#71 Remote leadership expert, Wayne Turmel, Co-founder, The Remote Leadership Institute

DISCUSSED IN THIS EPISODE

• What caring in the workplace means for Wayne
• Mastering effective communication in virtual environments
• Practical strategies to foster connection and belonging in a virtual world
• Actionable insights for leaders and remote teams alike

RESOURCES

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Transcript from the interview

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SPEAKERS

Graeme Cowan, Wayne Turmel

Graeme Cowan  00:01

It’s a real pleasure to welcome Wayne, to Mel, to the caring co podcast. Welcome Wayne.

Wayne Turmel  00:11

Graeme, great to meet you and finally, be here.

Graeme Cowan  00:16

Wayne. What does care in the workplace mean to you?

Wayne Turmel  00:21

Oh, wow. Care in the workplace, I think has a couple of levels, but the big thing is, do you care about the people with which you’re interacting? And as a leader, that means, do you care about your customers? Right? Are you doing the right things for the right reasons to satisfy the business and do that. And do you care about the people whom you are leading, and that as there are all styles of humans and all styles of work, styles and that kind of thing that can take on a lot of things, but at its core, do you care? Do you want the best for people? Do you want the best from people? And are you willing to exert that discretionary effort and draw that from them, because people who care try harder?

Graeme Cowan  01:16

Absolutely. Would you mind just explaining how you became an expert in leading in the virtual world, even before COVID was around.

Wayne Turmel  01:24

Yeah, I’ve been standing on this street corner for a very long time. I remember distinctly, actually, it was about 2005 2006 and I was working for a company teaching presentation skills. My specialty has always been communication, business, writing, presenting, that kind of thing. And I was teaching a presentation skills class, and somebody was looking very bored and uncomfortable and said, you know, this is great, but I only talk to real people, like twice a year. And I said, What do you mean? And they said, well, there’s this new thing called WebEx, and I do everything by web webcam. And I went, Oh. And so I looked into what WebEx was, and my brain went kaboom, because I realized that it was surely going to catch on, and it was going to be a tool that people needed in the future, but nobody was teaching anybody how to use it. From a communication standpoint, it was, here’s your WebEx license. Push this button, try not to hurt somebody. And not only were they not teaching people the features and how to use them. But when you’re online, you organize your content differently. Eye contact is different. You work in shorter increments, right? You need a physical break every 45 minutes or an hour, because it is ironically and paradoxically more draining to present through a webcam into cyberspace than it is in a room full of people where there’s an energy exchange absolutely and so I became really fascinated with that, and then about 2007 I created my own consultancy and wrote a number of books on the subject, and then, gosh, a few years ago, I was getting a lot of requests for less communication and more about leadership, which wasn’t really my bailiwick, whereas my friend and colleague, Kevin eichenberry, who is a renowned expert on leadership, was getting a lot of requests for virtual and, you know, my team is dispersed, and rather than invent two separate wheels and compete with each other, we decided to create this thing called the remote Leadership Institute. And a year later, he bought my company, and now I work with and for Kevin. And you know, we’ve written the three books in the long distance leaders series, and so this has been my area of focus for a very long time. I mean, it starts with, how do people communicate or not at work, yeah. And it really stems from the fact that I am the world’s worst consultant, because I don’t care about stock price, and even CEOs, other than on a personal human level, I don’t care. I care about the leaders and the people working in the business, and how do they keep body and soul intact and do good work? And so that’s what drives me. Yeah,

Graeme Cowan  04:49

1. And one of the big things, which was, of course, exaggerated with COVID, was a massive, massive increase in, you know, zoom or web. X or Google meets or teams, and from a leader’s communication and effectiveness, what have you found to be really important, to build credibility, show your care, and also to be effective?

Wayne Turmel  05:16

You know, it’s funny, we have these roles in the book, and rule number one is think leadership, first, location second. And what we found, which didn’t surprise us, but it’s always good to have the universe unfold the way you think it will, is the people who are good leaders care about being good leaders, the people who want connection with their people and who care about their people were fairly successful during COVID. Now they didn’t always do it skillfully, and it was often brute force, and very often they sacrificed their sleep and their working hours and stuff to make it happen. But they could make it happen because they understood the first principles, understood what it is to engage with people, to make them feel inspired to do their best work, and the rest is details. You know, a lot of people got thrown by the technology. Well, my people aren’t here. I don’t know what I’m going to do. Well, if you stop and think, yeah, you do. I mean, you need to coach, you need to set a vision, you need to delegate. You need to correct people when they’re not performing well. They need feedback. That’s all true. None of that has changed, yeah, yeah. What has changed is not what we have to do as leaders, so much as how we do it. Right? We’re doing it now, mediated through technology in ways that are literally unnatural,

Graeme Cowan  07:02

yeah, yeah. And so what are the things that leaders can do to build that sense of belonging and connection? You know, it’s a fundamental need, and it’s not going to go away when you think about the really great, remote leaders. What are things that they do differently to others.

Wayne Turmel  07:23

I think there’s a couple of things. You know, Genghis Khan ruled half the world and never held a WebEx meeting. There were certain things that all teams must have. I think when you think about remote work, and I haven’t actually formulated this thought in a long time. So I hope I don’t trip over it. You gotta have a vision. Why are we here, right? Is everybody on the same page? Do we understand what we’re doing? Why do we exist? Who do we serve? What is the product? What are the outcomes that we need? You use the technology that is available to you. You know, COVID happened at a reasonably good time in human history. Can you imagine, even 10 years ago, with the tools that we had at our disposal doing the things I mean, during COVID, productivity did not fall particularly, um, employee engagement actually went up for the first six months that people were working remotely. Because engagement doesn’t come from a building. It comes from caring about your people and a sense of mission and not wanting to fail your colleagues and all that sort of stuff, sometimes to the detriment where, you know, CEOs were concerned that people weren’t going to work enough. And in fact, as you know, it went completely the opposite way, where people couldn’t turn it off, and they were working more hours, in fact, than when they were going to the office. So you have to have a vision. You use the technology that’s at your disposal, and then there needs to be agreed upon accountability, right? What are the expectations of you, my employee? What are your expectations of me as your leader, and what happens if we don’t meet them? Yeah, yeah. And if you have those three things, if you have an agreed upon vision, if you have the technology you need to do the job, the tools, and you agree on what’s expected and where the metrics are and all of that, there’s no reason it shouldn’t be successful and probably less stressful than we think it is. And

Graeme Cowan  09:51

I know also that these days, having a sense of purpose is really, really critical as well. And. Um, you know, leaders being able to explain the purpose of the company, the purpose of the team and the values, but it’s, it’s often not just talking about it, is it? It’s actually living the values and making them part of the modus operandi of the way we work together, in terms of the meeting side of things, are there things you send that effective for building that sense of connection and belonging, tangible? How’s on? How to do that? Yeah,

Wayne Turmel  10:32

I think that the key thing is, you know, how do we as a team? Let’s start at the team level, because it’s easier at the team level, quite frankly, definitely, definitely, you know, how do we build teams in general, right? We are all there for the same reason. We know like and trust each other. We know each other’s strengths and weaknesses. We give each other grace when needed, and we’re not afraid to step up and push a little when that has to happen. And none of that has changed. All those things are true, but how do you do that when you are not sharing a physical space? And you know, there are some very kind of obvious things. Webcams are extremely useful. They are not a panacea. They are not a silver bullet, nor should they be used all the time. In the book we talk and spend a lot of time on this notion of choosing the right tool for the right communication moment, this notion of richness versus scope that there are sometimes you need to get the message out fast. It doesn’t require a lot of context. We get emails, Slack, messages, texts, whatever does the job. But you can’t rely on that when there are going to be questions, and when you need to gage people’s reactions, and you need to be gentle or careful about how you communicate, and so choosing the right tool for the right job, right if I’m having a coaching conversation with you, ideally, we would be face to face across a table with a cup of tea and having the conversation. Well, that’s not always possible, right? In this world in which we work, right? You could be on the other side of the globe or just in a hotel room on a sales call somewhere, yeah. So okay, what’s the closest we can get to that rich experience. Well, we’ll get on Zoom, or whatever we’re using Zoom generically, you know, we get on Zoom. The webcams are there. It’s just you and me. We can see each other’s body language. I can see you nodding right now, you know? Or if you give me the Scooby Doo face, and I can see that you don’t understand what I just said, I can respond, right? Yeah. The problem is that technology. There’s a couple of problems with it. One is that not everybody uses it effectively. Yeah. I mean, in most platforms, 80% of people use 20% of the features. Yeah, they use the bare minimum required to do the job, absolutely, even though there are tools that make it much richer and and easier. The other thing is that we tend to default to what’s easy. My favorite horror story is my wife was once fired by instant messenger. Wow, she was a salesperson working remotely. The manager decided to divest themselves of all the remote people and just keep an outbound call center in the office. And so just casually, you know, got on Yahoo Messenger and said, Oh, by the way, we’re letting you go, and your last day is tomorrow. Now, see you’re having the appropriate horrified response. But I have told that story, and I can see certain leaders going, can you do that? Because it’s easy. There’s no drama. You don’t have to deal with crying employees and whatever, right? Technically, it did the job. Any sentient human being will agree. It’s a horrible thing to do, and probably gives you a pretty good impression of this guy’s leadership style, but, and that’s a horrible example, but we’ve all been guilty of kind of similar kind of things. You know, it’s four o’clock on a Thursday afternoon, and I need to give Graeme some feedback. Oh, God. You know what he’s like. Let me just send him an email, right? I mean, you’ll deal with it eventually, and whatever. But, man, it’s easy to take the easy way out.

Graeme Cowan  15:13

Yeah, and it’s funny, like, what you describe about, you know, different technologies needed for different situations. Because in some ways, and I’ve worked a lot in the whole mental health space, and resilient and being supportive in the workplace and sometimes a call on a phone is preferable to a visual face to face situation. You know, some people just find it easier to talk when they’re not face to face. Some people find it easier, you know, when you can hear the energy or the pain in their voice, and you can pick that up and and and acknowledge that and talk about it so it it’s not, you know, the the whole video thing isn’t perfect for everything. There’s times when an old fashioned phone can be a good way to build trust and rapport if it’s handled appropriately well.

Wayne Turmel  16:08

And you know, that’s a big caveat that you just put on there, right? It needs to be handled appropriately. And as a leader, sometimes you need to make tough calls. You know, we insist everybody be on webcam every meeting. Really, is that a thing that has to happen? And during COVID, we saw this a lot. I just got back from the gym. I especially, I mean, women are held to a higher standard, right? They do not want to be on camera if the makeup isn’t right and they don’t look absolutely prepared. Am I sensitive to that? Now there is a time when, you know, Alice just refuses to get on camera. That is a different conversation, because there are times when we are visual creatures. We bond with each other visually. We enjoy seeing each other. I mean, when you and I got on this call, our little faces popped up and the first thing we did was smile. It’s like, oh, look, there’s another human being building connections is really important. And so things like webcams, while they are not a panacea, and nothing is 100% useful all the time, have their uses, and sometimes we may not want to use that tool, but it’s the right tool under that circumstance. Yeah, and you can use tools for other things. I remember I am a crusty old man. The word curmudgeon was basically invented for me. Me and other people get along great in small doses, but we have a monthly meeting every every month, Kevin calls the whole 15 person team together, and he always starts the meeting with an icebreaker. And just that word kind of sends shivers. You know, if you were a tree, what kind of tree would you? Oh, Kelly, but I am a grown up. I am a responsible person. I will tell you what kind of tree I would be. So one day, he starts with, what is your favorite candy? And my eyes kind of roll up in my head, and I’m like, Okay, I’ll play. And everybody mentions their favorite candy, and we get on with the meeting, and I don’t think anything about it. And three weeks later, there is a three pound bag of gummy bears sitting on the front steps of my house. No, no, no, nothing. I have no idea where this came from. The gummy bear gods have delivered a package to the front of my house, and I bring it inside, because I live in Las Vegas, and if it stays outside, it will become one giant gummy bear. And I started like, where did this come from? And hey, do you know anything about this candy that arrived? And pretty soon everybody kind of figured out that Kevin had sent everybody’s favorite candy, which was, which was a lovely gesture. It was fun, but it also got us talking to each other, like, instead of starting the conversation with, Hey, can you send me that file? It was, what kind of candy did you get?

Graeme Cowan  19:41

Yeah, it’s good point.

Wayne Turmel  19:42

And it was really a simple, lovely little gesture that rippled quite nicely even through, you know, the thick exterior of my curmudgeonly heart.

Graeme Cowan  19:59

What? Um? What have been some other good icebreakers that you’ve heard or encountered that created interesting poll on discussions? Because I think that’s an interesting perspective, isn’t it?

Wayne Turmel  20:11

Well, I think it’s funny, one of the best icebreakers you can have, and I break this rule regularly, just by virtue of how my office is set up. But I like seeing people set up when they’re on a call, because it’s easy for me to say, Graeme, what’s that book over your shoulder? Right? Or somebody has a guitar leaning against the wall, and they go, you play guitar. That’s so cool, yeah? And we connect on that kind of level, right? Or what’s out your window behind you, right? So much better than using the standard zoom things. Now sometimes that depends on the level of formality and connection that you want. If you are talking to one of my customers, I don’t want to see your unmade bet, right? I don’t want to see Mr. Whiskers walk across the keyboard while we’re while we’re having a discussion, right? There are levels of formality and professionalism and and all that sort of thing that require intentional decision making, yeah, yeah, but I like that informal thing. Another really simple thing is when you start a Zoom meeting and there are multiple people attending, if you can just let people enter without sitting there staring at that little box, because if we’re having a meeting in Conference Room B, right, it’s not that everybody’s standing outside not talking to each other until the doors open. No, we wander in, and some people are there early, and it’s like, Hey Bob, you know, great to see you, and sorry about your hockey team. And you know, your kid did great. And you know, all those conversations that we have, yeah, yeah, that can still happen, right? If the meeting hasn’t started yet, but people are popping up and you’re like, oh, Alice, how you doing or and sometimes it’s, oh, I forgot to send you that file. Let me get that to you. I mean, it’s not all social frivolousness,

Graeme Cowan  22:25

Absolutely.

Wayne Turmel  22:29

but it builds those social relationships and helps us have the conversations that we’d be having in the hallway or in the break room.

Graeme Cowan  22:41

I heard a guy. I can’t remember his name, but he was the CEO of the Human Resource Institute in the US, and during COVID, they did something which I thought was quite interesting. They had one person each worked with many. One person would interview another person just opening questions about your life, highlights, blah, blah, blah, just to get and it’s just a one way conversation, just to find out more about that person. Next week, it’s a different person interviewing and a different person being interviewed. And he talked about that being a really great way to deepen, deepen the relationships. You’re finding out things that you never knew about a person, even if you’ve been very close to them for a long time.

Wayne Turmel  23:25

Yeah, that’s a great technique. The only caveat I would put on that is it can’t take too long. Yeah, exactly right. It needs to be enough that it’s interesting and energizing and not so much that people feel like their time is being wasted.

Graeme Cowan  23:39

Yeah, he made it 15 minutes and that same time, yeah.

Wayne Turmel  23:44

See, 15 minutes is a great length of time. I’m all about that. What we do with new hires, for example, is because we’re spread all over the US is when somebody is hired their first formal assignment, other than get on the network, you know, all that kind of thing. Their first formal assignment is they need to reach out to every other member of the team, regardless of position, and schedule a half hour one on one webcam conversation.

Graeme Cowan  24:11

Love that. Love that.

Wayne Turmel  24:14

And you know, once you get past what do you do? And what do I need to know to keep Kevin off my back, you start to have conversations about, where did you live? Where did you go to school? Do you have kids? What do you do in your spare time? And these are conversations that would kind of happen by osmosis if we were all in the office together all the time, but they often don’t happen without some kind of shove, yeah, yeah. And so within a week, you’ve had a half hour one on one with every single person on the team, and you already have a sense of, hey, I really like this person. Hey, this person can really help me,

Graeme Cowan  24:55

Absolutely.

Wayne Turmel  24:57

You know. And so when people say you can’t. Build relationships. That’s simply not true. I mean, you and I are of an age we remember in the 80s and 90s. I’m going, I’m gonna say the 80s for me and 90s for you, a third of long term relationships began in the workplace. Not just you dated a co worker, but somebody had a sister, and there was a function, and you met somebody at the function, and well, now a third of on of long term relationships begin

Graeme Cowan  25:32

online. Yeah, yeah, not surprisingly, now in

Wayne Turmel  25:36

order to maintain them, in order to keep them going, at some point, you have to get together and meet each other and do that stuff. But, you know, one good meeting can be sustained by an awful lot

Graeme Cowan  25:49

of virtual communication, absolutely, absolutely and

Wayne Turmel  25:53

so it can be done, but it doesn’t happen intentionally. The big thing we say this over and over in the book and in all the books, is that it’s that intentionality, and if you care, you will be intentional and take steps not to put too fine a point on

Graeme Cowan  26:1

How is AI impacting remote leadership?

Wayne Turmel  26:24

Oh, how is AI impacting? If you knew how I spent my day? That is, as with everything to be determined, I think that there are certain things from a functional getting the job done standpoint, which are going to make it so much easier. I mean, right now, one of the reasons that companies insist that everybody be on online at the same time is because we need to talk to each other, and if I have a question, I need to get an answer. Well, chat bots. I was playing with one today based on our content, which can give you 75% of the answers I could give you if you came to me with a question. Amazing, right? So in terms of information transfer, it’s going to change everything. We don’t need to be online at the same time. If I know I can get the answer I need.

Graeme Cowan  27:25

Yeah, absolutely,

Wayne Turmel  27:26

with the push of a button. That’s the good part. Yeah. The bad part is, you know, are you one of those people who says please and thank you to Alexa, right? Do you crave actual, honest to goodness, human communication? I mean, when I find out I’m talking to a bot, I get really cranky. No, I want a person to answer my question, yeah. And we haven’t figured out that balance, and we haven’t figured out the right equation, because there isn’t a right equation for everyone,

Graeme Cowan  28:01

yeah, yeah. Horses for courses, as they say, you know, it’d be indeed adaptive. It’s been wonderful. Catch you up today. Wayne, it’s been worth the persistence to finally connect and get together. And you know, as I mentioned, I always finish by asking my guess what advice? Knowing what you know now, what advice would you give your 18 year old self?

Wayne Turmel  28:25

I was such a little drama king as a young man, and there is a piece of advice, and I don’t know where it came from. Marcus really has said something similar to this, the Buddha has said something similar to this, and I spent a lot of time telling my daughter this when she was young, and that is that misery is optional. Misery is optional. Bad things are going to happen they just do, and how we choose to respond to that is going to make the difference, right? That’s the difference between resilient people and non resilient people. And one of the proudest days of my life was when my daughter, who was just about to turn 30, we were having a conversation, and she said, Well, you know, Misery is optional, and it just warmed the cockles of my little daddy heart.

Graeme Cowan  29:33

I also, you know, you know, a big admirer of Victor Franklin, his book Man’s Search for meeting horrible being in a concentration camp, but that was his one message as well. No matter what happens to you, no one can take away your capacity to choose. You choose how you respond, and whether it’s the Buddha or Marcus Aurelius. I think it’s a great, great lesson so

Wayne Turmel  29:58

and and it is not. Uh, disconnected from this conversation that we’ve been having. You know, yes, working remotely is different. Certain people struggle with it. Isolation and loneliness is a very real thing, but you can reach out, you can connect, you can do these things. And as a teammate, it it might be my job to not wait for somebody to reach out to me. Yeah,

Graeme Cowan  30:26

that’s a great final message. Thanks so much. Wayne, I’ve really enjoyed our chat. And where can people find your books? It’s

Wayne Turmel  30:33

a book and it’s put out by a real publisher, so anywhere you buy your books, Amazon, of course, you know, you can chapters, indigo, Waterstones. I don’t know what the bookstore is in in Australia,

Graeme Cowan  30:49

We have an Amazon here.

Wayne Turmel  30:51

Yeah, oh, I know they are everywhere. It’s quite terrifying. And if you want to, you can, you know our podcast is the long distance work life. If you go to long distance work life.com/ldl long distance leader, you’ll find our book as well as the other books in the series. And if you want to know how we can help your organization, the Kevin eichenberry group, Kevin eichenberry.com is where we pay the bills,

Graeme Cowan  31:23

Right? I’ll include that in the show notes. Thanks so much, Wayne,

Wayne Turmel  31:28

Thank you for having me. Graeme, it’s been a pleasure.

Graeme Cowan  31:33

Excellent. Thank you, Wayne, that was great. Really good.

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