When I was growing up, most households only had one phone and it was usually in the kitchen. And teens spent alllll the time on that phone. Today’s teens also spend a lot of time on the phone, as do most of us. These tiny devices consume so much of our time and attention, although

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Is it okay to turn your webcam off in the middle of a team call? That seems like a reasonable question, but it always seems to get people worked up. It should be a binary answer: yes or no. But the real answers are “sometimes,” and “it depends.” We all know the pros and cons

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In a fast-paced (and often remote working) world, we seem to run our days on “transactions” – short-term, project-driven tasks. And while transactions get things done in the short term, relationships are built and nourished on interactions. And in a remote working world, relationships are even harder to maintain. That’s why it’s important that we

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One of the great paradoxes of remote work is that it requires a lot of trust, yet that trust is hard to build at a distance and easily damaged. Most of us start out assuming positive intent, and that we trust in people until they show us they’re more deserving of mistrust. At worst, we

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Apology is a powerful — and often underused — conflict resolution tool. One reason for not apologizing that I often hear in my work with clients is the concern that apologizing either totally admits fault for the conflict or reveals a weakness. While those concerns may be legitimate in some situations, they are overblown in

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Are you training your remote teammates to get in the way of your productivity? Of all the discussions we have in our classes with long-distance workers, one of the most fruitful is when we talk about how we teach our coworkers and manager to work with us and help us succeed. Sometimes, however, they learn

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When I was a kid, many kids spent hours talking on the phone. Now, kids the same age spend hours on their phones too. But more likely, they are texting rather than talking. When I first joined the workforce, I spent lots of time on the phone. Now, I have more communication options than ever,

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No doubt, bad news has been the norm lately, and you may have already had to be be the bearer of it more than once. As a leader, especially a new leader, the last thing you want to do is deliver bad news to your employees, who may assume that you are somehow responsible for

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Most of us are holding more remote meetings now, and if you haven’t noticed, they are inherently different from in-person meetings,” says Howard Tiersky, coauthor along with Heidi Wisbach of Impactful Online Meetings: How to Run Polished Virtual Working Sessions That Are Engaging and Effective. “If you’re not used to running them, you’re going to

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As leaders, we know that one-on-one communication with our team is critical. When we can’t just look out and survey the cubicle-farm to see how people are doing, the little time we get to spend with each employee becomes more precious. That’s why conducting these meetings is perhaps the most important skill a long-distance leader

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