How to Create the Culture on your Remote Team (and the family members in your household)
I want to acknowledge and thank you today. You’ve been putting out so much energy and caring to take care of the people around you – your team, your family, and people who might be suffering more than you in this time. That’s the kind of person you are, and I want you to appreciate yourself for it. After spending the week talking to my individual clients and leaders at companies who have brought me in to train their teams on Success under Stress, I’ve heard some themes over and over. A common one was: how to ‘get’ your team members to be productive while still being supportive. And a variation on that was how to ‘get’ your children to accomplish what they need to? The answer is that WFH is a new way of interacting with your team and family, so its an opportunity to do a reset. What you want is to be intentional about creating that culture. First, Be Intentional about who YOU show up as. Think about the outcome you want for your team or family. Then ask yourself, Who do I need to show up as in order to create that culture? You have an opportunity to re-define what is needed of you as a leader and as a parent. You might think first about how can you ‘get others’ to act a certain way, but the prerequisite for that is ‘how do YOU need to show up’ to create conditions for them to act that way. I call this idea your Horizon Point. You have probably been busy reacting to other people, but instead Ask yourself: who do I want to show up as? That is your purpose, that you CAN control! Second, Be Intentional about the culture you create You can lead a team discussion about what is the culture we want to have on your team. I call this the Ideal Day discussion. “What would an Ideal Day look like now?” How would we communicate together; what is the most important work, and what’s less; how can we maintain a sense of feeling connected and have ‘virtual hallway chats’, etc When you lead this discussion, you are starting to create a collective positive future vision that bonds everyone. Your ongoing conversations will be about how to reverse engineer your interactions to create that day. You can also do this with your family too – they and your pets are your new co-workers! Ask your loved ones “what is the experience we want to have as we go through this time together?” Go around the dinner table and get everyone’s input. Maybe each person gets to plan an evening activity. Maybe do a dance break or take an afternoon walk together (or maybe you need space to do this on your own). The idea is: How do each of us need to act in order to have that experience? When you crowdsource input to your Ideal Day from everyone involved, then all your team or family members feel they have ‘skin in the game’. They are bought-in, and want to do their part. Tapping their own motivation is 100x stronger than you trying to ‘get them’ to be productive. Third, Be Intentional about your Schedule Structure sets up success. You want to impose a structure on your day. Think about Steven Covey’s concept of the ‘big rocks’ where you populate your schedule with the MOST important activities first, then build all your meetings and interactions around them. Are you building your day around your most important activities? (e.g., a morning routine of exercise, meditation, time for writing own your 3 big things for the day) that sets your head up to in the right place? And are you creating a structure for your children? They will benefit from routine and predictability. Make it a part of your Ideal Day discussion to ask about what activities they want to do so you can balance them with the activities that you want them to do. Here’s to your Success under Stress, Sharon
