Organizations need to adopt best practices for providing excellent mentorship to remote employees hired during the pandemic and integrating them successfully into the team. That’s the key take-away message of this episode of the Wise Decision Maker Show, which describes evidence-based approaches for remote training and virtual mentoring for hybrid and remote teams. 

Video: “Remote Training and Virtual Mentoring for Hybrid and Remote Teams”

Podcast: “Remote Training and Virtual Mentoring for Hybrid and Remote Teams”

Links Mentioned in Videocast and Podcast

• Here is the article: Remote Training and Virtual Mentoring for Hybrid and Remote Teams
• The book Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage is available here.
• You are welcome to register for the free Wise Decision Maker Course 

Transcript

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of the wise decision maker show where we help you make the wisest and most profitable decisions. And today will help you make the most wise and profitable decisions about remote trading and virtual mentoring during. So when you’re thinking about the future of work, the future of work is overwhelmingly hybrid and remote. That’s the reality. But many leaders are really worried about this. Many leaders are really worried about having a hybrid schedule of one to two days a week for employees full time, especially worried about full time remote employees who are full time remote. That’s because they worry that it undermines collaboration, and specifically collaboration around how do you integrate new employees into the team into the organizational culture? How do you provide them with on the job training that mentoring helps them understand what’s actually going on, and answering their questions immediately in the moments there are no obstacles and hesitations, and they can learn all those immediate little tasks components of each task that they need to be a fully functioning effective employee. It also impedes cross functional collaboration from their perspective, because when you look at the research of the surveys, people are less connected, especially to people from outside of their teams, and their organizational culture suffers. Again, when you’re looking at the surveys, overall, people are less connected to their organizational culture, when they’re in hybrid remote settings than when they’re in full time in person settings. So leaders often pursue full time office returns for these reasons. But that’s a very big problem from the perspective of what employees want and the retention and of course, recruitment that’s necessary in today’s tight labor market. And we’re dealing with the talent wars. And the talent wars means that if you’re not winning, you’re losing, you’re losing really talented employees. leaders do understand, they really do. I mean, when I’ve been talking to them, I’ve helped 17 companies and nonprofits transition, mostly companies transitioning to the future of work to hybrid and remote teams. And they understand that most employees want either full time, remote work or hybrid scheduled most want a hybrid schedule, most do want to see their coworkers sometimes, so maybe they want to come in maybe a day, a week, maybe two days a week, some once a month, something like that, but some want to fully remote schedule. So when you look at the surveys, broadly speaking, a quarter to a third one full time remote, something like maybe over a half, two thirds, one hybrid schedule, and really smallish numbers under a quarter want full time in person. So that is what you’re facing. That’s what leaders are facing. And they’re making pretty bad decisions, they are failing to adapt well, to these needs of remote work to integration of new team members to on the job training for new junior team members, that’s a problem. Because they don’t adapt best practices, they don’t adapt those best practices on how to collaborate effectively, in remote settings and in hybrid settings. So that causes a lot of these challenges and integration on the job: learning, collaboration, organizational culture, you’re facing a lot of challenges with these leaders who are not adapting strategically to the hybrid and remote future of work. And they’re not doing so because of cognitive biases, these dangerous judgment errors that stem from how our minds are wired. And they lead us to making poor decisions, strategic decisions, financial decisions, human resources, decisions. And so leaders fail to adapt innovative best practices on how to lead in the future of work, they’re trying to go back to the past of work, that will not work. Because January 2020 will never be around again, people have fundamentally changed as a result of the pandemic, the many, many, many months over a year of the pandemic and these new variants on all of these problems. People have fundamentally changed their values, what they value, they value flexibility a lot more, as you can understand from those surveys that show how much people want hybrid or full time remote work. They favor the schedule of these individual employees, but leaders really want to do what’s comfortable for them. And they don’t want to do what’s in the organization’s best interest without realizing it. It’s not like they’re consciously saying, I’m going to undermine the organization. That’s not what’s happening. But they’re not realizing how their own intuitions and desires and feelings about what’s right for the workplace are causing them to make seriously bad decisions. And these bad decisions are cognitive biases. The way that our mind specifically is mis wired in the modern environment that goes wrong in many ways are called cognitive biases. And there are two big ones around on the job training around integration of junior team members and one of those is called functional fixedness functional fixedness. You might have heard of this as the hammered snail syndrome when You have a hammer, everything looks like a nail. That’s what functional fixedness is about when we learn one way of doing something, whether it’s hammering something, fixing something, or whether it’s collaborating, we tend to impose that same methodology in all other settings, we become fixed in the way that we do things. And that’s a big problem, because people tend to not accept new practices for how to collaborate effectively, despite the context change, you know, so they try to fit a square peg into a round hole. That’s a big, big problem. So leaders are failing fundamentally, when they’re trying to transition to hybrid and remote work, but are still trying to adapt their previous in office ways of collaborating. And then they’re wondering why they’re not succeeding, and they’re pushing for a full time in office return. And then another issue that’s related to functional fixedness is called the not invented here syndrome. That’s where people in leadership roles don’t like practices that are invented outside of their organizations. And so they reject them. It’s called the not invented here syndrome. It’s not amended here, therefore, it’s bad. So even if these practices might work better for their contexts, they tend to not become adaptive. So that’s a big problem. Now, when you think about what are the actual best practices for the future of work, you want to focus on the hybrid model of work where most people come in one to two days, and a substantial minority are full -time. That’s what helps optimize collaboration and your attention. And of course, if you play your cards right, and adopt best practices, integration of junior team members, and on the job learning for them. Now a specific best practice for doing so is called Digital coworker, digital co working remote co working, it’s basically where you co work together, but not in the same place, you co work at the same time in a shared virtual setting on a video conference call. So a good way to do it is to employ daily for an hour or two, I suggest starting about an hour. If you have a lot of commitments for your team, you can start it at one hour a week, and then ram it up. So one day a week for an hour and then ramp up to do it daily every day for a hybrid team that’s not in the office. And then every day for a remote team. That’s the ideal timing for this digital cowork. So what you do is you get everyone together on the video conference call you dial in, and you plan to work on your individual tasks. This is not for collaborative tasks. This is for your own individual tasks. So members start the time briefly going around each takes 15 to 30 seconds to share what they plan to work on. Then you turn off your microphones, and you’re leaving your speakers on, you can choose to leave your video on or not. And everyone works on their individual tasks. And of course, because your speakers are off, you’re not Bob, your microphones are off, you’re not bothered by other people’s sounds unless they deliberately choose to turn on their microphones which they do if they have a question. And that’s especially useful for junior team members who have a lot of questions and they want that on the job learning. Because on the job learning what is that about? Well, that’s about immediately being able to ask quick questions and get quick feedback. So it allows experienced staff to help with that on the job learning and shows them junior team members how to do these tasks. And virtually it’s quite helpful if they do it virtually because they can do screen sharing which is harder to do in person remote in in person settings. The benefits of digital co working replicates the experience of working in close quarters, no shared cubicle spaces, with a cute quick resolution of problems. You collaborate, you’re sharing expertise, you can do things that you can’t do in those cubicles, like screen sharing, it’s not very easy to do. It allows people to bond to socialize, integrate into the team. And it’s not draining like the typical Zoom meeting. Because you don’t have to engage with other people, you just answer questions when they have them. So this is very helpful. Let’s be digital covered. Now another tool is mentoring and hybrid and remote settings. What you want to do is you want to pair junior staff and junior staff I mean, someone who’s been there for less than three years with senior colleagues, ideally not senior colleagues who are in direct supervisory role, but senior colleagues, senior colleagues in the same team who are not supervisors, and then senior colleagues and other teams who are not supervisors. So a senior staff member from the junior team members team and then two members from outside the team, one from the same business unit and another from a different business unit. And you get different benefits from each one. So the member of the same team helps provide insights into the team culture and helps with on the job learning of those daily tasks. That’s very helpful. From outside the team you help address how does junior team members integrate into the broader team culture of the organization, the broader organizational culture itself and then make connections outside of their team because one of the things that we do find is a big problem for hybrid remote teams is a loss of connections across the organization, people just don’t spend as much time with each other and making those unexpected connections when they go into the same building. This helps address that. Because of the people from outside the team, a critical goal of their mentoring is specifically helping these junior team members get connected to people from outside of their teams. So that really facilitates cross functional collaboration, which is so necessary for contemporary organizations to succeed. So that is the goal. You want to assign regular co working sessions between the mentor and the mentees. That’s a really good activity, as well as just once a month meeting between the mentor and the mentee is to talk about growth, professional growth, what they can help them with. And again, regular digital co working is so intended again, that’s called time to work on your individual tasks. But of course, the mentee can ask the mentor for questions that address those challenges of loss of intra team collaboration, those connections within the team, and especially inter team connections collaborations between the team. So that is how you can address the challenges with integrating junior team members and providing that on the job learning that was lost in some many contexts throughout the pandemic, by leaders who didn’t adopt best practices. And here’s some best practices for you to adopt that digital, co working and that hybrid and remote mentoring. Alright, everyone, I hope this episode has been helpful to you. Please make sure to subscribe to the wise decision maker show wherever you check out the show. If you check it out in podcast form on Amazon or app or iTunes. Check us out on YouTube and video cast form we have both so check that out in the show notes. The show also notes much more information about digital co-working and remote mentoring. So make sure to check that out. And if you have any questions about any of these topics, just have feedback or comments, email me at Gleb at disaster avoidance experts.com That’s Gleb GL EB at disaster avoidance experts.com Alright everyone, I look forward to seeing you on the next episode of the wise decision maker show. And in the meantime, the wisest and most profitable decisions to you, my friends. 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai 

Originally Published at Disaster Avoidance Experts on December 7, 2021.

Bio: Dr. Gleb Tsipursky is an internationally-renowned thought leader in future-proofing and cognitive bias risk management. He serves as the CEO of the boutique future-proofing consultancy Disaster Avoidance Experts, which specializes in helping forward-looking leaders avoid dangerous threats and missed opportunities. A best-selling author, he wrote Never Go With Your Gut: How Pioneering Leaders Make the Best Decisions and Avoid Business Disasters (Career Press, 2019), The Blindspots Between Us: How to Overcome Unconscious Cognitive Bias and Build Better Relationships (New Harbinger, 2020), and Returning to the Office and Leading Hybrid and Remote Teams: A Manual on Benchmarking to Best Practices for Competitive Advantage (Intentional Insights, 2021). His writing was translated into Chinese, Korean, German, Russian, Polish, and other languages. He was featured in over 550 articles and 450 interviews in prominent venues. These include Fortune, USA Today, Inc. Magazine, CBS News, Business Insider, Government Executive, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Time, Fast Company, and elsewhere. His expertise comes from over 20 years of consulting, coaching, and speaking and training for mid-size and large organizations ranging from Aflac to Xerox. It also comes from over 15 years in academia as a behavioral scientist, including 7 as a professor at Ohio State University. You can contact him at Gleb[at]DisasterAvoidanceExperts[dot]com, LinkedIn, Twitter @gleb_tsipursky, Instagram @dr_gleb_tsipursky, Medium @dr_gleb_tsipursky, and gain free access to his “Assessment on Dangerous Judgment Errors in the Workplace” and his “Wise Decision Maker Course” with 8 video-based modules.