Working While Distancing

DAN MCGINN: Welcome to Dear HBR: from Harvard Business Review. I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Work can be frustrating, but it doesn’t have to be. We don’t need to let the conflicts get us down.

DAN MCGINN: That’s where Dear HBR: comes in. We take your questions, look at the research, talk to the experts, and help you move forward. Today we’re answering questions from listeners who are suddenly working from home due to the global Covid-19 pandemic. Our guest is Harvard Business School professor Tsedal Neeley. Tsedal, thanks for coming on the show.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Thanks for having me. It’s always terrific to be with you.

DAN MCGINN: So, like everybody else, we’re adapting to a work from home situation, we’re each recording ourselves at our houses rather than doing it in the studio as usual. Tsedal, how are you holding up through all of this?

TSEDAL NEELEY: I’ve been okay. I’m adjusting like everyone else. I do feel like I’m much more tired than I typically am.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, I hear that a lot from people that a one-hour Zoom meeting is a lot more intense than a one-hour face-to-face meeting. And that the fatigue factor, when you do two or three of those in a row, it really just does get draining.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, and never mind trying to find a quiet space where you won’t have kids running around in the background asking what’s for lunch, what they should do next. I think that’s been one of the biggest challenges for me is just figuring out this new routine.

TSEDAL NEELEY: You know, it’s, boy, when I first took on this subject several years ago, I never imagined that in my lifetime I would see the day that the entire world shift to remote work all at once based on some global pandemic that we would encounter. Never in my life did I imagine that we would see a day like this.

DAN MCGINN: Alison, ready for our first question?

ALISON BEARD: Yes, let’s get to it. We’re going to do this a little bit differently than we normally do, we’ve gotten so many questions that we’re going to do a bit of a rapid-fire approach and get to as many as we can. So, I’ll start with the first. Dear HBR: I’m an extrovert. I totally get powered by people and moving around. So, suddenly working from home is absolutely awful. I’m getting bored because of the complete stillness in my room. It feels like my brain and I have lost connection. I know I can trick my mind to get in flow by listening to music while I work, but what else can I do? Tsedal, any tips?

TSEDAL NEELEY: This is such a good one because extroverts really need the stimulation, they need to talk to people. You can actually do this thing while you’re virtual, or some people talk about having parallel play where you can have Zoom or some other instant message program, or Slack, where you are working alongside other people in real-time where you see movement, you can instant message one another, talk to one another, you’re almost recreating that cubical environment while you’re working. You don’t have to just listen to music, you can create the parallel play, you can create the contact. And there’s one more thing too, and I don’t know if you have other thoughts, Dan and Alison, leverage the people in your own home.

DAN MCGINN: One small tip she might think about is she mentions the complete stillness in her room as one of the big annoyances of this. Even if you have a small house you probably have different locations within it. Granted, if you have a family and small kids running around that might not work so well, but changing the scenery, especially if you don’t need to be in a professional video meeting kind of scenario, just changing the place you’re sitting can help make it feel like there’s momentum to the day, and there’s a little bit of variety.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I agree with both of your suggestions. And we should tell this letter writer not to bother the people in her life who are introverts and actually relishing this time to some degree, she should connect with other extroverts who are needing the same contact that she does.

DAN MCGINN: That’s true. That’s a good way to identify a group.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Another crazy idea, I don’t know, I’m not a big TV person, but there’s times where there’s the television in the background kind of in your peripheral view, breaking the stillness, on mute. That’s a possible solution as well.

ALISON BEARD: The last thing I’d recommend, and Dan is going to burst out laughing, is it’s a really good time to adopt a pet.

DAN MCGINN: Of course it is.

ALISON BEARD: And I hang out with my cat a lot. I chat with him. I pet him once in a while. It does give you companionship in a really lonely time.

DAN MCGINN: Alison thinks that every time is a good time to adopt a pet, so I’m not really sure the crisis really influences her on that.

TSEDAL NEELEY: If you can take care of it. It’s a big responsibility if you’ve never had a pet. But what a great idea. It’s really about breaking the stillness or the boredom.

DAN MCGINN: Good, second question?

ALISON BEARD: Yep.

DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR, I’m a manager, and I’m struggling to find the right strategy for handling my team now that we’re working from home. Few of my team have experience working remotely, we’re in healthcare. Given the added workload and stress of Covid-19, I want to make sure that I’m looking out for their mental health needs too. What should I be doing? Tsedal, what do you think?

TSEDAL NEELEY: You know, checking in on your team regularly is really important right now. And what I mean by that is to reach out to folks and say, how are you doing, how are things going, how can I be helpful to you, while they’re working from home to make sure that their mental health or the stress is not getting to them, and to see how you can support them. In addition to thinking through how to support the work that they’re doing, and having them communicate their deliverables.

DAN MCGINN: I’ve tried to make clear to people that work with me, hey, I’m a little bit distracted right now, I’m watching the news too much, I’m having a little bit of problem focusing at times, you’re going to need to give me a little bit more time, I might not get this back to you until tomorrow. So, kind of normalizing and being vulnerable about the fact that I’m kind of anxious right now too, that might be a strategy that can help.

ALISON BEARD: I agree that allowing for mistakes and a little flexibility is really important right now. I think connecting with people on a personal level is really important. And then I also go back to just sort of basic advice we have to give people about how to feel good about their jobs in times of stress, and a lot of times we talk about focusing on purpose, like what’s the higher purpose here, what are we working for, why are we continuing to do this. And especially if they’re in healthcare, I’m sure there are some compelling notes on that front. It’s also giving people a sense of control, I don’t control anything that’s happening with this crisis, but I do control sort of how I’m planning my day, and the things I’m getting done. And then last, just really emphasizing wellness, encouraging people to take their weekends off even though this time is crazily blurred and we don’t know the difference between work and life anymore because we’re all working from home, giving people recognition, telling people to exercise, to take breaks. So, I feel like those things that managers do in any circumstance are even more important now.

TSEDAL NEELEY: I agree. The other thing that I’ll say is even in thinking about this very question that the team that this manager has is in healthcare, workload has gone up, stress has gone up, is there a reason to think that this manager needs to grow his or her team? When we think about teams, and team design, and the right strategies, oftentimes we need to consider whether the context and the situation that we’re in calls for us to rethink the size of our team and the composition of our team, particularly given the crisis that we’re in. So that might be an important strategy to consider as well.

DAN MCGINN: It’s a great impulse for a boss to be concerned about mental health, and there are certainly all things we can do to be more empathetic, more caring, to look out for each other, but I think we should also recognize that at a certain point somebody might need actual mental health professional help. I know our company sent out an email with the employee assistance hotline, which many large companies have. Even though many therapists’ offices are closed because of social distancing, there’s lots of telehealth going on in the therapy world right now. So, recognizing that a boss can only do so much, and at a certain point, people might need professional help, and helping them find it would be useful too.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR, I’m currently facing a challenge and a blessing working from home, namely, my five-year-old son. His school is closed for weeks. My partner is now working from home too. Both of us are constantly on conference calls on either side of our small home. Our son is bouncing back and forth between us looking for attention and interaction. How can I maintain professionalism on conference calls with constant interruption and need for mom-ing? This one hits home for me, Tsedal, how about you?

TSEDAL NEELEY: You know, it kind of hits home. I got fired the second day that we started working from home by my seven-year-old. [LAUGHTER]

ALISON BEARD: He fired you as a teacher?

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes, yes. He doesn’t realize that I’m an award-winning teacher, and oh, man, listen, this is hard. Most of us have never taught small children who need a lot of attention, and how do you manage that if you are in a dual career household, which is also my situation. And what I’ve learned is we have to figure out a schedule, a schedule, we have to be able to allocate time where one person is with the children while they’re working. And you have to communicate with your partner to be clear who’s working while the other person is with the child. And this is where you can truly take advantage of flex time. Remote work, the magic of remote work, you can cut up the time in the days in whatever way works for you. And you need to think about weekly deliverables, not daily deliverables. If you think in those ways and negotiate with your partner, you can make it all work. And that’s how we’ve been surviving. And my husband is a much, much better teacher of young children than me, that’s what we’ve discovered.

ALISON BEARD: My kids are older and technically on break right now. We haven’t been given a schedule. We’re definitely still figuring it out. I agree that communication with my husband has been key. Communication with them has been key. And our letter writer has a very young child, five years old, that she probably can still talk with him directly and say, you know, mom needs four hours right now, that’s like one Disney movie, and a half an hour with Legos, and a half an hour of a KIDZ BOP video, and maybe a one-hour nap for you, and when I’m done with that, I’m all yours, and we’ll do a baking project, or we’ll do arts and crafts. And so, I think that communication with the child, as long as they’re of an age that they understand a little bit, can help. And then I think communication with one’s boss. Stew Friedman and Alyssa Westring wrote a terrific piece for us about how we can all adjust to this as working parents. And it’s being really honest with your manager and your co-workers about what your day is going to look like, that flex time you talked about, Tsedal, and when things do need to push when you’re not going to be able to get a report in because you have to manage something else in your house, but it will come the next day.

TSEDAL NEELEY: And in some cases, there are many organizations that are making childcare available, bringing a babysitter if you’re comfortable bringing someone into the house. We have not. We have decided that we don’t want anyone in the home at all during this time, so we’ve decided that we want to do it all of our, everything all ourselves, for now. But this is just week two. Check with us week three. But that’s another option too if that’s a possibility for people to get help.

ALISON BEARD: We also, I mean, technology is your friend here, and that doesn’t mean putting your kids on a screen and having that watch a video, we’ve sort of experimented with virtual playdates. My kids do Zoom meetings with their friends. There’s a thing for older kids called House Party where they can play games like Heads Up and Trivia altogether as a group, seeing each other on video. And then my brother in law is doing an exercise session for his female friends who are working moms that don’t know what to do with their toddlers. So, all this technology can allow you to actually bring virtual babysitters into your house in a way. Use the grandparents without actually coming into physical contact with them.

DAN MCGINN: Great ideas. Dear HBR, here’s what I’m worried about, what’s the impact of this shift to working from home on employee productivity? Obviously, it’s going to change somewhat, that just goes with the territory, but how do I measure it? I’m not just worried about the impact on operations, but also on employee evaluations. How do I give a performance review for someone’s work during this strange time?

TSEDAL NEELEY: During ordinary times productivity during remote work never goes down, and in fact, there’s a lot of evidence that shows that productivity actually goes up when people work from home. Because you’re stripping away the commute, you’re stripping away distractions. The difference now is that there’s a lot more stress, a lot more uncertainty, and our economic landscape is shifting. We need to think about global pandemic rules right now where the deliverables, and what people have to provide have to be renegotiated at the moment because I can’t imagine that the things that you want people to provide are going to be provided in the way that we expect. I think we need to somehow rethink what people are working on, and think about priorities and deliverables based on outcomes, and what people can really generate at this time. We’re seeing this in a lot of universities, by the way, where they’re extending tenure clocks and shifting deadlines.

DAN MCGINN: I have two children in college, and their college shifted everything to pass/fail for this semester. And it’s not politically correct to say, oh, let’s just make our performance evaluation systems a pass/fail for our companies right now, but I think you’re right.

TSEDAL NEELEY: I wouldn’t be at a place where we’re worrying about employee evaluations and performance reviews at the moment. I would be at a place where you’re adapting and changing expectations while equipping, and teaching, and coaching your employees to be effective remote workers, which also means that you need to work on yourself and develop the aptitude as a manager of remote workers, to be a better coach and leader. So, you need to read up and manage better.

DAN MCGINN: If this listener is already worrying about performance evaluations, which typically take place at the end of the year, I congratulate him on being in a really good, really stable business, because most businesses are just worried about surviving the next few months. It’s great to be thinking that far ahead, but in terms of the priorities right now, thinking about cash flow, thinking about innovative ways to make sure that revenue continues to come in, thinking about the cost structure, I think for many managers employee evaluations are going to be really far down the priority list right now, so it’s not something I would spend much time thinking about.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, and I think the thing that he can do right now is not worrying about measuring the productivity, but worrying about enhancing it, trying to calm their fears, trying to make sure they feel supported, trying to give room for flexibility, trying to emphasize the purpose, trying to clarify the goals, doing all those things that just makes you a good manager is what he should be focusing on. I think that’s exactly what you were saying, Tsedal. Remote work is different in that you need to just sort of heighten all those things, right? You need to make people feel even more supported, understand their purpose even more.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes. I hope people take this to heart. But it’s also important to equip people, to help people understand how to be effective in remote work.

ALISON BEARD: Dear HBR: Let’s just say the timing could have been better. I’ve just recently set up my consulting and coaching business. I’m used to working remotely and enjoy it, that’s one of the reasons I decided to take on this independent role. But it’s not the best time to be starting a new venture. The first contact is always best face-to-face. What can I do to better open and maintain client relationships right now? This is a really tough one, Tsedal, what do you think?

TSEDAL NEELEY: It is a really tough one, but at the same time what I would do is number one, use video conferencing for your initial communication with any of your leads that you want to engage with. The second thing is to have frequent contact. So, the frequency of contact actually helps build rapport and allows you to develop bonding and connection with people. The other thing that I would recommend is you pair the video connection, the frequent contact, with other forms of communication. So, it might be a text message, it might be through What’s App, it might be through Viber, just find out, and you can really build connections through those mechanisms. You can really do it.

ALISON BEARD: I think the issue with this writer though is that this is a start-up, right, she is just starting a business. I happened to be reading a book on social networks by Marissa King, who’s a professor at Yale, and in it, she talks about the fact that in times of crisis people turtle in terms of their connections, even if naturally they sort of want to meet new people. When things are stressful they tend to focus on only their closest contacts, and so, the idea of a potential consultant or coach contacting me in this time of strife and offering me their services, I personally probably wouldn’t react to that well, or I might even just ignore it. So, how does this listener get over that hurdle that she’s a new person trying to introduce herself?

TSEDAL NEELEY: That’s such a good point, it’s like a new venture, and is this a time for this listener to try to get people excited about her services. But this is a coach at a time where a lot of people need coaching. Believe me. Don’t you think?

ALISON BEARD: Yes.

TSEDAL NEELEY: I would think that the coaching business is one that’s going to be exploding with needs, people really needing to figure so many things out. So, I think it’s quite possible that people might be looking to get coaching even on remote work.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, one thing she could do also in this time of need for people, she might offer her services pro bono to help people establish those connections and those networks, prove her worth, and then establish real sort of transactional business relationships with them later.

DAN MCGINN: Yeah, or at least change her pricing model for the short-term. We have a piece by Rafi Mohammed, who’s a pricing consultant who works with a lot of companies, and he says many, many businesses should be taking a hard look at their pricing structure, and especially a coaching start-up if she can’t afford to do it pro bono in the beginning, at least some short-term packages, or short-term discounts to try to spur that demand.

ALISON BEARD: Good. Ready for the next question?

TSEDAL NEELEY: Yes.

DAN MCGINN: Dear HBR: My company has a mix of white-collar and blue-collar workers. It’s much easier for the office workers to adapt to remote work than it is for the blue-collar workers, but our revenue is derived from onsite work at customer locations, and our people can’t go there right now. We’re coming to realize that some of our workers have it easier than others as we make this shift, how do we handle that? Tsedal, what do you think?

TSEDAL NEELEY: You know, this is a very loaded question in that it reveals the divide, those who can continue to work from home, and those whose regular job with contact with other people has really been stripped with the coronavirus such that the staying at home mandate completely affects their ability to engage with people, the ability to drive. And so, what we’re seeing is people having to make decisions around do we keep people at home, do they use up vacation time, do they not, do we furlough, it’s a very, very difficult question. Best-case scenario is you preserved peoples’ employment, you do some upskilling for the moment, and then when things settle down, people can go back to their regular operations. That would be the best-case scenario. But the level of uncertainty in our new normal makes that unrealistic for some places. What do you think Dan and Alison? How do you answer this question?

DAN MCGINN: It’s really hard. Like you, one of my first thoughts was is there some kind of training component that they can do while they’re at home. I ran into somebody in the education field recently who the nature of their job doesn’t lend itself to online learning, they’re basically using this time to try and get them to think broadly about how to be better at what they do once they get back to a classroom setting because they can’t teach online right now. So, I think to the extent that companies are able to keep these workers on the payroll, they’re at home, they can’t do their actual job, try to think creatively about whether there’s any training or development purpose they could do during this time. But I realize that can’t last forever.

ALISON BEARD: Yeah, I worry about this letter writer simply because he’s working for a company that’s revenue is primarily derived from this onsite work, and we don’t know when that’s going to be able to pick back up again. So, I think probably everyone in the organization, white-collar, blue-collar, must be scared right now. Perhaps the blue-collar workers are more scared. And I think the best thing a leader can do in that situation is be very transparent about what’s going on, and what the plans are, and what the leadership team is thinking, be hugely empathetic, and then also emphasize, and Tsedal you’ve talked about this a lot, the oneness of the organization. We’re all one team and we’re going to get through this together.

TSEDAL NEELEY: And in fact, the smart leaders, the best leaders, are the most visible leaders at this time. They’re giving people hope, they’re giving people courage, they’re giving people instructions on how to behave on a regular basis, and they’re communicating on a daily basis. Not a weekly basis, but on a daily basis. And by the way, they should be visible digitally, meaning they should show up on video conferencing, whether it’s recorded or live, on a very regular basis. They should be seen, they should be felt, and they should be heard sending this message, and smart leaders are doing it.

DAN MCGINN: In thinking about these letters, it’s funny, one of my favorite pieces ran in the magazine just about ten years ago. It was by Bob Sutton, and it was called How to Be a Good Boss in a Bad Economy. And it dealt a lot with the anxiety, and the uncertainty, and the emotions that your workers are feeling, and how to kind of empathize with them and try to help them calm a bit. And I think a lot of what we’re talking about in terms of boss behavior draws on those same lessons. The specifics of a pandemic, and the health concerns that we all have right now, those are acute, and those are very different than what we felt during the last crisis, but a lot of the emotions are similar, and I think some of those strategies still work really well.

TSEDAL NEELEY: I agree. I completely agree with that.

DAN MCGINN: Tsedal, thanks for coming on the show.

TSEDAL NEELEY: Thank you so much for having me.

DAN MCGINN: That’s Tsedal Neeley, she’s a professor at Harvard Business School. Thanks to the listeners who wrote us with their questions. Now we want to know your questions. Send us an email with your workplace challenge and how we can help. The email address is DearHBR@HBR.org.

ALISON BEARD: On our next episode, we’re going to be talking about influencing up with Nashater Deu Solheim.

NASHATER DEU SOLHEIM: People really struggle with will they come across as being manipulative, or desperate, or needy?

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ALISON BEARD: And if you like the show, please give us a five-star review.

DAN MCGINN: I’m Dan McGinn.

ALISON BEARD: And I’m Alison Beard. Thanks for listening to Dear HBR:.