feel Bad because you might have missed something important and this is really Is is creating stress as well. And I think We have to be very careful with it There's a couple of things in the chat that I want to bring out because I think they're really quite relevant one is From from Anna Christina. She's talks about how certain members of the team, you know get a lot of stuff done at different time For whatever reason in the example. She gives us small kids, right? So I'll get stuff done while while they're having their nap or, you know, and they're Going to bed So I'll be working different hours and this is giving us that greater flexibility Then that sort of balanced out with with Angela saying, you know, if we were all together We could just verbalize something the team could solve it like that now we've got a book of me So I think I find that Interestingly, you've got the sort of glass half empty leaders You look at all the downsides around the remote working about how this is all taking longer and You know people are struggling and people can't be trusted And then you get the glass half full leaders who say, yeah, but we can do all this flexibility stuff And we can use all these tools and we can do this that the other and asynchronous work and synchronous work together And it's probably somewhere in between, right? It's it's probably a conscious conversation about all of this stuff And the expectations Yeah But then from going back from the remote work then to the offices What do people have to think about when they go back now? Like it's going to be a big change The other way around as well because from going from office to remote was a change And then going from remote back to the office will be different. So how how can we prepare for that? Um You want to go first Andrea? Well, it's fine. Um, well first of all, will we ever go back? Really because I mean a lot of clients a lot of leader. I'm talking to They realized there's a especially Here in berlin in the in the startup environment. There's always been a massive competition about difficulties to hire people and the other problem is because they keep on stealing each other people Here all the startups, especially software developers Uh, the other problem is finding office space big enough to host all of these people And most of the time you need to have office space in a cool location so that you have a nice Uh, environment with restaurant and everything around so lunch break can be also Fun and people are also leaving close by so they don't have to commute for longer time Well, if now we find a decent way of working remotely Then all of this problem go away and we see already now a lot of people are Canceling their massive office space in the city center reducing it to the minimum actually paying some money so that Employees can buy proper Infrastructure and work from home. They are paying the internet the mobile phone and everything is still cheaper Then maintaining massive infrastructure and and office spaces in city centers And on the other hand you can hire people which are almost Anywhere within a couple of time zones and they don't need to commute So the whole stress of having to get into a car or public transportation going to the office and coming back So your day potentially really are from nine to six if you are working or from eight to five Whatever it is and and that's it and you can really stop working in that time and in terms of sustainability Is potentially a better setup Than having to go back to the office And with this i'm not saying it is better to work remotely than working Individually but consciously We should also consider The advantages that working remotely brought for some people who really struggle to wake up at five or six in the morning Commute for one hour or two hour to go to their to work workspaces Basically for doing things that weren't necessary So there are things for which being physically present because we can use all our senses We can move we can do better stuff with our end and we can do with digital devices Even if we are very talented most of the time And and that is very important when we do creative stuff together and so on But we have for example a couple of clients who already establish now They meet with the team once a week or once every two weeks to do their spring change Refinement and other things they go to the office actually They stay outside if the weather is nice or they go inside with empty room space with a mask and everything And they have their creative session there and everybody when enters has a package with Their own post-it and marker and they are only using those post-it and marker when they exit They they they throw away the post that they didn't use it's a massive waste, but it's safe But they only do it really when is necessary. They don't do it In terms of going back all the time To to the office again We also have to to recognize that there is a value from a human side to stay more with the family think about as consultant I mean flying to 100 days a year As opposed to being home every day, it's different right As a joke when corona started we all predicted there will be a lot more of babies in this year or a lot more of divorces one of the two I'm gonna slightly disagree with you. I'm very good because although nothing you've said there is If something I would say is untrue. I I predict that there will still be fully Co-located organizations. I still think for some that will be a competitive advantage I think for some that will be the kind of company they would want to work for I think there will be some that are fully remote. I think the vast majority will be hybrid And just I mean I I do get kind of overly excited Excitable, I suppose by some of the you know the concept drawings for these new hub out of city center buildings that the organizations that I see are drawing up together To try and Make use of the time when we are together and it will be you know Again seeing through the chat here I shook hands with someone for the first time in ages and it felt so good weird but good And you know, I met I met up with a couple of friends the other day outside a pub in a beer garden And it was just great to see them in 3d and I just think we're going there will be a time where we We really make use of that we Take advantage appreciate probably appreciate it. Yeah, and we'll yeah, we'll be very we'll be mindful about when we do We won't just be getting together for the sake of it. It will be the exception rather than the norm for many But I think that we will we will really leverage that um The other thing I think I'll say about in terms of preparing while There's an argument of you can't really prepare for something. You don't know what's going to what it's going to be yet um, but what will happen is I'm pretty pretty confident is people will be nervous Because it will be such a change it would be we've got into this Temporary new normal however monotonous and unfulfilling it may be But then we're going to have to go out of our comfort zones again It's amazing how quickly we we normalize things And so you know, it's weird getting on a train for the first time for a while We're getting on the plane for the first time for a while. We're sitting in a cinema for a while Everything that we used to think was was pretty normal. It's going to feel a bit weird to begin with and human beings are naturally Change a verse if you like from that respect Because of the fear factor because of the discomfort factor But since work from home is not something everyone likes to do or feels comfortable in What can you as a leader do to make them maybe feel comfortable in that sense Well, I in this case, I think there's two things I mean, some people don't like to work from home But the reason why they don't like to work from home is because they're probably Either they need to collaborate and we're always thinking about, you know, software development or services But there's a lot of businesses Think about restaurant or production line. You can't work from home. You have to actually go there and do things, right? You can't You can't really work remotely. So there are people who don't have the chance to work remotely They need to go to the workplace to be productive and engage. So that's one aspect The reason why people many people are stressed about working remotely is because they never designed for it And I know many people are also some of our colleague They they rented a very nice fancy flat in the city center But he only has one sleeping room and one little guest room and if both In a pair in a family are working remotely Then one is sitting on the kitchen desk and the other one is in the guest room on the little bed with the laptop on on their On their lap the whole day and then you go like, okay, I could buy a desk But where am I going to put it? Right, I don't have the space and that's a big problem and the tendency you can see also Here in berlin is already now making a difference making a dent people Emptying the office space in the city center the owner are trying to convert them to loft And they are getting even more expensive price But what people tend to do actually they are going away from the city because they don't need to be in the city anymore They can have a much better quality of life a little bit more outside in the green if they don't have to commute every day And also with the same money they rent a 60 square meter flat in the city center They might have a house with a garden and even a swimming pool outside in in in the suburbs and you know And that and that is something everybody's thinking about and i'm not joking In the past year I sold more sona swimming pool jacuzzi that ever in the past 10 years think about it How many people decided to create at home more comfort or even moved away from their apartment Into a house because they said well if I have to work remotely if I have to stay at home then Let's make the home a place where I I love to stay and I feel home and I relaxed and so on So there is a very big tendency now of people going out From the crowded expensive area, which will of course create a collapse in the In the real estate market at some point because the demand will be less than the capacity So prices start going down because there's a lot of empty space all over the place I just think it'll be a big shift we could be about to see the biggest shift in property and Where people live so for generations and my daughter is turning 19 and she's thinking Against the question moving out. Well, where does she go? Just I think living in a big city is going to be We're going off topic a little bit. What can leaders do here? Ask is my simple answer because everybody's got their own different challenges Whether as the people are rightly pointing out I've got two kids working home schooling as well or Small kids who you know, the nursery has been because the chef's got tested positive or whatever Or I don't I don't have space for a desk or our walls are paper thin So if I'm on a conference call and my husband's on a conference call We can't really concentrate Whatever the issues are as a leader you've got to treat everyone differently But treat them same by treating them differently because meeting their needs and making again come back to this Are you okay? Because I I fundamentally believed if you're okay, then you'll do good work That's that Have fundamental operating prince. Yeah, and to go back perhaps to the initial question What if people don't feel comfortable working remotely then I think we need to empathize with that We need to understand in which condition are you actually working remotely and eventually perhaps consider renting office space or in a shared office space, you know Working station where close by to the house and just moving out and going out Even if it's 10 minute walk or 20 then go there and work from there So you are outside of your environment and then when the work is finished then you come back again Home so that those are solutions that are actually really happening If people didn't plan or designed to work from home and they have kids at home Great respect. I really I I we have neighbor here with with three kids both working remotely And I mean chapeau is one year. They are working in with homeschooling self-learning Condition and stuff like that by iterating It's it's great and also for the kid is great because the parents are home all the time But they needed to be educated away. They needed to learn that working and leading remotely It's difficult and it's not that papa and mama are at home and then we can jump on them and play with them They needed to understand. Okay. This is work time. I'm not supposed to disturb them But gives another feeling of safety because you always know they are there, right? But I think we also miss the social Conduct in a way and Going back to the leading topics when we lead remotely We should be aware of what is the situation on the of the people on the other side And also probably role model as Jeff said before if you have kids at home and you are a leader Don't be ashamed if your kids come in into a meeting Just empathize with it. And it's normal. It's just the way it is today So there are kids in your life. It's fine And they come in while you have a meeting with the CEO. It's also okay, right? It is the way it is And you have your priority is still your family still your well-being is still you being a good human being If you want to role model it to the other so sending your kid away or pretending is not there or doing other funny things Is probably worse than actually just accepting the situation as it is I miss read a comment in the chat there from Jenny saying I I thought she'd rest written I really miss the excessive amount of sweat of in-person meetings for the excessive amount of sweets but then And that sort of brings me on to that treating it getting to know people and just reaching out to them The number of people that I've seen tweeting or posting about the care package. They've received just a little gift And the what the best ones are the ones that are a little bit personalized because you know about them and And what what they would value just like present is the thought that counts Just reaching out telling people that you know, you're still thinking of them that you still value them that And here's something useful. Here's a little recognition. Yeah Appreciation and we were we were talking this morning. For example, then I mean one of the biggest problem now We are impeded in our movement. So we can't travel so easily. We can't go on holiday so easily anymore And we are suffering because of this. I mean our body our mind needs to change, you know The environment and and also do some physical movement and so on and so there are people. I mean also Some of our colleague they just bought a secret at home and sometimes they are pedaling and They are in the meeting and you see they are wobbling up and down and this morning with jeff we were talking about having A small treadmill under the desk and sometimes you stand up and you just walk while you have a meeting You are a little bit wobbly but there are people who have different needs So the role of the leader is really to have this one-on-one check-in regularly Not talk about the work but talk about a how are you doing? What is it that you are missing? You know, how are you feeling? What is it that we can do to help you? You know be more Effective be more satisfied about the work. So you can focus really on doing what you're good at rather than Being all the time stressed and dissatisfied about the situation and the condition Peter's asked the question If we all work mostly working from home and we don't have to commute, we should be better off We shouldn't so is it the case that we're just not managing ourselves very well or is it genuinely a lack of trust? I think the self-discipline needed to be working from home working remotely. I know there are different things But similar to what we're doing today Yeah I think one part is the lack of trust, but I think one part is really We are not We are not used to this routine yet. We don't have the protocols We don't have the acceptance of the fact that is okay. For example, if this afternoon from two to four I'm going out for a run right or I go this morning for a run and then I work later also the the This stress of having the work time from eight to five or from nine to six I mean a lot of company had flexible work time already before But shifting to remotely it seems that all of a sudden everything got tightened up again Because of the need of having chat messages and video call and meeting And so on so I think we spend a lot of time probably too much time in doing face-to-face meeting on zoom and we could probably Skip a lot of those stuff with some good information and focus more on Really meeting when it's necessary and giving people more space to organize their own activities around the normal work day instead of Being so strict about being online and And having to reply to chat and stuff like that, especially international company were active 24 hours What difference does it make if I'm there from nine to six? You know at the end of the day it boils down everything to trust as you said before Jeff So it does and I do I know we've had a couple of people pointing out that this isn't truly remote working This is working from time to time and that it is different and and ultimately a lot of us were in the business of To some degree remote working from before a pandemic who spread that we were all in And it's it's it's taken it to a real extreme, you know probably further than where it will be whatever whatever the new normal turns out to be but the This idea of Self-discipline, it's it's a new set of discipline It's a new routine that we're having to develop for ourselves when we were working in the office We had certain routine that we built them up over a number of years that we didn't realize that we got into routines and rituals And certain things and we created little triggers for ourselves and so on And now we've we've been forced to create some more so there is an element of a lack of self-discipline Some of it I think is engendered by the role modeling and what we see but also what we kind of expect others are expecting of us if that makes sense, so that I may feel I need to to prove more because I know that other people I believe I know that other people are wondering if I'm slacking Yeah, or I don't know whether I'm adding enough value So I'm going to try and do more just to meet my own definition of success on my own feeling of And and if I'm not aware of the what's going on for me, and I said this before when I was set next to somebody I might not realize that I'm getting more stressed and intense and Frustrated, but the people next to me can and the number of times that people suggest. Yes. You just there Go for walk or go for coffee or I don't have that anymore. I've all I've got is a screen Looking back at me. No one really looking out for me. So I've got to learn a little bit more about myself Yeah, but I think I mean as as we both shared in our video blog before Before this webinar. I think ultimately a good leader is still a good leader and In principle we are trying to achieve the same thing and I think that the job of a leader is still the same Is to create an environment in which people are enabled to deliver the value that is necessary to be delivered And they can find satisfaction in their work So what change when we do it remotely is that we need to change the practices that we have been using We cannot simply do what we were doing in physical Form Translated and do it on the video because It's probably not working. It doesn't have the same impact. So we need to find a new way new practices To be able to engage to be able to check in as opposed to check up as Jeff said before But there are also aspects related to support people Learning because shifting the environment to remote it was easy for maybe All of you or all the people we know that work already with with a computer. They can they're very Skilled in using office tools and things like that But think about all of those businesses Which weren't used to work remotely and weren't used to have a digitalized environment They're all discovering now microsoft team and zoom and and sharing document and You know, there are people who are really struggling with all of this new stuff and We should be aware of it and we should offer them support and there's a lot of other skills also I think from a human perspective in terms of making explicit how you feel in learning how to communicate effectively remotely That are necessary in order to be able to lead Also remotely, but we need to grow ourselves as leader and learn those things But we also need to upskill all the people we are working with because it doesn't really help If we learn about those stuff and nobody else knows about them, right? And also what I personally learn at my own expense Is that we need to be a lot more specific about things and how we mean them We need to write them down We need to document probably a lot more so that people can read things offline And and is a way of agreeing co-creating a working agreement for remote work Even agreeing how to use slack and taking taking the time to think about Look when is a reply in thread we do like this we do like that so that there is a feeling that okay Now I know what you mean with it because we are doing things in context rather than just using a tool I think all of these things are eating us now and They will keep on I think the old society wasn't ready to this big shift the old digitalization Complained that we are all around europe or the lack of bandwidth and all this type of stuff are all Consequences of the fact that we weren't able or we weren't ready as a society to switch To work remotely so massively all at once We'll have now in the chat been saying that they haven't even met their teams or colleagues ever Yes, because they have been working remotely. So how can you as a leader tackle this? Maybe how can you onboard people well and how can you build trust with people that you have actually never met? Because it's any different doing it over video than face to face, right? Yeah, um One of the one of the people that i've doing some work with recently Claire donald she she does some work at product company and we're going to do a presentation actually Soon at one of the meetup groups on on the future of work And her company actually have a really really good onboarding process Which to build on what andrella was just saying there is effectively a lot more documentation than we normally have had But it's who's Who can you speak to about this? This is where you can find this? These are the links to this and it's it's really really proving really valuable To to people who are joining the organization, but we've actually got another question around Yeah, and use this trust thing I'm probably gonna risk saying the same thing again, but perhaps in a slightly different way Which is from a leadership perspective. I was always taught not just from a leadership perspective Not necessarily formally my mum and dad sitting me down and telling me this but it's sort of something that came through the culture, which is People should earn your trust and I think that's backwards And I think this is really magnified that And actually starting with trust and saying unless unless you prove me wrong I'm going to trust you I think that's that's where I've seen leaders really separate themselves and create Better cultures within their organizations I genuinely believe that people want to do a good job And if they're not doing a good job, it's because the environment isn't set up to help them and enable them Some things going on So, um, I'm going to trust you And unless you prove me otherwise That's that's where I'm starting. You don't have to earn my trust I'm giving you my trust I think that is it's very important on the other end I work with a lot of leader and not all of them are in the position to do it And that's another problem. Uh, it's a problem and we talked about this also today jeff when we When we share with the people also about the archetypes. So it depends really How how is the environment? How is the culture in the organization you're working in? If everything is controlled and steered top down Unless you are one of the guys on the top It's very difficult for you to take the responsibility to say I give you the trust And I take all the fault on my shoulder very few people feel comfortable about doing that and creates also stress So in principle, yes, we need to start trusting if you want people to trust us And that and that is in my opinion the most important thing from a leadership perspective What can you do so that your people trust you because if they trust you Then you know that you can trust them and and you need to start trusting at the same time So you need to demonstrate trust by creating freedom by giving them empowerment by Being able to support them when they make mistake and telling them. Okay Now, what did we learn with this mistake and help them evolve from their state of fear? But unfortunately Sometimes and I find out often with the one-on-one coaching sessions people would like To give trust would like to allow people to make mistake But the pressure they have and the level of control they have from their own Bosses and leaders doesn't allow them to create that safety space And I think safety and trust are particularly important when working remotely to be honest There is no way you can supervise anybody Working remotely unless you're spending the whole day Supervising a single person to to do what she's doing right to look at what she's doing There are even crazy company building up to a loom monitor What people do on a daily basis in terms of which site did they browse? How many times how much time they spend writing emails or chat messages? How many times they spend using an IDE or a or office tool environment? I mean, this is madness, right? You probably know this more than me, Andrea I was told that zoom had a feature but it's been removed now Which indicated if zoom wasn't your active window. So if you were open like messaging or email or something It would alert. Oh, this isn't the active window. Is that true? I'm not sure I heard about it. There was some rumor, but I'm not sure that is actually I don't know if they remove the feature to be honest. Maybe it's still there. We just don't know about it It's not there now. I don't think but yeah, that definitely definitely work. I mean the companies have I think it's really unlikely the companies that do trust their people and don't yeah I I agree. I mean at the end of the day I think we are all needing needing to learn what is going on But I think there are a lot of stuff That we already said we also said in the video blog and and I think those things are important Working remotely requires a lot more Of empathy in some way We have to be more empathetic with the people on the other side try to put ourselves in their shoes Our behavior should be more driven by curiosity and by the willingness To support people and to help them Find good rhythm a good Rituals for working remotely. We should provide all the necessary information so that people feel comfortable They don't feel isolated and alone. I think Jeff you talked Largely about this Before and also in your blog post one of the biggest Problem we need to try to solve is people feel isolated. They feel alone Their courage and their opportunity to ask for help Remotely are significantly less unless they already established relationship of trust with others. So there's Onboarding people remotely It's it's harder because it's harder to put them in contact with all the other people in the company and Well, what we are doing now we have we have already onboarded. I don't know how many people Probably loter was the first one or not even the last one But we had a couple of coaches now other two are coming in Remotely we never met them physically We just had a couple of talks and we are trying to set up Like 30 minute walk and talk things with different employees At least twice a week so that they get to have that Just personal relationship exchange and knowing about oh, who are you and how you look like and what do you do? Beside working in the same company, right? So all of these things are things which we need to learn And we need to I think amplify more because this feeling of isolation Drives to feelings of incompetency because I don't get help and then I feel frustrated because I cannot finish my job So I get dissatisfied and I spend too much time doing things that I shouldn't spend Time with and all of these things pile up in creating more stress less productivity And ultimately a very bad work life balance because what people end up doing they just work longer And and they work more hours because they still need to prove that they are achieving something Or someone has expectation on them And and they are ending up ruining completely their life and and being completely burnout. And this is what we should be very careful with Burnout just few chat comments as well here that people feel tired and people are afraid of being burnout And also afraid of admitting it to themselves and to the probably to the leaders or team leaders or teammates even so Yeah, yeah Yeah, just I see this other question from a lesser and I want to as well as just just generally role modeling things I'll start off with this to good practices about remote team building or team events Yeah, I'll off with what I said earlier, which is there's there's not really that much difference between where we are now and where we were obviously there is but The the principles the fundamentals remain the same and that we're more likely to act as a team if if we know we're If we know a little bit more about each other And so just a little bit of getting to know each other, but in an informal setting in a safe setting so from a from a practical perspective User manuals are a really good technique that I've come across just just tell me a little bit about how you work How you operate what gets you going what gets you in a good zone what gets you in a bad zone What frustrates you how can I stop annoying you those types of things? And just certain level of safety And then just little things that we would normally do I mean, I don't think this is particularly brilliant, but I think it worked quite well The community that I'm part of we we hired a musician to come on and do a do a few songs for us And everybody could request the songs, you know, whether you did or not you might not but you could We could learn a little bit about musical taste just sit back have a little bit of a social and It's replicating a little bit of what we might get so something that's nothing to do with work Something that's a little bit to do with work and then giving them a challenge that they can actually achieve And and get that sense of yeah, we did something together. I think those are the three areas Yeah, I think I agree with that and also this idea of Making explicit what our expectations are normally this would happen in conversation on the on the floor or during the day work and so on But probably facilitating an exercise in which everybody Clearly declared this I think is what I can contribute to the team This is what I would like the team to do for me And this is what I think is our mission and our vision or what I can contribute to that mission and that vision And I think making that explicit and just maybe sharing a Miro board with this information can start that conversation and can have the possibility also to get feedback from other And everybody can do their own card and then rotate it and give each other feedback and then Build a conversation and create a common sense of purpose And especially when a team is new as jeff said never challenge them too much at the beginning Be empathic with the fact that they are having difficulties It's not easy for them probably to coordinate and work remotely. So we should start giving them Maybe smaller challenges little things which are probably achieved quickly But still creating value for the client so that they can start getting excited about it They start believing is working They start and if you believe in is working then it is working because More and more you engage the more you believe is the right path you are following The more you are willing to put energy in to make it work even if it doesn't And it's different if you start failing from the beginning then you start blaming everything else around you and You know the internet is not good enough. We didn't talk to the client is not my fault wasn't my responsibility was jeff fault Because the enemy is always outside It's never you know where we sit. That's the the biggest problem. I think Thank you Guys, we are also running out of time. Unfortunately, we have one minute left So maybe you can give your best tip and trick before we say thank you for the day jeff In 10 seconds I think i'll i'll start with Pretty much what andrea just finished with there, but from a leadership perspective is to start with yourself Not for two s self-care, but also role modeling Yeah, what do I want to see other people doing? I'm gonna do that yeah from my side Not to repeat what I said before and jeff just repeated but I'd rather I think one of the biggest difficulties Leading remotely is to put ourself in the shoes of the person on the other side And we really need to spend purposefully time to do that We need to get to know the person on the other side. We need to understand how they feel and we need to go away from Managing we need to go away from checking up We need to start really leading and trying to model those behavior that we want to see more of And try to dampen those behavior that we don't like and we can only do that by having Serious one-on-one conversation about how people behave not about what they do So forget about what they do that is taken care of they do themself just focus on How do they behave? How do they feel? What can you do to help them behave in a more correct way? Thank you I know there's a lot of more questions probably around leading remotely But I know you guys are also very active in the community that we have just launched right? So if people have questions, they can also just hop into the community and and ask you more questions through story Right Exactly join us at community Yeah, go on Sorry join us at community dot agile 42.com. We will see the link probably in the blog post Yes, there's going to be a blog post and an email We will take it from there. Yeah, thanks everyone for being here. Thank you Jeff. Thank you, Andrea as well We look forward to see you in the next web. Thank you. Yeah. No problem Bye