In today's world of remote and hybrid and even after three years of working in it, leaders are still challenged by maintaining connections with their teams. The old "out of sight, out of mind" happens very easily in a remote world, but I have found that being remote makes it even more important to make a conscious effort to stay connected.
One of the many tools I picked up from the Agile discipline is the concept of a daily stand-up. In Agile, a project team will have a daily short meeting to discuss progress on the project in high level terms. It is called a standup because it used to be done standing in a group in the office. Stand-ups are usually 15 minutes in length and come from the software development space, but definitely have a use case in any environment.
I have daily stand-up calls with my team, and while we're usually sitting and on Zoom, the purpose and benefit of these calls are unchanged. We usually have everybody share three things:
What are they working on today?
What are their obstacles to success?
How can I help?
I have found that having daily calls with my team allow me to do a few things:
I get daily face time with them even though we are very spread out in the continental U.S.
I find out about obstacles and challenges very early on and directly from my folks.
It gives me an opportunity to ensure that we are all aligned within the team and with the organization much more frequently. Considering that resources are always a challenge, this is a big benefit of the daily standup.
Some days I am unavailable, but I generally ask my team to hold the meetings without me. Sometimes we skip a day. I just apply the 80/20 rule here like I do in so many other areas of my life. Making the effort and connecting with your team daily is almost a necessity in the remote and hybrid workplace.
And let's face it, 15 minutes of productive structure beat 45 minutes of water cooler talk in the office any day!
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