Team Anywhere Leadership Podcast

How to attract – Go deeply into your purpose

• Create an engaging and purposeful culture
• 75% of the workforce will be millennials by 2025.  
• Millennials say that culture and learning is more important than pay.
• Millennials want to connect to a “Purposeful” Culture
• Focus your actions and conversations on (1) why you are in business, (2) what do you do as company that connects to the purpose, (3) how does your company make a difference, and (4) how does an individual at your company make a difference
• How to do this:  Create a Brand Purpose Sheet with a Visual of what your company stands for 
  • Who are you? 
  • Why are you here? 
  • What do you want to accomplish 

How to retain – Get everyone involved

• Create initiatives that connect employees to the company purpose 
  • Community Focused Initiatives 
  • Innovation Initiatives 
• Ask employees to participate
• As management…act on these ideas
• Take on experiments to deal with the challenges of COVID – tell your team that you are experimenting to make things more effective

How to Hire – Customize your video outreach

• If you are going to do job boards…create the ads from the perspective of the candidate
• Better than job ads are creating customized messages
• Have the hiring manager or the CEO reach out to candidates you truly desire
• Create customized video message and have your best talent in those videos

How to Interview – Be extremely intentional

• Take time to IDENTIFY the core behaviors that make someone successful in your company and on your team
• Throw OUT the resume – Look at what it takes to be successful on YOUR team, and ask questions around that
• Create open ended questions (NOT FROM GOOGLE) based on situations that the candidate will encounter in YOUR business
• Look for:  How do they think, How would they react, What questions are they asking you, what’ their approach, do they fit?

How do you Retain – Focus engagement surveys on your “A” Players and build a culture around them!

• Create a set of criteria for your “A” Players (“Talent Profile”), irrespective of who your “A” Players are now
• Survey your “A” Players separately – this is a MILLION DOLLAR idea!
• Looking at the responses from your top performers, focus on those issues FIRST!

How to build an Effective Virtual Workforce – Create a M.A.P.

• “M” – Meetings – This is about Effectiveness.  Set Standard and Clear Expectations for Meetings, Roles, Projects – Take the extra time to develop clarity through conversations, since we are separated geographically 
  • To enhance effectiveness – assign two people to the same assignment, forcing them to interact and collaborate 
  • For weekly meetings ask for L.M.S. – Learnings, Mistakes, Support 
    • At every weekly meeting have everyone share what did I learn, what mistake did I make, where do I need support? 
• “A” – Accountability – Focus on managing the RESULTS, not the time!
• “P” – Performance – Create more touch points to inspire people to interact more and constantly motivate them to perform 
  • Have more meetings (once a week vs. twice a week) AND make them shorter! 

How to be a more effective Virtual Leader – Vulnerability

• Ask for support
• Share where your head is at, especially if you can’t take something on at the moment
• Talk about your personal space
• Share with your team members what you are doing to support them personally
• Share your appreciation for all that they do

Audio Credit: Show Me the Way, Vendredi 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The First Rule to build Connection is that no matter what, everybody's video camera is turned on. 

The Second Rule to build Connection is that we always really check in with each other at the beginning of the week.  What's the week ahead look like? Are we feeling okay, how was our weekend? Do we have any stories to share? 

The Third Rule to build Connection is twice a week we send an email that is meant to share photos and share prompts to answer, such as, what are you looking forward to in 4-6 months?

The Fourth Rule to build Connection is on Fridays to share something that happened professionally within our organization, or something completely personal. 

The Fifth Rule is to push to the forefront of the conversation the social, emotional, and mental aspects of today’s work situation. And make it a part of the conversation.

If you want productivity, offer flexibility:  Trust your people and give them time to take care of themselves.

Keys to innovation when working from anywhere - Innovation comes from Happiness:  With flexibility comes happiness, energy and more creative head space.

Flexibility offers commitment across the team: With flexibility, team members make themselves available to their team members. As a result, team members are also there for the team leader.  Team members have the emotional energy and the bandwidth, because they're in this more flexible environment where they have more opportunity to breathe and take care of themselves and their families.

Podcast Introduction Audio: Show Me the Way, Vendredi 

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Design Your Values to Support a Remote Only Company.  

To do that requires that you design a company that focuses on Generosity

Design Your Company that measures its success on how people feel every day.

• How do your managers make each employee feel?
• How does each colleague make the other colleagues feel?
• How the purpose of the business makes each employee feel?

Making a Family First Environment:

• If someone is going through something, ask how can I help you? 
• How can I take something off your plate?
• Be generous in trying to make everyone successful. 

Accountability:

• Design a system of meetings and check-ins that holds people accountable to their greatness. 
• In order for you to be great at what you do, you need to be personally accountable and manage to that yourself.
• Be open to collaboration and communication from peers, colleagues, clients, and the founder.
• Create scheduled, brief meetings that are standard across departments.
• Have standing weekly calls that are important to the business. 
• Have firm-wide meetings Monday mornings.
• Have a Staffing call on Mondays and Thursdays. 
• Set an agenda and make sure everybody's there. 
• Cross-functional meetings force people to collaborate. 
• Have monthly team training to get people together.
• Have monthly lunches.
• Have meetings at the end of the day that brings everyone’s family into the call.

Tools:

• Willory was one of the first 10 clients for Microsoft Office 365.
• They collaborate through SharePoint.
• They communicate through SKYPE and ZOOM. 
• Bridgette uses a tool called HubSpot for digital marketing. 
• The Company uses Smartsheet to share progress on virtual projects, and exceptional tools.

Absence makes the heart grow fonder philosophy for culture and leadership:

• Encourage your teammates to get together off-campus!
• Bring everyone together for a book group, then have a facilitator challenge your employees to develop new skills in their personal and professional life.
• Follow the data so you can follow up with employees to support them in their work.
• Raise your empathy and make sure to connect with what everyone on the team is going through…it leads directly to profitability!

Podcast Introduction Audio: Show Me the Way, Vendredi https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1swecA5cnnQ

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.