Connect Human First
Remote Manager, Issue 4
This installment of The Remote Manager offers simple, real-life tips to create a human-first environment for your remote team. Connecting human first is about improving the flow of work within your team. If relationships are the fuel that make a business run, human interactions are the social grease that keep it running smoothly.
Building on the ideas in Develop Healthy Relationships, this edition gives the remote manager tools to neutralize the tendency to treat remote workers as cogs in the machine. Connect human first begins with the premise that businesses exist to serve people — all people, all the time.
Remote team members need and deserve to feel connected and valued as humans first and foremost.
Simple Ways to Connect
These tips are small, powerful ways to make space for the human moments that make remote work meaningful. They have been extensively road tested and consistently work to create people centered environments to support your remote team.
Tip #1: Say hello 👋
When I first started remote management (pre-pandemic), I constantly forgot to say hello. I would shoot a quick question or a request to someone without any greeting. I never meant to be terse, I would just get caught up in my own thinking and clearing my to do list. Invariably, my team members would send me a “good morning” or “hello” first, wait a beat, and then answer my question.
It was a subtle, but clear reminder of the cultural values I skipped. The team valued “human first” because it’s the only way remote management works. This small activity of saying hello first is so important because remote work can be isolating. It can be hard to feel like important and valued when your only engagement is responding to questions or demands. Saying hello alleviates this pain point, and lets your people know you actually see them as people.
Tip #2: Schedule small talk into the agenda ⏲️
For many leaders, building in time for small talk can be a counter intuitive practice. In trying to respect everyone’s time and staying on topic, they rob their people of the social grease that is needed to make work actually flow. Small talk, when done well, allows team members to relax into the relationships through which they produce their work.
People need these small social connections to fully understand and care about each other. That understanding and care breeds the trust and flexibility that is critical to team success.
Small talk needs to be part of the agenda in every meeting, every day. It doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the meeting, although that is a natural time for human first connection. I like to mix the timing up so that small talk always feels organic.
But, never schedule small talk for the end of the meeting. Doing so will just make the meeting feel unnecessarily long, eliminating the benefit of scheduling small talk to build human connection.
Tip #3: Have fun 🎮
So much of our lives are spent at work!
There is no rule that says we can’t enjoy the time that we spend there. How often do your team interactions leave people laughing or with a smile on their face? If you’re connecting human first, the answer should easily be at least 50% of the time.
Healthy relationships leave us feeling valued and connected. Connecting human first leads to enjoyment of spending time together. Meetings — scheduled or impromptu — are an opportunity to build deeper relationships. We can enjoy seeing one another because there is good history built around the fun we have had had in the past. We live easily with gratitude for those around us.
Look for little ways to build in fun.
- Dad jokes.
- Memes (professionally appropriate, of course!).
- Capture the picture challenges.
- Movie quote duels.
- First day stories.
- Pictures of pets or favorite desk items.
- Fun polls, quizzes, or trivia contests.
When you learn what interests or excites your team incorporate it into your day. Relax and have some fun together.
Tip #4: Be authentic 🤖
Remote management requires authenticity. Set the standard by being comfortable showing your true self and recognizing those who do the same. Give your people permission to be authentic as well.
If everyone has their game face on all the time, it’s difficult for people to truly connect as human beings. Set the ground rules about the behavior (or dialogue) that is acceptable based on your cultural values and professional expectations. Then make space for authenticity.
As a remote manager, you have an opportunity to create an environment that celebrates and appreciates each individual. Creating team flow is about making your people feel comfortable with their place in your business and within the team.
Each person contributes to the success of your business through their work effort. They collaborate and cooperate with others to make work happen. Each person deserves to feel like a valued individual first and foremost, not just a cog in the machine.
Connecting as humans first elevates your people from mere means to an end to the ends themselves.
In my company, one of our values is to assume good intent. The value represents the way that we want to engage all of our client’s stakeholders as we help other companies improve their operational processes. But the value has no meaning if we are not applying it to our internal interactions with one another as well. When there is conflict or miscommunication, this is how we engage with one another to resolve the situation. Our human first connections are smoothed by practicing this cultural value.
As you design processes to connect human first, incorporate your company’s cultural values into every single one. Cultural values should be experienced realities through each interaction. They should shape how you and your team connect to one another, dictating acceptable and unacceptable behavior so that your human first connections never go off the rails.
As the remote manager, it is your imperative to integrate and amplify the cultural values that shape your business. Don’t rely on the hope that your team will emulate those values in their interactions with one another. Opt for direct communication about how those values drive and shape interactions.
Every day in every interaction, the remote manager looks for ways to connect to their team members as people first and to support their team in doing the same. Connect human first encapsulates all aspects of the remote manager mindset: be intentional, focus on the bigger picture, prioritize relationship development, and innovate ruthlessly.
Focusing on the bigger picture means never losing sight of the value each person brings. In prioritizing relationship development, the remote manager knows that human first connections drive trust and accountability. Never willing to rest on what is working now, the remote manager unceasingly pursues new ways to support individuals and help them connect as humans first, always ruthlessly innovating to make work better.
Our remote team members deserve to be valued and treated as human beings. Designing interactions to focus on connecting as humans first elevates our team and reminds us that the most important item on our to do list is to serve our people. Because business is about people.
Jennifer Columbe is the lead Operations Guru at Blue House Solutions. She blends her experience in operations, project management, product development to help business leaders build processes that work for their people.
She writes and speaks about issues impacting operations and building people centric businesses.
Reach out if you want to chat about how ideas in this article can work for your business.
