Can you grow your team remotely? And I’m not talking physically – I’m talking about leadership, development skills, scale, empathy, learning. Did you grow your team remotely? Did they develop over the past year when they were all separate? They probably weren’t attending any conferences this year so what did you offer them instead? It’s good not to have answers to these questions, it’s bad to now not do anything about it. Set the goals…
When you are small, everyone and everything is within reach – you are all close together, all next to each other. You can smell the excitement and fear as you push code into production. It’s not one person doing it, it’s everyone, waiting, with bated breath to see what happens. When a customer calls in with an issue, everyone is watching the chat conversation or listening to the speaker. Everyone is there, everyone is involved…
One-On-Ones are hard, they aren’t easy. If they were easy, we wouldn’t need to do them. Getting started with a team member where there is no trust is even harder because we want that immediate trust, that immediate connection, that quick win. If your one-on-ones are all walks in the park, you’re either not asking the right questions or you’re not putting in the right amount of effort. Embrace the struggle.
If you aren’t going to do the work that comes with the idea. Then don’t propose the idea. You don’t have to do all the work, but you have to get it started, you have to kick it off, you have to lead it beyond an initial meeting. That first piece of work, that threat of work, is what holds so many ideas back from becoming the start of something great.
There is a lot being discussed about 4-Day Work Weeks and I don’t want to spoil it. We took a hot take on it for Remotely Prepared – and yes – it was fun. I’m all in favour of 4-Day Work Weeks but I honestly have to wonder – why do we keep having to do all these studies? Just get it going and do it.