84: Remote Work with Craig Stoss

unknown: 0:00

And then we'll be able to do that.

Charlotte Ward: 0:13

Hello and welcome to episode 84 of the Customer Support Leaders Podcast. I'm Charlotte Ward. The theme for this week is remote work, so stay tuned for five leaders talking about that very topic. I'd like to welcome back to the podcast today, Craig Stoss. Craig, it's lovely to have you back again. The topic for this week is remote work, and I know that you have transitioned recently from leading teams in offices to leading a remote team and working remotely yourself on a on a full-time basis, right? Um I'd love us to talk about how you're finding that.

Craig Stoss: 0:57

Yeah, leading remote teams is is a challenge sometimes, right? And especially remote teams that aren't located in similar time zones or or speak the same language, first language necessarily. These are all considerations when thinking about remote teams. One of the biggest challenges of leading remote teams is the communication. Especially now with tools like Slack, where you get these walls of text. And while they're built as kind of asynchronous communication tools, the problem is that if someone is sleeping and wakes up many hours later to look at those tools, the important information is buried inside of a haystack of text that's now gone and multiply that across all the channels that someone is intended to monitor. And so that's the main focus for me in any remote team is making sure that my communication methods and styles meet the applicable nature of the people that I'm speaking with.

Charlotte Ward: 1:54

Do you think that there is a real dependency there on the tooling, or do you think that we can use tools that really actually are quite real time, as you said, like Slack to behave in an asynchronous way?

Craig Stoss: 2:07

I mean, I think the tooling exists today to enhance that. Tools aren't the be-all and end all, and you're not gonna solve with a tool something that is a people problem. If your attitude is I work from nine till five Eastern time and you know, take it or leave it, you know, that's probably not gonna work, no matter what tool you use. And so part of this is to adapt your style to the people uh that you have remote and and empathize with their needs um and their considerations. Um I worked remotely for a company for many years, and one thing that was critically obvious was that we weren't in HQ. Every decision, every every celebration that happened spontaneously in that office didn't permeate over to our office uh or or to the remote employees. Those are the things that you need to think about is if if you're celebrating something, how do you celebrate when someone is not co-located with you?

Charlotte Ward: 3:06

You're bring you're bringing back many a memory of emails arriving saying there are cakes in the downstairs kitchen.

Craig Stoss: 3:13

Not only that, but that that now you have that FOMO or that that feel of lack of engagement because other people are celebrating without you.

Charlotte Ward: 3:20

Really understanding the context that your employee is operating in for for all sorts of reasons, right? You touched a little bit there on the sort of FOMO, the fear of missing out on everything from celebrations to information, right? I think that both of those are actually kind of isolating if you don't feel like you're you're taking an equal part or share of those. Including remote employees in celebrations is difficult. But I think including remote teams in communications shouldn't be that difficult. Asynchronously is the word that we all use. What do you understand that really to mean? I mean, what does that look like operationally?

Craig Stoss: 4:05

The biggest thing to me uh are important announcements and team meetings. When I'm doing asynchronous communication for important announcements, uh generally those be delivered, you know, in a in a spontaneous type of meeting or or something that you know is has the most engagement possible, especially if you do have an office team and a remote team. And and if there's a time zone conflict where someone is unable to attend that, how do you spread that that word and message in an appropriate way, especially if it's impacting their roles or the company as a whole? You know, recording that meeting and sharing it, that would be one way. Another way would be to make sure that that information is summarized in an email or something that is that is usually more tangible than a Slack message or or some other communication that that would have to be sought out and found in the tool itself. But something like that helps. Secondly, is the team meetings, and and my approach to that has always been to hold the team meetings uh at a time where as much as possible everyone can attend, and then when not possible, make myself available in the time zone that's appropriate, again as much as possible, and and communicate the regular things and even hold the meeting a second time, even. Um, I also think that face-to-face in that instance is important too. A really great asynchronous communication tool is video, and I don't mean Zoom calls, I mean tools like uh Wistia Soapbox and Loom and Videyard, and send these short snippets to your teammates so they see you engaging with them in a different way and can respond in kind.

Charlotte Ward: 5:41

I really like what you said there, particularly about holding the meeting twice. It's something I've often toyed with, and I currently have team members seven hours ahead of me and eight hours behind me, and we are just about squeezing an hour in the middle of the week where somebody comes in early, somebody stays a bit late. I think as I hire across an even broader set of time zones, which I will be doing soon, I really like the idea of not forcing somebody to come in it really what will be in the middle of their night. I've toyed with almost having a wandering team meeting that wanders around the week that I can get 80% of my team on at any moment, but it that it's a different 80% all the time.

Craig Stoss: 6:24

Absolutely. And typically speaking, for most time zones, you can do something with your day. Maybe you come in an hour early or an hour late, but I do feel that that's pressure is on the management, not on individual contributors to come in always early or always stay late.

Charlotte Ward: 6:42

Go to customersupportleaders.com forward slash eighty four for the show notes, and I'll see you next time.