Articles for category: Leadership

October 2, 2020

Greg Thomas

All Video, All the Time?

I was having a call a few weeks ago where we were trying to figure out how make our meetings more productive. The immediate answer from someone on the call – “Everyone should have video on, we should turn it on by default, I want to see everyone’s faces”. I shut it down and here’s why… Just because I can see your face, it doesn’t mean you are engaged, it just means you are there. When someone has a poor connection, the video saps their audio, which collectively degrades the call. I want to hear what you are talking about,

October 1, 2020

Greg Thomas

Don’t Forget the Little Things

Was at a store the other night and saw a few of these drinks in the grocery area. For some reason, Grape Crush has been the treat over the last few years you didn’t know you would ever want. Goes great with pizza and shawarma. How many little things are you missing right now? What did you used to do with your team that you can’t do anymore? What do miss having? What is your team missing? We’re all missing little things, some things that won’t be back for a long, long time. After six months, I got lucky and

September 30, 2020

Greg Thomas

Optional Meeting Invites

I’ve never been a fan of optionally inviting people to meetings. It’s always screamed at me – “If you don’t want them there, don’t invite them”. But now having worked with people remotely for a longer period of time, I’m starting to see the value in can have in people’s minds. And I still think it’s wrong because we are associating optional meeting invites as a way to cure FOMO for the remote age (Fear of Missing Out). So we let everyone know when a meeting is happening, why it is happening and give the option to show up if

September 28, 2020

Greg Thomas

Setting Expectations

With the absence of video in a call, you’d think it’d be an easy task to dole out some work. Truth be told though, if you wait a week to see what happens you’ll come to realize that what you asked for is not what you are getting. Even worst, most likely not when you were expecting to get it. Setting expectations in person is a simple endeavour, when tasks are assigned we observe the person’s response, their body language, behaviour, eye movements, how they leave the room or write it down. Even in a video call you won’t capture

September 24, 2020

Greg Thomas

The Hard Decisions made Remotely

It can be very tough right now to have the hard conversations with your team – when everyone is remote, when people are going through their own struggles, when each day is drastically more different than the last. But the Hard Decisions aren’t going anywhere. You are still going to have to handle them in a remote environment. Whether it’s over the phone or in video, you are going to have make the hard decisions for the benefit of whatever project you are working on and whatever team you are leading. For the sole reason, that they need you to.

© 2025 Rambli by Greg Thomas. All rights reserved.