When the world was faced with Covid, remote work emerged as an appropriate solution to the need for social distancing. Its adoption as a permanent work model is now a topic that has the world divided. There are multiple reasons why team leaders don’t approve with the idea of remote work and many of them have to do with their fear that teams will slack without that in-person proximity. In this episode of the Jake Dunlap Show, Melissa Romo, author of “Your Resource is Human: How empathetic leadership can help remote teams rise above” joins Jake in a discussion about the pros and cons of remote work, unspoken remote work emotions and the most common issues that leaders face when coordinating remote teams. A long-distance leadership aficionado, Melissa shares why, despite being a career remote worker herself, she feels that the best solution for companies right now is to customize work to the individual and follow the organized hybrid work model popularized by Nicholas Bloom.
When the world was faced with Covid, remote work emerged as an appropriate solution to the need for social distancing. Its adoption as a permanent work model is now a topic that has the world divided. There are multiple reasons why team leaders don’t approve with the idea of remote work and many of them have to do with their fear that teams will slack without that in-person proximity.
In this episode of the Jake Dunlap Show, Melissa Romo, author of “Your Resource is Human: How empathetic leadership can help remote teams rise above” joins Jake in a discussion about the pros and cons of remote work, unspoken remote work emotions and the most common issues that leaders face when coordinating remote teams.
A long-distance leadership aficionado, Melissa shares why, despite being a career remote worker herself, she feels that the best solution for companies right now is to customize work to the individual and follow the organized hybrid work model popularized by Nicholas Bloom.
Time stamps:
(00:57) Meet Mellisa Romo, author of the best-seller “Your Resource is Human: How empathetic leadership can help remote teams rise above”, and VP of Global Marketing at Sage;
(02:47) Most common issues leaders face when interacting with their remote teams: trust, proximity bias & hybrid organized model;
(11:00) Boredom, depression, paranoia, loneliness, and guilt- the 5 unspoken remote work emotions;
(16:37) Emotional professionalism- how do companies deal with the pressure of people looking for a sense of purpose in their work;
(21:54) Other leadership behaviors- accomplishing things as a team, communicating with optimism, and one on one conversations that combat loneliness and give employees a sense of belonging;
(31:11) Tactical things that transform remote work into a positive experience (for the employer as well as for the employee).
Quotes :
“There’s this persistent fear that when people are at home they’re not productive or they’re slacking off (...) The reality is (remote work) is more productive, and there is data behind this. (...) If someone is slacking off it becomes really evident, work just doesn’t get delivered. Things slow down, you don’t really need to see the person to know that they’re slacking off.”
“If you don’t trust your people, why did you even hire them?”
“We need to take the leader's location, and we need to look at how that leader is rating their people, where are those people located, and here is what I bet you’ll see! Geographically, the further away that employee is from his leader’s location, the worse their rating. (...) We just have these built-in biases that don’t serve our interest as a company.”
“Organised hybrid means to decide a day, or two, or three when everyone comes in, and by everyone I mean a group of people that have sort of obvious collaboration needs and you know that when you go on Tuesday, you’re going to be in the office with people that have similar collaboration needs as you.”
“If (remote workers) don’t like that they’re being asked to come in, I would ask them to think about the people who are new to the company, the people who just got hired and are trying to get a read on the culture and are trying to build a network in the company. (...) They can’t come into the office alone and build a network alone. They need you to show up!”
“You’re not going to get anything from people when they’re burned out. I look at the timestamp of emails from the people working for me and sometimes I’ll see somebody send the first email at 5 am and the last email at 10 pm, and I go straight to that person and I say I don’t want to see this again. And I’m very strict about that.”
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Get in contact with Melissa:
Website- https://www.melissaromoauthor.com/
TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@melissaromoauthor
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissatromo/
Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/romoauthor
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/romowriter/
Melissa’s book:
Your Resource Is Human: How Empathetic Leadership Can Help Remote Teams Rise Above
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Mentions:
Nicholas Bloom- Stanford Economics Professor, Speaker, and Consultant on Remote Work
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Follow Jake:
Website- https://www.jakedunlap.com/
Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/jake_dunlap_/
Linkedin- https://www.linkedin.com/in/jakedunlap
Twitter- https://twitter.com/jaketdunlap