by virtualworks | Aug 4, 2020 | Transcript
Effective Delegation – Podcast Transcription
Delegation is an extremely important aspect of business leadership, and when executed correctly, it’s a practice that should be used whenever possible. Here’s my best tips to help you get more done through effective delegation.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high value growth activities.
Did you know that there are many people out there that would rather overwork themselves than delegate a task? Either it’s just easier or they don’t trust someone else to do it right or they plain just don’t feel like doing it; they have to end up fixing someone else’s work anyway. These are just excuses. As a business owner or association executive, you cannot do it all and you shouldn’t even contemplate it.
1. Make sure you plan ahead
There is nothing more annoying than a team member waiting until the day before a deadline to flag that they need help on a task. Everyone on the team suddenly finds themselves in an awkward position and sometimes there just isn’t the time to get everyone caught up on what needs to get done. It’s stressful, it’s aggravating, and sometimes can make you that person. Please don’t be that person.
The key is to never get to the point where you are that person. Always examine tasks ahead of time and consider if you will need help for any part of it. If you do need help, give your resources a head’s up so they know that a delegated task may be on its way to them.
2. Delegate the right tasks
There are some tasks that simply cannot be delegated to others. They’re either too variable, too high value to you, or you need lots of training or background info to do them. These are the tasks that you need to hold on to, while letting other tasks be delegated. Recurring tasks that are simple in nature are great to delegate because once you’ve trained someone, they can always take that task from you on a more permanent basis.
3. Give examples of completed work
One of the best ways to help someone succeed at a delegated task is to show them the end result you want to have. It’s easier to problem solve if you provide a framework for reference, or something you can try to emulate. Sometimes it’s more effective to share details visually.
If there’s no previous example of the work you’re delegating, you can always share videos, drawings, sketches, rough drafts, or mock ups. Anything that can give perspective to someone new to the task will be helpful in getting them to the end result.
4. Don’t delegate at random
This is a big one. Every person on your team virtual or in house has different strengths. They will be most productive if you assign tasks to them that match those strengths. Avoid delegating work that doesn’t fit the skill sets of your team members. Good leaders find positive ways to develop their team ways that don’t include stressing them out by asking them to do something they don’t have an aptitude for. Remember that if a team member is really good at what they do, and they enjoy it, the task will be done efficiently and effectively.
5. Manage expectations.
When delegating a task be extremely clear on what you expect, and what the finished product should look like. You must give people details when assigning them a task, or you might find that they’re on a totally different page than you are. By then it might be too late to fix the problem and a deadline may get missed. If you delegate a task to someone and they come back to you with the completely wrong design or idea, it’s not necessarily their fault; it maybe a communications disconnect. Having someone verbally confirm the details of a task back to you is a great way to make sure that everyone is on the same page. If the task has a long duration, it will be worthwhile to create an implement a periodic check in, something like once or twice a week.
My sixth and final tip: is to please don’t “Delegate Dump”.
This is where you send out a large quantity of tasks all at once with little or no direction. This does no one any good and generally stresses everyone out. (Remember what I said in tip one, don’t be that person). At best, it may initially alleviate your stress to get everything off your desk. However, as the many questions for each task come in, you will be inundated and stressed out all over again. Instead, delegate a small amount of tasks to begin with; plan to have questions come back to you, plan to have time to answer those questions or provide training and plan time to review the work that’s been completed. It’s not just about getting it done. It’s about getting it done right.
If you remember these six tips, you should hopefully avoid unnecessary stress and disappointment when you delegate. Delegation is an important teaching tool as well as a good time management tool. It should not be avoided or deemed “too hard”. As with all things worth doing well, it takes time and patience.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best, CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
- Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
- If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
- You can visit our website at https://www.virtualworks.ca and,
- You can always find us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/virtualworks
©Copyright 2020 Virtual Works Inc.
All rights reserved
DISCLAIMER
This material is provided for educational and informational purposes only.
No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.
The author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.
by virtualworks | Jul 27, 2020 | Transcript
Remote Ministry In Real Life – Podcast Transcript
This week’s guest podcast provides a real life example of how humans have had to learn and evolve in order to serve their community in these unprecedented times.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is Humans Working Remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high-value growth activities.
Jennifer burns is the coordinator of both the homebound outreach and social media ministries at Asbury, United Methodist Church in Smyrna, Delaware. She is a certified local lay servant with the peninsula Delaware Annual Conference of the United Methodist Church. Jennifer typically works out in the field in connection with the community, but has had to shift her ministry due to COVID-19 and is currently working from home for the foreseeable future, using a phone and a virtual connection to continue to serve her congregation and the community. Welcome, Jennifer. Thank you for joining me.
So Jennifer, your ministry has moved from in-person to remote community outreach. How did that evolve for you?
Jennifer: I had actually just come back from a work trip and I had probably two or three normal-ish days where we kind of knew that something was coming related to COVID. Seeing the reality of quarantine rearing its ugly head, and when the shutdown happened, it was pretty immediate, and it really left me, “okay, what do you do now?” So a lot of it was really on the fly.
Barbara: Yeah, good for you. So, what were what were some of the things that you had to do on the fly that you hope to God would work at the time?
Jennifer: So, first and foremost, we were not allowed to have our normal Sunday worship service because of the limitation on numbers of gatherings. The church I serve has three services on Sunday, and they range in attendance from 30 people to upwards of 100 and in it. I’m in Delaware, we were not allowed to have any gatherings of more than 10 people. So that left us completely unable to have any kind of service. It even left us, we had to make some choices about staffing and even just the people that you have to put on a service. So we did have one week where, like I said, we knew that a full quarantine was coming. But we had one service where we had kind of opened it up ‘to make the decision that’s right for you – if you’re going to come out or stay home’. But we knew that that Sunday was going to be the only Sunday that we were going to be able to have an optional service.
So the biggest hurdle was, you know, how do people worship if they can’t come to church? And the answer to the question was live streaming. We had been talking about a live stream for a while, but it was kind of a six month, year five year process, and we came down to basically me getting out my iPhone and literally propping it up on a on a book. And you know what we’re going to go live and we’re going to hope that the internet holds out. Our church is an over 170 year old building so internet connectivity and bandwidth is a concern. So we literally Facebook lived off of my phone with no lead and no advertising and I was like hopefully people will see it. And that kind of developed, you know, once we knew that, or once the lockdown was a reality. It’s kind of you know, the next week I had a camcorder and a tripod. And next week I learned that I needed a wireless mouse so that people don’t hear my track-pad clicking. And it’s kind of every week, there’s another piece of the puzzle that’s been coming along.
Barbara: Yeah, so it’s definitely evolution for sure. Have you had any hiccups with technology that you’d like to share? Maybe a funny thing that happened somewhere along the way?
Jennifer: We have had some technical difficulties with sound. And you really just have to, you know, sort of pick up where you left off. And, you know, people were ‘we all know we’re human’, and, you know, we just carry on, right, yeah.
Barbara: Because of this new technology that you’ve developed, and you’ve done things on the fly, you’re what is now a new online ministry that has gained in popularity. How has this opened up opportunities to reach more people for you?
Jennifer: So, the internet, I mean, especially YouTube is a new opportunity in that it’s fully public, and it doesn’t require, the proximity to be in the central Delaware area or anything. YouTube, the way the algorithms work where you’re watching certain videos, and it’ll do the ‘if you watched this, then you might enjoy this…’. We’ve picked up, there’s actually a man in Namibia, Africa for the last I think it’s 10-12 weeks at this point, that has been watching almost all of the content we put out on YouTube. It was completely random because you go look at the analytics and where are your watchers coming from? It’s Smyrna, Delaware, Clayton Delaware, which is five minutes down the road and Dover, so everybody was in about a half an hour radius of the church, and then ‘Namibia, Africa’ (!). After I had kept seeing and seeing comments that he was engaging with the content. I did send him a message and I was like, ‘I’m happy to have you, but how in God’s name did you find us?’ It was the YouTube rabbit holes, so that’s been interesting to see who else. The other thing too that has been nice to see is that we’ve seen people who’ve moved away. Dover has an Air Force base, so you know, we have people that are military affiliated, that have moved out of the area. We have kids who, well, adult children who were raised in the church that are now out of the area, and they’re able to come back and watch the same church service that their parents are watching, even if they’re not doing it at the same time, they’re going back and seeing the sanctuary that they grew up in a lot. That’s really nice. It used to be their Sunday school teacher and stuff, and they’ve been detached from that, a lot of them for years.
Barbara: I take it, then, Jennifer you’re not necessarily used to working from home. So, what’s it been like for you? I’m sure it’s been challenging. What kind of things have been going on for you adjusting to working from home?
Jennifer: So, to answer the question, no, I’m not used to working great.
My ministry was really so I felt, you know, to work. With the homebound outreach which before quarantine was probably 80% of my time, and that entailed visiting nursing homes, visiting our senior citizens who live alone. Some of them do come to church and you know, they’re fairly active but they live alone during the week. Yeah, and obviously because of quarantine, the nursing homes are not accepting visitors at all; essential travel doesn’t even permit visiting people in their homes. So that part of the ministry has moved to over the phone. Unfortunately, some of my nursing home residents are either for hearing issues or different levels of dementia, are not able to have a phone conversation. So unfortunately, they are kind of left in the lurch right now where I can’t really get to them until the nursing homes start allowing visitors again.
But my senior citizens who live alone, and really just other people in the church, that connection has moved to over the phone. So we have a church directory that is really just a phonebook of people in the church, and I really just started finger walking the directory and calling pretty much everybody, and, you know, ‘how are you doing?’, and I kind of rotate, you know, one day, I’ll start at the front of the book one day or see back of the book and try as many people as I can.
So that’s been interesting. And then the other part with the [ministry] I mean, obviously, we have the live stream that happens on Sunday, but during the week, we’ve been doing Bible studies over Zoom, we’ve been doing all of our church council meetings over Zoom. We were trying a conference call option which we had some issues, but trying to find different ways to include, you know, not everybody’s on social media and not everybody is internet savvy. Trying to find different methods to give people a choice of how they’re going to connect and trying to offer that to as many people as we can.
Barbara: So no, that’s wonderful. Really, that’s, that’s wonderful that you’re doing all that and learning as you go and doing things on the fly, which is great. So we’ve been in a pandemic situation for just over two months now. Can you tell me Jennifer, what have you learned from this experience?
Jennifer: First and foremost, I think that the pandemic situation taught me that God gives you everything that you need. And, you know, I’m a believer in, you know, God gave us the ability to invent the technologies that we’re using. So, you know, some of them are not necessarily, you know, organic, given blessings, but they’re things that, you know, we’ve been able to create for ourselves. But if you sit back and ask the question, okay, God, what are you asking me to do? And how do I do it? It’s possible. It’s not easy, and some of it is not the way we would like for it to be, but it’s possible. And I think the other aspect of it is the resilience people have.
Barbara: Yes, I’ve noticed that as well.
Jennifer: Yeah. And, you know, it’s I think that people are learning the difference between you know, nobody has to pretend that this is fun or that we like this because the fact of the matter is, nobody does and it’s okay to say, this sucks, and I want it to go back to normal. But in the moment, it is what it is. I’m going to do what I can do, right here, because, you know, like I said, the alternative is: does that mean that you don’t worship until I can come back to the church building and I’m just going to give up for two and a half months? So that’s been interesting to see kind of how people make different decisions that are right for them in the middle of it. But still being resolute to, ‘okay, I’m going to do this and I’m going to do it as well as I can’ instead of just sitting back and kind of throwing in the towel, you know?
Barbara: It’s easy to do, because we’ve not experienced this kind of thing, not in this generation anyway, we did 100 years ago, pandemic, but for hear and now, none of us have experienced this kind of thing. So it’s like you say it’s ‘fight or flight’, really and we are given the tools and we learn, we have to, you know, to move forward and provide services to those in our community. So good for you. Rock on! That’s just great.
So just in closing, Jennifer, I’ve realized that I’ve already stated who you are, what you do and who you do it for. Perhaps you could give our listeners some information, how they can contact you, if you wish to be contacted, how they can contact you. Maybe a website, whatever you’d like to put out there, that would be awesome.
Jennifer: So, my congregation is Asbury, United Methodist Church. We’re in Smyrna, Delaware, which is about 15-20 minutes north of Dover. All our services for the foreseeable future are still going to be online. The church website is www.asburyumcsmyrna.org. We’re also on Facebook at the same, Asbury Smyrna. If you want to get in touch with me, my email is media. asbury@gmail.com and you can also send a message through the Facebook page, all those messages go to me.
Barbara: So wonderful, thank you so much for your time, Jennifer. Very interesting.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
- Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
- If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
- You can visit our website at https://www.virtualworks.ca and,
- You can always find us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/virtualworks
©Copyright 2020 Virtual Works Inc.
All rights reserved
DISCLAIMER
This material is provided for educational and informational purposes only.
No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.
The author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.
by virtualworks | Jul 21, 2020 | Transcript
Developing Powerful People Skills – Podcast Transcript
This week’s podcast is a follow on to episode eight, about communication skills and the art of speaking. Did you know that people with strong emotional intelligence are most likely to be strong, effective business leaders? They realize that trusting relationships built on diplomacy and respect is the heart of both individual success and business productivity. Today’s insights will help you put your best foot forward, whether you’re in person or connecting remotely with other humans.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is humans working remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high-value growth activities.
Success in business is greatly impacted for better or worse by the way in which we communicate. Happiness in our personal lives is also greatly dependent on this very same skill.
Becoming a good communicator takes practice and consistent attention and effort on your part. And it’s a skill that we cannot afford to overlook.
Dr. John Lund, a leading researcher in interpersonal communication, and an author in identification studies, conducted a significant part of research involved in identifying patterns of speech and differences in how men and women communicate. Did you know that when someone else communicates with us, the way we interpret their message is based on three things:
- 55% is based on their facial expressions and their body language;
- 37% is based on the tone of their voice;
- 8% is based on the words they actually say.
Dr. Lund provides us with these percentages, which are the averages across both men and women together. If you looked at women alone, they would give even greater weight to facial expressions and body language, and even less to the words actually spoken. This tells us that it’s critical that we become very self-aware of how our body language is when speaking to others, as well as the tone of our voice.
Here’s a little test. Next time you’re on the phone, look at yourself in the mirror to assess how your body language reacts to what you’re actually saying. This will help you become more aware of how you’re reacting to the conversation. Try this out with many people as you will likely react differently to each person you’re speaking with. Here’s a few insights to help give you an edge in conversations:
- Take a genuine interest in others. Really tune in to what the other person is saying, and don’t think of questions while they’re talking. (the intuitive among us will see that you’re doing it). Think about what they’ve said. Ask thoughtful questions and provide considered answers. Always make an effort to remember names, dates, and important life events. Not good at the skill? Keep practicing.
- Be flexible with others. Being “liked” or having a “wonderful personality” are highly prized attributes, especially in today’s remote environments. Superior communicators have a keen ability to shift gears when the context calls for it. They respond accordingly to what the current situations require.
- Obtain good judgment. Good judgment is a key people-skill that comes directly from learning, listening to others and observing the world around you, and allows you to wisely select friends and associates, determine reactions and responses and make sound decisions.
- Have the ability to keep an open mind. To create trust and respect with others, people need to know that their point of view and feedback will be valued. Being known as someone who keeps an open mind also makes you more approachable and easier to work with.
- Be honest. The saying “honesty is the best policy” is not only true, it’s essential in building trust among your peers and clientele. Once it’s lost, it’s almost impossible to regain.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best CEO of Virtual Works, Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
- Please feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
- If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
- ·You can visit our website at http://www.virtualworks.ca and,
- ·You can always find us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/virtualworks
©Copyright 2020 Virtual Works Inc.
All rights reserved
DISCLAIMER
This material is provided for educational and informational purposes only.
No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.
The author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.
by virtualworks | Jun 29, 2020 | Transcript
Stop Getting Derailed – Podcast Transcript
Have you ever wondered why many of our best laid plans fail?
You may have heard the quote, “Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on mine”. My podcast this week looks at why our plans end up being derailed, and how we can stop this from happening in the future.
Hi, I’m Barbara Best and this is humans working remotely, a podcast where I’ll show you how to meet the expanding needs of your organization by utilizing alternative solutions for operational staffing. Through expert insight and meaningful conversations with business professionals, we’ll talk about common challenges and proven strategies that will provide you with more time to focus on your organization’s mission, relationship building and other high-value growth activities.
Problem 1: The most prominent problem is that we let the lack of planning by others constitute an emergency for us. We let others do this to us; we let other people’s urgent issues poor time management, poor planning and procrastination, take priority and control over our work schedule.
The solution: Learn to say NO! Of course, it may feel disastrous at the time. However, if you survive saying no, and not let yourself get dragged down into other people’s problems, you’ll eventually be able to stop messing up your own goals and schedule and actually find yourself being more successful and productive in your job, or whatever you’re working toward.
Problem 2: “Crisis management is expected in any project”. I’m sure you’ve heard that one before! There’s two ways this can derail you: first, it can be a crisis totally irrelevant to the project you’re working on, or second, it can be a crisis within your project
The solution: You need to probe deep into the root causes behind the everyday recurrence of this usual crisis. If you sit back and really analyze your day to day, you would quickly find that you’re dealing with the same old problems because they never really get resolved. Awareness is the first step; make plans for change.
Problem 3: The lack of sufficient time being built into project schedules to actually do a good job. Part of that is driven by that sense of urgency mentality that infuses business today. There’s never “slack” to handle the unexpected built into any schedule, especially if you work for someone else.
The Solution: Just two things on this one: say NO and plan extra time into a project for the unexpected.
Problem 4: Focusing solely on results. That’s an obsession with “efficiency” over “effectiveness”.
The Solution: Have a well-designed plan that addresses what needs to be done. Also, allocating enough time to do the job right is also as important as planning for the unexpected. Remember, “Plan B” is just as important as the original plan.
The Big Takeaway: Obtain the ability to stay on track, focus on what’s really important and don’t get derailed from the tasks you deem important, despite all those whose lack of planning is expected to be your emergency.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening today. I hope this information was helpful, and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best, CEO of Virtual Works Inc.
Here’s a few action steps:
- feel free to leave me comments or feedback on this platform.
- If you’d like to be considered for a future podcast, please drop me a line at info@virtualworks.ca
- You can visit our website at http://www.virtualworks.ca and,
- You can always find us on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/virtualworks
©Copyright 2020 Virtual Works Inc.
All rights reserved
DISCLAIMER
This material is provided for educational and informational purposes only.
No responsibility can be taken for any results or outcomes resulting from the use of this material.
The author does not assume any responsibility for the accuracy or use/misuse of this information.
by virtualworks | Jun 23, 2020 | Transcript
Remote Support in a Non-Profit Setting – Podcast Transcript
Barbara: Hi I’m Barbara Best. I’m an expert in the field of remote administrative support, and our topic today is how remote support and growing teams happens in the context of a non-profit. My guest today is Monica Cholan, the co-Executive Director of Organizational Development at Dandelion Dance in Ottawa. Welcome Monica and thank you for joining me on this podcast.
Monica: Thanks so much for having me Barbara. I love talking to you about these things so I’m excited that you asked me to join you.
Barbara: Great, let’s jump right in. So, Monica, tell me, how does remote support happen in your organization? What’s going on today, how are you doing it?
Monica: So, there’s a couple of different ways that we are engaging remote support for our organization. First off, we are an entirely virtual organization. We run programs for girls that support their leadership skills and well being, here in Ottawa, and for those we run them at various locations throughout the city and we rent space to do that, but we don’t have a brick and mortar location for an office.
So, what that means is we work virtually in almost everything that we do in terms of the operations, and the planning and the management of the organizations. And one thing that we’re doing is we’re growing. I made a decision quite some time ago that it didn’t make sense for us to look to hire staff in certain functions, because our need for certain functions like, some financial support, or administrative support, customer support, social media, bookkeeping, those are things we only need a few hours of support in each month. And it also cycles a lot throughout the year. I’m a really big believer in hiring people that are really good at those kinds of functions, for those things.
You know if you outsource it, yes they are charging more per hour for a freelancer, or if there’s somebody that’s working as a virtual assistant, but you get better work, and you get better results and it’s actually more cost effective and efficient for us overall.
So, we have a virtual assistant, that has now been with us for almost 2 years, and she does a range of work for us. She’s our front facing customer service email management, and she does the responding to people who are interested in finding out more about our programs. She is the person who also takes care of our social media, so she does the posts, and she develops the strategy and she and I work on that together. Then she implements it. She is so good at so many different things that she is now working with us on some basic bookkeeping and functions that we, on a financial management end, need support with. All of that plus the administrative support. Even then, we are looking at 20-25 hours in a month for all those things because our organization isn’t big enough to need more than that.
So being able to find that virtual assistant was a godsend. It’s perfect. And she’s been able to grow with us. When she first started, we were doing 5-7 hours a month, because that’s what we had the budget for. So we can grow it and there isn’t that same kind of an obligation that you do have to somebody when they are an employee, and you do want to treat them well and you do need to treat them well, it’s important to treat them well. But I’m not in a place where I can hire somebody that’s just going to do the finances and have a need just for that. So, we have that remote support in the form of our virtual assistant and social media specialist and that’s one person who does those two things really well. And as we grow, she’s learning and taking on other things. And then we also have somebody that we contract to take care of our website and IT support and graphic design, and so she provides services in all three areas. And again, we are not big enough to have someone on staff that does only those things. And I think it’s probably common for most organizations to contract out IT and website support and graphic design, but it’s really on the virtual assistant side, where I think people are thinking about that more. Which is great. And it’s so awesome that there are so many more people out there that are thinking about doing this as their own businesses.
Barbara: I’ve been doing this for 16 years and I’ve hit my stride. This is where I thrive in what I do. Yes, I manage a company of 12 service providers, but I started out doing what your virtual assistant does. And that’s doing the whole back office thing. And I’ve come to realize that it’s really, what I like to call, ‘pure work’. In other words, you as the employer, you’re paying only for the work that the support person provides. You’re not paying for their vacation, you’re not paying for their coffee breaks, you’re not paying for lunch time and all this stuff. You’re only paying for the services that you incur. So, it’s very efficient and very cost effective.
So, I also want to know, Monica, from your perspective, are there any challenges that you’ve come across, hiring remote support? Not necessarily from a skills perspective, but from the perspective of being remote, is there any challenge with bringing on people remotely?
Monica: There are, and you know, the first thing is, I think a lot of people do feel like, well how do I know if I’m not seeing this person face to face? It’s a general sort of thing. How do I know what they’re really doing? And that’s a trust question that you have to build over time.
Barbara: Absolutely.
Monica: I’ve worked in a lot of traditional office environments where there’s people who Look like there’s doing a lot and they’re not. And I think there’s that kind of a concern that people might have at the forefront of their minds, but that’s something I don’t get too hung up on. For us it’s just the more practical things, like, for example, as our virtual assistant is helping us to be able to manage a lot of our book keeping and she’s supporting with management of files and things like that, we do still have to be able to meet. Or find some way to get paper records to her. There are certain things that we just still have to do by paper. Her home office is in a very different part of the city from my home office, and we also have very different types of schedules, and we’re always balancing different obligations, so it just means it takes planning sometimes to do the simple things. Like, I can’t just walk down the hall and hand something to her. It does take getting some systems and putting them in place so that those kinds of functions that are important, those certain of things that need to be done day to day, that you’ve got systems to take place of the usual way of walking down and putting it in somebody’s inbox because you can’t do that. But they’re not insurmountable you just have to think about it. And then, the other thing is, where do we store everything, right? So, there’s things that she and I have developed a system where there are certain kinds of files and certain kinds of things that I need as an executive director, and then there’s things that she’s keeping that are things I don’t need, and frankly we’re just going to pull them out once a year for our audit, and that’s it.
Barbara: Absolutely.
Monica: Right? So, there’s those systems for taking care of that. But it does mean that I have to know that that person has the available storage space in their home office, and I know they’re managing a bunch of different clients. It sounds like such a mundane thing but it’s a pretty big thing after a while. And there’s always that technology is not always going to work in our favour. It’s getting better, and better and better, but you know even up until 2 or 3 years ago, a Google Hangouts call, or Zoom, or whatever; it is so great to be able to do video conference. I absolutely love being able to do video conferences with people to be able to meet people in that way. You can share screens and all of that, but sometimes it doesn’t work, and sometimes you do just have to get together face to face. There are certain kinds of things that you can’t do that way. But again, I don’t think these are insurmountable challenges, it’s just a different way of working.
Barbara: Yeah, I agree. And if both parties are open to possibility, what can we do, how can we solve, whatever? If both parties are up for it, why not? It’s more efficient to do it that way, for sure.
On that same vein, we talked earlier about growing teams by working with people’s strengths, treating them well and being human. What’s your take on that Monica, in a remote workspace? I know we have to work at it a little bit harder, because humans are wired to be face to face, but here in 2020 we’ve got all this great technology as you just mentioned, video conferencing and so on, what do you think about building teams in a remote workspace, what’s your take on that?
Monica: You know what I think is really interesting about it is, I think that when people are able to work remotely, and especially when you start to look at certain functions in an organizations that you don’t necessarily have to have in house, but you can outsource, you have an opportunity to then really and truly allow the people that are quote in quote, in house, focus more on what it is that they do best and what brings them to work every single day. We’re all going to have to do things that we don’t want to, like every single one of us has to do things they don’t want to. But I really think that people are at their best when they feel. It sounds so obvious, but I don’t think that people really think about this when they’re going to university or people are in high school and you’ve got career counsellors, like what actually motivates you at that fundamental emotional level to get up every single day and show up and do your best at whatever it is that you are doing for work or an occupation or your career, your studying? I know from personal experience that there are a lot of things that I’m very good at, but that I don’t find motivating. For example, to sit at a desk day in and day out and do work writing legal briefs. I have a background as a lawyer. That is not motivating for me. I like to be out. I like to be talking to people, I like to be working with people. I like to be doing things where you’re building something, you’re imagining possibilities and I love things that feel more creative than that. Not to knock legal work, I think it’s really important work, and I feel stupid saying that, but it’s not motivating for me to go into an office every day with just me and my research and my papers, and this memo that I’m drafting or whatever. So I had to really learn for myself what motivates me to get up and have energy in my work, and what I think is really cool, is that when I first met our virtual assistant that we use at Dandelion, she loves setting up systems, she loves organizing things.
Barbara: I can relate to that!
Monica: And I was in disbelief. And I am so grateful that I’ve got somebody so passionate about it, that that’s her business. And this is what she’s doing to support small organizations, or organizations that just don’t need somebody that’s going to be doing administrative work 40 hours a week because there just isn’t enough of it. So, this is what’s she passionate about.
So rather than going somewhere and working in a role where maybe she’s, on paper fulltime, but maybe she also has to end up twiddling her thumbs for some of that time, because the truth is, they don’t have enough work. She always shows up at her absolute best. And in working this way and as I’m able to grow Dandelion as an organization and we grow our budget, it gives me space to focus on the things that give me the most motivation, and that gets me the most excited about what I do best, and I do the same for all of…like we definitely have staff. We have employees that actually deliver our programs, and in this process of realizing that we would be able to use remote workers and virtual assistants, it was like, okay so there’s a lot of things that a lot of my teaching staff had to pull into their hours. What this means is that we’ve been able to transition a lot of that work to the virtual assistant, who loves helping us with it. And then they can focus more on the teaching, the community outreach, building partnerships, working with me on those things that are going to grow our impact. So, this is where being human to me is recognizing that people are motivated at an emotional level and there are people that love to do different things. And if there’s different ways of building a team or being able to give work to people that break out of those traditional molds that I don’t think recognize really the way that people truly work and operate at an emotional level. We should do that. We should work with how human beings are.
Barbara: I agree.
Monica: Not try to force them to work against their nature, their fundamental nature.
Barbara: I agree, absolutely. Especially in today’s information economy, you know, there’s a line there, or maybe not so much a line anymore, between technology and being human. I think we’ve evolved to sort of use technology to a human’s advantage and we’re just finding our way now. It’s fascinating stuff. You mention, and one thing I love that you said when we talked earlier, you said “Keeping the best people means going beyond the 9-5 ass in seat mentality”, which I think is just great. Can you elaborate on that, what do you mean exactly? I just love how you said that, what does that mean for you?
Monica: It is entirely possible in many work environments, to show up and look like you’re there, but not really be there. It is totally possible to do that. I really am so much more interested in what people deliver on my team, than the amount of time that it took to get them there. That doesn’t mean, look, my virtual assistant bills us by the hour, that is our arrangement.
Barbara: That is your thing.
Monica: But I genuinely, all I care about is you know that when I set a deadline or I say we need something, and she tells me if it’s workable, or if it’s not, what I care about is the result that I get from it, and is it amazing, does it meet my expectations, does it surpass them? That is what I really and truly care about, and when it comes to the people in our organizations that are employees, I very much treat it the same way.
Everyone is on a part time salary, and we’ve done that in recognition of the fact that the hourly model doesn’t really work for our organization because we’re growing and things are changing, and sometimes my staff need to go over a certain number of hours in a certain week, but other times they don’t need to work that much. From an administrative perspective it is crazy to make people who are working to grow to build something and are very well educated, and have a set of very professional skills, for me to tell them you are working 10 hours or 12 hours or 16 hours in a week right now, and I expect you to be working from your home office between like 8-5 every single day of those days that you’re working for Dandelion. That’s not going to work. They’re balancing this with other projects, they are professionals. These are not high school students, these are not even university students, these are women that are looking to build their career, working in girls’ well being, and they balance this with other work that actually makes them really damn good at the work they do for us.
So I recognize that sometimes that means they’re taking on consulting gigs, sometimes their taking on a special project, sometimes they are doing things frankly outside of work where they need some support to balance with kids and family and we have e level of trust where we focus on setting deadlines, absolutely. Absolutely I ask them to track their hours, to see how things are working. Is the salary that we’re offering a fair reflection of how much it is that you are putting into the job, like is there something we need to adjust? But I really think that if they need to get something done between 9pm- midnight on a Tuesday night because they had to take their kids to the doctor because they’re not well, that is okay. And I want to be able to support them. I don’t want them to be working 9pm to midnight, but sometimes things happen. I do think that people have to be treated like adults and be given the flexibility to manage their lives in ways that really recognize again that we are human beings and the world just doesn’t work that way anymore. It doesn’t have to, so let’s look past it.
Barbara: That’s right, we’re not punching time clocks, anymore right? Not now.
Monica: Exactly you know? And the other thing I think we really have to put an end to: this idea that everyone’s brain is just on between the hours of 9-5.
Barbara: Truthfully.
Monica: I wake up a lot of days at 5:30 in the morning. I often have put in a half days work by the time that most people have gotten into their office, gotten their coffee and settled down. And that’s because my brain is on, it’s awake, it’s on fire, and then I hit my desk slump at 2 o’clock, and if I can frankly go grocery shopping at that time, that is awesome. That is great.
Barbara: I agree, I do the same thing. Absolutely. Do you have any final words for us Monica? What do you want to say? What’s going on, about this whole human thing?
Monica: I genuinely, I really think that any time if you’re in a leadership position and you’re finding it hard to let go of the idea that people should be able to manage their schedules to a greater extent, that people should be trusted to deliver on results, you’ve got something on your own end, probably, that needs to be worked out. I’m not saying that it isn’t important to build that trust and know that you’ve got that trust in the team, but you know we resist change because we’re afraid of something. We feel like we have to keep control somehow, and I think it’s really worth looking at ourselves. If we’re not willing to try to do things differently that just reflect the fact that we’re all people. And if we’re not willing to get with that, especially with the opportunities that technology does give us now. Like this isn’t something that we just can’t because you know, everybody has to do things on typewriters. This is not how we are anymore, so if you’re not able to allow some more flexibility and allow people to balance their own… *barking in the background* By the way, that’s my dog. One of the other challenges of working virtually is that sometimes people have a tough time setting up a home office that’s entirely peaceful. But whatever, I used to have annoying coworkers that worked down the hall, so this is trade-off, my furry little friend.
Barbara: But it’s so real Monica, it’s so human.
Monica: Absolutely, he’s doing a good job of guarding the home office, that’s what he’s doing. But you know, I think that if people aren’t willing to change and they have an opportunity to make those calls, wherever it is they’re working, I think it’s worth asking ourselves if we are leaders, and we are worried about trying something different, and what is it? And if it’s genuinely that you’re just not sure about the trust issue and you’re just not sure; there’s a fear around something like, there are so many opportunities to do things differently, and better and more efficiently and it’s worth taking a bit of a leap of faith on it.
Barbara: Yeah, I agree.
Monica: Just try. Just try and I think you’re going to have happier people working for you as well.
Barbara: More productive people for sure, cause they’re probably in their environment, they’re in their element doing what they do anyway, and that alone means they’re going to be happier and more productive for their clients.
Monica: And build loyalty!
Barbara: Yeah! For sure. So, in closing, thank you Monica for your insights, it’s been wonderful. Tell our listeners a little bit more about you, what you do, why you are and who you do it for, tell us about Dandelion dance.
Monica: So, Dandelion is an organization that was founded formally as a charity and non-profit back in 2012. It was founded by a woman named Hanna Beach, who has spent 20 years of her life building experiential programs for children and youth. She had developed a very specific kind of program for girls and young women from all walks of life, all abilities, all experience levels. And it’s all about using movement, the body and the creative process for girls to be able to discover their own voices and put their own ideas out into the world. So, the program is not actually at all about technique.
I mean, they learn a lot of different techniques from our facilitators, but it’s actually about discovering their own ideas and who they are and learning how to take creative risks and put something out into the world. So I really think of it as this beautiful balance between art making and you see these girls and young women just taking delight in realizing they’ve got capacity beyond what it is they’re able to explore in their every day lives in other ways. And I think there’s something powerful when girls and young women also have opportunities to be able to move their bodies in different ways, and actually just stand up on a stage in front of an audience and be like This is who I am.
Especially In a culture where there is all this pressure to look a certain way, especially when you think of dance, right? The best part is that they all think of themselves truly as dancers. You know, being a ballet dancer, these are all beautiful artforms, but they all bring to mind a certain kind of body and a certain kind of standard of beauty. You know when our young women come together, and they support each other to create things and move their bodies and showcase their work to the community. And people are just so moved by it, like it really challenges the fundamental notion of who deserves to be seen and heard. Especially when it comes to girls and young women.
I’ve been working alongside the founder, Hanna to build up the organization. I do all the work on the development side, so everything from strategic planning to fundraising and communications and, cause I’m not the program expert but we work together hand in hand to build this, and she and I both balance it with other projects that we do. I do strategic planning and government consulting apart from that, but Dandelion it is my baby and I am so excited that it’s 2020, it’s 8 years later, it’s here, I’ve been involved since 2016 and I cannot wait. I’ve got this sort of vision 2022 in my mind. The 10-year anniversary, and where will we be? So, we’ve got big plans.
Barbara: So empowering.
Monica: So, thank you for letting me talk about that.
Barbara: No problem. Just quickly, what’s the website and your email address if people want to get in touch with you?
Monica: Absolutely, so our website is dandeliondance.ca. So dandelion, just the way that flower is spelled, and my email address is monica@dandeliondance.ca. And I would love to hear from any of your listeners.
Barbara: Thanks very much Monica, and a big thanks to you, dear audience, for listening to us and have a fantastic day.
Monica: Thank you so much and thank you for putting this out into the world and making people think about making better workplaces.
In closing, I’d like to thank you so much for listening. I hope this information was helpful and I look forward to providing more. I’m Barbara Best CEO of Virtual Works Inc.
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