You’ve been told you need to be “camera-ready” for a meeting. But you’re working from home or someplace you don’t want people to see. What do you do? Many of the most common web meeting platforms allow you to use backgrounds that will hide your real surroundings. Should you use them? What works best? Glad you

Read More

Should everyone on your team be in the office all the time? Can the work be done from home or somewhere else? Is hybrid work the right answer for your team or just a messy compromise? We get asked these questions all the time. It’s not always easy to get the right answer. But whatever

Read More

As the rational, well-intentioned, highly professional manager of a remote or hybrid team, do you make mistakes? Odds are you do. Likely because your brain tends to process information in certain ways that work most of the time. Most of the time. But we all have biases that occasionally get us in trouble. I have become

Read More

If you’ve downloaded the latest Zoom app, or use Zoom frequently, you have probably heard that it added AI features. You may also be a little confused as to what they are and why you should care. Here’s the headline: Zoom AI actually can help you and your team when used correctly and sparingly. When I

Read More

I am going to say something heretical. I am tired of hearing about change. Not that it is happening, but that we feel like we’re the first to go through such times. We are going through “unprecedented change.” You hear it every day. Whether it’s AI, work from home, Covid, or other challenges. In fact,

Read More

Getting new hires acclimated to their role and productive quickly has never been without its challenges. In today’s world of remote and hybrid teams, remote on-boarding can be more difficult than when we were all co-located. But is it actually easier with a co-located team or simply a more familiar process?  For years, we onboarded

Read More

There are a number of misconceptions and generalizations about work from home, remote work, and hybrid work. If you read the pro-remote from home bloggers, nobody is in the office, nor should they be. The traditional business press says everybody’s going back to the office so just shut up and comply. So what’s the real

Read More

Why do some people work from home and others prefer (or have no choice but) to work in the office? The business press will tell you it boils down to personal preference (yours or your manager’s.) New studies show that there are a number of factors involved. A recent study on Working From Home Around the

Read More

Have you ever tried to reach someone on Microsoft Teams and seen a red status message that says they’re busy? That’s fine, but will they be available later today? Are they out of the office? Here is a simple tip that you can use to make those notifications more useful. Let’s say you’re working at home

Read More

How do you keep employees engaged when they aren’t interacting with their teammates and leader every day? The answer is to make sure we’re mindful about including them when we have the opportunity. Positive team inclusion makes for stronger emotional connections, both with fellow teammates and our work. We become more invested in our work, and

Read More