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Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, Long-Distance Work, Organizational Leadership

When Should We Use Virtual Backgrounds for Meetings?

Have you been on a Zoom meeting with Bob in Accounting, and it looks like he’s sitting in a luxurious office with a view of Manhattan? He’s not, of course. He’s using a virtual background to hide the fact he’s actually working from the north end of his dining room table.

Someone recently asked a question on our Long Distance Worklife podcast: When is it appropriate to use background filters, and what are the rules?

What problem are virtual backgrounds solving?

Most technology was invented to solve a problem. Also, there has been nothing invented that human beings won’t find a way to misuse or create more problems. Let’s look at the problem they were trying to solve first of all.

Working from home does not mean we automatically have broadcast-capable facilities. Using a webcam to join a Teams meeting may mean showing the world your “home office” is the spare bedroom. Perhaps the only place to store those boxes is directly behind your work space. But now the CEO can see them every time you turn your camera on.

Before COVID, the people who did work from home got creative. They made sure their desk backed against a plain-colored wall, or they draped a sheet behind them. Some of us even invested in tools like “WebAround.” The collapsible screens fit over the back of your chair, masking whatever was really lurking back there.

Zoom, Teams, and WebEx all addressed the problem with software that changed what the audience saw in the background.

We have options

One option is to “blur” the background. This changes the focal length of the camera so that everything close to the camera is clear, but the further back you go, the more out of focus the picture is until you can’t see what’s behind the speaker. But they didn’t stop there.

Next were several photo options, most of which were safe, boring, stock photos of a traditional office. But wait, there’s more. Then came moving backgrounds. You could be joining the meeting from a windswept beach or even the moon. Eventually, because people demanded customization, users could upload any photograph to use as their background. Hence, people began conducting business in front of a giant picture of their cat, or a vacation photo. Not exactly the proudest moment in the evolution of remote work.

What's the problem?

There are two big problems with this. Initially, the way these tools work (the technology is irrelevant, just work with us here) can create visual distortion. There’s a halo of light all around your body. When you lift your hands, they disappear, and what you’re holding up to the camera is invisible to the viewer. It looks weird and can be a huge distraction to the viewer.

Secondly, it may appear unprofessional to your audience. Your customer doesn’t need to see that you’d rather be on a Hawaiian beach than working with them. Here, then, are some guidelines:

Think about who your audience is. There may be legitimate reasons to hide your physical surroundings. In such cases, blurring the background or adding an appropriate visual makes sense. Choose wisely. I have three backgrounds I usually use. The more formal the presentation, the more I’m likely to go with the blank, beige wall. The cartoon robots (it’s in Microsoft Teams, look it up) are for informal conversations.
Using your own photos is fun, but use high resolution. I have a picture of the Las Vegas sign I often use. It’s a bright color, and is often a conversation starter. It’s also a high-resolution photo, so it doesn’t suffer the same problems of blurring and flaring that some others do.
Check your background before getting on the meeting. How much of a distraction your background may be depends on a lot of factors. How crisp and clear is the picture? What about your clothes? Certain patterns and colors can create psychedelic effects. How far are you from the camera? Will your audience be able to see whatever movements you need to make during your call? Something like that can turn a harmless joke or an unintentional move into a major headache. Test your background with the clothes you plan to wear. Or just start a meeting a couple of minutes before joining the call and see what it looks like.

Working from home has allowed us to show off more of our selves and our personalities in the workplace than ever before. That requires making smart choices when using some of the customizable tools.

Coaching & Developing Others, Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Personal & Professional Development

What to Do About a Team Member Who is Doing Nothing Right

By Guy Harris

You have tried everything that you know to do. You have encouraged, corrected, taught, coached, sent to classes, partnered them with a co-worker, and they still do nothing right. What next?

The short answer: fire them.

The long answer: start (if you have not already started) the process of “managing them out of the organization” or whatever euphemism you use for your organization’s process for terminating employment.

Now that I have addressed the starting question, I have some questions:

Are they really doing NOTHING right? Is that true?

Or…

Are you just so frustrated with one or two annoying things about their performance that you no longer recognize the things they do well or the positive attributes they bring to the team?

I realize it is possible that they are doing nothing right. It is just not what I usually see.

What I typically see in situations where leaders – particularly new leaders – express frustration with someone on their team, is more an issue of barely okay performance than clearly unacceptable performance.

As I have already indicated, if performance is in the clearly unacceptable category, give them a reasonable chance to fix what is unacceptable, and then manage them out if they do not fix it.

If performance is in the “barely okay” range, the frustration you feel as a leader is more about your personal frustration than it is about a clear negative impact on team performance. While it might be suboptimal, it is not necessarily “bad.” Frustrating, yes. Leading to failure, maybe not.

If this is your situation – frustrating and not leading to failure – the best plan is to focus on helping them do more of the things they do well so that they have less time spent on the things they do poorly. Working with people to “not” do things is a losing battle. Better to replace a behavior with a better one than to stop the behavior.

The most powerful communication tool for helping people to replace less than ideal behaviors with better ones is positive feedforward. Rather than point out what people did that created less than ideal results, talk about the gap you see between current and desired results and then discuss what to do better next time. The goal is to keep your conversation on what success looks like and how to get there in the future, rather than to focus on the past.

Back to the title of this article: what to do about a team member who is doing nothing right.

First, honestly assess if they are really doing nothing right or just frustrating you with not doing everything right.

In most cases you will find that their performance is annoying rather than failing. If that is the case, use positive feedforward to help them know what to do better next time.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership

The Power of Transition Conversations

By Guy Harris

Navigating changes in your professional relationships is a big part of successfully transitioning from bud to boss. The change in your role and your responsibilities demands that your relationships change as well. You will experience changes in the type, scope, and sensitivity of relationship issues you face. The relative power dynamic or imbalance between you, your team, and people who were formally senior to you will change. All of these changes will create other changes in your professional, and possibly, personal relationships.

One of the more powerful things you can do to successfully navigate these relationship changes is to have Transition Conversations. The people you have these conversations with include:

Your Team
- The team you lead.
Your Friends
- People on the team you lead that you used to mingle and socialize with more than others.
Your New Boss
Your New Peers
- Probably people who also report to your new boss (this could include other people of similar level in the organization even if they do not report to your boss)
Your Former Boss
- This one can vary a great deal depending on your former boss’ role. For example, your former boss could also be a new peer or a member of the team you lead. I have seen both scenarios, and they call for different types of conversations.
Anyone else affected by the change in your role and responsibilities

The purpose, or point, of these conversations is to head-off miscommunication and misunderstanding during the transition of relationship dynamics you have with the people in each of these categories.

The type of conversation you need to have is what many people call a meta-conversation, or a conversation about how you have conversations. Transition conversations are less focused on a specific business topic, problem, project, or issue and more focused on defining and clarifying each party’s relationship and interaction/communication wants and needs. The things you want to focus on in these conversations are:

Relationship and time boundaries
Expectations for decision making authority, change notifications, etc.
Communication preferences – both style and mode.
- Do they prefer direct bottom-line communication or friendly, relational communication?
- Do they prefer that you drop in their office, give them a phone call, send a text, or draft an email?

Ultimately, you want to make these conversations intentional. Rather than wait for likely misunderstandings and miscommunication to poison these relationships, start the process of talking about how you talk with each other to minimize negative events. It is unlikely that you can anticipate every potential relationship challenge. You can minimize the negative effects of the likely ones, though. By initiating these types of conversations before there is a problem, you also make it easier to discuss problems when they arise.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, Video

Reframing Change – Remarkable TV

Change is hard. It doesn’t usually come naturally. And at the end of the day, when we change we have made a choice.

And as leaders, when we are trying to lead change at work, we are asking our team to be “all in” – to make a choice to change.

Unfortunately, most change leadership communication is about the change itself. This is important of course, but we’re missing three key components when we’re communicating about change. Check out the video below to see what you might be missing in your change leadership.

Follow: Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts, Amazon Music, iHeart Radio or your favorite podcast player.

Tweet it out: When communicating change, make sure people see how much isn’t changing – to give the perspective and hope that they can handle what is changing. @KevinEikenberry

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Communication & Interpersonal Skills

Managing Expectations to Encourage Satisfaction

By Guy Harris

Have you ever noticed that people are sometimes dissatisfied with situations that are not that bad and sometimes satisfied with situations that are not that good?

I will use myself as an example.

I can think of times when I was sitting comfortably in a restaurant with food in front of me, and I was dissatisfied (even a bit angry) because of minor issue with the food. A little cold. A bit too salty. You get the idea. I was in a good, safe, comfortable location with food that was safe to eat, and I was dissatisfied.

I can also think of times when I had a numb mouth, two people about six inches from my face, and one of them had their hand in my mouth while drilling on my tooth. I was uncomfortable and satisfied at the same time.

It is a conundrum.

Why would a person be dissatisfied with a situation that is objectively pretty good and satisfied with a situation this is objectively uncomfortable or bad? It seems like we should be happy or satisfied when things are comfortable or good and unhappy or dissatisfied when things are uncomfortable or bad. And that is not really what happens.

What actually happens is that we tend to be happy or unhappy (satisfied or dissatisfied) because of how closely our expectations match our experience. When our experience matches or exceeds our expectations, we tend to be happy or satisfied. When our experience falls short of our expectations, we tend to be unhappy or dissatisfied.

When it comes to human psychology, I am hesitant to state anything that sounds like an absolute truth or rule, and there is a statement that is generally true that I have seen and heard in several places. I have seen it stated two different ways:

Happiness = Reality/Expectations or
Happiness = Reality – Expectations.

Either way you state the “rule,” it leads to the same place: when reality meets or exceeds expectations, our happiness “value” is on the plus side.

Going back to my two situations. In the restaurant, my experience fell short of my expectations, and I was dissatisfied. In the dentist scenario, my experience matched my expectations, and I was satisfied (not necessarily happy, but satisfied at least).

Why should leaders care about happiness and satisfaction?

Because happy/satisfied team members tend to get better results, have fewer conflicts, and create a better team environment. The team functions better, and the leader’s life (your life) is easier.

I do not propose that leaders can magically make everyone happy or satisfied. I do propose that leaders need to understand what supports this condition and what they can do to positively influence it. One of the more powerful things that leaders can do to promote satisfaction and happiness is to practice the skill of setting fair and realistic expectations with the goal of at least meeting the expectation and possibly exceeding it.

For example, if a situation is going to be difficult and will take many hours of hard work, tell people that is what they can expect so that they are not surprised when things get difficult. I am not convinced that your team will necessarily be happy about the challenging times. Maybe you can avoid creating dissatisfaction, though.

On the other end, when you expect things to go well, moderate your optimism so that you leave a little room for exceeding your most optimistic prediction. I am not suggesting that you downplay your excitement and enthusiasm, only that you remain aware of being optimistic to the point that the best you can hope for is to meet the expectation and there is little or no room to exceed it.

Setting fair, realistic, and honest expectations is one of the most powerful tools you have for creating a hopeful, satisfied – possibly even happy – work environment for you and your team

Communication & Interpersonal Skills

The Principles Don’t Change: Get on Their Side of the Table

By Guy Harris

Have you ever struggled to persuade another person to change their mind or their behaviors?

Based both on my personal experience and in what I have heard in Bud to Boss workshops, my guess is that you have. In fact, I think most of us have recently struggled with this issue, are struggling with it, or will struggle with it in the near future. Trying to persuade people to either change their mind or behaviors is a pretty common interaction in general and an almost daily occurrence for leaders.

Here is an example of a question I recently got from a Bud to Boss workshop participant:

“How do I convince my peers that the way they are handling line problems actually hurts the equipment they are trying to fix?”

The interesting thing about the question is that we had discussed a similar issue earlier in the day except that the context for the prior discussion involved communication with team members reporting to the supervisor rather than with peers – similar issue, different audience.

I have noticed a pattern in questions like this about communication with peers and supervisors: there is a widespread perspective that the basic principles of both communication and influence somehow change depending on the person with whom we are communicating.

While there is a different power dynamic in conversations with peers compared to conversations with team members, basic communication and influence principles do not change. Application of the principles can change depending on our relationship with the other person, and the principles themselves do not. Remember that all the people you are interacting with are, well, people.

As we talk about communication and influence principles in From Bud to Boss and in Bud to Boss workshops, a great deal of the discussion is in the context of leaders interacting with people on the teams they lead. Inherent in that conversation is at least some assumption of power or authority relative to the person with whom you are interacting.

While power or authority relative to the person is often an unstated assumption in the conversation, it is not a prerequisite for the ideas we are attempting to convey. If you read From Bud to Boss or any of the articles we have written, attend a Bud to Boss workshop, watch one of our videos, or listen to one of our podcasts, what you will see is that very few – actually, I think, none – of the strategies or approaches we advocate, promote, or teach depends on the projection of power or authority to make it work.

Power and authority are tools in your leadership toolbox that should be used only when absolutely necessary. In the overwhelming majority of situations, I suggest that you work with influence strategies instead. If you work exclusively with influence strategies, who you are working with does not change the key principles you apply to the situation. Who you are working with might change your phrasing, body language, and tone. It does not change the foundational principles that make your efforts either succeed or fail.

One of these foundational principles is to:

Get on their side of the table.

Here is a mental picture to illustrate this idea that I got from a mentor of mine many years ago.

Imagine that whatever issue you need to address or problem you need to solve with another person is represented by a piece of paper.

If you sit across a table from the other person with the piece of paper between you, the issue is, quite literally, between you. The physical positioning makes it difficult to see the issue the same way – you see it from the top of the page, they see it from the bottom of the page. This difference in perspective almost immediately creates a confrontational approach to the discussion.

Now imagine that you are both on the same side of the table looking at the piece of paper in front of you. The problem is in front of both of you rather than between you. As you discuss the issue or the problem, you are sitting side-by-side looking at the same thing and talking with each other rather than facing off over the problem and talk at each other.

Talking with a person about an issue or a problem is much more likely to persuade or influence them than talking at them about it.

No matter who you are working with – your team member, your peer, or your supervisor – one key principle of influence and persuasion is always the same: get on their side of the table.

Looking for more information on upcoming workshops? Click here or email info@kevineikenberry.com for to find out more!

Coaching & Developing Others, Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Video

Three Types of Expectations to Set with Team Members

by Kevin Eikenberry

You’ve got questions, we’ve got answers. Hi, I’m Kevin Eikenberry, answering the questions that new leaders ask us. Actually, it’s our goal to help all leaders be more successful, productive and confident. And the question I’m answering today is about setting expectations.

Are you ready? Let’s get started. When you think about setting expectations, the first question that might come to your mind is how do I set expectations given? It’s a great question worthy of a video, but it’s not the question I’m answering today.

In fact, I’m asking a first question a question that comes before that, really, because before we set them, we need to know what all of them are. So the question today is this: What are the types of expectations?

We want to make sure that we have a clear picture for people of exactly what success is. And there are three types of expectations that we need to set so that we make sure that we and our team members have that clear picture.

All right, first type of expectations are the what expectations these are the things you likely were already thinking about when I brought this up. The quality of the work, the timeliness of the work, the descriptors of the work, the basics of the work, this is what it looks like to be successful.

This is where we need to end up. Those are the what expectations of all of the three types, this is the type that leaders are most likely to get, remember or set the other to a little less likely.

Let’s talk about those other two now. The second type of expectations are the why expectations. If you have been given a task and you understood what you needed to deliver, you had the what. But you didn’t know why you were doing it.

You didn’t know who it was for, what its purpose was, how it fit into the bigger picture. Have you ever had that situation? If you have, you will agree with me that it’s frustrating and limiting. You might have ideas.

I mean, I’d like to make this report or do this with this report, but I have no idea. If I do that, it helps or hurts. Someone later makes sense to me. I don’t know if it’s better or not.

We need to give people context and purpose for their work so they know how it fits in. It will allow them to make better judgments in the moment to be more flexible and actually to set themselves up to actually help improve the work product.

This is the high expectations. And the third type of expectations are the how expectations. This is the work process stuff. This is the how we get things done. What’s the timeline and flow? Who needs to be involved? Who do you need to contact when all of those things?

These are the boundaries that help us make sure that the work is done. There’s maybe check ins with you as the leader as part of this, but who else should they engage and involve all of those things? Anything.

It’s not about the work itself, but how we’re doing it. All matters. And so you’ve probably as a leader if you’ve been a leader for very long, been frustrated with someone because the way that they were doing it was causing a problem, maybe unbeknownst to them.

So they can’t change it if they don’t know what the expectations are, right? So three types of expectations what expectations, why expectations, and how expectations so. Once you know what they need to be these areas, then you need to make them super clear before you can set them with someone else, they must become clear, likely clear.

On paper, written down. And when you’re doing that, then make sure do I have not just what expectations, but also why and how expectations as well. Let me close with today’s tweet. Expectations define success. Make sure people know more than just what success is, but always the why and the how of the work as well.

If you have a question you’d like me to answer on a future episode. You can send that question into info at Bud to Boss dot com. We’d love to hear it, and hopefully we can feature it here in the future.

And we have plenty of other resources for you at, but device dot com. We hope you’ll take a look there and you might want to subscribe here for future videos in this series. Hope you’ll do that, and I’ll be back with more questions and answers coming soon.

https://youtu.be/rLGNtZmLanA?rel=0

Tweet it out: Expectations define success. Make sure people know more than just what success is, but always the why and how of the work as well. @KevinEikenberry

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, Personal & Professional Development

Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change

Are you experiencing flux or continuous change? Chances are you are almost laughing at how obvious your answer is. Here is another obvious question: Would you like to thrive in times of change (like now)? Would you like some concrete tactics to help you deal with the realities and emotions of constant change?

April Rinne is a futurist who spends her time looking into the future. She wants to help people succeed in that future. For her, that means helping them thrive in times of change. As such, she has written the timely and helpful book, Flux: 8 Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.

As promised in the title, the book outlines deliver 8 superpowers:

Run slower – when we slow down our actions and thoughts, we will be less harried, find new perspective and be better able to thrive in flux.
See what’s invisible – we need to look beyond the obvious, listen to our intuition and look for patterns.
Get lost – travel to explore and learn, not just arrive at your destination
Start with trust – How trust in yourself and others can help you thrive in times of change and flux.
Know your enough – move past the mirage of more and accumulation to help you determine how to approach and understand change.
Create your portfolio career – how to see roles as temporary and change as an impetus to build your experience, knowledge, and career.
Be all the more human – the value of being more outwardly, contribution focused to deal with and capitalize on change.
Let go of the future – worrying less about it and living more in the present to thrive in times of change.

As this list shows, there are personal, leadership, and career components of this book. Any one of which is reason enough to learn from April.

This book has a coherent message, great examples and draws from April’s well-travelled worldview. It will help you understand your scripts and beliefs about change to help you thrive in times of change … like… today.

If you want a deeper dive into this book and its ideas to “try before you buy” or to learn while you wait to get your copy, I recommend listening to the conversation April and I had on The Remarkable Leadership Podcast.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, New & Frontline Leadership, Personal & Professional Development

It’s Okay to Ask for Help

By Guy Harris

Most new, front-line leaders have a history of being excellent individual performers. They are good at what they do, and, as a result, they get the opportunity to move into leadership. It makes sense in so many ways, and that common path to leadership can also create a challenge.

The challenge comes when front-line leaders continue to act like individuals on a team rather than leaders of a team. The challenge reveals itself in several ways, and all of the manifestations have a common root cause. Front-line leaders create problems when they confuse being responsible for a business result with being the person who gets a task done.

As a leader of a team, you are responsible for making sure things get done. You are not responsible for doing all of them or even knowing how to do all of them. To get past this challenge, you have to be okay with asking for help.

Two of the most common issues where you can ask for help are delegation and performance issues.

Let me explain:

Delegation

When you delegate a task to someone, you are effectively asking for their help (and trusting that they will do what you ask). For a person who is used to doing things on their own, that can be a difficult issue to confront. I have heard (and used) many reasons (well, excuses) for NOT delegating tasks. To be successful as a leader, this is one challenge you must confront and overcome. You cannot do it all. You have to ask for help.

Employee performance

I hope that you have an amazing team and that you never have any serious performance issues to address. I also realize that you are likely to have at least one experience with a team member who is not getting the results you need. When this happens, be ready to ask for help.

I do believe that you are the first point of interaction when you face an employee performance issue. In fact, I strongly encourage you to do everything in your power to address the issue within your team. I also encourage you to ask for help from your supervisor and from your HR department and to do so early in the process.

When it comes to performance issues, there are personal issues, legal issues, company policies, and historical precedent that you to need navigate successfully. Unless you are an expert on labor law in your state and know everything about every employee issue ever addressed at your company, you are going to need help. The best place to get this help is from your supervisor and from your HR department.

I am not suggesting that you throw up your hands and ask them to handle the situation. I am suggesting that you engage with them early in the process to get both their perspective and guidance on how to best proceed so that everyone (you, the employee in question, the rest of your team, and the organization as a whole) is protected and treated fairly.

As you enter front-line leadership, remember that the personal drive and desire for accomplishment that gave you the opportunity to move into leadership has both good and bad associated with it. It is good because it makes you a high achiever. It can be bad if it stops you from asking for help when you need.

Remember, it is okay to ask for help.

Communication & Interpersonal Skills, Leadership, Long-Distance Work

The Meeting that Could Have Been an Email

I’ve been researching and writing on virtual meetings for almost twenty years. I’ve heard a lot of complaints, but the one that most amuses is, “I just sat through another meeting that could have been an email.”

Sure, it’s funny and looks great on a coffee mug. And we have so many meetings it might be lovely to have alternatives to yet another hour spent staring into a webcam hoping our faces don’t betray our misery. But are emails really an alternative to meeting as a group? If so, why do so many leaders wind up leading meetings on the topic anyway?

When I ask leaders about it, I get one answer far more frequently than any other. The response reveals a lot about both the team leader and the team members. Here is the top answer, and what both parties can do to make the situation less painful.

“I wouldn’t have to call a meeting if they actually read the email.” This is the number one answer by a mile. Leaders consistently say they send information in an email, but don’t think anyone reads it, so they wind up calling a meeting just to make sure the information was received and to answer any questions.

There’s a lot to unpack here, but if you’re the leader, here are some things you can do.

Request a response.

And not just a read receipt, but an actual answer from the team with either an acknowledgment that they read and understood the message, or any questions or comments they have as a result. Bonus points for posting the answers in a Slack or Teams channel rather than email, so that people can read the answers to other questions and save you all some work and time.

Write clearer emails.

Just because you sent a message doesn’t mean they read it. And even if they read it, there’s no guarantee they understood it the way you meant it. Take the time to be clear about not only the content of the message, but what the action items or main points are. One best practice here: Bulleted lists of items or points are preferable to lengthy paragraphs.

Offer ways to answer questions or clarify points that don’t require dragging everyone on to Zoom.

Not everyone is going to have the same questions. Some of your team will understand and take action, others won’t read it at all, and most will have some questions before your message can be truly understood. Include links to FAQs, or the company website, or a longer document in SharePoint where they can get the answers they need.

You send a lot of emails. Make it clear which ones require particular attention.

The dirty little secret of email is most of them don’t get opened. People get so many that they read the subject line, and possibly the first paragraph if it fits in the preview pane. If the information you’re sending is critical or requires action, don’t bury that at the end of a message. Put “Action Required,” in the subject line, or start your email with something akin to, “This message has priority. Please ______ after you’ve read it.”

As the sender of a communication, you have a lot of influence over whether people read it and take action, but very little direct control. If you are the team member or email recipient, you have a responsibility as well.

Acknowledge the message.

Your manager wants to know that you not only received the message, but understood it and plan to take the action requested. When she tells you something verbally, face to face, she can tell by your expression and body language that you understood or have questions. In email or IM, there is no way of gauging whether you “got it” or not. This is the main reason you wind up having to have a meeting. If you don’t want to get sucked into another meeting, let the boss know it’s unnecessary.

Ask questions.

No matter how good a communicator your manager is, it’s almost impossible to craft a written message that doesn’t raise questions. They might be big (Why are we doing this?) or minor (when do you want it done?).

Take action.

When someone requests you take action, it doesn’t mean you have to drop everything and do it (unless that’s the specific request). But the longer between sending the message and seeing results, the more the sender will start to wonder if it got read, or if anyone is going to do what’s asked. Eventually, paranoia sets in and they believe nothing will happen so, yup, it’s time to call a meeting.

All communication, verbal or written, contains three components: message sent, message received, message understood. If there isn’t evidence that all three stages have been completed, it’s likely the sender will reinforce their message or confirm understanding by either spending time following up, or saving time by calling a meeting.

Whether you’re the sender or the receiver, if you are tired of meetings that could have been emails, then make the most of the email. It’s simple, even if it doesn’t look cool on a coffee mug.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Wayne Turmel
Co-Founder and Product Line Manager

Wayne Turmel is the co-founder and Product Line Manager for the Remote Leadership Institute. For twenty years he’s been obsessed with helping managers communicate more effectively with their teams, bosses and customers. Wayne is the author of several books that demystify communicating through technology including Meet Like You Mean It – a Leader’s Guide to Painless & Productive Virtual Meetings, 10 Steps to Successful Virtual Presentations and 6 Weeks to a Great Webinar. His work appears frequently in Management-Issues.com.

Wayne, along with Kevin Eikenberry, has co-authored the definitive book on leading remotely, The Long-Distance Leader: Rules for Remarkable Remote Leadership. Wayne and Kevin’s follow-up book, The Long-Distance Teammate, offers a roadmap for success not just for leaders, but for everyone making the transition to working remotely.

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