Skot Waldron:
Unlocked is brought to you by Invincible, a program designed to unlock the potential of people and teams inside your organization. Join companies like Pfizer, Delta, the CDC, Google and Chick-fil-A and others in over 116 countries that are currently using this program to increase productivity and develop healthy cultures. Access hundreds of hours of content that is accessible anytime, anywhere. And finally, use real time data to understand the health of every team inside your organization, which teams are performing, which ones aren't, then understand the why behind that performance. Get free access to Invincible for 30 days by visiting www.giant.tv/30days. Hi, everybody. Welcome to another episode of Unlocked, where we talk about unlocking the potential of our people, ourselves, society, humanity, in order to unlock the potential of organizations and our planet and whatever we're shooting for. Well today, I've got a very cool guest. Have you ever met a remote work guru?
Well, you're about to today. So, Debra is going to talk to us today. She's from a company called VirtualWorks! where she's the founder and president. And she has been talking about remote work telecommuting since 1999. Yes, that's a long time. She was talking about it before everybody was talking about it. She was talking about it when we had AOL dial up modems and chat messages going on. Like, she was talking about it for a long time. She wrote books on it back then, and she's still writing books on it today, where she just released a new one called Remote Leadership. And, she's going to talk to us about the contents of that book and about remote leadership and what that means for us now. She's been blown up in 2020, for obvious reasons and she's here with us today to talk some more. So, you're ready? Let's go. Welcome, Debra. This is fantastic having you and I'm looking forward to this.
Debra Dinnocenzo:
Thank you, Skot. I'm thrilled to be here and I'm looking forward to it as well.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, this whole remote work thing, telecommuting. I mean, you were writing about this before we really did a lot of this, right? I mean, you were writing about it quite a while ago. I mean, this is your fifth or sixth bookish, right?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
You've written smaller books and you've been writing about this for a long time. Tell us about that journey and why you've stuck to this space.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Well, I stuck with it because I started early. I experienced it. So, I've been both a consultant and an author in the whole space of telework and remote leadership and virtual workplace issues, including work-life balance issues that took on a different twist as we became more digital and more connected. But prior to all of that, I forged a path to having a home office, had an opportunity to accept a really great job with the company, headquartered in another state that I didn't want to move to, was really happy where I was. And, I had the good fortune of the CEO that was hiring me, knew me. So, get to the issue of, we were familiar with each other and I'll talk about that again, in our conversation. And he trusted me enough to say, well, let's try [inaudible 00:04:00] to make this work, why don't you stay there?
And we're installing video conferencing in our field offices, we'll just put one in your office. And so, I actually had the first picture Tell system at my little phone company, where I lived installed. We had to put two ISDN lines into support, the whole picture Tell system. So, I did that, manage the team of marketing people all around the country and did that and thought, this is probably the wave of the future. So, to your point, I did publish my first book, 101 Tips for Telecommuters in 1999, which I was pretty shocked to discover how many years ago that really is now.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well, nobody's counting. We're good.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Nobody is counting, right? So, and it's changed so much and evolved. And when you think about the technology that we have now that we take for granted that facilitates all of this, didn't exist in 1999. We had dial up modem, for goodness’ sake. And so, the ability to make this work well and to help people feel connected, be connected and continue to be really good contributors through all of this and for leaders to lead well, it's right here. Then the pandemic happens. And so, I really am one of the few people that started in this field and was still in it. Lots of other people moved on to other things, retired. A couple of them passed away. I'm still here, thank goodness. And have just remained passionate about this and the potential of it and helping people do it well.
SKOT WALDRON:
This is really cool because you stuck with it. You are passionate about this. So, I will admit, right? I help with the internal team communication and leadership, personal brand development and whatnot. And yes, I used COVID as a way to repackage some of my content, right? Because it does apply and we need to be timely and it can help remote teams with what I present. But like, I'm one of those like, Oh, COVID is here. I need to adapt my content to match COVID. Not you, like you've been doing this since 1999. That is awesome. You even, co-wrote this book with Jason, your co-author remotely, like you've never met before.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Right. It's very cool, actually. I hadn't thought about it till we were close to finishing writing the book. And Jason and I have known each other for more than 10 years. We were in an industry association relative to telecommuting. So, we've kind of known each other, we've talked over the years. We never really collaborated on anything. We reconnected right after COVID happened and said we both really have a lot of experience and I wasn't ready to move on to anything else. I really am very passionate about this. And we said, why don't we write a book? And so we did. I mean, we were just head down on this and got this book out really quickly because of the urgency of giving people the tools that they need to do this well. We don't think the passage of COVID is going to mean, everybody goes back to the office and a lot of data to support that right now.
But the truth is Jason and I have actually never met each other. We've done lots of Zoom meetings and we've talked on the phone a lot, but we've never met. And we got a book done together, which anybody that's ever tried to write a report with somebody else knows it's really hard to collaborate that way. But we also lived through with some of the challenges which is having a plan, changing the plan, adapting the plan, getting work done, giving each other feedback and doing that from a distance. So, we feel like we've lived through a really important project and we're very excited about this book and very excited about even some of the unknown. So, the whole notion of hybrid teams, everybody's still trying to figure out what's that really going to look like? Unknown, really. What's hybrid school look like? We see a lot of kids right now around the world, a lot of children and high schoolers and college hybrid.
Some people are there sometimes, they're there on different days. It's Monday, Tuesdays, then they clean on Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, mixing it up. Some people were at home. So, the kids are at home all the time. That's what hybrid is. It's just a different configuration at all times. The idea is, we really need to start to think of ourselves as a remote first culture in our organization, so that remote is not the one-off odd person that is at home sometimes and in sometimes. This is just how we are. We're versatile, we move around. It's the moving parts, but we have to stay focused on being productive and collaborating together.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, let's dive into the book a little bit. And so, the book is called Remote Leadership, successfully leading work from anywhere and hybrid teams. So, what are the key components of the book, the keys to building trust from a distance? You talk about trust a lot, obviously we're talking about distance. What are the keys to doing that? What do you talk about in the book?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Well, trust is the first chapter in the book. It's not the sexiest topic, but we believe it's so critical. If you don't have a strong foundation of trust and you're not continually reinforcing and building that trust, the rest of it doesn't matter. So, we can talk about having productive meetings and we can talk about onboarding and we do talk about all of those things in the book. But trust is primary and here's why. If we don't have a good foundation of trust, then we can't accomplish much. It's like any other relationship that we have if there isn't a bond of trust. So, how do we do that? Well, trust is riskier. There's greater likelihood that those bonds of trust can be broken when people aren't face-to-face because we're social animals. We actually like to be together.
And so a lot of people still are way more comfortable, can't wait to get back to the office. Now, I talk to a lot of people, are perfectly fine. Love working from home, having the flexibility to live in different places. And we see that in the real estate market, there's a lot of shifts going on right now and people moving out of cities and expensive places. And, we also see the people being zoomed out today, they call it because of overload. I think it's kind of interesting when people complain about too many Zoom meetings. I always have to remind them, when we were all in the office, didn't we just complain about too many meeting periods. I mean, it doesn't really matter.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's so true.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Now, is there a dynamic where so much screen time makes that just that much harder? And it feels a tad more unnatural than hanging out in conference rooms together, going from one to the other all day and eating those stale donuts that were left over from the meeting in the morning. I don't know, if we like that better, I guess that's okay.
SKOT WALDRON:
Well, I do feel like I visit the pantry a lot now.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
You still look pretty skinny. It's okay. Don't worry.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah, you're right. Because I'm home more. I just ride my bike a lot more now.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
I mean, I've done training, what would have been classroom training but we're doing it now in teams for one of my clients. And when there's a lecture time or where there's just information where people don't have to be interacting. I have one guy he gets on his bike. He's still engaged. He's watching, but he's peddling while he's doing that. Is there anything wrong with that? I mean, as long as he's engaged and he's not even blocking out his camera. So, back to your point about trust. So, building trust really starts with communication, which is chapter two, by the way. But we talk about it about how we need to ensure that we're communicating both the quality of communication when we're in distant relationship and the frequency. So, it's quality and quantity. And so it's really important to remember to reach out to people.
When we're on site together, we bump into each other, in the rest room or in the break room, getting coffee, in the hallway we've stopped by each other's office. As much as we can replicate and stimulate the things that we do face-to-face. And in every training I do, every presentation I do, I always say, if you take away nothing but this, remember, always be asking, how can we replicate and simulate what we would do if we were face to face, or we had everybody face to face. How can we replicate and simulate that, and do it virtually? There are all kinds of creative ways to do this. And now we've got the great technology to help us with that. So, we need to remember to be communicating. And now that we have all this technology, a lot of times we've left communication resort to horrible things like just email all the time or just texting all the time.
And we sometimes forget that, just pick up the phone and talk to people. There's a lot of power in that live voice to voice. There's more authenticity, it's way easier to be empathic in the moment. And you can hear, you can listen between the lines much more readily when you're doing live communication. So, I'm always reminding people, if you haven't talked to one of your team members for a couple of days, it's okay to just call somebody and say, hey, I just want to know how are you doing? Or, for example, if somebody had a personal health situation in their family, connect a little bit more about that without being intrusive, of course. And so, the magic is really in the mix. Of course, we're going to have to do email, we're going to text chat with people.
We might do online messaging and we're going to pick up the phone occasionally. And then we're going to have team meetings a lot as well. So, how we manage those meetings is another whole area. So, a big part of communication is familiarity, getting to know people. So, before we started this, you and I chatted for a while. So, you learned a little bit about me and I learned a little bit about you and what's going on in your life. And a little bit about my history and my family history. And don't we feel like we kind of know each other a little bit more than if you had just called and said, okay we're ready to roll here. And we tend to kind of forget that when we're doing virtual meetings. It's scheduled on Zoom and everybody needs to get started because they have another meeting and we don't do the informal thing. Again, replicating and stimulating.
We never ever get on site for meetings and just sit down and start a meeting. We always chitty chat [inaudible 00:15:59]...
SKOT WALDRON:
Water cooler talk, right?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah, exactly. Because it's just natural. So, we want to bring as much naturalness into this and we want to ensure that people know each other because that's a really foundational part of trust. Knowing each other as individuals, as human beings, as people because everybody comes to the table with a whole story. What's going on with their kids, what's going on in their life. A lot of people have really had more challenges coping with the whole pandemic situation for a variety of reasons. Some people have actually had COVID. And so, really understanding that, and this is particularly true, the whole issue of familiarity and building trust when you're bringing a new person into a team. So, I have a number of clients where they've hired new people in the last year that they've never met yet. And I say, don't worry, Jason and I have never met. We wrote a book. So...
SKOT WALDRON:
Well, I think about that too. I was talking to one of my employees today and we're talking about something. Oh, she saw a shirt that she... I was wearing a shirt yesterday, she hadn't seen in a long time. And said, well, honestly, I haven't seen you in almost like 16 months now.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah.
SKOT WALDRON:
So, I guess that's probably why you haven't seen it. There's this weird dynamic that's happening with us. But what I hear you saying is that, the foundational element of all of this right, is trust. And I talk about that a lot as far as building a brand perception inside of our organizations, with leaders and teams and making sure that we're building something that is worthy of talking about in a good way, when you go home at night, right? Or when you walk out of your home office at night or whatever it is, or at the barbecue. That you're talking good about your work experience and what it's like. And that comes from trust. And, I think it was a big leap for a lot of companies that had never worked remote, that are always there to look over the shoulder of their employee to make sure they were getting all their widgets done to now go, I got to just trust these people now. Like, that's scary. And now I just have to trust them because I have no choice.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Well, and that gets into the whole area of performance management, which is actually another whole chapter about, how do you manage performance remotely? And, the real truth Skot is, even when people were on site, we could see that they were there. And so long as they, appeared to have a pulse and had their eyes open, we thought they were working. We didn't know really. I mean, there's all kinds of examples of situations where people were doing a lot of things other than working, sitting in their offices. And so, it really comes back to, what is the deliverables? What expectations do you have of people? What are those deliverables? How do you measure it? How do you monitor it? And, so I've long said the distributed workforce, taking everybody remote actually forces us to be way more conscious about what we expect of people.
And is it hours sitting at a desk or is the deliverable and how do you define that? And is everybody on the same page about that? And so, there is now the element of trust in terms of our people working. If you as a leader can't see the deliverable in some way shape or form beyond, they would have sign in by Zoom every day and you would watch them work. There's something wrong with how you've defined their position or how you're managing performance. And so, it's shining a big light on performance management, which I think is great because that brings more clarity to our expectations and help people know that they are doing what is expected of them. So, it's forcing much more conversation about, what do we need to get done and how do we know when it's done?
SKOT WALDRON:
So, they're managing performance of their people. They're having to learn to trust their people more. People have always been remote, it's just like, sure, I mean, it's just what we've always done. But leading now in the digital age is a little bit different than what used to be. How do leaders now communicate effectively with their teams? Or how do they show them that they're there, they're supporting them effectively? How do you talk about that?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah. So, coaching and developing people was another big challenge. And early on people were, remember when we first went into lockdown in the United States, we thought that it was a three week adventure. That was way back last March, April.
SKOT WALDRON:
It's probably been like four or five weeks now, right?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah, it's four or five weeks. I think six or seven.
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
I mean, we're like months into this. And the reality is, most people unless you're in critical. And one of my clients was declared their critical business. So, they had to adapt and get people into manufacturing and people had to manage that, some of them not on site had to manage what was going on on site. But providing all the protections and all the COVID protocols and all of that, because they still had to get product out the door because they were an essential business. And so, and other organizations, they're were wondering, why are we paying for all this real estate? Because the truth is we sent people home. And one of the leaders that I interviewed for the book earlier on said, actually, there are a whole bunch of jobs we thought never could be done remotely.
We never even talked about that. And now we had to do it and it's going really well. So, that would call into question, what do we need to change in the future and how do we leverage what people are able to accomplish? So, how do we coach and develop them? Honestly, I don't think we figured out some of that yet for this being an ongoing thing. I will tell you, for one of my clients that I was supposed to be doing onsite training for them, a leadership training for all of the second half of 2020, couldn't do that. We just pivoted and did training, two day team meeting of training, which is a bit of a slog to engage in something for two days remotely. But, that just forced me to say, okay, how can I simulate and replicate what we do in the classroom?
How do we do this small group stuff? How do we do peer coaching within the context of this and get them offline and not doing the whole talking head thing for two days. I mean, that would be deadly or I could talk for two days about this stuff, but I didn't want to do that. So, small group works, still practicing feedback, presentations and mixing it up. So, but people have been deferring things like annual reviews, because we know we want to sit down to talk about that. That is not happening. So, we have to use this technology and we have to recognize that, how would it be different if you and I were actually in the same room. And, it would just feel a little more human, I guess, but it feels great to me that we can see each other.
It's just as dynamic. And it's the reality. I don't even know where you are and you're probably many states away. The idea of having to get on airplanes or to travel, to drive six hours, to do something that we can do very well through this technology, we have to look at that because I did this for years. I would get on a plane and fly two and a half hours for an hour long meeting and then wait for my flight back and then go back. Maybe miss, the flight gets canceled and sleepover in the hotel without any luggage at great expense. Not only travel expense, but time. And the erosion of productivity for me to do that when an hour long virtual meeting takes care of it, people think we can't sell remotely.
I've talked to a lot of salespeople who said, oh, as soon as this is over... I mean, I can manage my clients, but I really need to get out to talk to my prospect and I have to be face-to-face. You know what I say? What makes you think they're going to want you in their office, breathing on them face-to-face anytime soon. So, you best learn how to advance sales and do that because this might be the way people want to have more efficient interaction with the people they buy from, going forward.
SKOT WALDRON:
You talk about one of the biggest problems with companies and culture is not articulating it. Right? And not helping people feel like they're part, like where they fit inside of the culture. What's that about?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah. That's a really interesting point. And we have a whole chapter on culture, but I've long been interested in culture. And because that's really pretty fundamental. Actually, one of the chapters, it's starts like this, it says... It starts like everything with culture because well, trust is important. Culture is kind of the underlying element that shapes everything about an organization. And so, I do think there's a big challenge. First of all, it was hard enough before getting everybody to understand, first of all, clarifying what our culture is, who we want to be, how we want to be. And the whole issue around the ethics of that and how you communicate that and how you shape that. Now doing that remotely is a bigger challenge because these are sometimes not easy things to talk about.
And so, here's how I've always seen culture and change as we shift people to new new areas of focus, or as we try to get them into their culture. I see it as, so let's say, you and I were leaders in an organization and we decided, this is how we want people to be, this is how we want our company to be. And so we paint a picture of the organization and how it is, how it's going to be. And sometimes, culture can be aspirational. The trick is, we have to give people the tools to paint themselves into that picture. You can give people a really compelling picture, but if they don't see how they're going to fit into it, they're going to do lots of creative things, even not consciously to avoid going to that because they might not agree with it. They might not feel that they have the capacity to do it. They might not feel like that would be comfortable. They don't even really understand what it is. Who's going to go towards something that's confusing. Now, doing that remotely then just requires... It's a real burden on leaders.
It requires a lot of talking, clarifying, seeking to understand, seeking to align a lot of empathy about how challenging this is. And so again, back to lots and lots and lots of discussion and dialogue and communication and feedback and scheduling time to just talk about things. And culture is the really important one.
SKOT WALDRON:
This has been great. You've had a lot of experience in this world. And we've all heard about the new normal, you call it the next normal, which I really like.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah, because who knows what's after that?
SKOT WALDRON:
Yeah. Whatever that's going to be called. But this has been amazing. Where can people get a hold of your book? Is it out yet? Where can we expect to get ahold of that?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
It's actually printing right now. So, by the time everyone would hear this, it will be done. Very simple, remoteleadershipbook.com.
SKOT WALDRON:
There you go.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yeah, so it's very easy. Let me just pick up on one thing that you said. Do you know why we call it the new normal? It's because we desperately want to have clarity and know where we're going. We want to get there, we want to settle in. And the reality is, I mean, just look at the last 25 years. We're not settling in anywhere. It's constantly evolving. And that's why I like to call it the next normal. We have an idea where we're going and we're not going to settle there very long. The reality is, there's going to be the next normal, whatever that is. And I believe we have to equip leaders to help people be comfortable in this evolutionary change that's going to continue to happen.
SKOT WALDRON:
That's really good. I really like that. That process is really, really good. Okay. And then people, if they want to get in touch with you, what do they do to engage with you, to hire you, to come speak or to do whatever that they need from you?
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Okay. Well, first of all, thanks for asking. And they can do that through the remoteleadershipbook.com site and just click on my picture and it'll open up an email to me. Or I also have, for my VirtualWorks! company, virtualworkswell.com and it covers a lot more of what all we do and my keynote, which keynotes are now virtual too. Nobody's getting groups of people together, so the stage is right here and I'm ready and accessible to do any of those things. And we're doing a lot of remote training right now, getting people up to speed on doing this well. Not just from a leadership perspective, but from a team member perspective as well.
SKOT WALDRON:
And you're on LinkedIn because that's where we found each other.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Yes, exactly. So, I'm in LinkedIn and...
SKOT WALDRON:
LinkedIn and email. That's how we connect. So, that's very cool.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Well, once again, the magic is in the mix. You got to be out there communicating in lots of different ways. So...
SKOT WALDRON:
You do. Well, thanks a lot for being here. So excited. I'm glad that you spoke on this topic. I've been speaking on this topic a lot lately, but from a different angle. So, it's really interesting to hear your take on it. And you have a lot of experience, 1999, however long ago that was. Nobody's counting, right? So fantastic, Debra.
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
It's hard to say I have been around for a while.
SKOT WALDRON:
So wise. Beautiful. Thank you so much for being here. I really appreciate...
DEBRA DINNOCENZO:
Thank you, Skot. I appreciate the opportunity. It's been great to talk with you.
SKOT WALDRON:
Hello everybody. Did you hear that? We're now working in a new normal. Okay. If you want to call that, that's fine. I think [inaudible 00:31:50] avoids that word now, because it's been said so many times. We're always looking at the next normal, what's the next thing that's going to happen? The next workplace normal, the next society normal, the next family life normal. What is that and what are we going to do to embrace it? Well, Debra talks about first, trust. And how we have to have trust in order to be fully functioning, in order to do the things that we need to do to succeed, we have to have trust. And it's like that. Everybody knows that, everybody is, I do business with people you know, like and trust. You only buy things from people you know, like and trust. And the thing is that trust word is so important because it leads to loyalty. I always preach about loyalty and being loyal as a brand, right? To consumers, being loyal as a brand, to your employees and teams.
And it all starts with that trust word. And then wait, how do we build trust? Well, that's through effective communication and understand that you got to be there for your people. In a remote world, there's different ways of doing that. And I love the principle of, how are we going to replicate what we did in the office here in this meeting? How are we going to replicate that to make sure that we're trying and putting an effort to have that human connection and to have those experiences that made us what we were when we were working in person together. So thank you, Debra. Good luck with the book, Remote Leadership, go check that out. You can go to her website and check that out, the link is here in the description. If you want to find out more about me, skotwaldron.com. I've got all my interviews posted there.
I've got some free tools and assessments on there, you can download and you can go to my YouTube channel. I've got all my videos there, I've got some free trainings there as well. Like, subscribe, share, do all those things that you do on YouTube and connect with me on LinkedIn. I would love to connect with you and build a network. So, thank you everybody again for joining me on another episode of Unlocked.
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