Lessons from an over busy diary It’s 0345hr, my alarm is going off and I cant help asking myself is this sustainable? Two days ago I arrived late at the hotel and crashed into bed. A restless night had me up slightly too early, my day had started.
Why intimacy is a big deal when managing remote team workers and what to do about it. Intimacy doesn’t seem like a very professional word does it? It is, however, a crucial idea when we are managing remote team workers. The Google dictionary suggests its definition is a ‘close familiarity or friendship’.
I’ve never been one to suffer badly with back pain. The really painful stuff has only happened to me a few times over my near 55 years. Memorably the first time I experienced debilitating back pain it was caused pulling my socks on, on my 30th birthday! Prior to that experience I had carried around woeful, youthful distain, belittling the grumblings of others over their sore backs.
One of the problems associated with becoming a remote worker is the loss of team feeling. We find that organisations who have a great culture start to introduce remote working, home working, hot-desking etc, only to discover that they are loosing something of the sense of team.
We probably use ask and tell all the time in our management roles, but there’s something important about this that goes beyond just being polite or not. There are times as a manager when I really need to tell, to be directive and give individuals instruction.
Unless you’ve been avoiding the news, you will probably know that there is a leadership battle underway for the UK’s top political job. At the last count there were 11 contenders all competing for the opportunity to be the next (unelected) Prime Minister of the UK.
What’s all the fuss around giving people praise, especially if they are only doing what’s expected of them? Sometimes we managers can get ourselves into a really unhelpful way of thinking. Perhaps it’s because we feel we mustn’t ‘over-do’ the praise of our staff.
For many years I thought the opening line of Johnny Nash’s hit was “I can see clearly now Lorraine has gone” The realisation that the lyric was about the weather brought for me a whole new meaning to the song! Seeing clearly is such an important thing for teams that managers really should think more about it.
Three week to go before the festival of work kicks off. We've a brand new stand to show off this year, although we did have a few problems trying it out in the office! iManage 1, light fitting 0! We've just been granted a speakers slot too, so if you're there on the Thursday (13th June 2019) come to the Learning and Development stage for 1045hr to see Bob present on 'Designing learning solutions for remote/virtual team managers and workers.
Most people seem to have heard of the SMART objective. An acronym to help you have all the correct ingredients when crafting an objective. There are loads of different versions of it too, my favourite being: Specific, Measurable, Awesome, Ridiculous and Time-bound ;-) But the traditional amongst us may be more familiar with Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant and Time-bound.
