Articles for category: Leadership

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.

September 23, 2020

Greg Thomas

Remote Mentorship

For our final interview of Season 1 of Remotely Prepared, we were fortunate to sit down with Stacy Cassio – Founder & CEO of the Pink Mentor Network. It was a great interview and a perfect note to end the season on as Stacy talks about her experiences in growing her mentorship company on a remote scale. There is a ton of great information in it, so if you haven’t had a chance to listen to it, here it is. Full Episode

September 22, 2020

Greg Thomas

Onboarding is Changing

We used to put a lot of effort into what someone would see at their desk when they arrived on their first day. Some getting started reading, some papers to sign, a great workstation with new equipment, perhaps a lunch out on the first day to get to know you better and of course, the flybys by the leadership team throughout the day welcoming you to the company. How much of this is still happening? And if it is how are you giving it that personal feel to it? Are the equipment and books coming straight from Amazon? Are the