Transcription
Emily Troiano
Hi, everyone. Welcome to Catalyst’s LinkedIn live on managing remote work, inclusively. Catalyst is a global nonprofit that works with companies to advance women in business and build inclusive workplaces. I’m Emily Troiano. I’m Vice President of our Information Center.
Amelia Costigan
And Hi, I’m Amelia Costigan. I’m a Senior Director and I’m also in the Information Center. And we’re going to talk to you today about managing remote teams. We know with everything going on that a lot of people are working from home suddenly and working on remote teams. And many people have had experience of working from home on a one-off here or there. Some people do more often. But for a longer-term idea of having a remote team and how you build effective and productive remote teams is a little bit different than the norm.
Emily Troiano
And Amelia, we both have a lot of experience on remote teams.
Amelia Costigan
Yeah, I have. I started as a flexible worker at Catalyst; I was part-time. Then I moved to remote two days a week and in the office three. And that’s been for about eight years. It’s been pretty successful. And I know you started as one of our first remote workers.
Emily Troiano
I was in the office for three years. And then I went as a remote worker in 2006. And now I manage our team, which is a distributed team across the US over four time zones. And so with this team, and I just want to say I’m so proud of our team, I think our team is incredibly productive, and really close. So we want to share some of the learnings that we found and some practices and we know that these aren’t normal times and advice we might give during normal times only apply to some extent here, but we are looking for these norms and practices to get us through this difficult time.
Amelia Costigan
And if you’re joining us today live. Now this is our LinkedIn live on managing effective remote teams. And if you want to go to catalyst.org for some tools and tips about remote working, we’ll have a lot on there.
Emily Troiano
So, let’s start with the basics. So, I think something that we do in our team really well is about the agreed upon core hours, with a lot of stuff and then a lot of flexibility in between. But what we end up doing is having a nice overlap throughout a lot of the day, where we are communicating, collaborating all day, giving people that control to manage their lives as well when they start and stop. We also have good technology. So, we use, we use chat a lot.
We’re going to talk a lot more about chat in a minute. We use project management systems. We use video a lot, which took us a while to get into it, but I was surprised how much it just becomes second nature, just calling someone on video, whiteboards. And then the other thing you know, you’ve always made a point of this, is that you can have all these technologies. And yet if people aren’t trained in how to use them and when to use them, then they’re moot. So that’s a good point to remember as well.
Amelia Costigan
And not to make assumptions about people’s level of comfort with technology. If we assume that everyone’s a digital native who’s under 40 years old, but I think we need to… it’s better just to do across the board training.
Emily Troiano
Yeah. So Amelia, I think that the tool that the Information Center uses the most is the chat. You want to talk about the chat feature for a little bit.
Amelia Costigan
Sure. We love chat. We’ve been using it for a while. We actually use [Microsoft] Teams. I know other people use Slack. And it’s great for synchronous conversations. So, then it’s real time, doesn’t have that obviously delay of an email. And we use it as a sort of bookend of our day. We start the day. Everyone who signs on no matter what time zone or flex schedule they may have, you know, with a Hello, a little outline of what the day is going to be, what projects they may have, meetings.
And it’s also a way to let people know any work-life conflicts they may have. So, someone may be stepping out for childcare or for the gym… it’s just so that we’re over-communicating and knowing where we are for the day. We also make sure that we separate our rooms in our team. So, we have a room where it’s… or two rooms actually, that are work-only because messages can sort of get buried as you start to build on a conversation.
So, our other room is really more for fun. And that’s something that is a priority also with a virtual team. I think especially now, with so many people feeling isolated, not only working remotely, but also you know, from their friends and some of their family. And so, we use a lot of GIFs in that room. We use a lot of joking, and for some reason our team seems to love Schitt’s Creek. And so those GIFs are up daily, maybe every three hours and it’s just a great way to build community and it’s fun.
Emily Troiano
It got me to watch the show. I have something with the chat: I just want to be clear that when it’s… mine might be, “Good morning. I’m here. I have a bunch of meetings today. I have a research project, I’m preparing for the LinkedIn live. We’re not doing it to keep tabs on each other. There’s, there’s no holding people to it. It’s just about this idea of communicating and over-communicating, because there are times so I’m putting a project on like, “Oh my gosh, Heather just talked about that. Let me make a connection that way.” Or just, “Can I help?” Or, we have a space as well to say, “I’m overwhelmed today and I need some help.”
And someone on our team was always like, “What can I do? Let me take some requests from you or certain projects.” And so recent challenges for that, that frequent communication and then for transparency and I would say this is where it’s a subject, we’re gonna dig in a lot more to throw the other tools as well which it’s not just remote, but it’s flexible.
And so, what works for our team because we’re so collaborative during the day is, if you’re running out… I’m gonna go walk the dog, I’m going to go to lunch, I’m going to go do something… you put that in, and it’s, and there’s no judgment, there’s no nothing. It’s just letting people know where you’re at. And if you’re in an office for lunch, people would see you go. So that’s fine. But in this remote team environment, and again, we’ll say it again, over-communicating goes a long way.
Amelia Costigan
And then just—
Emily Troiano
Thank you.
Amelia Costigan
If you’re just joining us now, this is a LinkedIn live on managing effective remote teams from Catalyst. So if you’d like to go to catalyst.org for some tools and tips about remote work, you can please do that after.
Emily Troiano
And Amelia, you brought up before about isolation. And we know from research, we know from personal experience, that remote teams that aren’t being done very well or people are new to it, it can be a really isolating experience. So any thoughts about helping people feel part of a team? What do we do that’s worked? What have you heard from our colleagues?
Amelia Costigan
Well, I mean, it seems really obvious but like those casual water cooler chats, when you happen to pass somebody by the elevator is what you know, creates those, the shared interest? It’s the first step of building empathy and building trust. So well, somebody who’s new to remote work may think that’s a waste of time to send that Schitt’s Creek GIF, it’s actually building that feeling of inclusion.
And so, some of the things that we have done is we’ve really moved to video all the time. As a manager, I meet with my direct reports once a week, I… checking up not on what they’re working on as a way to you know, keep tabs but also to help them look to discover where there may be barriers, to not let too much time go by where a deadline may not be met. We also meet weekly with a team meeting. And there we talk about all the different projects we may be working on, some challenges.
Emily may give us some insight on what she may have heard from the Senior Leaders’ meeting. And if we don’t have anything for that week, we just meet and talk. And that may be once every other month, we just sort of have a chat. Anything that you can think of?
Emily Troiano
I think you stated that, I think once everyone was around that you kept the meeting and did like a lunch meeting with each other. And we kept doing that and someone on our team is getting married. And we talked about his wedding plans for a long time, and just made those connections and they gave us all space to breathe, and to get to know each other better. And I feel like we’ve also all been good about this, about doing this across the organization and not just in our teams.
For me, I love doing virtual coffee dates. And so, I’ll send two random people across the organization and it’s been amazing the brainstorming sessions that have come out of just these. You know, we started what do you work like? How are you? But then it’s like, what are you working on and, and so much has come out of that, that I even started putting it in my OKRs like my quarterly goals, as an important thing that everyone should be doing to keep this communication going.
And then it’s also a lot about intentionality. And for me that across the organization, coffee dates, I realized I was doing with the same six or seven people and often from the same department. And once I realized that, I was like, “I gotta do better.” And so, I started reaching out to more, but I know someone else in our team is doing that. And so, there’s that, you know, it’s accidental role modeling, that I think our team is leading the way on that now.
Amelia Costigan
Yeah, and when you say role modeling, I think that’s really important. It’s one thing to say, “Okay, to create your communication chart plan, that you’re all going to use video.” Well, as a leader, you need to go on that video. Even on a bad hair day. It’s just you need to be the person who shows that it’s okay to be transparent about going to pick up your kids. It’s okay to be transparent about you know, schedule. Or even humility like admitting you don’t know something. So, it’s really, it’s leadership and how we want to communicate.
Emily Troiano
Yeah. Amelia, we’ve got a question, which is: What tips do you have when everyone in the household is working remote? And I’ll say again during normal times we do this super well. Right now, we’re with everyone else trying to figure this out and struggling a bit. Right now, I would I have with us something that I am, I finally figured out.
My, I have a partner, my husband. Again, we realized how privileged we are to be working on this expense right now and he’s able to take our kids this week and do this, figure out this homeschooling going on. But he starts again next week and so I’ve been able to block my calendar that I can have these times and I want to say I’m about to communicate with our team that I’m doing that and everyone should do that.
And then we’ve been fortunate enough and I hope everyone else is too, to have Catalyst, our whole organization communicating that to all of us where it’s, “Do your best. We know flexible. We still want people to get a lot done, as much as you can, but we know we’re all in this together right now, and it’s, do your best and communicate about it.” What about you? What are you finding?
Amelia Costigan
I’m finding, you know, that my kids have just started the home schooling now and talking to many of my friends, a lot of is falling on women’s shoulders. And it’s really hard for working women to balance the two. My kids are older. So have a big sign on my door right now: “Do not come in,” so that someone doesn’t come in. But I’m not sure yet. We’re still trying to figure that out also like how we’re going to schedule that.
Emily Troiano
And if you’re just joining us now this is a Catalyst LinkedIn live on managing effective remote teams. Make sure you go to catalyst.org, to check out all our remote work resources we have online. We have micro-learnings, tools and all sorts of things that might help. I knew I only have a few minutes left Amelia. Can we talk a bit about miscommunication and what we found there and how we counter that?
Amelia Costigan
Yeah, one thing that research has shown is that written communication is much more likely to be misinterpreted. And, yes, we know that part of it is because you’re not able to show people your feelings through your facial expressions, your hands. And part of it, it’s just that people tend to misinterpret what they’re reading on a more negative level. So, you really have to manage for that ahead of time.
And really have to‚ one thing that we do is really assume positive intent. And especially now, when people are under so much stress and feeling so anxious that you know, people are juggling a lot of things. We also like to use emojis a lot. And as I mentioned, the GIFs as a way to indicate tone, as a way to, you know, help people guide what your intention is. And we again, we over-communicate. Don’t ghost. You need to hit that balance.
You don’t need to be chained and responsive to everything that everybody says. But you can’t vanish for a long time during this time either without giving a note to people like where you’re going and why. Because your team is depending on you, and you’re wanting to continue to build that trust that you might have had in person.
Emily Troiano
Yeah. And also, it’s what to use when. If you do have to give feedback to someone or constructive criticism, whatever that is, you don’t necessarily do it in an email then like that’s what it might be a chat or more likely a video, so you can kind of check someone’s reaction, how they’re doing. They might be fine, or they might really want to discuss it and, and so just make sure you’re using that, the proper technology for what’s going on. And Amelia, we got a question, and you did a whole course on this. So, what’s the difference between flex work and remote work?
Amelia Costigan
Well, flexibility is, as I started in Catalyst part-time, it’s the ability to define how, when, and where your work gets done. So that could be part time, which may be something that many organizations need to look at now. It can be job sharing, and it could be different start times and end times. And remote work is just that, it’s telecommuting, so not being in the office, finding a way to work that way.
Emily Troiano
And if you’re just joining us now this is Catalyst LinkedIn live and managing effective remote teams. Make sure you go to catalyst.org, check out some tools like our Knowledge Burst on managing remote teams inclusively and assorted other tools there. One thing in that Knowledge Burst on the catalyst.org is there’s a communication charter.
And for anyone starting out on a remote team find it in there‚ let us know if you can’t‚ but it’s a document, and it’s for a whole team to use together. And it’s: how do you set core hours? Especially like we’re lucky, we’re spanning over four time zones. But what if you have people on the other side of the world? How do you handle core hours? How do you make sure that anyone can use and download?
Amelia Costigan
And everybody’s on page, you’re on the same page as far as the team norm?
Emily Troiano
Again, it comes back to communications and about letting your, especially your boss, or manager know what’s going on. And you should be having one-on-ones, larger group meetings, project meetings. It can be kind of meeting-heavy, but you make sure meetings are more efficient; they might be shorter.
But it is sometimes if you’re not doing the drive-bys, or you’re walking by someone’s desk and they know what’s going on, you have to find a way to make sure that information is still getting out. It does build trust, it builds that communication. It lets your manager know when you need help and what you might need. I know you’ve been using work logs with someone you want to talk about that for a minute, Amelia?
Amelia Costigan
Yeah, I think that’s a great technique that then was started in our team, and it’s a weekly or bi-weekly reflection or work log. And it’s really effective to know what your team has been working on. What maybe some of their challenges and barriers are. I mean, especially Emily is managing a large team, and then, you know, I get the log from my reports and we put them up to her and so she can sort of get a bigger picture. Some of the things I think you like are what I learned and favorite accomplishments. And, do you want to mention something about that?
Emily Troiano
Yeah, like I’m not tracking the work people are doing, like trying to keep tabs in that way. But I like to know, what’s going on? What’s your challenge? Where are you at? And what can I do to help? I know we’re almost at time. Amelia, there are a couple things that I thought that when you and I discussed this were really important. So, when you’re looking at managing effective remote teams, you really want to make sure that you’re leading by example.
And that’s not just for the manager, that’s everyone is a leader to some extent, and so you make sure that you are leading by example. Humility, curiosity, get to know each other, ask questions, make it personal. You need to build this relationship. Without relationships your team’s not gonna make it. So, make sure you keep working on that even though you’re remote. Training: everyone needs to be training on the technology. And it’s a lot about intentionality. Just remember intentionality and empathy and that’s gonna get us a long way.
Amelia Costigan
And we would like to end also with a reminder that we did make public one short Knowledge Burst. It’s a short training on upskilling managing remote teams inclusively and has a lot of these tips and more as well as that communications charter, and it’s on the homepage of our webpage catalyst.org, where you can also find some additional material on working flex and working remotely.
Emily Troiano
And we know that these are challenging, difficult, unusual times. This was not what anyone was really planning for in this way. But when we can look at it now it’s an opportunity for teams to make, to be more inclusive, to be more intentional and implement these inclusive practices on their teams.
Amelia Costigan
Okay, thank you so much. And remember please to come to catalyst.org.