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 particularly relevant as we examine hybrid work, and whether we can work from somewhere other than the office.

How answering questions helps us

As the world of work changes, so do the jobs we do, where we do them and who we do them with. There’s a lot of nonsense spread about his, which makes it hard to actually address the issues, especially on a personal basis. Answering some of the questions, though, is critical to planning your (and your organization’s) path forward. As we think about hybrid work and other ways of getting the job done, it’s important that we understand the basics of the work so that we know how to best meet its demands

There are rumors floating around that 85% of the jobs people will have in 2030 haven’t been invented yet. As this Forbes article points out, that’s a dubious number at best. It’s still worth thinking about. We know that there are jobs now that didn’t exist a decade or two ago and likely that things will change. Some of that confusion is how we describe our jobs. We had plenty of marketing professionals twenty years ago, but not one “head of video and Tik Tok content.”

Simple questions that lead to understanding

Here are three questions that sound simple, but answering them thoroughly can help you and your team understand what’s really needed to get everyone on the same page (versus what has always been or what we’d like to see.)

In The Long Distance Team, Designing Your Team for Everyone’s Success, Kevin Eikenberry and I have four simple-sounding questions that can have serious implications for the future of your workplace, regardless of your job title:

• Where should we work? This is the one most people think about first, and admittedly, what for some feels like the biggest change in paradigm of work. The options here are many. Will we all be together some or all the time? Will some people “never” come to the office? Will geographical location matter at all?
• When should we work? When we will work relates to days in the week, times of the day, and overall hours in the week. What do we want, and what will allow the work outputs and goals to be reached?
• How should we work? This is a big part of this book. We need to determine the work processes and culture—from how we design the team, to the work processes, the culture, and more. We have more decisions to make here than ever before—even though they are as obvious as the other decisions we discussed.
• Who should we work with?  Who will be on the team and how do we define team? What will be our goals and desires around diversity of all sorts? How will we think about part-timers, contract/gig employees, and more? Where are people from, and what are their backgrounds and perspectives

What you call your job doesn’t really matter (and it changes all the time.) When you start asking these questions—and honestly answering them—you may find that we can work in different, new and often exciting ways

It might even help you explain your job to Gramma.

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.

The latest book from Wayne and Kevin shows leaders how to design a team culture that has a one-team mindset and gets great results under hybrid-work conditions. You can order The Long-Distance Team: Designing Your Team for Everyone’s Success now.