Remote Work: Marta Koonz Of The Myers-Briggs Company On How To Successfully Navigate The Opportunities & Challenges Of Working Remotely Or From Home

An Interview With David Liu

Meaningful Opportunities: Meeting simply for the sake of meeting doesn’t work in the face-to-face world, and it doesn’t work in the remote world. If you’re going to take the time to connect, make the time engaging and interactive and worth the minutes invested. Have an agenda and a detailed plan for how to use your time. Use breakout room to your advantage: sharing with a partner or small group before opening up to the full group can lead to more ideas and deeper conversation. Encourage us of the video option so you can see faces. And finally — make sure that people who are invited need to be there and aren’t on the list because “everyone needs to be there.”

Career development is the ongoing process of choosing, improving, developing, and advancing your career. This involves learning, making decisions, collaboration with others and knowing yourself well enough to be able to continually assess your strengths and weaknesses. This can be challenging enough when you work in an office, but what if you work remotely? How does remote work affect your career development? How do you nurture and advance your career when you are working from home and away from other colleagues? How can you help your employees do this? To address these questions, we started an interview series called “How To Advance and Enhance Your Career When You Are Working Remotely”. As a part of this interview series, I had the pleasure of interviewing Marta Koonz.

Marta Koonz as Professional Services Senior Consultant for The Myers-Briggs Company, Marta draws from nearly three decades of experience in working with teams and team leaders to provide team development training and individual and team leadership coaching services. She has worked in the education sector, with state and local governments, and for corporate and not-for-profit clients across a wide range of industries. Marta is a credentialed MBTI® Master Practitioner and a member of the faculty for The Myers-Briggs Company’s MBTI® Certification, FIRO® Certification, and Strong Certification programs. She is an expert in training design and facilitation, and is endorsed by Global Learning Partners as a Certified Dialogue Education Teacher. She is certified by the International Coach Federation as a Professional Certified Coach and provides volunteer career coaching for Stand Beside Them, an organization that provides free coaching services for U.S. military veterans and their families. Marta holds a doctoral degree in Depth Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute, with an emphasis in Jungian and archetypal studies. Marta has presented multiple times at the Jungian Society for Scholarly Studies annual conference, been published in the Depth Psychology Alliance online journal and the Personality Type in Depth online journal, and lectured on Jungian psychology and typology.

Thank you so much for doing this with us! Before we dig in, our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What is your “backstory”?

My name is Marta Koonz. I work for The Myers-Briggs Company as a senior consultant and certification faculty. Basically, I certify people to use psychological assessments. I have a PhD in Depth Psychology, a branch of psychology that is much more aligned with the humanities than the sciences and is centered on the unconscious aspect of self (very cool field of study).

Can you share the most interesting story that happened to you since you started your career?

I found myself at The Myers-Briggs Company because of our flagship assessment: The Myers-Briggs Type Indicator. I quickly came to realize that we had four other assessments (which I kind of was familiar with but hadn’t really used much) and that I really like what the other assessments had to offer too. It really helped me to round out my assessment toolbox and discover that I didn’t have a favorite assessment. I’m fickle — my favorite assessment depends on who I’m working with and why I’m working with them!

Can you share a story about the funniest mistake you made when you were first starting? Can you tell us what lesson you learned from that?

Time zone. I always mix up time zones. I’ve been early for calls and late for calls. I did it the first week on the job and continue to do it to this day. Time zones are my nemesis!

Can you please give us your favorite “Life Lesson Quote”? Can you share how that was relevant to you in your life?

“Barn’s burnt down. Now I can see the moon.” Masahide

Most everything presents us with an opportunity if only we are able to take a breath and look at it from a different perspective.

What advice would you give to other business leaders to help their employees thrive and avoid burnout?

Take the time to get to know your employees one-on-one so you can tailor recognition, motivation, rewards, feedback to who they are and their individual needs. Give them space to do their work, opportunities and support to learn new skills, and clearly articulate why the work they do is important.

Ok, let’s jump to the core of our interview. Working remotely can be very different than working with a team that is in front of you. This provides great opportunities but it can also create unique challenges. To begin, can you articulate for our readers a few of the main benefits and opportunities of working remotely?

Working remotely allows individuals more opportunities to work at times and in ways that fit their natural preferences and needs. Midnight inspiration? No problem. Movement helps you to process through projects? Bring on the exercise bike.

Hours previously spent commuting free up time to spend on self-care or connecting with family or friends — allowing individuals to show up for work refreshed and ready to go. Employees can also chunk their schedules, making time for breaks and family obligations.

Have I mentioned no commute?

Finally, working remotely provides us with an opportunity to work more closely with colleagues from different time zones, even from different countries. While video conferencing has been around for a while, many of us have recently embraced and perfected our proficiency in the video conferencing world.

Can you articulate for our readers what the five main challenges are regarding working remotely?

Working remotely is going to bring different challenges for different people, just as it brings different benefits, so the top five is a bit of a moving target. Let’s consider a few:

1. How to stay connected? Some of us enjoy connecting on a very regular basis, some of us are okay with just a few connection points, but all of us need an opportunity to connect with the people we work with. Working remotely often makes it more challenging to determine how and when and with whom to connect.
2. How to collaborate? For those used to sitting down with a team or brainstorming on a whiteboard in real time, the shift to remote can make it more challenging to accomplish our shared tasks. While not impossible, virtual collaborating is different and may not be as easy to accomplish.
3. Making remote opportunities meaningful: Sure, we can connect and collaborate virtually, but how do we make these exchanges engaging and interactive and meaningful.
4. How to juggle family and kids and pets: Because they all want to come into your workspace now that you’re easily accessible. Kids walking in during meetings or constantly slipping “Can I” notes under the door, cats insisting on helping you type — being at home makes some things easier and other things perhaps a bit more difficult.
5. Finding space for a home office: If you’re not used to working from home, finding space to actually do your work can be difficult. The dining room table, a corner of the bedroom, the spare room — where you work has an impact on the quality of your work and finding a dedicated space is not always easy.

Based on your experience, what can one do to address or redress each of those challenges? Can you give a story or example for each?

1. Connection: Make a point to discuss what works for each person. While some people may need a daily check in, for others once a week is just fine unless something comes up. And while we have video conferencing as an option, it’s not the only option. You may prefer a video call, but for me — an email works just fine. Discuss what each person prefers and find a middle ground. I’ve found that I need to move away from my desk to a comfy chair when connecting one-on-one. Being at my desk is too distracting and I don’t give the person I am talking to my undivided attention, a challenge that is solved by moving my location in that moment.
2. Collaboration: There are lots of tools out there that can make this an easy challenge to address. Live collaborate on a shared document, share your screen and have one person take the lead, show yourself on screen with a flip chart or whiteboard to work on. Again — have a dialogue and discuss what works best for those involved and the project at hand. One of my favorite tools is using to project my iPad onto the screen while using Notes — this allows me to simulate a flip chart pad and share ideas best expressed through a visual.
3. Meaningful Opportunities: Meeting simply for the sake of meeting doesn’t work in the face-to-face world, and it doesn’t work in the remote world. If you’re going to take the time to connect, make the time engaging and interactive and worth the minutes invested. Have an agenda and a detailed plan for how to use your time. Use breakout room to your advantage: sharing with a partner or small group before opening up to the full group can lead to more ideas and deeper conversation. Encourage us of the video option so you can see faces. And finally — make sure that people who are invited need to be there and aren’t on the list because “everyone needs to be there.”
4. Juggling family and kids: This one can be tough. If you’re lucky enough to have another person in the house sit down and create a plan. Block off the non-negotiable times when you absolutely need privacy — for example, virtual meetings or deadlines. Then decide how these times will be handled to ensure that you’re not interrupted. If family members are older and don’t require care (as in older children or needy roommates), then a direct sit-down and negotiation of terms and strategies is in order. Create some work-from-home rules: If the door is closed that means I need privacy, my schedule is posted on the door so you can see when I will be available, if the door is open I’m available for questions and connections, this is how we define an emergency (no, your sister is being mean is not an emergency) — you get the idea. One colleague encourages his children to send notes under the door when it’s closed so they know their question or concern has been shared and will be responded to as soon as the door is open.
5. Finding space for a home office: Where oh where will I work form home? Take some time to think through the best location for you and those you live with. The dining room may seem like an ideal space to you, but if it’s where your kids do their homework it likely isn’t the best choice. Who else will be home while you’re working? What are their space needs? Can rooms be juggled: sometimes what was once an underused dining room can become a great workspace. I know a family that had a great small space that was being used as a TV room, but as a result their living room was never used. Moving the TV into the living room created a larger space for family gatherings and a small work alcove perfect for an at-home office. Finishing the basement can create an office nook, or even an attic. Think outside the box!

Let’s talk about Career Development. Can you share a few ideas about how you can nurture and advance your career when you are working from home and away from other colleagues?

Take the time to notice what aspects of your job you really enjoy and are skilled in. Bolster these interest areas with online learning opportunities, many of which are free or low cost. Share your interest areas with your supervisor and offer suggestions on how you might be able to incorporate your skills into your work. Ask them for ideas on need areas that need to be filled. Time flexibility may allow you opportunities to take an online course for credit that could enhance your career. Now is the time to take advantage of the benefits of working remotely and using them to your advantage.

Can you share a few ideas about how employers or managers can help their team with career development?

Talk to them. Ask them how they are feeling about working remotely and what they perceive as benefits and challenges. Encourage them to share their ideas on how working remotely might lend itself to developing their career. Provide them with professional development time to build skills add competency areas. Show them that they’re valued and appreciated and supported.

You are a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger. :-)

I think right now we could all use a bit more compassion and empathy. For many people, their lives are upside down. Their world has changed. They’re struggling — even if they don’t show it. Be kind, hold each other gently, offer support, realize that we’re all in this together. Employers and managers: give a random mental health day (paid, of course), provide time for employees to pursue an interest, be empathetic and encourage flexibility, and remind them that they are appreciated.

How can our readers further follow your work online?

https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-myers-briggs-company/

https://www.themyersbriggs.com

Thank you for these great insights! We wish you continued success.