Leading from afar

Here's the recap...In today's episode, I sat down with Valentina Thörner the Empress of Remote to talk about mental health and what individual remote leaders can be doing to improve the mental health of their team and create more transparent environments for sharing how everyone is feeling.  In this episode, we focus on how you as a leader within a larger team can start improving your team's mental health if the company isn't yet focused on it. And of course, what you as a leader can be doing to support your own mental health.

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Here's today's recap...In today's episode, I'm joined by Danielle Farage for a deep dive on the topic of quiet quitting. What is it, who does it affect, is it a short-term fad, and what can company leaders do to prevent it? Talk around quiet quitting started a number of months back and focused specifically on Gen-Z'ers. Yet, when you look at the various reasons why people are quiet quitting you see this is an everyone issue and in my belief at the heart of the future of work. Where people put their own happiness & well-being front and center. Not their work.

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Here's the recap..In today's episode, I spoke with Sid Pandiya, CEO of Kona. I've been a huge fan of Kona since their earliest beta days. I've been a big advocate in supporting the mental health of my team and understand I need help in gauging and gathering feedback to better understand it. Where Kona comes in. Today we did a deep dive into what leaders need to be doing today to better support their remote team's mental health and happiness. Both are linked to better engagement within the workplace. We discussed what we've done, the tools to use (including a bunch of free ones), and most importantly what to do when we get the information we're after.

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Here's the recap...Remote can work for some teams like Engineering and Customer Support but not Sales. Then CoVid strikes. Then Sales can't do async because they need lots of together time to feed off each other's energy, high-five, etc. But I've learned from this conversation and from recent experience that async will be a superpower and major unlock for Sales teams. Like the rest of the organization. In this episode, I spoke with a former colleague and fellow remote OG, Ryan Burke, how about how Sales teams can thrive asynchronously. Interestingly enough, how he started building in-person teams at InVision but over time pivoted to hiring anywhere and since going all in on async at Qatalog. If you're running a remote Sales team this is a must-listen.

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Here's the recap...I've been quite interested in hearing some stories of how some tech giants pivoted to remote work. While most were and are still desperate to go back to the office, others fully embraced it and have been super successful in moving toward the future of work. In this episode, I spoke with Meaghan Williams who months before the pandemic had already started the company on its journey. I was honestly blown away at how much thoughtfulness and effort went into building an equitable hybrid and remote experience even before the world shut down. This significantly helped them go fully remote overnight with little hiccup and continually design an optimal experience for those staying remote forever and those who came back to or eventually want to be in an office X days a week. This was probably the most enjoyable episode I've recorded to date and learned so much.  

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Hybrid Work Report Blog: The Future of Work at HubSpot: How We're Building a Hybrid Company

Medium post: How HubSpot Makes Hybrid Work, Work

Medium post: Three Takeaways from How HubSpot Employees Want to Work in 2022

Here's the recap. In today's episode of Leading from Afar I chat with my good buddy Jakob Knutzen, CEO of Butter about sync meetings. Nope, it's not a type. I didn't mean async. Since Jakob is building the most engaging sync video tool, I thought we'd discuss why we all hate sync meetings and how to redesign them to be more impactful. We started off discussing the why's of calling a sync meeting. Then going deeper into when of those why's, to have a sync meeting. Finally, we discuss the how of doing a sync meeting the right way. Spoiler: Proper sync meetings have quite a bit of async embedded.  

For a full transcript check out  https://bit.ly/3D2nluK

To learn more about async communications check out these other great episodes.  

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Here's the recap...In today's episode, I sat down with one of the foremost experts in async communication, Liam Martin. Liam is a fellow remote OG and writing the book about async (stay tuned)! This episode continued the series on how individual leaders working at remote companies not embracing the best practices of the future of work can do so within their individual teams. So today's focus was on how leaders can implement async leadership & communication with their direct reports. We talked a lot about writing, data, and the need for radical transparency.   If you're a team leader or company leader thinking async makes a whole of sense and want to move away from pointless Zoom calls this episode is for you.  

For a full transcript click here.  

For more awesome content about async communication check out the async playlist.  

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Here's the recap...In today's episode, I spoke with Tania Kefs, the CEO & Co-founder of Jurnee. Like me, she's working on building her next company. We wanted to focus the conversation on the individual leaders within the company and what they can do to build better cultures and engagement. Even just within their team. Building amazing company cultures can be done from the bottom up (though not recommended). We dive into the challenges individual leaders have within a remote organization, what are the easy changes to implement within their teams, and more.

For a full transcript click here. For more information about the show click here.

To learn more about Jurnee click here. 

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Here's the recap...In this episode, I chatted with my buddy, Tyler Sellhorn, the Head of Remote at Polygon. Some companies are still struggling to realize the future of work is now here. The years of work building culture and operations based in an office has to be tossed in the rubbish bin. Many companies that went remote during the pandemic are still fakin' it till they make it. Making the newly popular role 'Head of Remote' quite intriguing. Tyler and I chatted about what the role is and isn't. Who should hire one and who's just wasting time. And is the Head of Remote really the new COO?

For a full transcript click here. For more information about the show click here.

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Here's the recap...In this episode, I chatted with my good friend, Lee Rubin, the CEO & Co-founder of Confetti. Remote work is now the standard of work (finally!) As teams will stop looking back, looking forward will need to focus on how to build deeper relationships remotely. IRL opportunities will be crucial for this. But what can teams do in between to ensure their teams are fostering trust and bonds when no longer working together. Team fun, games, and similar are a great way for a team to connect while not working. We shared ideas and tips about what types of events your team can start running today. Including taking offline/siloed events and build interaction and connecting online.

For a full transcript click here. For more information about the show click here.

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