A simple practice that makes working remotely more effective and joyful

Working remotely is rapidly becoming the new normal. According to Gallup, 43% of employees work away from their team members at least some of the time, and 20% of those who work remotely do so 100% of the time. And these stats shouldn’t sound surprising. The obvious benefits that working remotely creates for employees as well as employers, like better work-life balance, agility, and the expansion of the talent pool, prove to be well worth the hustle of switching from working in traditional office spaces, or splitting your time between both modes. 

While being highly rewarding in the long-run, however, this transition comes with some serious challenges. For example, the lack – or shortage – of face-to-face time makes it harder for teams to develop trust, work collaboratively, and support each other’s growth in a meaningful way. Of course, there is no shortage of SaaS companies that constantly come up with brand new tools promising to solve these pains. Yet, there is still a lot remote teams can achieve on the behavioral side that can exponentially accelerate their results. 

 At Ferrazzi Greenlight, we see a lot of value in helping our clients build meaningful relationships with customers, shareholders, gate-keepers, and among their own team members. It has proven to not only help companies do their work faster and more joyfully, but also contribute to significant increases in their business results. While more difficult to achieve in traditional corporations with hub and spoke communication systems and strict reporting lines, building meaningful connections that touch both personal and professional lives has helped our clients increase customer satisfaction, grow sales, and improve innovation efforts. 

Achieving similar results in remote teams through helping them build meaningful relationships might seem much more challenging at first. After all, when the team members do not work in the same physical space, it takes away the casual opportunities for them to connect, like water cooler conversations and sharing a table during lunch breaks. Undoubtedly, building personal and professional connections among colleagues who do not get a lot of face time together requires extra thought and effort, but can be achieved with the right mindsets. At Ferrazzi Greenlight, we call them Relational Mindsets. 

The four core mindsets that fall under our Relational Mindsets model are generosity, intimacy, candor, and accountability. Together they represent the key building blocks for successful professional and personal relationships and establish a positive relational foundation that flows naturally into logical business engagement and strong results. Each element of the model is a step that builds on the previous toward the achievement of desired goals.

Generosity means making a proactive effort to be in service of others. In remote teams it can be providing extra context, sharing helpful tools and resources, and communicating in a predictable manner.

That, in return, opens the door to building intimacy – or camaraderie – a bond that helps teammates open up to each other and risk being vulnerable even though they do not work in the same space. When all members of the team feel comfortable showing vulnerability, it gives them permission for candor. They no longer feel afraid to offer each other radical feedback in service of elevating their shared results, which leads us to the fourth, and final, step of the model – accountability. In remote teams, it means responsiveness, shared ownership of results, and proactive effort to make radical progress. 

Together, the Relational Mindsets – generosity, intimacy, candor, and accountability – produce a powerful formula for deepening remote team’s relationships in ways that can help them achieve individual and collective excellence at work despite physical distance. This, in turn, elevates their business results, helping them go higher together.

Consider how you are applying Relational Mindsets in your interactions with local and remote colleagues by asking questions like, "How can I be generous with this person? What do they need to hear, and do I have the permission to say it?"

Good luck on your in-person and remote working journey, and remember, great results start with acting in service of others and leading with generosity, no matter if they are located in the same office or around the world. 

Rob Whitfield is the CEO of Ferrazzi Greenlight, a behavior engineering company that provides keynote speaking, coaching, and consulting services to organizations around the world. If you’d like your team to be more agile in mindsets, behaviors, and practices, and to achieve some of the benefits that are well within reach, get in touch and we can explore how you can empower your people to want to aim higher, together. Follow me on LinkedIn, or get in touch to start shifting your results.