E109 - Designing Your Team for Everyone's Success from a distance featuring Wayne Turmel, Eh!

Wayne Turmel, a fellow Canadian and podcast host, an author, and consultant for the Kevin Eikenberry Group, joins Trench Leadership to share hard-earned wisdom about creating high-performing teams across distances in our transformed work landscape. As a remote work pioneer, Wayne offers a refreshingly pragmatic perspective that cuts through the noise surrounding return-to-office debates.

The conversation explores Wayne's 3-O Model of Leadership, which balances Outcomes, Others, and Ourselves. This framework helps leaders navigate the complexities of managing remote teams while avoiding burnout.

For leaders navigating hybrid work arrangements, Wayne's advice is refreshingly straightforward: focus on the work that needs doing rather than where it happens. By approaching team design with intentionality and listening to employee needs, leaders can create more effective, engaged teams regardless of physical location. The key is pausing to think strategically rather than rushing back to familiar patterns.

Wayne’s Links:

1. www.KevinEikenberry.com

2. www.longdistanceteambook.com

3. https://www.linkedin.com/in/wayneturmel/

4. wayne@kevineikenberry.com

5. The long-distance work life podcast: www.longdistanceworklife.com

Wayne’s Recommended Book/Movie/Podcast List:

Books:

1. Purpose, the Starting Point for All Great companies https://www.amazon.com/Purpose-Starting-Companies-Mourkogiannis-2006-10-03/dp/B01FEKANJ8/

2. Babel

3. The Necessity of Violence. An Arcane History of the Oxford Translator’s Revolution: https://www.amazon.com/Babel-Necessity-Violence-Translators-Revolution/dp/B09MV827NK

Movies:

1.     The Unbearable Weight of Massive Talent - because nothing is funnier than someone poking fun at themselves successfully.

2.     All Quiet on the western Front (2022) - because we haven’t learned a darned thing in 100 years.

3.     Writing Excuses

4.     The Skeptics Guide to the Univers

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction to Remote Leadership
• 8:13 Wayne Turmel's Remote Work Journey
• 15:27 The Pandemic's Impact on Work Culture
• 23:22 Flexibility vs. Rigid Return-to-Office
• 32:05 The 3-O Model of Leadership
• 40:16 Building Trust in Remote Teams
• 47:11 Final Thoughts and Contact Information

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:07

I would like to begin this episode by acknowledging that I am located in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and I am privileged and honoured to live and learn on the unceded, unsurrendered territory of the Anishinaabe Algonquin Nation.

Speaker 2: 0:24

Hello, you're listening to Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front produced by iGlenn Studios, a show for emerging leaders from all professions To hear from other leaders who have led from the front, made the mistakes, had the triumphs and are still learning along the way. And now here's your host, simon Cardinal.

Speaker 1: 0:50

Hello and welcome to another episode of Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front, a show for emerging leaders. Leaders are often required to design their teams to achieve maximum success, and the fact of the matter is there's an expectation for leaders that we're going to make the best teams possible, or often work with the teams that are given to us. But that doesn't change the fact that in this quasi post-COVID world, designing teams from a distance can and has become a reality of today's leaders. But how do we do it? In this episode you'll hear from Wayne Turmel, fellow Canadian eh and podcast host, author and consultant for the Kevin Eikenberry Group. Wayne's going to talk about the challenges of creating teams from long distances, and then Wayne is going to offer his insight into how leaders can create robust, diverse and impactful teams.

Speaker 1: 1:42

But before we get into that, as always, we're going to do the visual representation. So for myself, I'm wearing the black golf shirt with the red Trench Leadership logo over my left side. I've still got my black rimmed glasses. There's still too much gray here on the sides of my head and my back wall is a photo of a stone wall with the Trench Leadership logo hanging. It's still white and it is still highlighted in purple, although the actual Trench Leadership logo is red. Wayne, did you want to take a moment and tell us about your physical location?

Speaker 3: 2:13

Yeah, hi, I am actually in my home in Las Vegas, so I am wearing a black golf shirt as well shirt as well. I am gray on top, gray on my very fuzzy face, and you cannot see the plain, boring gray wall behind me because I'm using a backdrop of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign and, for those of you who are wondering, I'm not actually sitting in front of the Welcome to Las Vegas sign. It's far too windy today.

Speaker 1: 2:47

Yeah, I would be impressed and that's some impressive AV work to make that wind and not be kicking in for that. So thanks so much for taking the time today. I know earlier we were talking about how you'd had a busy day, but fortunately it sounds like we're at the end of it for you. So once we get through this episode you'll be able to take a moment and go hit the slot machines or whatever, whatever your preference in being what they are.

Speaker 3: 3:08

You are the only thing between me and lunch. So don't you know I'm not too hangry at the moment, so you got me at a good moment.

Speaker 1: 3:16

That sounds great. Well, listen, before we get into this, I'm just wondering do you mind taking a moment and telling us a little bit about yourself and the journey that you've been on, and, ultimately, how you got to this point?

Speaker 3: 3:28

Well, the journey is far too long and it's far too early in the day to drink the beverages that usually make this story more palatable, but the way it works is this I'm from Canada. I was in the entertainment business in Canada, moved to LA 30 good heavens two years ago to be a big star, and you can see how well that worked. At some point, the wife and child insisted on eating, and so I was looking for a big boy job, and since the only thing I knew how to do was stand and talk, I started teaching presentation skills and got into the training and development area. Very early on, like 18 years ago or so, I started specializing in virtual communication tools like WebEx, and those types of things were brand new and nobody was teaching people how to use them effectively, and so that became my area of expertise, did that for many years, started my own consultancy, and then Kevin Eikenberry, who I'd known for years and is a fabulous thinker in the leadership space. He was getting questions about leading remote teams and presenting.

Speaker 3: 4:45

Virtually. I was in that space, but I was getting questions about leadership and leading teams, and it just kind of made sense, rather than invent two separate wheels, that we came together, and so we formed what was then. The Remote Leadership Institute is now part of the Kevin Eikenberry group and I lead the practice around remote work, and he and I have co-written three books the Long Distance Leader, the Long Distance Team and the Long Distance Teammate. And so here we are.

Speaker 1: 5:22

Well, thanks so much for that. I'm seeing a little bit of a theme when it comes to your books, something about long distance in there.

Speaker 3: 5:27

I don't know, maybe I miss reading that well, I've written 15 books, but these three, uh, are specifically and in long distance. We chose long distance specifically because, yes, more and more people are working remote and this was pre-COVID we had started this series. I like to say we were ahead of our time by about 30 minutes, but it's you know. Now, with hybrid work and flexible work and fully remote work and working across time zones and national boundaries, the odds of leading a team where you are always in the same location as the team are, not to make a pun, fairly remote, and so that's why we settled on the long distance kind of theme for the books.

Speaker 1: 6:24

Well, you know it's interesting you're talking about that and how you're able to get ahead of it. I think a lot of people, most people, had at least heard of Zoom. I know I had heard of Zoom, but I had never used it. I had never even heard of things like Microsoft Teams, and WebEx was just something that I had on my computer because of course, I took with the military but it didn't work very well and then everything overnight was thrust into having to be able to work remotely and that was a huge, a huge adjustment for people.

Speaker 3: 6:50

Well, it had been building up for a long time. I mean, I got my first big boy job in 1996. And even then I had a lot of my team about half my team was remote and we were working by phone and fax machine and you know we still had email addresses. When I got into the virtual presentation space, there were 125 web presentation platforms out there, starting with WebEx was the best known, but there were tons of them and things have just changing and evolving. And as far as remote work, starting in about 2000,. Remote work was growing at 25% a year before COVID.

Speaker 3: 7:36

So what happened was a lot of people were thinking about remote work. It was kind of on the horizon. We were starting to play with the tools. Frankly, a lot of people were doing stealth telework which was oh, I need to get this project done, I'm going to work from home today. That was already going on.

Speaker 3: 8:00

But what happened, of course, three years ago is we got pushed across the Rubicon and it was no longer theoretical and we could no longer pretend like it wasn't happening and it was far more. It was far more chaotic than we wanted it to be and way less. You know, people anticipated especially senior leaders that it was going to be the end of the world as we know it. In fact, productivity did not drop. Particularly Employee engagement actually went up in the early days of COVID and we have found that we can make it work. So now we're in this space for leaders where some companies go all right, everybody back to the office now, and we're gonna pretend like the last three years didn't happen and that's not gonna work. I am not one of those people who is a zealot for remote work. I think where it's appropriate and where you can do it, great. But I think the answer is find what's right for the company, for the organization and for the team and for you as a worker, and then make it work.

Speaker 1: 9:23

Yeah, and that's the trick with it is understanding how and when to make these teams be remote, why they need to be remote, all the different things. I know for myself I've spoken about it on previous episodes how the civilian company worked for Callion. I think that when we started getting back to the opportunity to have to go back to the office or not have to go back to the office, but the opportunity to do that the company did it right in that they sent out a survey and said what do we want to do? And ultimately, what they did was they listened to the survey and they said okay, what we're hearing is each team needs to be able to make their own decisions, because that just makes the most sense for this company. And that's what happened. And it happens to be that my team, we are all working from home 100% of the time, and then we try and make it so that we all go to the office one Tuesday a month for our that happens to be the day we do our weekly meeting.

Speaker 3: 10:08

And that works for us. There's a bunch of stuff that you just said there which proves that it's a good, smart company full of good, smart people, right? Number one thing is you realize really early on that, depending on the business you're in, depending on who your customers are and depending on the business you're in, depending on who your customers are and depending on the function that you serve, right, one size does not fit all. The second thing is they involved the staff really early on One of the phrases that.

Speaker 3: 10:43

Kevin came up with and I wish we had thought of this in time to get it in the book around. Return to office is the idea of pilot before policy Companies that spend a lot of time thinking about this. Okay, we're going to do this and everybody's coming back three days a week and we're going to do this. We're going to do that.

Speaker 3: 11:02

And then they found out that their well laid plans didn't go so swell, yeah, and so you know people that took your approach. Let's talk to the people, let's see what it is, let's give them some autonomy, and right now everybody's remote, but it's one Tuesday a month. Maybe we find out that's not enough, right? Maybe we need to do that more often. Maybe certain groups need to do it, Okay, but you've got room now to maneuver and experiment and try things out. You're not locked in.

Speaker 1: 11:37

Yeah, I love that you talked about not being locked in, and I think a lot of the things with most leadership principles or most leadership policies or practices whatever the word we want to use, it doesn't matter is about being flexible and being open to different things. It's certainly more comfortable to have a plan and stick to that plan all the time, but things change and if we don't change then you end up going away.

Speaker 3: 11:55

Well, and I mean, let's face it, as much as people were thinking about the future of remote work, last three years we've been living the experiment, and the genie isn't going back in the bottle. A lot of people's assumptions got blown up. There are certain jobs that can't be done remotely Well, that's true, and there are a lot of jobs that we didn't think could that are. You know people will slack off and you know, watch TV all day and not really get any work done. Well, guess what Didn't happen. And you know as well as I do, being in the office is no guarantee you're getting any work done.

Speaker 1: 12:37

Exactly yeah.

Speaker 3: 12:40

You know you can't build relationships over distance. You know a third't build relationships over distance. You know a third of long distance relationships now begin online. It's the world that we live in. The times have changed Now. Are there reasons to get back together? Absolutely. Are there reasons why you don't want people to be remote 100% of the time? I get that, but are we making the right decisions for the right reasons? And what we do in the Long Desk as a team, it's really designed to just help frame your thinking so that you can be intentional. Whatever answer you come up with, you're doing it for the right reasons and in the right way.

Speaker 1: 13:27

Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting how, if we don't come into this with intentionality and listening to the team members, how quickly things can implode. And the example I'd love to use is that at the time of this recording, in Canada anyways, and we're in late April the Federal public service, the largest union they're striking right now because one of the main sticking points is that they want more opportunities and more options for working from home. Of course, there's other factors being taken into account, but this is one of the main things, because originally, when the federal government came out and said that this, okay, we're on the other side of COVID, so what we're mandating is everyone will be at the office a minimum of two days a week, and when I say everyone, I'm talking about 155,000 people across the country. A blanket policy doesn't work for one person, much less toss it out there for 155,000 people across a very large country. It's wild.

Speaker 3: 14:22

Well, funny that you mentioned, because we do a lot of work with the American federal government and they announced yesterday yesterday being Wednesday, as we record this that by Monday, every federal agency has to have a plan to have people back in the office. Well, it's madness. I mean, first of all, the good, smart ones and there are good, smart federal agencies were already kind of working towards that. Yeah, and they were, and some people have already adjusted to that.

Speaker 3: 15:01

The challenge is that there were three things about returning to the office that are creating havoc, and any leader needs to know this anytime you want to institute a change, right? The first thing is hey, you didn't ask us about going home in the first place. You asked us to go home. We sacrificed, we upheaved. You know, our life was in upheaval. We've proven we can get the work done, and now you're going to pretend like this never happened, right? So that's the first thing.

Speaker 3: 15:33

The second thing is there's something called the endowment effect, which basically is a psychological term that says people fear losing something more than they think about gaining from it, right? So all of a sudden, I've had three years I haven't had to fight traffic on the Dawn Valley. You know, I don't spend as much on gas. I don't even spend as much on childcare, because my wife and I can make you know, the schedule work. And now we have to go back to what we were before and I don't like it, and some of it is just I don't like it. I mean, human beings are going to human.

Speaker 1: 16:20

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 16:21

And the third thing is, if I have to do all that, if I have to fight traffic and pay Canadian gas prices and do all the stuff I have to do, and I walk into the office, hang my coat over my chair, sit at my keyboard for eight hours, pick up my coat and go home, why did I come in? So the big thing about hybrid work and returning to the office is really getting smart about what. Not just where does work happen and what work happens, but what work happens where and when right.

Speaker 3: 17:02

One of the reasons I used to work from home was because I couldn't get anything done in the office. I'm trying to work. People are stopping by my desk, the boss can see me and immediately, you know, calls me, and every time they have a question, there's cake in the break room for somebody's birthday. So I got to deal with that, and sometimes I just need to put my head down and get some work done. Well, maybe the office isn't the right place for that. Meanwhile, if we're in the office a couple of days a week, maybe that's when we have our meetings and I'm not on Zoom from eight till five every day.

Speaker 1: 17:40

Yeah, and that's the thing. It's striking that balance. That's what I'm hearing in this is knowing, listening to the people, but also listening to ourselves, and knowing what works best and when, and having an honest look at ourselves, not thinking well for like. For myself, I like wearing shorts, so that was great. I wore shorts pretty much every day for three years. It was wild, but some days I had better days where I got more work done at home, and other days I wasn't as productive, and that's all part of it. That's okay, cause it's the exact same thing in the office. My experience that people would get hung up in the fact you're in the office versus not, and just that mindset it was hard to get past that. Does that make any sense at all?

Speaker 3: 18:13

It makes perfect sense. And what you said is really important, which is you need to be honest about what's going on. Some companies are feeling very hard done by. They're like we've let people work from home, we've kind of let them do their own thing, and now we're calling them back in and the ungrateful weasels aren't, you know, aren't doing this.

Speaker 3: 18:39

Well, why are you calling people into the office? And there are good, legitimate reasons and there are some tasks that if I need to brainstorm with my fellow engineers and sit at a whiteboard and do all this stuff, yeah, being in the office might be the right thing to do. If I'm one of 15 people filling out T-17 forms all day long right, and my forms are getting filled out why do I have to show up to the office? So, what is the work that needs to be done? What's the best way to get that work done right? And and so the company, you know, does the company have a right to say what they want? Yeah, they have a right to do that. They're paying the bills is a good business to dictate what you want them to do and if they don't want it, they can jolly well quit.

Speaker 3: 19:36

That's one way to look at it right, not the one I'd pick, and organizations that do that are going to find themselves with turnover, and you know all of the problems with it. Here's the thing I think leaders listening to this should think about. There's a bell curve, as there always is when it comes to return to what we found out. There's about 10% of people who could not get back to the office fast enough. My kids are driving me crazy. I'm alone here. I need human contact. Get me back to the office. Let's go. On the other end of that bell curve, there's about 12% of people who said, nope, I've had my freedom, I'm not going back. I am never again going back to a nine to five in the office job. And then there's the big giant hump in the middle of the bell curve, which is everybody else who is okay, you know, let's figure out what this looks like and doesn't make sense, and you know we'll do what we need to do.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Well, as I was reading the book the book that I'm just going to show it here to everyone the Long Distance Team by Wayne and Kevin in chapter four you talk about how we view work and you actually talk about that pattern and how that is just the way it's been ingrained for so many years, decades. And all of a sudden we were forced to have to look outside that. And sometimes force takes a push, a not so gentle nudge down the stairs and and in this case it's all about we're so used to having to work together and now we're not. And then all of a sudden, hey, this feels great, but eventually there's kind of you know, the pendulum is going to swing hard one way, it's going to swing hard the other direction and eventually it'll find its way in the middle, and my perception is that a pattern will be created that works for individuals and for the teams. It will naturally work itself out. We just I think it's important to give it the time to do that. Do you have any thoughts on that at all?

Speaker 3: 21:37

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there are a couple of things going on, right. There is what does it mean to go to work for 150 years or so? That meant you leave the house in the morning and you go to a specific location and you do something for a prescribed amount of time and then you go home. And that's what it meant to go to work, right, and that's because that's where work got done, that's where widgets got put together's, where people met to talk about stuff, it's where your customers found you. That's what work was dependent, and we have the technology to allow us to do what we need to do.

Speaker 3: 22:35

So then it becomes why do what? Is the right way to get this work done? And we have more options than we've ever had. And it's difficult when you're just running, running, running, doing, doing, doing, we don't really stop and think about it. But we had three years where we were forced to stop and, as we're being intentional about going back to the office, now it's, we have this brief window where we can actually stop and think about is this what we want to do? Because for everybody who says, yeah, I can't wait to get back to the before times, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3: 23:14

What's happened is there's been two waves of resistance to going back to the office. There was the great resignation, where you're 10 to 12% of people who said, no, I'm just not going back to heck with it. But there was a second wave that we're in the middle of now, where people went back to the office and then they went oh yeah, this kind of sucked Right Like they were excited to get back to something like normal and they liked working with their peers, but they also remembered all the stuff they didn't like about it. Also remembered all the stuff they didn't like about it. And we're in this space.

Speaker 2: 23:53

we can actually make some choices now. Oh, hello, there, it's Glenn, the voiceover artist, and if you're hearing me, that means we're at the midpoint of this episode. Do you have an idea for an episode that you feel is vital for emerging leaders? Leave the idea in the comment section and, if your topic is chosen, you will have the opportunity to join us as a co-host during the recording session. Exactly.

Speaker 1: 24:18

And the challenge, in my perception, is that and what I'm hearing is that there's an opportunity to create these teams in a way that makes the most sense, and if you feel we've earned it please tell

Speaker 1: 24:28

your are, and even a little bit, looking towards the future and in the book you talk about the 3-0 model of leadership, and this is a way that leaders may be able to kind of go towards creating, maintaining whatever their particular team the outcomes, others and ourselves. I'm wondering if you wanted to chat about that a little bit or other ways that leaders may be able to build those teams.

Speaker 3: 24:52

We're big on models and all the books leader, teammate and team have models in them. They're all three somethings right? Three R's, three L's, whatever.

Speaker 3: 25:02

But in this case, the three O model model really is just. If we stop and think about our work and particularly our job as leaders, there are three components. There's the outcome that we need right why does the company hire us? What do they need to do, what are the goals we have to have? And we focus on that really, really hard, really hard. But as managers, as leaders, as people above entry-level employees, we have to get that work done through other people right. So there's the job that needs to be done and we have to get other people to do that job in the right way. And there's ourselves.

Speaker 3: 25:47

If we don't have it together, if we aren't taking care of what we need to take care of, we can't get those others to work as we need them to work and we're not going to get the outcomes that we need. And especially in the early days of COVID, a lot of managers were burning out because they were super focused on keeping the plane in the air. We have to make sure that we're getting the work done and they were being very aware of helping their people, but they were working too many hours, they weren't disconnecting from their devices, they weren't taking time off. You know, managers were burning out at an alarming rate in the early days of COVID because they were so focused on outcomes and others that they forgot about themselves.

Speaker 3: 26:47

Ideal team situation if you're putting a team together, obviously has to be focused on the outcomes, right. The company needs to do what the company needs to do to stay in business and we have goals and things that we have to achieve, and we do that through other people. Well, if we mandate or set unreasonable expectations or something for those other people, the work's not going to get done. And if we're not in the right headspace to help those people get the work done, it's just not going to work.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Yeah. So what I'm hearing in this is that it's on the leader to create the culture, to be able to set the standard or the pace for the team. Does that make sense at all? Am I hearing it correctly?

Speaker 3: 27:35

is dangerous because it sounds like the leader, and we make this very clear in the book. You know there are a lot of questions and a lot of ways to guide your thinking and you can think about. You know this is what I want the culture to be and this is what the company should be. But if it just comes from you and you alone, what you're going to get is, at best, you're going to get compliance instead of buy-in. You know the process that you go through to think about this stuff is the same process that should be done with your team, right?

Speaker 3: 28:19

I mean your employers said to people hey, talk to us, what does this look like? What should we do? Now you can actually come up with something. What is the manager's responsibility is to then guide, coach and execute to whatever that plan is. And of course, we know, as managers we are in this lovely vice between you know what senior leadership says they want and what our people say they want. And oh, look, here's us trying to orchestrate all of that.

Speaker 1: 28:58

Yeah, and that's the big trick in that is I'll just a little bit by saying thank you for clarifying that In my mind. I definitely was thinking, you know, after having spoken with the team and figured out exactly how we want to go forward, who takes the reins to go forward, and a little bit of that, I think. The way some of the terminology and I'm not making excuses is I was in the military for a lot of years, so you know, it's just the terminology I get used to. That doesn't change the fact that I didn't explain myself and that's dangerous too when we're in those roles.

Speaker 3: 29:29

well, and we are seeing companies who this is where I said before pilot, before policy we have seen people where senior leaders and hr and everybody got all together and said, okay, here's going to be the plan and they didn't include the people, and so people didn't feel appreciated for the sacrifices they've made. They've changed their lifestyle and now they have to change back. Does anybody care about that? You know, we found out that we can get work done and I don't want to commute five days a week, but there's this policy now, right that somebody put in place and remember senior leadership making that policy. Those are the same people who didn't think remote work was going to work in the first place. Because they didn't. I'm going to spill the tea on senior leaders. They put a good face on it, but nobody in the C-suite expected remote work to be as successful over the last three years as it was.

Speaker 1: 30:35

Oh, and there's no question of that, and I think also I don't think anyone expected the intensity that a lot of people want that opportunity to decide what they want to do. I think there's so much more in the federal public service right now in Canada. Like I said, one of the biggest things is they want more clarity on what a hybrid model will look like, even though the government's current model is you will be at the office two days a week.

Speaker 3: 31:03

Government is in a really rough situation no-transcript. Then there's the employees that saying, does this need to be the soul crushing job that it's been for a million years? And then you've got the political pressure of people saying, hey, this is the public's money and, by the way, all government employees are lazy money and, by the way, all government employees are lazy, good for nothings, and they need to be chained to the oar and whipped until they grow faster, because they're just government employees and you know how they are.

Speaker 1: 31:57

So the beauty of Zoom calls and that's a part of the whole aspect of the working from home, the remote sections of these things is people were having to adjust to these different worlds and now that they've gotten used to that, it makes it challenging. I am curious how might a leader who's in charge of one of these teams, or in charge of a previous existing team whatever do you have some advice on how they could help their team exist inside a long-term?

Speaker 3: 32:32

a long-term, long-distance team, remote working team Boy? I'm not quite sure what that question is because it's pretty broad.

Speaker 1: 32:35

Yeah, exactly how might a leader be able to help their team exist in a long-distance remote setup?

Speaker 3: 32:41

Yeah, you know, in the long-distance leader we had 18 rules for making it work and the number one rule was think leadership first, location second Don't be so freaked out by the fact you're remote. Focus on what is the job that needs to be done, what are the roles, what does the workflow look like? And when you do that, you can see where the choke points are. Right, oh, we need to be, you know, synchronous and having meetings and being able to talk to each other for a certain number of hours a day or a certain number of days a week days a week and then that gives you flexibility to do the rest of it.

Speaker 3: 33:30

Does it really matter what time of day that report gets written? Probably not. Does it matter that it is where it needs to be at 10 am Tuesday? That matters, right. So it all starts with first principles. If the work is getting done and people are engaged and things are happening and customers' needs are being met and people aren't fleeing in droves, it's probably going pretty well. Is that? If I'm walking through the bullpen and I see Simon banging his head on his monitor, I can stop by and say, simon is everything okay, right.

Speaker 3: 34:19

If I'm working remotely with you and I say, simon, how's it going, you say fine. My brain goes, oh, simon is fine, and I'm going to move on right, because I can't see you beating your head on your monitor. The first rule, by the way, that I have, is nothing is fine. Anybody who has been married any length of time knows that fine is not an answer, right, it can mean yes, everything is going exactly according to plan.

Speaker 3: 34:47

Thank you, no-transcript Right, but just hearing fine doesn't help. So the big thing is that we need check ins not check ups, but check ins that are frequent enough and rich enough that we really know what's going on. And that stems from people trusting and communicating on an effective basis, where, if somebody has a problem, they will be proactive about saying I have a problem, I have a question, I need some help here, and so it requires a different level of intentionality. You know, there's a lot of follow-up questions that need to be asked when we work remotely. That no need to be asked when you're eyeball to eyeball with somebody over a cup of coffee Doesn't mean that it can't work, doesn't mean that there aren't incredibly high, productive, engaged, fabulous teams and people out there. They just require a different sort of coaching and encouragement than when we are in the same physical space.

Speaker 1: 36:13

Yeah, I completely agree in that it's understanding the team and getting to know them, and not just beyond the cursory hey, how's it going today? Okay, let's move on taking that time. In the book you talk about how team leaders they own a lot of the culture and you talk specifically to three points, and the first one is being the main connection and conduit between the team and the organization's macro culture. You also talk about being responsible for helping new people adapt and fit it into the way the team works. And third, you speak about modeling the behaviors and attitudes that create that desired culture. So basically, what I'm hearing is in all in all of that is very similar to lead how you expect to be led. That's how I kind of look at that. Does that make sense at all?

Speaker 3: 36:54

Yeah, it does. And again it goes back to the fact that being a manager leader is a really hard job. The way I've explained it for years and stick with me because this sounds weird at the beginning with me, because this sounds weird at the beginning Managers are literally the heart of the organization. I don't mean that in an Oprah, soft and mushy kind of way. Think about the function of the heart. Stuff comes down, it goes into the heart, it gets oxygenated and sent back out.

Speaker 3: 37:24

Well, as leaders, we have stuff coming down from on high. Right, we have the macro culture of the organization, we have the goals, we have the direction, and that comes from on high and it comes to us. We process it, we figure out how are we going to communicate this to our people and send it out. Meanwhile, information is coming from our teams up to us. We have to process, oxygenate it and pass it up the food chain. So we are in a really unique place.

Speaker 3: 38:00

We have to pass on the goal, the vision, the things that the organization expects, things that the organization expects. We have to process it and turn it into a way that motivates and inspires and helps our people achieve, and we need to take the feedback from the team and offer that up, and sometimes that's a great place to be, and sometimes it's really uncomfortable and weird, uncomfortable and weird. Now to the third thing that you said, which is all of that is great on paper and as we talk about it, you could put vision and mission statements up on the wall, but at the end of the day, we need to model the skills we want people to see, and that includes things like transparency and authenticity and, you know, owning mistakes and all of that, because if that's the culture that we want, we need to model that, because every single person on the team is looking to you first.

Speaker 1: 39:14

Yeah, absolutely, and it's, it's. Those eyeballs are on us, regardless of whether it's through a camera or together. That's just a fact of the matter and some of the lessons I know for myself. When I was a newer leader, I wasn't aware of the influence that I had, and I mean even back when I was a teenager and I was in air cadets and stuff like that, I had no concept of the fact that I'm in charge and that means people are going to be looking at me, for whatever reason, and in the military and it clearly defined hierarchy. It still took me a while to clue into that. There's just some self-reflection that had to happen and mistakes, many, many, many mistakes many mistakes.

Speaker 3: 39:55

The thing that was the hardest lesson for me as a leader is I feel powerless and frustrated and whatever, but I forget that there is always, always, always a power imbalance between me and my direct reports. No matter how open I am, no matter how friendly, no matter how non-threatening I try to be, you are still the boss, and this is why, on remote teams, we have to be very careful about that. You know the scariest words in the English language. Words in the English language hey, have you got a minute? Oh, yeah, yeah, right, I'm busy. I'm working away.

Speaker 3: 40:35

Suddenly up pops Kevin on my team's chat, says hey, have you got a minute? Right? Immediately my brain goes what did I do now? Oh, I'm in the middle of something. Now I have to stop what I'm doing. What fresh hell is this? What is he bringing my way? On Kevin's part, it's a legitimate request for information. Hey, I need to talk to you for a minute. Is this a good time? Right, it's a perfectly valid question. But if all you get is, hey, have you got a minute, you're causing way more drama and tension than you need to, right? If you say, hey, can you do this for me? Again, perfectly valid request.

Speaker 3: 41:25

They hear drop everything do this right now or you're fired and we forget, no matter how benevolent we try to be, that power imbalance is always there, and so you know little things like uh, have you got a minute I want to talk to you about x, or have you got a minute? No rush, but you know, before tomorrow would be great. Yes, it's an extra five seconds on the keyboard, but it makes a huge difference oh, absolutely, you know.

Speaker 1: 41:56

So that's a lesson I learned very early on in my uh, my military time. When I got newly promoted, I would send nets out, say, hey, I need to talk to you for a second, and in my mind, for a second was my way of saying this is informal, but I never verbalized that and a couple of the team players like a couple of people on the team rather they they knew me well enough to know that that's exactly what I meant. But a couple of the folks were a little more high strung in their nature or just had a different way of interpreting that information than I did, and I didn't realize I was causing them a lot of stress. Uh, and that's the big thing. So one person during briefing we were talking and they mentioned this to me, say, hey, this is what I'm thinking about, this, and that really made me think okay, this level of influence, even though in my mind I'm like I'm a new, I'm the first level leader in this, I don't carry any authority. Yes, I do, and whether or not I want to admit it, like you said, there is that difference there. And then.

Speaker 1: 42:50

So when I'm with Kelly and now, and I will often say, hey, listen, do you have a second? And I'll do the same thing. Nothing urgent and nothing dire, I just have a question about this and then we go forward from that. The other day I was really, really busy I was having an email heavy day and I sent that note, said I need this by this by this time, and I got a response back that are you okay? Am I in trouble? Because people were used to getting that extra second to understand that. So it creates a bit of a bond as well that people say, hey, simon's actually taking the time to think about that. Does that make any sense at all?

Speaker 3: 43:20

Makes sense to me.

Speaker 1: 43:26

Fantastic. Well, listen, wayne. We've had a great chat so far. I'm wondering, before we move into the lightning round, do you have any final thoughts? To sum this up?

Speaker 3: 43:37

the big thing I'm a big believer in you are capable of solving almost anything if you stop and think about it and ask the right questions, and that's what we're trying to do with the long distance team is give you the questions right, the things that you need to think about. So if you can stop, think about what needs to happen, then odds are you will make the right decisions right. What happens is we don't stop and think and be intentional about what we're trying to achieve. We're just running and doing. Take the time to ask the questions, to think. We're in a unique inflection point in business right now where there's a moment for us to catch our breath and think about this before we just start running again, and so take advantage of that.

Speaker 1: 44:36

Take a breath. There's always time to take a breath. So, listen, we have had a fantastic conversation, Wayne. Now, if people want to reach out to you, they want to learn more from you. Just have a conversation. How might they do that I?

Speaker 3: 44:49

am not hard to find. Obviously, the Kevin Eikenberry Group is our organization. We actually have a website specifically for the book longdistanceteambookcom. People can find out about the book. There are downloadable resources, special offers, all that stuff. Linkedin Wayne Turmel. I'm very open and happy to network and talk to folks. On Twitter. It's W Turmel, although I warn you that that is my personal account and you may learn more than you want to. So yeah, we're very, very easy to find.

Speaker 1: 45:33

Fantastic, and did you want to take a moment and talk about your podcast?

Speaker 3: 45:37

We have a podcast called the Long Distance Work Life. Myself and a young woman who works in our office, very, very talented person who's figuring out now how talented she is uh, marissa. And it's actually it's a weekly podcast, but every other week, one week is marissa and I talking, doing kind of a discussion across generations about remote and hybrid work, and then the following week will be an interview with somebody way smarter than me where we have these conversations and it's, it's wonderful. It's a short listen, it's like 20 minutes or so, and we're really enjoying it and having a blast. Just long distance work life in your podcast aggregator, or long distance work lifecom, is the website with all the episodes and transcripts and good stuff like that.

Speaker 1: 46:36

Perfect. Thanks so much for that and thanks for taking the time today. This has been a lot of fun. We've learned a lot and we spent a lot of valuable time understanding how we can understand our long distance teams and how to make them stronger. Thanks so much. I'm looking forward to having you and Kevin back for the part three of this whole series.

Speaker 3: 46:52

Thank you for the invitation, man, this has been a blast, and thank you to your listeners. I hope you found this valuable.

Speaker 1: 46:59

Thanks so much. Take care. That's a wrap from the front. In this episode we talked about long distance teams and the role of the leader inside those teams. We talked about that. It's important to listen to your team members, be intentional, be honest and remember to think leadership first location second. Thanks for tuning in and remember leadership without passion limits the depth of your vision.

Speaker 2: 47:24

Never miss an episode by following us on all of your favorite feeds. Never miss an episode by following us on all of your favorite feeds. While you're there, please consider leaving an episode review and let us know what topics you would like to hear about. Be sure to join us next week with your host, simon Cardinal, for another episode of Trench Leadership, a podcast from the front Produced by iGlenn Studios. Music provided by Ashamal of Music.