Career

  • Ethical Visibility for Remote Workers

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    This one is a little harder for me because letting people know what I’ve been up to sounds an awful lot like self-promotion. I’ve never been super comfortable with people who are constantly promoting themselves and what they do. I certainly don’t want to become known for promoting myself all the time. The difference between the two was actually the subject of two episodes of the Work-Life Podcast earlier this year, and I thought the discussion between Wayne Turmel and Marisa Eikenberry was a fantastic exploration of the difference between being ethically visible (I stole the term from them, it’s that good!)

  • Charter Research Suggests Mentorship Matters No Matter Where Your Team is Located

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    In other words, it’s successful when the organization puts together and supports an intentional mentorship program. When they don’t they become reliant on chance interactions in the office. That’s the difference. It’s not that hybrid and remote employees just can’t be trained and mentored. It’s that quality mentoring requires intention.

    If you want to provide quality mentorship for your junior employees create and support a program to do that. Period. End of discussion. Where they are located is not relevant.

  • It’s About Being Intentional

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    As I said, it’s not that being a remote worker means we won’t have any friends. We just have to be more intentional about it. We have to find ways to interact socially with our current friends and be in spaces, physical and virtual, where we can meet new people.

    You’ll read plenty of hot takes about remote work. Whether it be how difficult it is to build any culture or connect with your team, you’ll get lonely, you won’t get promoted, or mentored, etc. It’s not that the authors of these posts are lying to you, but they are also unlikely to point out that none of these things have to be the way they are. They can all be overcome when someone decides to act with intention.

  • Do You Know Why Employees Leave? Do You Know Why They Stay?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 4 minutes

    My point isn’t to toot my own horn. It’s to give you a concrete example of what a difference sitting and talking to your employees can make in terms of understanding what works for them, or doesn’t work for them in the workplace. A survey has a purpose, especially when you realize that meeting one on one with all of your employees doesn’t scale very far. If you really want to know what’s going on, though, don’t wait for someone to leave so you conduct an exit interview. A stay interview might prevent them from leaving in the first place.

    And for god’s sake, conduct exit interviews too, and be willing to act on them. These people are telling you what went wrong, why wouldn’t you want to know that?

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    Employees and Employers Have Roles to Play in Career Development

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    It is in your best interest to have employees who are growing and advancing in their careers. One is because they continue to become more valuable to the organization, which you need. Secondly, as they grow and become more valuable they are also more likely to stay. Turnover is costly. The organization can provide mentors and other resources that would be more difficult to do on their own. In return, they get employees who grow with the organization. Who wouldn’t want that?

  • Linked – Research: Asynchronous Work Can Fuel Creativity

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Have you ever been in a brainstorming meeting, in person or on Zoom, and walked away thinking it was great? The ideas were flowing, and people were expanding on each other’s ideas, professionally disagreeing constructively, and bringing energy to the discussion. It was great, all of our meetings should look like that.

    Except that’s not really what happened. At least it’s not the whole picture. Yes, perhaps there was a good exchange of ideas, and perhaps some of the folks on the call brought their energy and passion to the discussion. The key word there is “some”. The important thing to remember is that those people who did bring that energy also probably made it really difficult for other voices to be heard. The science would tell you that the straight white men on the team probably spoke up, while others did not speak up. (In the experiment that is detailed in the article, it was men and women singers who were compared.) In my experience, it’s a little more complicated than that. Yes, a small group of white guys can absolutely drown out all of the other voices, but so can a small group of extroverts.