Last week, I wrote this post on LinkedIn about how remote work doesn’t (shouldn’t) stop you from meeting your colleagues. At the time, I was meeting with colleagues in the UK - in person, and for a limited and dedicated amount of time.
So, for those who haven’t heard the news yet: the pandemic is over. You are allowed to travel. It is now possible to get your team together intentionally to strengthen the foundation of your work.
Arguably, you should even do that if you do meet in the office. Communication doesn’t happen by Osmosis, so investing in intentional team building is always a good idea.
The problem: where do you even start with the transformation?
Disconnected and unmotivated team members have a real impact on the bottom line: estimations range from 15-37% of their annual salary, that’s 9-22k per year for someone on a 60k salary. Knowing the problem isn’t the same as knowing what to do about it.
And IF you ever did a leadership course (another pet peeve of mine: “Congratulations! Here’s your new team. Good luck!”), that course probably didn’t address the reality of a distributed team.
So here are my recommendations if you are in that situation:
Start biweekly 1:1s with each team member, and learn more about them. What motivates them? How do they work best? What’s going on in their lives? Be curious, and be ready to also share some tidbits about yourself.
Investigate the expected fault lines in your team. Where can you predict friction, and how can you mitigate it? Sometimes it’s role-dependent, sometimes it’s personality, sometimes it’s differences in managing feedback. Addressing the elephant in the room can make a huge difference.
Get the team together, in person, at least twice a year. Just you and your direct reports, for 4-5 days sharing stories, laughter, food and work. Approach the meetup like organising one of those annual weekends with your university friends, and it won’t break the bank.
Measure team impact, team outcomes, and team involvement before and after the meetup so you can create an internal database of facts for others to follow your lead.
Lean into the current trend of “making things human again”. Get together and work together, and also go for a hike or a city tour together. Not every day, but once per quarter. Leave the fake humanity to AI and engage in real connection instead.
You are a good enough manager as it is. I believe you can be a great leader, one who inspires loyalty.
Remember: employees do not leave companies; they break up with their direct manager. Investing in your capacity to retain employees saves your company real money. Each person leaving costs 50% or more of their annual salary to replace them. You do the maths.
And that’s why I completely redesigned the Remote Leadership Accelerator - the flagship leadership program that used to be online only. I’ve added an in-person meetup. It means the group is now capped at 10 people, but the impact will be so much more immediate. Anyway, here you go:
Introducing Meetup Mastery - the improved and expanded version of the Remote Leadership Accelerator
Meetup Mastery. Leading Distributed Teams with Confidence is a live, guided program for managers and team leaders who understand that location isn’t everything and that you can have impact even at a distance. And sometimes that means that you need to meet in person, intentionally and with a plan.
Over 8 weeks, you’ll learn to adapt your leadership style to a remote or hybrid reality without ending up in the dreaded micro-management trap. We’ll combine online classes with an in-person meetup in Spain, to accelerate your learning and help you to model your own future get-togethers. (Full documentation and playbook included).
The cliff notes
This is the next iteration of the previous Remote Leadership Accelerator, a dedicated program for those with team members who aren’t in the same office.
Weekly group classes on Mondays, 1 pm CEST, starting April 13th, or 3 pm CEST, starting March 23rd.
Weekly 1:1 coaching sessions with me to adapt the learnings to your situation.
A Culture Map assessment to improve your collaboration within international/intercultural environments.
You’ll get the full course documentation, including all templates and checklists needed for the course.
Each group is capped at 10 people, and you get a course certificate at the end.
And here are ALL the details. Get tea ready, or scroll through to the end and book a call with me: https://valentinathoerner.com/meetup-mastery
Or reply to this email if none of the times work, and we can work some
