Author: Bob Bannister

Building a high functioning team

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

There is a clear difference between high performing teams and high functioning teams.

Put simply, many high performing teams are not necessarily high functioning. They achieve what they achieve through effort, blood, sweat and frequently tears. Performance in these organisations is exhausting, often stressful, there is fall out and discontent. They are battle zones. In truth, these are not pleasant environments in which to work, but so often we put up with it because when we jump we find exactly the same issues emerging in the fire as well as the frying pan.

In contrast high functioning teams are positively slick, they are pleasant supportive places to exist. They operate in such a different zone that performance becomes the by-product. So nearly all high functioning teams are also high performing, but without the angst found in high performing teams that are not high functioning.

It’s this inability to function highly that we have witnessed time and time again. Almost everywhere you will find people working hard, everyone is busy, at least by the norms of their incumbent culture. Performance is striven for on all almost every front, but it’s like giving a diabetic with a headache some paracetamol when the reality is their blood sugar is too high. Working harder and faster, becoming increasingly busy is not the answer, improving the way we function is.

Will Karlsen and I have been working for the past decade (or even longer) trying to understand this and after much consideration, research and head scratching, we’ve defined it!  What it takes to be a truly high functioning team.  You will no doubt be pleased to hear that there is a model, plus what we are calling ‘my high functioning team footprint’.  

Here’s the model for you to ponder…

 

There is a fair bit of explanation behind each idea within the model, but for the purposes of this blog I’m going to cut to the quick and take you straight to the 4 elements of our footprint (the steps required to engender high functioning) which can be traced within the following sentence:

Two or more people, working together within a prosperous environment, towards a shared purpose.

We’ve summarised the footprint using 4 C’s that sub divide this sentence:

Two or more people (Collaboration),

working together (Competence),

in a prosperous environment (Community),

towards a shared purpose (Clarity).

Operationally it looks like this:

 

Clarity, competence and collaboration interlinked within a safe environment of a comfortable community.  We have found that all of these steps have significance and application within high functioning teams.  

Community

I’ve recently written on the topic of ‘Building Comfortable Communities’ so have a read.  It is the community that surrounds the three other operational areas beginning with ultra high ‘clarity’ of purpose.  

Clarity

Linking a strong organisational or functional purpose with day to day activity is always evident in high functioning teams.  It’s the thing that gives them common purpose and ultimately ensures that all parts are contributing meaningfully to the collective desired outcome.  Clarity of what we call ‘the golden thread’ between strategy and operations provides the barometer against which managers and team members are able to test their actions.  In high performing teams it’s often all about action, heads are down and everyone is busy.  By comparison, the high functioning team is more able to quickly ascertain which actions to focus on, and perhaps more importantly, which are wasteful.  

Competence

You are staring risk or even failure in the face if you empower someone who is not competent to complete an activity.  High functioning teams are always made up of highly competent people.  That’s not to say that they have stopped learning, or are competent in ‘all’ situations – the reverse is more true.  It’s that the managers and teams place a high value on domain expertise.  They support development, they enable experimentation they give space for mistakes to occur safely – all in the name of building high competence across the community.  They are often able to flex roles, support other areas that are under pressure, make insightful decisions and self manage the task load (Will gives a great example of this in this episode of Squeeze the podcast). 

Collaboration

It’s incredible to observe, but robust research (such as that carried out by Gillian Tett) is suggesting the advent of more and more powerful technology has not served to improve our collaboration.  In fact it has forced ever increased fragmentation between different functions and divisions of many organisations.  Gillian writes of organisations that have great brands, all the right skills, in fact everything they need to command a new emerging market, yet they fail at the first collaboration post.  They are just too fragmented to capitalise on the sum of the parts. 

Building a high functioning team is not easy, but it is attainable and will (time and again) trump those teams that focus solely on performance.  Implementing initiatives that contribute to each of the 4 C’s can indeed boost your performance, but it will be through much greater interdependence not independence.  

To listen to Will and I explore this further, tune into ‘Squeeze’ the podcast episode 2 on all podcast platforms.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

How close should managers get to their team members?

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

How important is the relationship I have with my team?  Pretty vital I’d say!  But what does that really mean?  How well does my team need to know me? What’s that balance between being familiar, one of the team and being professional, being their boss?  

These are valuable questions to ponder.  For what it’s worth, I think the tendency has been to air too much on the side of “I’m their boss” and therefore the need to keep a level of distance between me and them.  It’s become a mantra that echoes the corridors of our organisations “you must be professional’ nothing else is acceptable.  What does that really mean?  Often I think it’s interpreted as; I have to be stuffy, starchy, serious, aloof, superior, mysterious, separate, detached, chilly, even unsociable!   Well, excuse my language, but what a load of codswallop!  

OK, I bet most of you are thinking, I’m not any of those things, but look again.  How much are you working at ‘being the boss’, over ‘being the team’?  I would suggest its likely there are many little things on a daily basis that indicate you are the boss, compared to relatively few things that indicate you are part of the team.  Don’t hear me wrong – I’m not saying we should be unprofessional (whatever that is), I’m just highlighting the danger of limiting true relationship with my followers.  

I bet we would all agree with the concept of situational leadership, the need to lead in an appropriate way for a situation rather than have one style alone.  So why then, when it comes to relationship should I think one approach is going to be the best?  And what’s more that one approach has to have some element of ‘distancing myself’ from my team attached to it.  So here it is guys, you heard it first here, note it down and give me the credit for it whenever it surfaces.  What we need is…

‘Situational Intimacy’

© Bannister 2019 😉

Yep, simple yet profound hey! The level of intimacy we show needs to be appropriate for the situation!  I know the word ‘intimacy’ is not a very business word, but I’m convinced it’s a helpful one.  What is intimacy?  It’s the level of closeness we have with another person.  It provides a huge scale for us to consider from totally connected, open, laid bare, through to distant, unknown, cloaked.  It stands to reason there are times when I have to stand apart, but if that is at the expense of those occasions I am close and known, then it cannot be a good thing.  

As I suggested at the top of this blog, I think we’ve overdone the need to stand apart as managers.  

Who helps you when the chips are down?  Who trusts you the most? Who supports you best when you’re struggling?  Who is keen to follow your lead?  It’s those people who have the highest levels of intimacy with you.  If I am only distancing myself with my team, how can I expect them to want to follow me?  Having ‘professional intimacy’ with my team way outstrips the value of distancing myself.  I’m sure this is like the carrot and stick thing.  All the research tells us that the stick works, it is in fact better than ignoring my people.  The tough, hard, critical approach does bring results.  But those results are always shadowed by the performance achieved via a carrot approach.  It’s been well researched, for example, have a read of ‘How full is your bucket’ by Tom Rath.  Praising people can virtually double performance when compared to constant criticism.  Cutting a longer story short, Rath ultimately concludes that there is a perfect carrot stick ratio, that gets the kick up of performance even from the correction if done (he proposes) in a ratio of five praises to one criticism.  I haven’t done the research but I would stake my pension on the prospect that ‘situational intimacy’ would be similar.  We probably need five times as much ‘closeness’ compared to ‘distancing’ with our people.  If that’s the case, we can surmise that the current cultural narrative of “we must be professional” could result in an over cold level of intimacy with my people.  Anecdotally the best bosses I have experienced tend to be the ones that are able to be both intimate and professional.  It’s that salami sausage thing, they know when to give a piece of themselves that is open, honest and revealing, yet they also know when they need to give another slice which is establishing a boundary and some element of separation.  It’s all the same salami, all genuinely them, but it’s intelligent in the relationship.  Recognising that all shades of professional intimacy have legitimacy, if placed in the context of being the most helpful approach in the moment.  

Getting to know your team is so very very important, but maybe letting them get to know you is even more critical.  It’s something that creates bonds, builds safety, engenders the knowledge of when or when not to offer support.  It is at the heart of being a high functioning team, collaborating not just transacting, disclosing not just enquiring.  

Well, having said all that, perhaps you would like to get to know me a little more?  I would certainly welcome that and therefore encourage you to tune into ‘Squeeze’ the podcast.  It’s a brand new management and leadership development podcast from my colleague Will Karlsen and I.  You can catch us for 30 minutes every Monday on whatever platform you prefer to consume your podcasts.  Episode one has been posted and is available, starting with some personal introductions and an opportunity to find out more about us.  Just podcast search the word ‘squeeze’ and we seem to pop up.  Come along and increase your intimacy with us, because we’d love to get closer to you.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

Squeeze!

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

We’ve got some exciting news to tell you.  Next week at World of Learning, we are launching a brand new shiny podcast called Squeeze.  Here’s what the blurb says about it.  

Squeeze is a management training podcast designed to help squeeze the best out of you.  Each Monday our experts in behavioural training, Bob Bannister and Will Karlsen, sit down to discuss personal effectiveness, helping you to fine tune your management and leadership skills.  

In the first episode of Squeeze, you’ll get to know us, who we are and what made us think we were interesting enough or insightful enough to make a podcast!  We’ll also give you a bit of a roadmap for the future episodes of Squeeze.  

You will be able to consume Squeeze on whatever platform you normally choose to listen to your podcasts, fresh every Monday.  

Have a listen, let us know what you think, ask us a question, suggest a topic.  We look forward to giving you a Squeeze very soon. 

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

Building Comfortable Communities

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

Harvard has recently published a number of papers with some interesting titles. They include the following:

  • Sleep Deprivation Can Make It Harder to Stay Calm at Work
  • Time for Happiness
  • Why You Should Work Less and Spend More Time on Hobbies
  • Treat Your Weekend Like a Vacation
  • Prevent Burnout by Making Compassion a Habit
  • Stressed at Work? Mentoring a Colleague Could Help
  • The Pros and Cons of Perfectionism
  • What Makes Some People More Productive Than Others
  • How CEOs Manage Time
  • Are New Graduates Happier Making More Money or Having More Time?

The titles alone make interesting reading, providing lots of food for thought. There’s definitely a common theme here; perhaps along the lines of ‘ensuring we don’t burn ourselves out’.

Recently we’ve been developing our own thinking around the importance of building comfortable communities. We are convinced it’s part of what high functioning teams do; they create environments that care for one another.

Teams that get this, realise a phenomenal benefit that has been forsaken in recent decades, yet can deliver very hard benefits as well as untold soft advantages. It’s an obvious thing to say, but people who make no time for themselves (or others) tend to operate in highly stressful performance zones. Often this leads to super unhelpful consequences both at work and at home. The research from those clever people like Harvard is all stacking up to suggest ‘performance comes most readily and satisfactorily when people balance their own lives and their shared communities, to be healthy prosperous, safe environments’ – or as we put it, comfortable communities.

It is both the personal and the corporate arenas that you need to focus on if you want to develop high functioning environments that nurture as well as perform. The easiest of those to impact is of course your own world. Take stock and work out whether you are giving yourself enough down time, but also enough stimulus outside of work. Ask yourself which one or two things (within your control) would enrich your life if you made the change to introduce them regularly.

The exercise would be equally beneficial for your team, it’s just a little bit harder to implement some ideas within the constraints of an organisation. It is however very possible and frequently very acceptable to increase the comfort and security of your working community. We recently visited a clients premises located in the middle of nowhere! Yet they had catered extremely well for the sizeable community that worked on that site. Throughout any periods of dry weather the BBQ coals are set alight mid morning to allow anyone to rustle up an awesome alfresco meal by midday. We spotted teams outdoors around picnic tables having meetings. They sounded fun and noisy. Individuals in deck chairs were spotted typing on their laptops beside the canal that runs past the office. The tuck shop was a sight to behold. All simple ideas, but collectively these and other small things gave the location such a cool and comfortable vibe. A real sense of community.

Some commentators are suggesting the era of lining shareholders pockets may be on the cusp of giving way to the creation of safe communities. Environments that exist to support the members, not to make a few rich. I wouldn’t hold your breath on that one, but it is relatively simple to build better, more comfortable communities within our teams. Think individually, then collectively and see what you can do to build high function into your teams.

Bob Bannister
Ships Captain

Learn effective tricks to build your personal resilience

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

We think that building personal resilience is a management foundation skill.  During your management career you are going to face many stressors, both people and situations that are going to test you, potentially to the limit.  Being able to ride these storms doesn’t happen by chance, it is a skill you can develop.  

There are many aspects to being resilient.  Resilience is not only about the moment, the now, the current challenge, it’s also very much about me and the future.  It’s understanding what it will take to cope today and when other (perhaps even more unpleasant) things come flying in my direction.  

The advent of fragility

Psychologists are talking a lot at the moment about the advent of ‘fragility’ in society.  That is the idea that some in our day our feeling increasing less robust and more fragile.  It’s given birth to the phrase ‘snowflake generation’ for those born after 1995, referring in part to the increase in protectionist parental strategies.  In the United States it’s also thought to be connected to laws brought into play around 1995 that (for example), made it illegal for under 10’s to play alone in a public playground.  Whatever the truth of these things, it’s well reported that we are seeing a significant increase in people finding it more and more difficult to cope, or using our language here, lacking resilience.  

One of the problems is that we often look for confidence in being the best.  We look to be confident in being the winner, the champion, the most attractive, the one promoted, the one with the most social media likes etc; in a sense we encourage one another to go for gold all the time.  Yet the truth is, you can never be confident in getting gold!  You have no idea how you will actually perform on the day, let alone know how the others will perform against you.  So we end up lacking confidence, being unable to be sure of our success.  

So how can we reposition this?  Well, by simply putting our confidence, not in doing the best that can be done, but in doing the best we can in that moment – these are two different things.   The second is something we can be 100% confident in.  If not, we are just not trying!  This is just one of dozens of strategies that can help to increase our robustness and so contribute to our overall resilience.  

Invest in robustness

In our most fragile moments, we can quickly lose perspective.  Try investing in your robustness.  Develop your strengths and do all you can to reduce catastrophic thought processes that make the worst of future scenarios.  With skill and practice we can become increasingly resilient to all  kinds of management pressures.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain. 

5 tips for new managers

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

So you have been promoted or have just got that new management job.  Well done.  Here are 5 management tips for you that I wish I had been told in those early days.  There is of course loads of things that would be helpful to tell you, but Rome wasn’t built in a day, so these five make a great starting point.  

1. Challenge the effectiveness of your own role models.  

Despite what you may think, your managers up until this point may not have been the best!  We do learn loads from the bosses we have had, and when we are new to management we will often pick up on  their traits, styles and approaches.  

Now, you may have had a brilliant boss to learn from, and if you did that’s great.  Just don’t assume that they were all good, because guess what, even the best have flaws and get it wrong sometimes!  

Be analytical about it.  It’s worth taking time to grab a piece of paper and write down what they did very well and what they could have improved upon.  That way you can make conscious choices about what you might adopt yourself and where you could be even better than them.  

2. Ensure you step up into the role.  

Now this may sound obvious, but it’s a massively common mistake.  Make sure you step up to manage the team and not bury yourself in operational delivery.  I’ve written at length about this here, so I suggest you have a read.  But in short, it is a mistake to carry on delivering everything yourself, the greatest bosses I have had have been the ones that removed themselves out of the day to day as much as possible, seeing their job as enabling the team to deliver.  

3. Ask for feedback. 

My third tip is to ask for feedback, all the time, from everyone you work with – especially your own team members.  This isn’t about insecurity, always checking whether you have done the right thing, but is about fine tuning your strings!  Not only will you learn and hone your own skills, you will set an expectation and openness that will lead to a culture of feedback within your team.  In the long game this will be hugely powerful, enabling not only high performance, but the ability to function highly too.  You can read some more about the nature of high functioning teams here.

4. Sort genuine team issues. 

Number four needs to be a major focus of the first 90 days in role.  Let your team know that you are working for them by dealing with the genuine issues that they struggle with.  It will also show them that you have the authority to make things happen, bringing about a better environment for them en-route.  Show your interest and ability to make things happen that have not been dealt with sufficiently under any previous manager.  

5. Listen more than you talk.

It’s easy to think that you need to command your group, resulting in lots of direction and instruction.  Yes, there is a place for this, but it needs to come from someone who has listened first.  Make it your role to ask, to be non directive, to draw out the best in others.  Diagnose before you prescribe.  No one would like the doctor who hands out pills without asking and listening to what was wrong.  People like to be diagnosed, they like to be listened to, so make your ears the priority, not your mouth!  

There’s lots to learn when you begin your management career, but that’s OK so long as you have the humility to recognise it.  Be open, generous and helpful as a boss.  Serve your people rather than be a drain upon them.  Make it your primary role to support the people who work for you, ensuring that they always have everything they need (resources and skills).  It will create a great foundation for you to build upon as your grow and become the great manager you need to be.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

Simple tips for a stress free return to work after holiday

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

It’s a pain isn’t it?  You’ve just had a great holiday, managed to switch off pretty well and now you’ve just walked into hundreds if not thousands of emails.  There’s a todo list that’s overwhelming you and all those balls that you were juggling before your break are now rolling around on the floor waiting for you to pick them up.  The stress is palpable and you wish you could be back on the beach in the Algarve or wherever you were.  Let me help you, here are some things you can do to get yourself back in the mix without blowing a pressure valve!  

1.  Make an appointment with your email account.  

The amount of email we return to after a holiday can be a really significant stressor.  So here’s a good way to deal with it.  Put an appointment in your calendar with your email account.  Block out the time and therefore stop others booking and robbing you of that time, by adding it formally to your schedule.  A smart thing here is to put that appointment in your diary before you go on holiday, so when you return you know you will have that assigned space to begin sorting your inbox.  

2. Park every email that has cc’d you!

Write a rule in your email tool to move all the emails that you are cc’d in, to a separate folder.  Let’s face it, if you are cc’d it’s for information not for action.  So you can strip them out of your inbox into a folder where you can check them in a few days time (or even next week), once you’ve had a chance to settle back in.   It will help you to focus on the things that do need your immediate attention and reduce the potential to feel overwhelmed by the shear volume of your inbox.  

3.  Schedule a catch up to assess priority.  

Thirdly, make sure that you sit down with your boss, team, peers and get an update on what you have missed during your vacation.  This is surprisingly useful for tuning you into the tasks that will be more important / urgent and require your immediate attention.  If you miss out step 3, you’ve got to work that priority out for yourself.  There’s only one of you, so you’ve got to make some choices about what you tackle first.  Use your immediate network to speed this up and help you hit the things that really do need your attention as soon as possible.  

4.  Have a physical clean up.  

Getting back into a good work flow is tricky when we are cluttered by lots of stuff on and around our desk.  We all know how we feel better about ourselves and our world when we have had a good clean out, tidying the environment that we are in.  So take some time (it probably won’t take long at all), to sort through and remove those old meeting notes, those expired piles of work etc. 

Most of all, try and enjoy it!  Work really is a blessing in so many ways.  Most of us would be pretty lost without it.  Try to hang onto to that de-stressed holiday feeling as long as you can.  Close your eyes and remember what it felt like back on that beach, transfer that feeling into the current moment.  Relax your shoulders and remind yourself to remove the tension from your body periodically throughout the day; especially as the demands start piling up again.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

Time management techniques from an overly busy week!

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

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.  The following 48 hours were jam packed, 2 follow up sessions with different programme cohorts, a grabbed and rushed evening meal, another follow up one-to-one evening meeting in the hotel lobby, before a 2 hour committee meeting online.  A better nights sleep followed before a solid day of 2 more follow up sessions, plus a 2 hour training needs meeting with the clients general manager.  I was quite ready to come home when the late evening flight got cancelled and a bunch of alternative arrangements kicked in to play.  

So here I am, it’s 0447hr and I’m amazed at how many people are around me in the airport.  I should be home by 0830hr, but sadly, only to repack for another flight out at 1300hr (for a workshop in Milan of Friday).  It’s turning into one of those weeks.  

I know I’m not alone in having a pressured week, really I do,  I’m sure my story and much much worse is being repeated many times around the world.  But sitting here with my empty blue Nero cup, I can’t help feeling my diary has got a little out of order recently.  When it feels like this, I like to count my blessings, it puts things back into perspective.  I’ve got UCB1 radio on in my headphones (one of our great clients) while waiting for the gate to be called, they’ve just played a track featuring my two sons and son in law, makes me feel really very proud and grateful.  I muse on other things that make me glad and at the same time sad (seriously ill ageing parents) and I reaffirm to my self the need to enjoy it all.  

When my retired dad tells me he’s had a busy week, I have to say, I don’t necessarily believe it!  That’s the funny thing about being busy – it’s such a relative thing.  One persons busy is another’s easy, I guess the thing we need to watch for, is when it’s all becoming overly pressured.  For me that happens when I start to feel things are getting out of control.  Too many balls being juggled, so that there’s a real danger I start dropping some.  Generally I try not to worry about those things I cannot influence, the pressure comes when I am simply struggling to do all those things that are within my span of control.  I find clarity of purpose a helpful thing at these times.  I ask myself whether I am sure about what the end goals is.  It helps me to work at doing the right things rather than just being busy about all sorts of things.  Who in this fast paced world has the bandwidth to do stuff that is not directly contributing towards what you want or need to achieve?  I suspect no one, but I also suspect many managers have teams without that necessary focus or clarity.  

Making sure your team knows what is critical in achieving the desired outcome ought to be a daily task for anyone in a leadership role.  I’m quite dedicated to the idea that my team shouldn’t end up doing anything that is not directly and clearly linked to a desired vision or outcome.  It’s a way for you to help them ensure some sanity and not become overwhelmed by the weight of work.  

I wrote about slimming down stuff a couple of weeks ago, I think now is also a good time time for me to re assess some diary commitment rules.  set some realistic maximums on things like client days per week etc.  Someone told me a story this week about a small local company that gives one day a week to its staff for development and improvement.  I love that idea, it’s a big commitment to ‘reduce’ productivity by 20% but am convinced we do need to find refresh time, future time, development time, to survive in today’s challenging work environments and markets.  I think I’m going to schedule some growth days in the diary, perhaps for the whole team, I’ll ask them about it.  It will help me to ensure some sanity around my own schedule as well.  

It’s all too easy to become a victim of our busy lives, when the truth is we always have choices, always.

Bob Bannister

ships Captain 

How intimate are you when managing your remote team? 

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

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’.  Euphemistically we would refer to two physically joined people as sharing intimacy.  So it has to do with how close we are.  

Intimately connected or a million metaphorical miles apart.  

That is (of course) part of the problem when we are managing geographically dispersed team members, they are quite literally miles away from us and that can translate into a slow but persistent possibility of disconnecting.  We may not think this matters too much, but it does.  It matters loads, because the reduction of professional intimacy has a direct correlation with the reduction of trust, and when trust starts to break down in a remote workforce, you really start the problems.  

Note this too, it’s not just the intimacy between manager and staff, it’s also the intimacy between peers and co-workers.  So the remote team manager needs to ‘up their game’ and proactively develop the relationships as part of the day job.  Here’s some ideas about what you need to do. 

1. Get people together physically, just for the sake of getting people together physically.  

 

We need to  plan in reasons to have physical meetings and when we do there is a new and vital item to be added onto the agenda.  That is ‘catch up time’.  Whatever tech we are using (and we should use lots), there is still no substitute to spending face to face time together.  Working together for sure, but also ‘catching up’ together.  

Make sure you schedule down time from the business for people to develop deeper and more meaningful relationships.  This is even more important when on boarding new remote team workers.  It makes all the difference, really.  

2. Work at creating an online community.  

In addition to the physical catch ups, ensure you have some kind of online community tool, and work at making it an active environment.   

Most Organisations have team chat facilities now, but if not, simply grab WhatsApp or something similar.  Set up a group and encourage the whole team to be active on it.  Think about how you can create interaction; like adding a ‘good morning team here’s what I’m doing today’ post, and asking what others are doing.  Have some fun in there, run a few team competitions or post some pictures of the weekends antics.  It all helps to add personality and ultimately intimacy between everyone.  

3.  Go and visit them.  

Own the adage ‘go along to get along’.  Make regular time in your schedule to go and work with each of your remote team members.  They will really appreciate this, the interest, the care, the effort.  They will value this and see you as a highly beneficial boss.  Be careful though.  What ever you do, don’t make this an “I’m checking up on you” visit.  Instead make it a support trip.  You are there to serve them, to help them, to support them, to tune into their issues in the field.  So get out and about as part of your normal duties and it will pay dividend.  

Build a trusting remote environment.  

Work at these three things to help build a trusting environment.  Enable your teams engagement with each other and be proactive in creating significant, positive interaction between you and all the community members.  

If you are a remote team manager, it’s going to be harder than managing an office environment, so step up and own the role.  Do everything you can to enhance the intimacy in your team.  For further insight into managing a remote team check out our free online lesson on managing remote workers. 

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

Emotional intelligence: Lessons from the discomfort of a bad back

Bob Bannister
by Bob Bannister on

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 disdain, belittling the grumblings of others over their sore backs.  If nothing else, my unwelcome birthday present brought a new ability to empathise on a completely different level!  When you put your back out, it hurts like crazy!  

Two weeks ago I had the questionable pleasure of being reacquainted with such pain.  It was a normal day, I’d pulled up outside a clients head office, opened the boot, removed a suitcase of training stuff and then grabbed my laptop bag slightly twisted, bang!  There it was, that striking pain that indicates I’d become somewhat careless with my poor old back.  

What do you do?  Me, I’m a pusher, the client is relying on me, there’s going to be a whole room full of people expecting me to deliver, alongside mounting costs with people travelling to take part in the workshop.  Having tried to mask my discomfort I get into the room and find some strong pink painkillers in my bag (I want to call them Cuprinol, but I’m pretty sure that’s something all together different).  

I pushed through the two days in client, thinking I was masking my discomfort well, until the receptionist who has welcomed me for many many years said “Bob, are you ok, you don’t seem your usual cheerful self”.  She was right, I was ruddy sore! 

Two weeks on, thankfully it’s reduced to a low nagging reminder to be sensible when moving myself or anything at all really.  Perhaps a useful reminder, because we all know that it’s when I forget about it I’m most likely to do some more damage.  I’ve learnt some things though, if your interested here’s what:  

1. When you lose your health you can feel utterly useless! 

For those first few days I needed help to do the simplest things.  Literally the simplest; getting bags from the car, removing clothing, even getting out of a chair!  I couldn’t even pick up and cuddle my beautiful grand daughter (and honestly she is so beautiful she may be the reason for all that icecap melting; she melts me for sure) climbing up my leg to say hi to pops.  For me it was only a short lived disability, but it highlighted the struggle that many face on an ongoing basis.  It’s cliched I know, but looking after our health and well-being is so important. 

I feel I’m relatively fit, exercising once or twice a week, but I hadn’t made it to the gym (through busyness) for nearly three weeks before it happened.  I feel sure that returning to do a little exercise has helped my immediate recovery, but the experience has given me a new emphasis to make time for keeping my ageing bones in as good a condition as possible.  Exercise is not an option, it’s the route to keeping well as long as I physically am able. 

2. Some things can help you make small changes that you should have already been mindful of! 

The second lesson may not be so profound as the first, but it’s making a difference. I’ve lost weight!  Not personally, not in two weeks, but I have aggressively downsized that laptop bag. It had become way too heavy, really. I just hadn’t realised it. A laptop, a big iPad, usually a camera, a kindle, a book (I know), a water bottle, various food and endless other dongles, spare batteries and other general assorted crap!  It was a bad back waiting to happen.  So I’ve skimmed it down, tried to keep it to a bare minimum basis.  Which got me thinking; what else in my life had become bloated or unnecessary?  Are there other areas where I could slim down, cut out the crap and be better for it?  It’s very easy to collate and collect, multiple bass guitars, more shoes, another gadget. Or perhaps it’s another social commitment, committee or responsibility.  It could be a useful question, what can we eliminate from our lives that will reduce the strain we have inadvertently built up over the years?  

They say every cloud has a silver lining.  I think there is some truth in that.  If I count my blessings and strip out the unnecessary it might just make my push towards retirement all that more enjoyable and free from pain.  

Bob Bannister

Ships Captain

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