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Hey guys, welcome back to Leadership Detectives. Great to have you back here with us again. So here we are, just about to go back into lockdown. I'd like to think that we've learned a few things from the first time around. Ways of operating, how we spent our time. Let's think about that.
What we thought we'd do is let's give you a couple of tips that nearly not picked up from talking with guests that have joined us and from our own experiences of companies that we're working with about some ways in which you can be more effective while working remotely and working. So we've got seven tips that we put together here. I'll give you some insight into them. Number one, strategy and direction. Number two, some clear objectives and clarity for your team as to why.
Number three, communication, what and how to communicate. Number four, investing in the skills of your team whilst you find yourself in this situation. Number five is your time management, the rules of engagement that you work with your team when working remotely. Number six is being human and realizing that people are working on their own home while they're talking about it. And number seven is planning in some fun and having some fun when you do it.
So they're the messages that we've got over the next 20 minutes or so. I hope it's useful for you. Enjoy the session. Talk to you soon. Welcome back to Leadership Detectives and our next go at giving you some good tips for being great leaders. Um hey Neil, good to see you here. How are you doing?
You well? Um feeling good, thank you. Yeah, yeah, I'm really good. And uh, you know, it's a strange old world we live in. You know, it feels like deja vu. Here we go again. Uh back into uh back into lockdown.
Yeah. Which kind of makes today's, we thought today's topic um on leading in lockdown would be a really good topic to try and help, really, uh, with things that we've learned over the last few months in the stuff we've been interviewing with people, yeah, in businesses we've worked with, in stuff we've read and stuff we've seen, just to try and pull together some tips and ideas on how to lead in the best way possible as we go into another another lockdown.
So we just wanted to do something that was helpful.
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, yeah, so here we are, you know, we're days away from when that's gonna kick in again. And and as you say, we've learned a lot. I bet the people that are watching this have learned a lot as well, you know. So if we can add to that and give you the optimum way to operate, stay sane and stay happy, right? Because it's not just about doing your job, you've got to live a life, right?
Yeah, yeah. And that's getting harder, I think. You know, and and that's probably uh uh an episode on its own, is is how do you stay sane as a leader during all of this uncertainty and this up, down and turmoil? So that's probably an episode, it's all right. But it if if any if we can help with some best practice ideas that might uh just cut through the trial and error that a lot of people have been going through, then that would be great.
So, look, for the course of the next kind of 20 minutes or so, guys, we're gonna rattle off some thoughts for you. And by the way, in the comments on the feedback, let us know if you've got anything, right? If you've got some magic snippets that you want to tell other people about or tell us about, please do that, right? Because it's by no means that we've got all the answers here. So we've got seven points we're gonna run through. Let's kick off with the first one, right? Go through it.
First one is looking at, and and by the way, this is standard that we talked about before, but even more so when you're at home. Having a clear strategy and having a clear direction for your business and what you've set out to do. I think it's really important that you understand what that is and have communicated that well and have even dialogued it with people, right? It's not just about throwing this out there, it's about making sure you discussed it. So, Neil, you got some thoughts on that?
Yeah, I think what's what's really key at the moment is yeah, the having a vision and strategy is always important as a leader, but at the moment, it's really clear on so in this new world, in this uncertain world, as a business, this is the direction we're going in. This is our strategy, this is how we're gonna try and win market share, this is how we're gonna try and serve our customers, this is how we're gonna try and uh improve our PL or help our employees.
It's just being really, really clear on what not what the tactics are, but what the strategic direction of the business is.
That might have changed slightly as well, right? Given the environment you're in, you might have made a slight change to what what you're actually trying to achieve in this period for success now.
Yeah, so so then the question around having the vision and strategies are important, but I've also seen in the last um couple of months or last six months, two two things that are really important is involving your leaders in that process, yeah. So build bringing your leadership team into that process so they're involved, as well as the broader business, bringing them into that as as well, and making sure you how you communicate has to be through multiple routes, yeah.
It's not sending an email once a month that it may be having a town hall, yeah, so that you once a month you're updating on how's the strategy doing. Yeah, yeah. Um, but if you haven't got that vision of strategy, then no one really knows what's important and where they fit into that strategy as well.
Yeah, no, absolutely agree. So that's number one, guys. Make sure you're clear what is your strategy and what are your objectives, you know, immediately for the business right now.
Yeah, so number two. Number two. So we've talked about this a number of times, we'll reinforce it again. It's come up in interviews we had. Is at this stage, especially working at home, people working at home, they have to know what good looks like, they have to know what they're supposed to be doing, what's expected of them, yeah, clear objectives, clarity on what to do and why to do it. Why is what they're doing important?
Because if you're just telling someone what to do without the why, it really doesn't help. Yeah, so you need to um be clear on what does good look like. So that's the first part of number two, is be really clear on that.
Yeah. Yeah, I'd reinforce with you on the why, right? Someone needs to understand if you're having to do certain things that you're asking me to achieve, whether it's a short-term objective or a longer-term objective, what is it feeding into? What is the reason to do it? Because that drives my motivation, but it also drives my understanding. So don't underplay the why, guys. People are not just there as machines to chug out actions for you, they need to know the role they're playing in there.
Yeah, and I think I was reading something the other day because there's when when we first started lockdown, a lot of the leaders I coach were worried about how do they know what their employees are doing when they are not at work, when they can't see them. And actually, I saw a really good comment the other day that said, How do you know what they were doing when you could see them? You know, I'll go great comment.
You know, so um there's a definite element of trust and integrity, but if people are gonna skive, they're gonna find ways of skiving. If they're gonna get distracted, they're gonna find ways of being distracted.
Yeah, yeah.
So, but in general, people want to feel valued. You've heard that in loads of our interviews and and our uh episodes. People want to feel valued, they want to feel part of something, they want to do a good job, but they need to know what that means. They don't want to feel like a number in a factory, they want to feel like that what they're doing is important and contributes.
I I actually had when I was a leader, I actually had an employee who was running his own business in the background and doing a fantastic job of it, whilst being a great sales leader as well. So who cares? So who cares? So long as they clear what are the objectives you want them to hit for the business now. So that's why.
So so the and and then the other key thing of that is is it's not just setting them, it's then checking in.
Check in on a regular basis that they're doing what you want them to do, so it's important for you to feel comfortable, but secondly, that you are helping them know that they're doing the right things, and that you are so so uh being clear on what to do is one thing, then making sure that it's happening, and the best practice I've seen around that is every week having 30 minutes with an employee to go through it.
If you've got tons of employees, that might not be possible, yeah, it might be every other week, uh, but whatever the regularity is, make it consistent and have a really clear agenda of these are the things we need to go through on. I need to know where you're at against each one of your objectives.
Yeah, it's interesting because Neil and I talked about this just before we started, guys, and it's a difficult balance here between working to review how someone's doing against an objective and overmanaging and checking up on them, right? But there's a balance there. Part of your checking in, by the way, is making sure that you're accessible and that your advice is available and that your review is available because people sometimes need that and want that.
We know of situations of people that say they they don't know how to manage themselves at home, it's not something they used to. We've done it for years, lots of people on here have done it for years. For some people, this is very alien, so it's not overmanaging. Be careful you don't do that, but make sure you're making yourself available and you're looking for progress in the business. Yeah, because people are working from home doesn't mean the business stops.
No, and and and and you're right about the motivation because different people are driven by different things. So some people are are very self-motivated, they don't need much of measurement, they don't need much of a push. Others want to have that regular ongoing measurement. Yeah, you know, there was one uh business I was working with where uh one of the sales guys said, I'm gonna phone you in. I'm gonna phone you in the morning.
I need 10 minutes in the morning where I'm gonna tell you what I'm gonna do today, and I need 10 minutes with you in the evening where I'm gonna tell you what I managed to achieve today, and then the next morning I'm gonna do the same. He said, Because I need to know I'm accountable to you to motivate me. So that was really important. Um, really important for them. And so everybody's different when it comes to that kind of motivation.
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. So, um, number three, let's talk about communication, guys. Communication is absolutely key. One of the things I would say in here is you probably can't over-communicate, yeah, so long as you're not stealing too many people's hours, right? But you've got to communicate with people now. There's different methodologies, there's different styles. So I've combined two things in here.
One of them is about the techniques that you use, but also the technology that you use, right? So don't miss on exploiting the technology available. Neil and I did some training uh last week or week before, and on that course, we had a number of people that I was responsible for as my role, and I needed to keep touch with them. I said to them, why don't we set up a WhatsApp group so we can touch base in there? And and you know, they absolutely loved that.
It's not something they normally would have done, but because I was needing to talk to them in flight while Neil and I were training 33 people on a screen, and it worked a tree. So, would WhatsApp normally have been the way I would have communicated? No. But in that scenario, yes. Think about technology, email, are you using a screen? Are you just using a phone? That's one thing. The other thing then is about techniques.
So, Neil, did you want to talk about some of the techniques that we might use in?
Yeah, so I think there's there's the regularity and consistency. So, some of the best practices I've seen, probably the best I've seen is daily stand-ups for like 10 minutes, where a team will get together and talk about uh what they've done the day before, what they're going to do today. They have like a minute each, depends on the size of your team, but a stand-up every day. So you've had contact with your colleagues on a daily basis. So that works really well.
But I've talked about having the 30-minute reviews of the business KPIs weekly or every other week. Um, but you can go bigger than that, and everybody can have you know, lots of and lots of people have done lots of stuff around this, lots of great ideas and meetings.
But what I'm starting to see now is as we realize that we're not going to get face-to-face, that some of the bigger communication things, like quarterly uh off-sites, virtual off-sites for leadership teams or for the whole business, and now becoming virtual. And you know, you and I are starting to get involved in organizing some of those and having to pull some of those together for people. Because you can do everything you would do, if not more, online than you would do face-to-face.
No one no one wants to do it online, everyone wants to be face to face. But if you can't, there is loads and loads of things you can do to get the same effect, the same engagement, the same output on a quarterly meeting online or an annual kickoff meeting. You know, again, you and I are having lots of conversations with companies about kickoff meetings in January.
Yeah.
Um, so so yeah, there's I think you could think broadly about the daily, the weekly, you know, the the bigger sessions.
I I agree. I I think there are times at which it can work even better. Look, you've missed the personal contact with the people, I get that. So, you know, meeting in the coffee lounge and you know, before the session kicks off and everyone's going in the theater, and it's great to do those kind of things, but you can also be very succinct and you can get your message across extremely well using the technology.
And you know, if anyone wants to talk to us about how we could help them organize uh these kind of virtual offsites or virtual kickoffs, just drop us a message and uh love to talk to you about how we could help or just give you some ideas of what you could do.
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
Okay, so number four on the list. So we had uh clear direction of strategy, knowing what good looks like, and communication. So number four on the list is uh I think this is really important, especially now we're in a second lockdown or second period, is investing in skills and development of your team. We've heard all the way through the last 20 odd weeks that we've been doing these, uh, the leadership detectives, that people value being valued. You invest in them, they will invest in you.
And if you need to allow them to upgrade their skills and allow them to grow in their career by upgrading their skills, and there's loads of ways of doing that remotely. You know, there's the online universities like Udemy and Skillshare. Lots of businesses I know sign up for Udemy. I don't know what it costs a month, but then their employees have access to all of the different training, uh training courses that are on there.
Yeah, I know you can get your accountancy exam online, you can get your your marketing exams online. There are tons of stuff you can do online, and as a business, this is an area where as a leader you should be investing some time and money.
I I what would be interesting as well. I mean, you could take it to an even more simplistic level and say, are they even taking time out to maybe watch things like these videos? Yeah, right, yeah, you know what I mean. I mean, so I can't do a full course, but can I do anything that give me the chance to increase my skill and my effectiveness and my well-being by by things that are available to me? Yeah, so here's a great example, right? And we're talking about 30 minutes a week.
Could you do that?
Correct, correct. And and the other thing I've noticed is you know, and again, both of us have been involved in this, is getting busier with doing leadership coaching and sales coaching with individuals online, the way the business is investing in paying for us to do that and help them, yeah. And uh again, it's just it's such an effective use of time. 45 minutes of coaching, mentoring with someone externally can really help someone grow and they feel invested in.
Yeah. So talking about good use of time, let's go to number five, right? Okay, because number five is about managing your time, scheduling, and working out how you're gonna be effective. So let's think about it, right? You're used to getting up in the morning, showering, changing into your suit or your business dress, getting on the train, all that was mapped out for you. Now it's not mapped out for you. Now you get out of bed in the morning and you have to manage that.
So set yourself up some structure. Think about when you're gonna talk to your team, think about when you're gonna, because this is not just about managing your team, we're talking about managing yourself as an individual as well, right? But think about how you manage your team, manage your structure. When it comes to managing your team, I think we've got a piece here about ingreeing the rules of engagement. How are you gonna work with your team?
What have you outlined to them about the way that the working day functions, about when you're gonna check in with them, about how frequently you're gonna check in with them and they're gonna check in with you. I think you need to put some structure around that, guys, because everybody's working at their own parameters unless you lay that down. And as the leader, it's your role to lay that down, not as rules, but as guidance and parameters.
Yeah, and I think you're this rules of engagement needs to apply to you as to how you're gonna engage on your day as a leader, but also the rules of engagement for how you're gonna what you're gonna ask of your team, how you're gonna communicate with your team, how what what you expect in return. Because you'll be disappointed if you don't set your expect expectations properly.
If you expect someone to respond to an email in five minutes after you've sent it, and their expectation is I'll get to this by the end of the day, you're gonna constantly be disappointed. So there has to be a conversation, and the best thing is have an open conversation about it, about how you're gonna do that. Yeah, um, I think the other thing about time I really want to mention though is you gotta be really disciplined.
And a number of people I work with, I say, you know, we talk about time and the fact they go from one team's call or one Zoom call to another to another to another. And I ask them, why is it you put an hour in the diary for a team call when you don't need an hour or a team meeting?
Well, you know, you could why not put 45 minutes in or 40 minutes in, allow yourself time to follow up because what happens is you end up doing all these uh meetings online, and then at the end of the day, you've got to do all the actions, yeah. So you don't have any time for yourself. So, and I've I've had loads of conversations with people I coach about this. So make sure you don't need 60 minutes for a meeting.
Yeah, so if you want some best practice tips from us, first one would be don't put 60 minutes in the calendar, put 40 minutes or 45 minutes in the calendar or shorter, yeah. Uh, and make sure you're disciplined with that. The second thing I'd uh just share with people is an effective time to work on a task is around 20, 25 minutes without a break. So if you do 20, 25 minutes, stop, take a five-minute walk around, go and grab some water, then come back and sit down and do another 20-25 minutes.
You'll be much more efficient, much more effective. And the only other thing I'd add as well, I've learned during this lockdown is multitasking is something we all think we're brilliant at, and there is absolutely no evidence that people can multitask. You can only do one thing at a time. What happens is you flip from task to task, and then you become less efficient at any of them.
Yeah, yeah. It's interesting actually, because because we we were talking also about the distractions, right? Um, when you're working from home, yes, walk away from that task for five minutes and you know, take a breather. Be careful getting caught by the television or by something else that's now going to take you off track. But there's no harm in that. There's no harm in stopping and watching a five-minute clip of the news.
Just be careful, it hasn't totally disrupted what you had planned to get done in the in the forthcoming time. The other one is I'll come back and reinforce what Neil said. Be careful, guys, that you don't back to back to back to back your sessions, right? We're all doing that when you especially when other people are managing your time and booking calls for you and you're online and you're going call to call to call. And I'll reinforce what Neil says. Can you imagine? In fact, you know it.
You're getting to six o'clock at the end of the day, and your desk is full of stuff that you haven't done. You've got to do it now because guess what? You're back on the screen again at nine o'clock tomorrow morning. You can't work like that, guys.
And as leaders, and as leaders, what we have to do is make sure our people aren't doing that. Yeah, take lead by example, lead and set your time and your calendar and your schedule the way you expect your team to do it. Don't and make sure you're building in time to wander around to go and have um time when you're just not in front of the screen.
Yeah.
Uh, so that you it's really important.
I think that leads nicely into number six, doesn't it?
It leads nicely into number six, which is you know, I think this is a really important element of leadership at the current time is be human. Be human, be understanding of the fact that people are working at home, they've got families, and they may need to work unusual hours, they may not be able to do certain things at certain times. But if you understand your people, you'll know that.
So get to know them, get to know what works for them, agree those rules of engagement with them so that you can give them the space and time and allow them to be uh more effective at home and not under pressure from you.
Look, it is difficult, right? You know, as a leader, you've got people on the screen, you want them paying attention when you're having a session, but Amazon's gonna turn up at the front door, right? It happens, it's not the end of the world, guys. Think about that in your flexibility, accept the things that are gonna happen like that. It's not the end of the world, right? Because we do have to manage. My dog's down here, if she screams now, it's all gonna kick off because it does, right?
But I'm not saying you can have anarchy on the screen because you can't do that, you've got to try and run your team effectively.
But maybe we just need to build on a little bit more flexibility as leaders than we may have had before, because they are in their home environment, they are not in the office environment, and and their home, by the way, might be a studio flat, and their bedroom is their lounge, is their dining room, and they're having to work in that environment in a lockdown situation.
So you ought to be really conscious of the environment people are in. Uh, so yeah, just get to know them and be human. I saw so I saw a really poor example of this with a company that I know where they insisted everyone went to the office. This was when we were between lockdowns. And for one person, I know it meant problems with having to organize child care and pay for childcare. And it was just, I thought, that's just not understanding. There was no flexibility.
That's that's just not good leadership. Yeah. Um, so let's go on to number seven then.
So number seven is is likewise, whilst you've also got the piece about you know flexibility, I think you've also got the piece about having some fun. Um, so I know we can all talk about, you know, do we have quizzes or do we do other things? And Neil can talk about some of the things that he's done, right? But I think you do need to make sure you're planning in some fun.
Don't, as a leader, don't make all the technology and everything we've got here completely towards driving productivity and hard work of your people. That's wrong, right? If the only thing they think about when I'm going to log on to a call is I'm gonna get pounded about tasks and work, I don't think that's fair. If you were at work, you'd be stopping for lunch, you'd be having a laugh, you'd be talking about social, you'd be doing some of that. Build that in.
And I think there's a combination here. One of them is having a session that is specifically that. So Neil can talk about techniques we could have used. But I would also say have a bit of fun and a bit of social involved in your call, right? You can, it's got to be natural, but you can talk about what happened on the weekend, you can ask people any ideas they've got to how to manage your sanity during lockdown and stuff. Do that, don't have a call just for that.
But Neil, I know you've got some things you were doing as I've seen some great engagements of teams that haven't seen each other for six months, but feel like they're a community because of some of the stuff they've done. Um, so you know, you can have fun online with things like um I've we've done virtual virtual escape rooms, which is just great fun online. We've done virtual wine tasting, we've done virtual cake, uh, you know, like bake-off type competitions.
So there's lots of stuff you can do like that. But the other thing that uh we did recently for a company, which was we organized a virtual event to take them from their London office to their New York office, walking, cycling, running, and to raise money for charity for um cancer for one of the uh people in the company that was uh suffering with breast cancer or going through treatment for breast cancer.
And that it was amazing how it pulled the whole business together to focus on one goal that was doing good, and they covered 5,000 miles or something in total in the end, over eight days cycling, walking. We had kids involved, we had grandmas involved, you had finance departments competing against sales departments, all virtually all done from the front door of your house. Yeah, yeah. And it could be a mile, it could be a hundred miles of cycling or whatever it was.
And it just there are things you can do that make it uh that engagement with your whole team special.
Do you know what that's just said to me, right? There's things here where you're doing more in this environment than you were doing in the old world, right? That's a great way to get your mind around, guys. Think about how this is actually something you can make the best of. Don't feel that you're being penalized by having to work from home. Think about how you can use it to manage your team even better and to be a better leader whilst you're in this environment, right?
It doesn't have to be a penalty.
No, I think that's a that's a very, very good point, is in the past where everyone's face to face, or in office, or you're in the normal working, there's an assumption that it's all okay. Yeah, whereas actually now you have to have to make the effort and put the time in. And I think you're right, I think we're doing more. I think there's more engagement.
Yeah.
Um, so look, should we pull that together? Yes, we should. Yeah. So just quick cut recap: seven points. Uh, clear direction of strategy, make sure you're communicating, make sure you're involving people in that process. Second one was clear objectives, uh, clarity on what to do, uh, knowing what good looks like. Make sure employees know what good look like and keep checking in with them that they're on track and they know they're on track. Regular communication.
We talked about lots of different stuff around communication there, but making the effort to regularly communicate, and that could be the big things as well, not just the weekly things. Um, invest in skills and developing your people, uh, managing your time effectively was number five. Number six was be human, be understanding, and number seven was planning some fun. So those are the seven tips, seven best practices that we've kind of thought of that. Hopefully, that'll be helpful for you.
Yeah, I'll come back to what we said earlier on, guys, right? These are seven tips from Neil and Albert. Give us your comments, anything you think would be useful for your colleagues watching this on ideas and tips that you think would be good in the way that they could manage their teams, lead their teams, and manage themselves. That'd be really useful to hear from you.
Okay, fantastic. So until the next episode.
Great to spend the time.
Uh wishing everyone all the best as we head into another lockdown in the UK.
Indeed, I can't stop now. I've got another call to go to back to back on movement. Yeah, all the best. See you later.
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