One of the things many leaders feel we don’t do as well as we could is coach our people. Whether our team is co-located or scattered to the winds, it’s hard to find the time to coach effectively. When we do, it’s almost always focused on improving weak performance. That means we spend most of

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Offering feedback to people who aren’t located with you can be complicated. Should you send an email or get on the phone? Do you need to set up a zoom call, or will a quick shout-out on Slack get the job done? And why do they act like you’ve never told them something before when

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One of the phrases we use a lot around here is, “When working remotely, communication can become transactional.” Seriously, I was on our site and searched for “transactional,” and found over 20 references. And it’s not just a catch phrase. This is a real phenomenon. What’s also true is that a significant number of people

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I read recently that negative reviews online carry so much weight it takes eight positive reviews on Yelp to counteract a single bad review. While this is bad news for your local diner, why is it relevant to those who lead remote teams? The reason is that people take negative feedback much more seriously than

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We learned a lot during the first year of working from home. One of the things nobody expected was that it is a lot harder to take time off than anyone previously thought. We know this because a record number of people didn’t take vacation or personal time last year, or if they did they

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A recent report from Microsoft acknowledges and puts numbers to something many of us who work remotely have felt in our guts: Many remote managers are thriving with work-from-home, while their employees are feeling more stressed than ever. Microsoft’s latest white paper, The Next Great Disruption is Hybrid Work-Are We Ready? is full of fascinating

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COVID-19 caused many of us to work from home for much of the last year. Now that the anniversary has passed, there have been any number of articles about what we’ve learned—or haven’t. As with any momentous event, we should all be taking stock of the experience. Was it a success for us personally? Or

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Many of us are returning to our workplaces, at least part of the time. We’ve been asking people what they like most about getting back in the office. The answers aren’t surprising. Most people are happy being  back in-person with their colleagues, socializing, brainstorming, and getting out of their homes. But there are other things

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There’s a lot of conflicting news about when, how (and if) people are going to go back to working out of offices like they did before the pandemic sent everyone home. Some people can’t wait for any semblance of normalcy. Others have discovered the advantages of remote work. Some organizations are throwing themselves into remote

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Prior to the COVID pandemic, there was a movement afoot to intentionally enhance diversity and inclusion in organizations. For many companies, those efforts then took a back seat to just staying in business, helping existing employees work remotely and keeping the business afloat. Now, as they take a longer view, they are once again thinking

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