Someone asked me a tricky question the other day, and in thinking through the answer I realized that there are a whole lot of people working from home these days who never planned to—at least for months at a time. As a result, companies and workers are faced with some sticky situations that aren’t covered

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Few consider meetings the highlight of their workday – more probably consider it the bane of their work life. It is true that meetings, while important and potentially useful, aren’t always very good. Sadly, now that most meetings are being held virtually, it hasn’t gotten any better. The challenge is how to have more effective

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What do monkeys have to do with successfully working from home? A recent article from Harvard Business Review online studied how the COVID-19 inspired surge in working from home has impacted business. We’ll probably do a better examination in  a future article, but one of the things that surprised the authors was this: Despite all

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Everyone knows that new things go better when people know what to expect and how things work. That is the idea and intent behind onboarding – providing information and insight to help people succeed and thrive faster in a new job. Onboarding has been taken more seriously and given more attention in recent years for

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Zoom. At the beginning of the year, maybe you had heard of this tool for online meetings. Now, like Band-Aid and Xerox, it is a product name that has become a verb. People are creating and sending Zoom links for everything from first grade instruction to daily meetings to conversations between grandparents and grandkids. It

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You’ve been working remotely for a while. At the start, it went pretty well – you had a common challenge with your team and you met it. But now, you are finding that remote work fatigue is real. You know that work can be stressful at times, but this remote work fatigue you are feeling

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If you are coaching others in the workplace, you probably have some sort of performance management process. While these typically culminate in the annual meeting, many suggest or require at least a midyear check-in too. Even if your process doesn’t suggest that, I believe you benefit everyone by having midyear check-ins. The question is, how

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As I talk to leaders and team members who are working remotely, I hear their challenges, struggles, and concerns. One of the biggest challenges I hear is about remote team communication. People are figuring out the technology and making that work. But Zoom, Slack, and Microsoft Teams (and all the tools like them) don’t perfect

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Maybe you’ve been in a book club, or maybe due to the pandemic your book club has been cancelled.  But have you ever been to a book club with the author(s) of the book?  Now you can read a book, discuss and learn about it from others, and then ask questions of the authors.  Introducing

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While everyone wants a friend who is empathetic, some will not consider that to be a necessary work skill/habit. If that includes you, I hope you will continue reading. Here is my premise: an empathetic leader is a remarkable leader. The times we live in underscore this premise and actually allow (or force?) many leaders

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