Culture

  • Linked – Why public chats are better than direct messages

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    But, here it the real world, this doesn’t always work out very well. You really need the culture to be one where everyone is used to working asynchronously and checking the public channel for chances to help out the team. It sounds like that is both the expectation and the reality at this company but for a lot of us the reality is very different. Posting something in a public channel where no one gets a notification that a message is being posted generally means no one sees it. So we go back to using private channels or tagging people in the public channel in order so that we purposefully interrupt them. We haven’t developed a culture where asynchronous communication works and I suspect it’s because we don’t really want it. We want people to respond to us now. We don’t trust them to get back later and, to be fair, we don’t give our peers reason to trust us because we spend all of our time putting out fires and frequently forget to get back to people.

    In many cases, it’s a humblebrag. “Oh I saw your message but then I got involved in important things because I’m an important person and never got back to you”.

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    Linked: Maybe You Don’t Have the Skills You Need to Manage Your Remote Workforce

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 1 minute

    Suppose you or your management forces staff back into the office because you need the face-time. Or because you don’t think your team can collaborate, you don’t know who is being productive, etc. Instead of forcing it and running the risk of losing your best performers, ask yourself if what you need to do is manage differently.

    There’s no reason for promotions to be based on face time. With all of our technology, there is also no excuse for not collaborating or communicating effectively. Managing a remote team is not impossible. It’s just different. It requires that you change the way you manage.

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    Linked: What is Toxic Positivity in the Workplace?

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    When you aren’t allowed to question, you are probably also not allowed to have a bad day or express frustration. That limits how much of you can show up in the workplace.

    That is not the way to get employee engagement and the best efforts of the people who work for you. In today’s job market, it is a good way to lose them.

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    Linked: Management with intent

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 3 minutes

    Being remote is different. You have to over-communicate to make sure that people are in the loop. You have to create collaboration opportunities and build camaraderie purposefully, and they can’t be team trust falls. You have to get creative about how you work together and interact.

    Most of all, you have to be purposeful about it. You have to create opportunities for people to interact and allow them the freedom to create their own patterns and relationships. You have to learn how to work asynchronously so that you can have more meaningful meetings.

  • Training, Learning and Development Folks – The Pressure is On

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    They aren’t wrong. With the talent gaps being what they are in a number of industries right now, organizational leaders are turning to development and training professionals for help. Let’s face it, hiring gets a lot simpler if we have confidence that our culture and our internal resources will help these new folks that we bring in grow and continue to offer more and more value. We don’t need to wait for someone who ticks every single box that we are looking for, we can find the folks who are available now who tick the majority of them, knowing that our environment will make sure they tick the others in time.

    Doing that successfully is a massive advantage in the competition for talent. Your investment pays off.

    But, it puts the pressure squarely on those of us working in training and development, doesn’t it? We have to make that investment pay off.

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    Linked: Three-quarters of employees’ careers impacted by mental health, report finds

    ByMike McBride Reading Time: 2 minutes

    I think a little anxiety and anger are appropriate now. Being distracted from your work should actually be a pretty normal reaction to what is going on in the world. Just replace your own national politics for the UK in that survey and can you really say that something hasn’t prevented you from being your best at work during the last couple of years? I’m in the US, I think it’s crazy that there are people going about their work as if nothing is happening, but I also know that is the corporate culture for many of us as well. For the hours you are “at” work, that’s our time. Spend your own time worrying about the world, grieving for lost loved ones, caring for your family, or your own needs, etc.

    This is wrong on so many levels. Your people are not hours of labor on a spreadsheet, they are human beings, and human beings should absolutely be affected by what is going on in the world. Expecting them not to be during work hours tells me a lot more about the management team than it does about the workforce.

    It surely doesn’t say anything good about the management team either.