Lou Cartier: Connecting under stress Part 2 — aligning effort with goals key to working remotely

Greetings, fellow remote workers. 

How are you doing, balancing challenges of the job AND your important relationships? If you are not totally satisfied with your performance or effectiveness, have you gained a foothold?

As noted last week, many of us are engaging co-workers, clients, and group projects from home. We are becoming tech literate, if not fast enough for impatient types like yours truly. 

But we can download the necessary apps, tune into an audio or video conferencing platform from our phone or home computer, and know whom to call if (when) we get stuck, yes?    

If reading this column online, do you recall Paige Cohen's home office adventure with her scene-stealing dog? If not, take a moment right now, for who doesn't learn better when more relaxed and less uptight?  (For newsprint readers, make a note to Google "Harvard Business Review, working from home" and log on later). 

Last week, Aims faculty linked arms to bolster the path along our shared remote adventure, preparing for students coming off extended spring breaks. Hearts and minds are being steeled to engage "online only" teaching and learning through the end of the spring semester … and very likely summer school, as well.

Withal, whether our professional arena be business, education, government, or non-profit enterprise, our collective challenge is to think outside the box, to prioritize. Despite limited time, energy, cash, and self-confidence, we nevertheless must "connect under stress." We must do what we can do.

To work effectively with others, can we acknowledge the difficulty of getting people to pay attention at ANY MEETING, especially tough now that we're not in the same room? "Let's face it," write corporate trainers Justin Hale and Joseph Grenny in a recent HBR article, "most meetings have always sucked because there's often little to zero accountability for engagement."

So how can I — as meeting host or participant — foster greater accountability? 

Let's look at their five rules: 

The 60 second rule

In the first minute of your meeting (or conference call), help participants experience the problem you want them to solve by sharing statistics, anecdotes, or analogies that dramatize the issue … Make sure the group empathetically understands the problem (or opportunity) before you try to solve it. People must know what is expected of them. 

The responsibility rule

The biggest threat to engagement in virtual meetings is allowing team members unconsciously to remain bystanders. Rather than being an "observer," as in a theater, you will be an "actor," as in a gym. Opportunity for everyone to take meaningful responsibility, to stay present, mentally and emotionally, is important. This shows respect, a mark of professionalism.

The nowhere to hide rule

To avoid "diffusion of responsibility," define a highly structured and brief task participants can tackle in small groups (as you might in physical space). Provide a medium to communicate with one another (video conference, Slack channel, messaging platform, audio breakouts). After a short period, have the groups report out.  

The MVP rule

"Nothing disengages a group more reliably than assaulting them with slide after slide of mind-numbing data organized in endless bullet points … if your goal is engagement, you must mix facts and stories." Reduce your Power Point deck ruthlessly, the fewer slides the better.   

The 5-minute rule

Never go longer than five minutes (or so) without giving the group another problem to solve or task to tackle. Expect sustained meaningful involvement so participants do not retreat into an observer role. "When that happens, you'll have to work hard to bring them back."

Can we do it?

The business and popular press increasingly report on best practices in remote conferencing, such as distributing an agenda and necessary materials (links) in advance … designating a facilitator, tech support, and note taker … knowing how to mute your audio (to cough or admonish the dog) and your video (bad hair day, and to conserve precious bandwidth).  Good enough, so long as perfection does not become the enemy of the good.

In the physical classroom, I am a stickler about starting and ending on time, so the Tribune's "free-flowing chat" (among news staff on stories under development) that remains alive in the background even when individual reporters are not directly engaged with it intrigues me. 

"People can come and go as they please and get caught up when they return" explains Bobby Fernandez, Growth and Development reporter, "with a 'new messages' indicator for chat messages that other users have sent since I last opened the Zoom application. It's a permanent group chat, so there is no need to recreate the chat each day."

Hmmm.  Stay tuned, students.

Lou Cartier is an adjunct instructor at Aims Community College, independent consultant, and chair of the Local Government and Business Affairs Committee (LGBAC) of the Greeley Area Chamber of Commerce. The views and opinions in this column are solely the author's and do not necessarily reflect those of the College or the Chamber.

Recapping Fantasy High with Siobhan and Lou