If aliens landed in your front yard tomorrow and asked you what you did every day, what would you tell them?  This seems like a silly question so let’s make it less complicated. Can you explain your job to your grandparents? Here’s why understanding and being able to explain your job matters. It will be

Read More

Guest article by Shaara Roman As humans, we live for connection. In a world where it can be easy to feel alone, having friends gives us an uplifting sense of belonging… which is quite literally necessary for our survival and our ability to contribute meaningfully to society. Loneliness is widely considered as one of the

Read More

Guest article by Steven Kowalski, Ph.D. Are you leading a team that’s pioneering and pushing the boundaries? Maybe you’re developing a new service or product feature, debugging a glitch, improving an existing process, evolving your customer engagement strategy, or reinventing your approach in light of some disruption. When we think about it, most of us

Read More

Does being in sync with your teammates mean you have to be on the same schedule? Why do we have so many meetings every day? Why do so many companies insist on people going back to the office? Why do people insist on introducing their cat to people on web chats? When we ask our

Read More

When we think about Long-Distance Teams, we often take a very narrow view. We spend a lot of time focusing on those people who directly report to us and work with each other. We refer to those people as our “nuclear” team.  Maybe we need to think bigger. Taking a cue from families The term

Read More

The wave of remote work was rising for years before the COVID tsunami hit. At that time, most of the concern was on individuals: How do you as a leader need to do to get the most from your teams when you weren’t all in the same place at the same time? How can I

Read More

How long is a “work week?” Which days do you work? Who determines that? If you were asked to work ten hours a day, six days a week, would you consider that excessive? Until a good way through the 20th century, that was the norm. Then we began working Monday to Friday, either 8 to

Read More

There has been lots of thinking, concern, and even handwringing about the future of teams and culture in many organizations. As people have thought about and implemented a Return to Office policy (with varying success), they have come to realize that work and the expectations of it have changed. With those changes come questions about

Read More

The idea for this post comes from being a fan of college basketball. I enjoy the action, excitement, and suspense of the games. But I also draw leadership, teamwork, and coaching insight from watching, too. As I’ve watched my beloved Purdue Boilermakers this winter, I’ve asked myself if it takes a team of stars to

Read More

We spend a lot of time here talking about how managers should adapt to those who work remotely. That frequently includes those who come into the office a day or two a week. But what responsibilities do people who usually work remotely have to their in-office boss and teammates? Are you aware of your responsibility?

Read More