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Welcome back to Count Me In.

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Here with you again is your host Mitch
Roshong and this is episode 153 of IMA's

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podcast series. In today's conversation.

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You'll hear about leadership needs that
relate to hybrid or remote teams as you

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listen to my co-host Adam,

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speak with CEO advisor and
speaker Heather Polivka.

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Heather founded Heather P solutions to
work with progressive leaders of small

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and mid-sized businesses to accelerate
revenue growth by creating work

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environments where people thrive.

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Keep listening to hear her discuss the
evolution of business leadership styles

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and how to overcome the
challenges associated with each.

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We're talking about remote work
today, and it's been something,

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a topic that everybody's
been talking about,

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especially with the commencing
of COVID-19 and every that,

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how that shook the modern world as far
as the work world and everything else.

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So we're going to focus really
on a remote and hybrid work,

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as people are coming back to offices.
And so let's start with this question.

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How is remote and or hybrid work
benefiting teams or businesses now?

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There was a lot of benefits. I obviously,

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I think people know the benefits from
an individual employee perspective in

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terms of flexibility, maybe
saving on that commute.

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And you give some of the time back to
the company and some of the time back to

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your, your personal life. But that
also that, that benefits teams a lot,

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first of all, teams and business
now have a broader access to talent.

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You're no longer stuck within
your particular geography
in terms of, you know,

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who has the skills or the
experience that you're looking for.

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So it allows you to build the team
with the skills and capabilities and

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experience needed to forward
your business strategy.

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The other thing is retention
of talent. You know,

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an employee moves away,

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goes to school for whatever
reason gets married here,

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relocates, you don't have to
actually lose that talent.

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You can keep them wherever they go.

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And I think that's particularly when
I've worked for employers that really

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like to employ military
veterans and their families.

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And so that is a whole host of
talent that you get to retain

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even as they, as they move around.
And there has been some productivity,

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at least maintenance
and in many cases gains.

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And I think it's because the number
of people are doing what I said at the

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beginning. I used to do this. Like
if my commute time was an hour,

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I would give a half hour back
to me for sleep or working out

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or whatever, and I'd give a
half hour back to the company.

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and so that has helped
with some productivity.

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And then the last thing I'd highlight
is it's broken down some of the barriers

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between work and life. And I know that,

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millennials in that have not necessarily
had those strict walls between

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work and their real life, but I know
maybe for those of us a little bit older,

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we kind of had that separation going on.

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But when you've got kids hopping in
the zooms and dogs barking in the

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background, it makes everyone more human.

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So while we've had less
one-on-one interaction, it's also,

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I think,

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broken down some of those barriers that
we used to maintain between work and

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life and a good way.

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It's almost like you can
still be professional and
then have a dog barking in

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the background and under, and
everybody's been there and seen that,

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and it's no longer this
taboo thing, you know,

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like that businessman who was talking on
the phone in the news and his wife came

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in and the kid came in,

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his wife came in to just get the kid
out and nowadays people are like, oh,

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there's your child. And they would
just keep moving on, you know?

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Exactly, exactly. And
I think that's, that's,

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I think that's healthy
and that's really good.

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And I think it's particularly
healthy for leaders to kind of shed

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a bit of that and make themselves a
bit more human and vulnerable in the

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workplace.

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Speaking of leaders,

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how do you think they need to evolve
their style to work with remote

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teams? And then, you know,
on the other side of that,

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what types of leaders should companies
be looking for in this type of

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environment?

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Yeah, that is such a great question.

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I think one that a lot of
companies are struggling with,

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particularly I tend to work with
more small and mid-sized businesses.

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And, but my background
obviously is in fortune 100,

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many times, especially when
you're talking executive leaders,

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regardless of the size
of the organization,

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there is a way that we have all
learned how to be successful.

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I pulled this lever, I do this thing
and it creates those results, right?

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So we're now asking a whole host,

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a generation really of
executive leaders to

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no longer really use the formula that they

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know, and that has been successful
for them. And guess what,

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they're human and that
scares them very much.

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And that's led to some of
the defaults thinking of,

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we've got to get everyone back in the
office and because that's the way they

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know how to lead. And
so when we asked, like,

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what do we need from leaders to
lead in this environment? You know,

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one is the old command
and control model of

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leadership doesn't work well in
hybrid and virtual work, right?

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Because even if you're in a hybrid
work, you can see how people,

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when they're in the office are going to
be doing more of the kinds of work that

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it involves interacting with other people.

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So a leader could walk through an area
and just see a bunch of employees sort of

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sitting and talking in the lounge
area, which quote, unquote,

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doesn't look like work.

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And yet that's the kind of work they're
going to focus in on when they're in the

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office, because their intense focus,

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productivity work is the work
that they can do at home.

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So that command and control of
if you monitor and you manage

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employees that doesn't work
well in hybrid or virtual work,

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instead leaders have to shift
to managing the outcomes

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and the objectives and supporting
people in whatever they need,

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whether it's what resources do you need,

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or what roadblocks do I need
to break down? You know,

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what is it I can do as a leader to
support you, to deliver on that outcome?

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And that's very, very
different than managing people.

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For sure. So what are some of the
challenges that come up when you're,

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when you're, when you, so let's
say you've gotten that style,

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you're getting that style down.

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What are some of the challenges that you
are going to start facing as you work

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with remote and hybrid teams?

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Yeah, there's,

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there's four buckets that I see most of
the challenges come into and it has to

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do with communication,
performance management,

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relationships and project
or task management.

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Those are the four buckets and
some kind of bleed over into,

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into one another, communication.
What's interesting.

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And a couple of things with communication.

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The first is the thing we
miss with remote work is that

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sort of fly by interaction
or that incidental,

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you know, I used to catch people in
the coffee line and go, oh my gosh,

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I was going to set up a meeting with you,

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but I'll just handle it right
here in the coffee line.

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You don't get that necessarily when
you're working with remote work.

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So it requires a little more
either it requires more technology,

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it requires more intentionality.
But there are ways to do it.

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You can,

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I've seen groups set up collaboration
sessions where we're all going

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to log on and think about
this problem and brainstorm.

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And it's just a, it's just a working
kind of collaboration session.

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I've seen very successively used.

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What's called co-working sessions where
you set up like a two hour block for

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whole team. And at the beginning,

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you kind of all say you're high in your
creatings. Then after five minutes,

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everyone is heads down work, but
you still got your zoom going on.

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And that way is you come up
with a question or a yabba,

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or how about I can go out of this,
this thing, do you know where that is?

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And you can give me that quick
update and we can do that.

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And so we're still getting work done,

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but we're allowing for some of that
more informal, quick touch base.

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And then another thing to kind of take
us all back to our college days is the

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professor's office hours. The
whole team could have office hours.

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It could be an hour a day, each day.
And that's a time that, you know,

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you can informally grab anyone,
you know, real quick on, you know,

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texts or phone or zoom or whatever,
to get a question answered.

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So that's another way to bring more of
that informal communication into remote

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and virtual virtual environments.
So that, that would be,

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that'd be one I can dive into the other
four, the other three, if you want Adam.

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Well, I mean, if you want to
start addressing, you know,

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ways that they can help each of those
challenges, you covered communication.

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Let's, you know,

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let's look at some of those other ones
because I think it is a real problem,

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you know, unless I know that our
company, you know, gave us all Teams,

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Microsoft Teams.

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So now we can chat with each other a lot
easier because you do miss that, like,

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especially people who aren't
necessarily in your department,

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people in your department, you're talking
with more often, but somebody else,

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you may walk past their office and have
that informal conversation that kind of

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getting to know, because you
don't greet with them every day,

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but that's a little harder
in a virtual environment.

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It really is. And that's where
it does take, you know, some,

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it takes more intentionality there to
make that happen. And I think Adam,

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that's an excellent point,

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especially for those groups
outside of your team or department,

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but who, you know, you partner and you
need each other. That's great, call-out.

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Performance management, we already talked
on, it talked about it a little bit.

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I mean, first of all,
most, most businesses are,

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we should be should quote unquote,
be using smart goals, specific,

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measurable outcomes for, for people.

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And I think managing it by objective
and then showing up as leader to say,

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what support do you need is really
critical for being able to manage

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performance? And if you managed by
your outcomes or your objectives,

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I mean, certainly in a performance
review, that's an annual,

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so you have to break it down to what
does a monthly or quarterly look like?

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What does a weekly look like depending
upon what kind of team that you have,

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there's some way that you can
measure your outcomes or your output.

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So then you can see where things aren't
happening at the pace that they could or

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should or need to, and then
start getting into root cause.

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so that's how you can approach performance
management without having to keep

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your eyeballs on
everybody, sitting at their

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desk for relationships. I,

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I think it's also about setting up time
with each other where you don't talk

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about work. And I know that
sounds a little, little crazy,

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but that's also that
informal stuff that we miss,

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like when I was sharing about catching
up with people in the coffee line, right.

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And it could be that it's a Friday
morning virtual coffee, but you all agree,

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you're not talking about work instead.

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You're sharing what you're
doing over the weekend,

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because that's also an opportunity to
learn more about each other, like, oh,

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you're going to Comicon. I
didn't know you're into that.

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Who's was your favorite, you
know, that, that sort of stuff.

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I also like to encourage leaders
particularly to log in early to

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meetings and,

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take those one or two minutes
for chit chat to get to know

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employees and relate to them
and find out what they're up to,

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what they're dealing with
or questions before you,

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before everyone jobs jumps on the call.

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It has a great way to capture
those little informal tidbits. And,

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and to your point, Adam,

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I would say that that's
almost like critical to do
when you're interacting with

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departments outside of your own, that
you don't get to interact with as much.

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That would be a way to kind of capture
a little bit of what you were pointing

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at.

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I've I found, I found that,

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I've had to reach out to people that I
used to talk to when I was walking past

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their offices and like,
Hey, let's have coffee,

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let's have virtual coffee and like we'll
have tea or coffee in the afternoon and

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just catch up for a half
hour. And that's just,

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a great way to connect with people.

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It is that's that
intentionality, you know,

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we gotta be more thoughtful
about it and about the,

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even recognizing the fact that we
miss those interactions, you know,

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cause it wasn't like they were necessarily
planned or on our calendars before.

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And then I think the other thing is when
we were talking earlier about the zoom

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and the kid pops in and the dog pops in,

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I think there's a opportunity just,

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there's been more shared humanity
and vulnerability during this time.

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And that's important to continue
no matter where people are working.

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So I think there's something, again,

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particularly for leaders to share
some of the more of those tidbits,

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like what were some of
the mistakes you made?

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Like if you're talking about a major,
let's say a tech implementation,

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you can use that moment to say,
you know what, early in my career,

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I made a really big mistake. I
didn't ask X, Y, Z questions.

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So I learned, and I'm not going
to do that again. So what,

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what would be the answers
to those questions here?

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So you're using an opportunity to
actually forward the implementation call,

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right? Cause we're going to ask the
three questions, you know, to ask,

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but you access it in a way that
like shares something about yourself

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and makes a little more
human and more approachable.

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It's amazing how those little pieces
go a long way towards building

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trust, towards creating the kind of
environment where people know like, oh,

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I I'm going to share too. And it
doesn't mean the end of my career.

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And I can learn from you. Like you
just, you just shared a mistake.

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So I'm going to write this down to make
sure I don't make that same mistake.

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So it serves a lot of purposes,

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but it's just amazing how those little
tidbits can go a long way towards

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building relationship.

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So as we've been talking about
this, like remote hybrid stuff,

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it made me think of,

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there's gotta be these misconceptions
that are hanging over all of this.

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You know,

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a lot of those misconceptions were broken
down when everybody was forced into

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remote work. But as
offices opened back up,

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a lot of places are
just opening as hybrid.

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They're not going back to full-time cause
I don't think people want to go back

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full-time into the office.

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And so what are some misconceptions
that maybe we can break down for our

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audience?

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Yeah.

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Well I think the first one that I see
in here a lot is that we all need to

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be together for our culture. That
is a, that is a huge misconception.

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It's an understandable one though.

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And in that most workplaces
that were in person before,

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how they work, how they make decisions,

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how they go about getting
things done and share

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information, was all designed
around an in-person experience.

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And just like if we design a desktop
website experience and you go

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to your, your phone and it's not
responsive and it's all kind of wonky,

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the information is still kind of data or,

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but it's not showing up in
like the easiest way because
it wasn't designed to be

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mobile. Well guess what?

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Most of our cultures and ways of
working were not designed to be mobile.

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And that's why it has seemed
wonky these last 18 months.

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But that does not mean,
you know, your choices.

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You only use your desktop experience
or you design a mobile friendly one and

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that's the same choice with culture.
You can either review, you know,

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go back to the office if you're talented
and your employees are willing to do

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that and stay with you. And
in a sense, I would say,

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try to turn the clock back to 2019,
not the path that I recommend,

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or you can design a mobile first
experience that can also work when

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you're in person. And that's, that's,

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I think one of the mistakes too,
not that you asked for mistakes,

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but with that misconception,

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one of the mistakes people are making
is thinking that they can just go back,

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go to hybrid or stay virtual.

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And somehow it's going to become
unwonky over time by itself.

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And it will, but that's
sort of the painful way,

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like peeling the band-aid off
one hair at a time. You know,

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you can do it. I'm not gonna, but there's,

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there's a less painful way to go about it.

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Or I will say it's more kind
of ripping it off very quickly.

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And that is pausing and doing
some intentional thought about

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what is summit, what are the ways
that we have worked in the past?

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How have we shared information in
the past and how do we redesign that

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for a hybrid or virtual experience?
In fact, I just realized, Adam,

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I didn't share with you project
and task management. Aha. My bad.

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Two things I love that I recommend:

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One is stealing from our agile tech
world and doing daily standup meetings,

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the little 15 minute mini
things that has everyone, like,

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what are your roadblocks? What are
you going to do? Like easy peasy.

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But the other thing,

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and it's amazing how many teams don't
have this is a single source of truth

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for what work is happening. Who's
accountable for it. When is it due,

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but also like what decisions have been
made? Why were those decisions made?

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What's some of the context,

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if that's not someplace that all
team members can access, I mean,

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given some appropriate for
all team members to access,

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then you miss some of that, that context.

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But that makes a huge difference when
you're talking about designing a work

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experience where people might be hybrid,

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they might be virtual or
they might be in office,

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is you think about having that single
source of truth that you could get away

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with not having that
when you were in person,

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you really can't get away within
effectively and remote and hybrid work.

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So it's doing that work. And then the
other thing I'd say about that is values.

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What does compassion look like in email?

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What does integrity
look like on zoom calls?

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What does innovation look like
with slack channels? And I,

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those sort of like, huh, I
hadn't thought about it that way,

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but if businesses have defined
their values and their behaviors

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that they want to perpetuate
in their organization,

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they have to do what work to think
about how those values show up in the

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channels and the ways that we're going
to work in a remote and hybrid work.

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Cause that'll make it much easier.

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Like maybe it's okay to have short little
messages and slack and you don't have

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to say good morning or hope you
had a nice weekend and you say,

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we're not going to consider
that root cause in this channel,

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you get to talk in shorthand.

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It's amazing how much little nuance
and drama you could save by just

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saying that like, you don't have
to do the little warm greetings.

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We're going to use this as a, you know,

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almost like text messages I'm running
late, be there in five. Got it.

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It goes back to how important
communication is and good communication

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with the whole organization.

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Because if you're not communicating
people won't understand this new culture,

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all these different things
you're trying to do. If,

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if you can't communicate that, then
it just all kind of falls apart.

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Yeah, it really, it really
does. And I would say the other,

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and I don't know that it's a
misconception or even a mistake,

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but I think a struggle that we
kind of pointed towards earlier and

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that we're going to ask a lot of leaders
and especially executive leaders who

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their success and how they've produced,

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amazing results has not
been in this way of working.

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And they just,

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as they've been asking your team
members to demonstrate growth mindsets,

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you know,

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to continue to evolve and innovate the
business well now it's time for leaders

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to demonstrate growth mindset and be
willing to embrace a new way of leading.

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And I think as just as a human,
we never want to look silly.

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We don't want to make mistakes.
We don't want to do it wrong.

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And especially when you kind of
feel like eyes are on you like,

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like executive leaders feel.

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And I just think it would alleviate
a lot of pressure and expectation for

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everyone, for executive
leaders to say, Hey,

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I've asked you to demonstrate growth
mindset. Now I'm going to do that.

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I'm going to take on a new way of leading,

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cause I've not led in this environment
before and guess what I'm not going to

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get it right.

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And we're not all going to get it
right as we figure it out together.

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But what we ask is that we all have the
same intention and outcome and we have a

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lot of grace for one
another and then we'll,

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we'll make it through. I mean,
cause if you think about it,

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that was a lot of the messaging
at the start of the pandemic.

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There was a sort of, we're all in this
together and we're all figuring it out.

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And that is the first time in decades
that we've actually seen a marked

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increase in employee engagement
was April, May, June,

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July of 2020. And it's because employees,

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they were communicated to
which you just pointed to Adam,

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like there was a ton of
communication going on.

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They felt their employers
cared about them being safe,

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but there's a lot of messaging
because it was the truth.

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Everyone was just figuring things
out together. Like, I don't know,

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we haven't done this tech off site before,

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but we're going to try it in
the next 24 hours. You know?

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And there's something about that as
spree decor of that brings us all

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together that we'll figure it out
and we can use that right now.

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We can use that to our benefit.

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And a lot of companies and leaders can
use that to their benefit and it'll,

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it will, it will make everyone better
and more cohesive as we move forward.

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This has been Count Me In,

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00:21:42,730 --> 00:21:47,020
IMA's podcast providing you
with the latest perspectives
of thought leaders from

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00:21:47,021 --> 00:21:49,240
the accounting and finance
profession. If you like,

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00:21:49,241 --> 00:21:52,600
what you heard and you'd
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00:21:52,601 --> 00:21:54,820
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