Success with your support network

Lego inner cricle. A close nit lego family.

To succeed at remote work, we need to know what we need and how to communicate it.

I have three kids and the best kind of support from Lauren. Remote work would be impossible without her being a great friend, taking care of the kids when I’m having meetings and listening to all my silly ideas.

This post was a draft for a while and I’ve tried to make it as universal as possible, though, I realized that I could only share my viewpoint on the type of support one would need and so I’ll touch on practical and intangible support.

Practical support

My workday starts at 8am. I have a separate space where I can lock the door to stop the kids from running in. I’m not too fond of interruptions and any other task or requests while I’m working. I’m most productive in the morning and try to schedule my deep work between 8 and 12. Since I became team lead I have more meetings in the afternoon. I take a break every hour and regularly go outside to see my family.

To think about what you need to help you with, consider these questions:

What kind of space would you like to work in? Should your space be open and accessible to those around you?
What are your preferred work hours and when are you most productive?
What can others do to make your work easier and how can you return this favour?

After answering these questions or thinking about your own practical needs, consider the intangible needs that are equally important.

Intangible support

I need to talk about disappointments and let go of stressful situations. Similarly, I love speaking about the joyful work moments and having some quiet time to write and think fills me up. Reflecting on the positive things and practicing gratitude allows me to face life with a fresh perspective. There are days where it’s impossible to be entirely focused, where I am distracted by family responsibilities or life. You will face similar situations.

For the intangible support consider these questions:

Do you have good separation between work and life? Are you taking enough time off?
What makes you truly happy and how can you create a space for this in your life?
Do you take time to acknowledge and celebrate your successes, regardless of how small they are?

When we disconnect from work we need to return to space where we are loved, respected and cared for. In this environment we can more freely share how work affects us emotionally. Remote work situations differ a lot and we all have our own unique context, but despite the varying contexts taking your loved ones on the journey with you is crucial.

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Remote work success

Remote worker, like a lamp in the darkness

The global pandemic induced a mass workplace migration. Many office inhabitants were thrown into the wild remote working paradise. The expected decrease in Covid-19 case numbers will see most people abandon the remote working paradise, but for some, the distributed work environment is here to stay. I’m writing this guide for those who will become permanent remote workers.

I have worked remotely for over 7 years and still find both glorious and challenging. Along with flexibility and control, remote work requires great discipline and support.

Over the next few weeks I’ll be posting on the pillars of remote work success. I’ll touch on inner circle support, time boundaries, self care and much more. If you are interested in learning more about remote work and other related topics please subscribe below.

This is the list of topics I’ll blog about in the coming weeks. I’ll update the titles with links to the posts as I publish them.

1 – Success with your support network

Update: After thinking through these topic, I realised that I don’t have much more to say beyond the titles. So here they are. Consider them and make sure you do some of these things.

2 – Time boundaries

3 – Find a dedicated space

4 – Remove Distractions

5 – Structure every day

6 – Take great breaks.

7 – Get out and away for remote work success.

8 – Work hard on yourself .

9 – Look after yourself.

These topics are the pillars that have helped me over the years and I’m sure it will guide you in figuring out how to succeed in a remote working environment.

Howzit Podcast Appearance

It was a privilege for me to feature in episode 003 of a fantastic podcast called Howzit. The podcast episode touches on remote work, faith, writing, and personal development. I’m grateful to Travis for inviting me.

Remote spelled out is TRUST

2 planes in tandem with people performing stunt on top of them.

Bright and I had a very interesting chat about remote work, because of the COVID-19 lockdown situation in South Africa, they were thrown deep into the weirdness of distributed work.

Our conversation started with a simple question: “How do you know if someone is actually working when you can’t see them ?”. Most in-office manager’s who are used to making the connection between seeing and believing, must be thinking this at some point.

I thought about it for a moment and realised that we do not think about new hires like this at Automattic.

New hires are given full trust. They get access to all the systems, all decisions for the past 15 years, all the user data their role requires and the full faith in their ability to do what’s required to move the business forward.

My very first remote manager, Michael Krapf, had a saying that went something like this: “A good trend means a good worker, and a bad trend means a bad worker”. You could interpret it as; we should not evaluate people on an instance by instance basis, but should rather keep in mind what they do over a period of time and evaluate that.

In a work setting, low trust relationships are normally created when people don’t do what they say they were going to do. This doesn’t mean that we expect someone to be perfect, it’s just means that there is an expectation of progress, and obstacles being communicate in a timely and transparent manner.

When you have a low trust relationship, you will have to shorten the feedback periods considerably. This evaluation period should be well understood by all involved. The aim here should be to grow trust, not to have continuous checkups that puts only one side of the relationship at ease.

When trust grows, so should the evaluation period. In fact, you should expect trust to grow so much that there is no evaluation period. This is the peak of trust, all involved respects each other so much that, no news is good news and transparent communication is the natural outflow of progress.

Trust is also the basis of collaboration and collaboration the basis of a forward moving team. So start with high trust and work forward from there.

Featured Image by Belinda Fewings on Unsplash

Tag: remote