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Starting a thread to share things I am learning about leading a team that& #39;s newly entirely remote. I& #39;m sure a lot of this will be obvious to lots of ppl, so just sharing in case it& #39;s at all useful to anyone who& #39;s also new to this and learning as they go...
1/n Everyone says this, but over-communicating is very definitely a thing. I& #39;m doing this to an extent I find uncomfortable - I feel like I am being repetitive and boring; but I reckon if you don& #39;t feel that way you are probably not communicating enough.
2/n If you& #39;re introducing new ways of working or channels of communication that people aren& #39;t used to, you need to *really* go out of your way to explain what they& #39;re for, that they& #39;re safe and how they work. Help people understand how they might use them and what& #39;s ok / not ok.
3/n Give people explicit, repeated and full permission to feel whatever they& #39;re feeling and talk about it openly with each other. A powerful way to do this (I reckon - am trying it out) is to create space for / encourage a few people your team trust to lead by example.
4/n Keep reassuring people, as often and clearly as you can, that it& #39;s not just them who feels weird; this whole situation is really weird and unsettling and it& #39;s ok not to be as productive as usual, to feel whatever you feel about it and to take some time to adjust.
5/n Now more than ever, your most important work is the work of supporting your team to deal with this situation in a safe and healthy way. Make this explicitly clear to everyone, otherwise they might assume you& #39;re too busy to help them and try to struggle on on their own.
6/n It needs to be ok for people to have nothing to do, especially during this initial period of dust settling. Doing nothing is more useful than running around urgently trying to do helpful things that aren& #39;t actually that helpful.
7/n You need to make it *really clear* to everyone that it& #39;s ok not to carry on with the things they were working on before, and that you& #39;re not expecting previously set / routine deadlines and tasks to be met as per usual.
8/n Go outside and look at the sky / some trees/ the horizon once a day, and encourage everyone else to do the same.
9/n People want to help with the response and help each other, and helping people is really good for everyone& #39;s wellbeing. Try to orchestrate and support small ways for people to help each other.
10/n A lot of people, including me, have a tendency to do everything themselves when they are really under pressure, rather than taking time to bring others in. Don& #39;t do this, it& #39;s not sustainable or effective: spread the load, ask for help, let others lead.
11/n There will be some kind of new normality established soon, it won& #39;t always be like this - remind yourself and everyone else of this and help create a feeling that we are riding out the storm together and we know that it will pass, one way or another.
12/n in your daily comms to your team, include a list of questions you can& #39;t answer yet but know about and are working on, so that people know that you know what they are worried about and that more clarity is to come even if you can& #39;t provide it right now.
13/n be clear and honest about the fact that you are new to this, doing your best but really want and welcome feedback and ideas on how the team can collectively do this as well as possible
14/n video is much, much better than telephone. Did our daily all-hands call on Zoom today rather than phone conference and it was LOVELY to see everyone& #39;s faces. Definitely sticking with that from now on, whether we& #39;re all remote or eventually not.
15/n Mentimeter ( http://mentimeter.com"> http://mentimeter.com ) is a really nice free(mium) tool do polls / wordclouds in real time. Dead easy to set up. Used it with my team today in our daily call and quickly learned useful things about how everyone is feeling and what I can do to help.
16/n Fun is really seriously important https://twitter.com/janethughes/status/1245731011503239168?s=21">https://twitter.com/janethugh... https://twitter.com/JanetHughes/status/1245731011503239168">https://twitter.com/JanetHugh...
