Speaker 1: Hi, Kelly here. The video this week builds on our most recent podcast episode called Building Visibility While Working Remotely, and this is a special leader-focused video. So as the world of work is changing, you may be dealing with a constantly shifting way of leading your team. Remote work was a massive shift for many leaders and it may not go away. We also are seeing companies discussing hybrid setups where you may have some employees remote, some in office, and some that sort of flex between remote and in-person. You may also start seeing more remote employees coming from other regions, countries, and time zones, as remote work allows companies to cast a much broader net for job applicants. So what does this mean for you as a leader? It means that your work, both as a manager of tasks and a leader of people, could get more complicated. Now, frankly, over the past year or so, we probably haven't been all that concerned with long-term leadership strategy. We've been more focused on the day-to-day, keeping our head above water, survival mode. But now is the time to start mapping out that long-term plan of leadership in this new work environment. And it also means that you, as an employee, will need to drive your own career development in a different way. So this is an exciting time, but it can also feel overwhelming. Change often does. And one of the biggest challenges that comes up with remote work, both as a leader and in your own career development, is the issue of invisibility. It's so easy to go invisible when working remotely. And as a leader, it's frighteningly easy to lose track of our employees in the avalanche of our to-do lists. We lose track of their work output. We lose track of them as human beings. We lose track of the rapport and trust that's needed for an employee and leader to work together successfully. And this is even more true for people who are hired remotely and who have yet to actually meet with anyone on the team in person. So in this video, I want to share one strategy that you can use starting today to get some structure around managing your team's communications and the resulting visibility, no matter where they work. Now, one of the most common laments about workplaces, whether they're remote or not, is that communication isn't very good. What do I mean by good? Your team knows what they need to know to pick up their work and run with it. You know what you need to share with them. They feel comfortable coming to you with questions or concerns or ideas, and your leaders know what your team does and how well they're doing it. And everyone knows enough to make good decisions. It's a 360 degree flow of communication up, down, and to the sides of your team. Well, guess what? When you have remote employees, or you're the remote employee, or you have a hybrid team, or your leaders are remote, communication gets even harder. Not only are you potentially not getting the full picture of the situation during a virtual meeting, but you're also potentially missing out on those water cooler chats, or the, oh, I just bumped into him in the hallway, and we decided to do this kind of conversation, or the pre-meeting chats, or the post-meeting chats that happen after the meetings technically ended, but people are still talking about the topic as they're leaving the room, or they drop by someone's office and end up having a powerful brainstorming session chat. You could be missing out on all of these, and so are your employees. As a leader of a remote or hybrid work team, your employees are even more dependent on you for visibility on multiple levels. What's going on within the team? What's going on within the whole company? What's going on with other teams in the company? And your employees' visibility, and yours, to leadership. Senior leadership can't as easily see your work product in a remote setup. Your team is relying on you to bridge that invisibility to decision makers and other leaders within the company. You become the primary conduit of information for them. So here's one way that you can build up your strategy for communication and visibility for your team and for yourself. Create a communication plan for yourself and your team. Now that makes it sound so simple, but honestly, it kind of is. Think of it this way. Who needs to know what, why, how, and when? So here's an example. Our team needs to know our weekly metrics. Why? The why helps you figure out at a deeper level what information you need to share. When do they need to know this? Let's say Mondays. Well, how? In a way that makes it easy for them to both understand and refer back to throughout the week. So from here, you can see that sharing team metrics once a quarter on a slide that you don't send to the team isn't helping. This level of questioning can assist you with designing how to build out your fuller communication plan. You can take the same concept for that whole 360 degrees of your communication world. You'll likely find as you go through the process that you're giving too much info to some, not enough to others, or not in ways that actually makes the info useful or usable. This information should also not just be tactical day-to-day results either. Think long-term visibility too. What communications will help your team's long-term goals to achieve career growth, bigger budgets, and larger responsibilities? Now you get double points if you create this plan with your team, meaning that they get to help design and implement. You'll find out quickly what they know and don't know, and how you can fill the gaps in their visibility to what's going on. Next, schedule the stuff on your calendar so it actually happens. Don't leave it to your brain to remember. You won't, and your team may not either. If you prefer for your team to take the lead on scheduling meetings with you, to regularly communicate out what they've been working on, or whatever else, tell them that. Unless you work for a psychic phone line, they probably won't know that on their own. Make it easy on your team to stay in the loop. It'll make work easier for all of you. The goal here is to make regular, consistent communication and the resulting visibility as easy and effortless on your brain as you can. You have enough to think about without trying to remember how long it's been since you talked to this employee or that employee. You have the tools, you have the technology, so use them. So that's it for this video. If this has been helpful to you and you want more, reach out to me. We can have a strategy session to help you get a plan together either independently or with your whole team to communicate strategically. You can connect with me through the email below. And if you like what you're hearing, check out the podcast available wherever you get your podcasts. Bye.