The conventional, trust fall-based approach to team building is broken. And when I say “broken”, I mean “never worked in the first place”. Not only do team-building games feel contrived, they don’t translate into the work your team does or change how you work together. And games that involve revealing your innermost hopes, fears, and desires (eep!) often backfire by making people feel less comfortable. The only thing team building games do well is provide a shiny distraction from the difficult task of figuring out how to do great work together.

Working well together is the ultimate goal of team building, and we believe in getting straight to it. If you lose focus on the work itself, you’ll essentially build a book club and might as well bring wine to the office. Real team building means actually trying different ways of working and iterating on them. (More on that below, including a dozen proven techniques our teams use.) Fortunately, you can go about it in ways that also move your work forward.

Strong teams are built on strong relationships

To be sure, building meaningful connections is part of the equation. If you’re looking to help a newly-formed team bond or get a team’s groove back after a rough patch, your instincts are spot-on. Transitions are hard. If you’ve ever been on a team moving from a traditional work style to agile methodologies, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. While a week-long offsite in the tropics isn’t the answer, you can’t ignore the human factor either. (Although, if you have some budget to burn… 😉)

In days past, managers might seek to get their team over the hump by keeping them busy, busy, busy. But unrelenting efficiency comes at a cost. “We sell out,” says Dr Jason Fox, a former researcher at Murdoch University and author of How to Lead a Quest. “We stop listening, we stop empathizing.” Which, in turn, means we’re blind to the needs of our customers and each other.

Now, leaders at Atlassian and other forward-looking organizations like Culture Amp and Impraise nurture morale by building trust and a sense of belonging, thanks in large part to research conducted at Google. Over a two-year period, Google studied 180 of its teams and interviewed 200+ employees. They found that above all else, team members need psychological safety. The safer we feel taking risks and being vulnerable in the presence of our teammates, the more we will admit mistakes right away, ask the “stupid” (but necessary) questions, challenge assumptions, share information, and propose ideas that are so crazy they just might work — all of which are key ingredients for creating a high-performing team.

Fostering psychological safety is a full-team job, but it starts with managers. We coach our leaders at Atlassian to openly ask for help, try new approaches, and treat honest failures as opportunities to learn. They’re also free to share their hopes, fears, and struggles to whatever degree they’re comfortable, even when it has nothing to do with work. That sets the tone for the entire team.

Trust is the foundation that all high performing teams are built on. — Brad Lande-Shannon, Culture Amp

Building trust and belonging is a sound investment. Just be prepared to play the long game. For the increasingly popular cross-functional team, it’s even harder. Team membership changes depending on the project, with members filling a variety of job roles. It’s an effective organizational model (one that Atlassian uses frequently), but there’s a catch: fewer shared skills and experiences means it takes longer to build trust between teammates.

Getting to know each other on a personal level takes more than a round of “two truths and a lie”. It happens gradually through casual banter at our desks, pick-up ball games at lunch, team dinners, etc. And, of course, by working together toward a common goal.

That means working on the right things at the right time and collaborating in the right way. But how do you do that, exactly?

Getting $#!τ done is the ultimate team-builder

Atlassian teams are big on agile principles like continuous improvement and iteration, which drives us to experiment with different ways of working together. In 2013, our teams started writing down various collaboration hacks that were working well for them so teams throughout the company could take advantage. By 2016, we were confident enough in their value to share these techniques, or “plays”, publicly. We call it the Atlassian Team Playbook — our free, no-BS guide to building healthy and high-performing teams.

Teams all over the world — from ANZ Bank to Xero to Walmart — use the Team Playbook to build healthy working relationships between teammates and do the best work of their lives. I’ve selected 11 plays that will do the work of team building while you go about your daily work. #TwoBirdsOneStone

Download the team building infographic here and print it out for your workplace.

Let’s dig into the benefits of each activity and when to use them. Click on the name of a play below for full step-by-step instructions, downloadable templates, and other resources.

Plays that build relationships

Rules of Engagement This is a 30-minute activity where you learn about your teammates’ preferred work styles and establish some cultural norms for the team. (E.g. “Headphones on = deep work mode, so please don’t disturb.”) Run this play after forming a new team, or any time team membership changes. It’s also useful when team members are getting on each other’s nerves so much that it’s affecting their work.

Team Health Monitor Similar to the retrospectives run by agile teams everywhere, but with an emphasis on high-level concerns. Your team will self-assess in eight areas critical for high performance, like whether you have the right skills on the team, and identify ways to shore up weak spots. The assessment is based as much on gut-feel as on data, so it may require people to take a leap of faith as they share thoughts openly with their teammates. Run this play on a regular cadence, typically monthly or quarterly.

Stand-ups Not just for agile teams anymore. In this 10-minute ritual, teammates share their progress since last time, their plan for today, and whether they’re blocked on anything. It’s a great way to build muscle around open communication. Don’t be surprised if you notice people offering to swing by a teammate’s desk to help them get un-stuck, too. Run this play daily.

“Dicebreakers” We’ve all shown up at meetings only to find that key people are running late. This is the perfect time for a 2-minute get-to-know-you activity. Print and assemble our nifty paper dice (download ’em here), then start rolling. The questions are personal, but not too personal.

Off-topic Ok, this isn’t an official play (yet). Create a group chat room specifically for sharing book/article/movie recommendations, cat gifs, recipes, etc. Set notifications as low-key as possible so the room doesn’t become a distraction. Do this at any time.

Plays that build effective collaboration

Project Kick-off Sounds boring, right? It doesn’t have to be. Done right, a project kick-off builds a shared understanding of what the team will deliver and why it matters. The key is to share pre-reading beforehand and use the meeting for interaction. Our version includes activities like crafting an elevator pitch for the project, identifying risks, and agreeing on success measures. Run this play when you’ve envisioned the deliverable and are ready to execute.

Retrospectives A classic agile development ritual that is suitable for any type of team. The basic format includes a discussion of what has gone well, what hasn’t, and what to change (but there are loads of variations). It’s a safe space to dig into problems the team is facing and tease out solutions. Run this play at the end of each sprint, or on a monthly cadence.

Elevator Pitch This 30-minute activity can be focused on a specific project or your team in general. Using a fill-in-the-blank template, you’ll articulate what the team delivers, why it matters, how it is unique, and who your customers are. It’s a massive (and efficient) win for building a shared understanding. Run this play at the start of a new project, or any time you need to reinforce the team’s sense of purpose.

Goals, Signals, and Measures Speaking of a team’s sense of purpose… use this technique to align on your high-level objective, signals you’ll listen for that indicate you’re on the right track, and measurable results that tell you you’ve succeeded. Run this play at the start of major projects, when leadership changes, or when forming a new team.

Sparring Don’t panic: sparring means “practicing”, not “fighting”. Present a work in progress to your teammates, then let them suggest ways to improve it. Be open to challenging questions and respectful dissent — that’s where the magic happens. Run this play weekly, if possible.

Problem Framing Use this 30-minute activity to understand your team or project’s purpose at a deeper level. You’ll define the problem you’re solving, the impact for customers, the contexts in which it happens, and wrap that all up into a problem statement. This works especially well with cross-functional teams. The more perspectives, the better. Run this play when forming a new team or at the start of a major project.

Thrive, as a team

By incorporating the techniques here into your every-day work, you can build a strong team without a staging a big-budget offsite. Now, I’d be lying if I said Atlassian teams have never rocked some “telephone charades” or gone bowling together. One of Atlassian’s company values is “Play, as a team”. That comma is intentional. We’ve learned the team that plays together stays together. But the fun has to feel organic in order to be valuable — not forced.

Iterating on how we get our work done together is what allows our teams to be agile and effective and cohesive. It comes down to hiring great people, inviting them to do the best work of their lives, and giving them the flexibility to reach their full potential.

Originally published on the Atlassian Blog.

Just when you think you’ve got this whole “knowledge economy” thing figured out, here comes the “creative economy” — the world in which your ability to succeed and add value is limited only by your imagination. Of course, that creativity needs to be informed by a deep understanding of your customers.

Customer centricity is a hallmark of design-led companies. That’s one reason why design-led companies are outperforming their engineering- and sales-led peers, according to a new report from McKinsey & Company. And because design-led companies are relatively rare, there’s plenty of opportunity to adopt their practices and gain some competitive advantage.

As the lines between digital, physical, and service interactions blur, giving way to a unified user experience, building empathy with your customers is more important than ever. These five techniques rooted in design thinking will help any team keep customers top-of-mind and deliver more value, more consistently.

Contextual inquiry

You’ve probably chatted with customers on the phone or at events, but have you ever observed them “in the wild”? A contextual inquiry is more than a basic customer interview. It’s a chance to understand your customers’ needs and the context in which they use your product or service.

Contextual inquiries typically last a few hours and involve:

• Tour of the environment (office, home, etc.)
• Shadowing and interviewing individuals or groups
• Same-day debriefing session with your team
• A written summary of your findings.

The insights you gain during a contextual inquiry are useful on their own, but become even more so when you use them as part of the other four techniques.

Get full instructions for contextual inquiries here.

Journey map

The path from being oblivious of your brand to a loyal brand champion can be long and fraught with pain points. Journey mapping visualizes how customers experience your product or service, as well as how they feel along the way.

Here again, you’ll focus on a specific customer persona as they go through a specific journey — e.g., from their decision to purchase to the completion of the purchase process. Start by articulating each step in granular detail, noting how their sentiment is changing. From there, you can identify pain points that need to be addressed asap as well as opportunities to deliver more value.

Get full instructions for journey mapping here.

Empathy map

Even if you can’t walk a mile in your customers’ shoes, you can still spend an hour inside their heads. Sort of. In an empathy map exercise, you choose a customer persona and bring them to life by imagining their hopes, fears, needs… even where they get information and what sources they’re likely to trust. From there, think about what they might hear, see, or feel while using your product.

You’ll walk away with a better sense of who your customers are as people that you can put to use right away as you operate your service or market your product. You’ll probably also generate a list of questions and assumptions to be validated as you work to improve it.

Get full instructions for empathy mapping here.

Problem framing

If you can’t define the problem you’re solving, its impact on customers, and the contexts in which it pops up, you don’t have a very good chance at solving it. For this technique, draw a 2x2 grid and fill the four sections with answers to these questions:

• Who — Who actually has this problem? Have you validated that the problem is real? Can you prove it?
• What — What is the nature of the problem? What research or supporting evidence do you have?
• Why — Why is the problem worth solving? What’s the impact on the customer?
• Where — Where does this problem arise? Have you or your team observed this problem in its natural habitat?

Then, armed with a robust understanding of the problem, you can start thinking about solutions.

Get full instructions for problem framing here.

Experience canvas

Inspired by the classic “lean canvas”, an experience canvas helps clarify how you’re going to solve a problem, the customers you’re solving it for, and what success looks like.

Write your hypothesis at the top, then work through the areas of the canvas sequentially (more or less). As you go, feel free to go back and revise areas as needed. And don’t stress about getting it all built out in one sitting. When the canvas is complete, you can run through the journey mapping exercise to better understand how a customer will engage with your solution at each touchpoint.

Get full instructions for creating an experience canvas here.

Keep in mind it’s not a smooth linear process. It’s messy and scrappy, and you’ll see the returns on your investment in small bursts. But you will indeed see it.

These techniques are more effective when done as a group — preferably a group that brings diverse skills and backgrounds to the table. You can find full instructions for all five (and many more) in the Atlassian Team Playbook — our free, no-BS guide to unleashing your team’s potential.

Originally published at Atlassian Blog.

5 design thinking secrets that boost customer value was originally published in Designing Atlassian on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The very things that help us grow our business today, can impede growth tomorrow. To grow better, we need to develop the skill of recognizing when something has stopped working. We need to learn to unlearn.

During the first frenzied days when we were trying to get Atlassian off the ground, we had to take on as many responsibilities as needed and acquire every bit of knowledge that goes along with them. However, as we started scaling the business, this behavior quickly became impossible to sustain.

So, how did Atlassian become more effective without being chained to our desks all day?

We had to take something away. Unlearn it to free up capacity for something new.

Businesses are rapidly transforming and to stay relevant we have to unlearn. Just as operating models, organizational designs, leadership styles and work schedules have to change with the first 50 employees, it needs to continue evolving with the company’s first 100, 1,000 and 10,000 employees. There is always room for improvement, even when you’ve become the leader of an established company. Outdated ways of thinking and doing need to be constantly discarded to make space for methods that lead to innovation and growth.

This mindset shift can be challenging, especially when we’re often surrounded by a “more is more” culture.

Here’s how to get started.

Identify

At its core, unlearning is the art of stopping patterns. We identified practices, rituals or behaviors that would not be as valuable to us in the future as they were in the past. For example, at Atlassian we unlearned our practice of using KPIs (key performance indicators) and began using OKRs (objectives and key results).

When we had KPIs, we were always arguing about micro outputs that weren’t doing anything to push us forward. The old system was also too focused on individual performance, which led to people caring less about the impact their actions had on the overall success of the organization.

The fruitful conversations that we did manage to have during that time were actually informal OKR conversations. This led us to realize it was more useful to focus on the outcome of an employee and team’s work than to measure output, which didn’t capture the most important aspect: how the work being done was affecting our business.

Other habits like delaying investment in training or speaking in business BS (let’s never use the term “synergy” again) may have worked before but they’re no longer helping your company advance. There are some practices that will be easier to remove than others. You may have rituals that still pay dividends but it’s important to note that the dividend is reducing. You need the time and space to try something new and evolve.

Understand

I was working with a distributed engineering team when I first started working at Atlassian and when we went to our quarterly offsite, it became obvious that there was a lot of miscommunication. People were doing work that was no longer aligned with the team’s goals while others were doing unnecessary, duplicative work. It would’ve been easy to just blame the team members and move on but that wouldn’t have fixed the problem.

I dug deeper to understand the root cause by becoming cognizant of the team’s leadership styles and how they worked. Then I actively sought to understand the effect it was having on the team.

While doing this, I uncovered that while the leadership team met often, the entire team only met once a quarter. This meant that the leaders were aligned on what needed to be done but junior team members weren’t.

Being a distributed team with a poor communication rhythm also meant that people were saving up things to say for months until they had a chance to speak with the entire team at the offsite.

Once I figured that out, we worked to mitigate the negatives so they stopped being barriers to the team’s success. We mapped out the different stakeholders for projects in the team and connected the people with similar responsibilities so that they could stay on the same page. We also set up a regular communications cadence for the team to ensure team members weren’t working in silos.

Experiment

As we sloughed off low-value practices, we needed to experiment to find the new practices that would be best for the business.

When we first tried to implement new ways for our teams to improve their performance through the Atlassian Team Playbook, everyone saw the value of the Playbook but insisted that their team was fine and didn’t need it.

So, we went back to the drawing board and worked on how to get people to recognize that teams can always improve. Even if you’re already on a high-performing team, there is room for improvement.

Successful teams are prone to falling into the trap of going back to the same good idea over and over again, impeding their growth.

We decided to implement health monitors as a first step for teams before they started using the Playbook. As the name signals, team health monitors are the equivalent of getting a regular check-up, something everyone needs to do to establish a baseline for their health.

Health monitors finally encouraged teams to use the Playbook to improve their performance because it caused teams to pay closer attention and identify their blind spots. Once they were able to see the places for improvement, they were ready to put the Playbook to good use.

Implement

It’s all well and good to extol the virtues of unlearning, but we made sure to practice what we preach. I make myself do an unlearning exercise at the end of every quarter.

I assess the previous quarter, breaking it down into four categories: what I loved, longed for, loathed and learned.

The key is I don’t allow myself to add in a “longed for” until I’ve taken out a “loathed.”

While doing this last quarter, I found that I did less mentoring, something I love doing and pays dividends. On the other hand, I loathed how many meetings I was in. Moreover, many of the meetings didn’t seem to benefit from my attendance.

To address this, I deleted all my meetings off of my calendar for the new quarter. I asked meeting organizers to let me know if they needed me on the meetings and if so, what I was accountable for in those meetings.

In the end, I cut the number of meetings on my calendar by more than 50 percent and then was able to reinvest that time into mentorship.

Unlearning is a useful tool for everyone. For us to thrive, not just survive in the current market, we have to keep an eye on the future and constantly evolve — that’s how we grow better.

Learned something? Click the 👏 to say “thanks!” and help others find this article.

It’s time to learn to unlearn was originally published in ThinkGrowth.org on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If you’re like me, every article you’ve ever read about managers vs. leaders bagged on managers while praising leaders. Not surprising, right? People hate being “managed” and nearly everyone fancies themselves as being (or becoming) a leader.

There may come a time when managers are obsolete, but for now, these are both valuable roles — they’re just different.

For a real-life example, look no further than the military. Maybe that’s not where you usually seek examples of future-proof approaches to leadership, but credit where credit is due: they’ve nailed it with the concept of “command intent”.

It’s a surprisingly simple idea. The commander (i.e., leader) describes what success will look like. With the end goal clearly defined, soldiers on down the ranks can make fast decisions in their local environment.

It’s efficient, it’s effective, and it mirrors the needs of fast-moving companies in today’s competitive landscape. Like the military, growing companies have mid-level managers who need to make mid-level decisions quickly as their teams execute against the top brass’ vision.

Is that really so horrible? No. Here’s why.

The difference between managers and leaders

Steven Covey, author of “7 Habits of Highly Effective People”, has an analogy for the difference between leaders and managers. Imagine you’re part of a group trekking through the jungle. A leader is your scout. They’re up in the treetops, looking to see what’s coming next and relaying that intelligence back down to the group.

Leaders prepare people for change. They leave aside nitty-gritty operational control and instead take in the big picture. How do they find the time? They empower their people to make the day-to-day decisions — that’s where command intent comes in.

Meanwhile, a manager is the person at the back of the group sharpening tools and making sure rations are appropriated correctly. They’re relaying information up to the leader, communicating what the group will need to make it across that next river.

How to be a leader (if you’re not already)

Everyone accepts that delegating tasks is the key to being an effective manager. But if you want to be an effective leader, you need to delegate authority.

Giving others the decision-making power they’d normally expect you to carry helps them stretch themselves and practice adapting to new situations. If you’ve embraced the concept of command intent, you can delegate authority and still sleep well at night, knowing your people are equipped to make the right trade-offs.

And when you have a moment to come down from the treetops and pitch in with the grunt work, do it. Sharpen a few tools. You can’t prepare people for change if you don’t have a strong sense of empathy for them and the work they do. Besides, a demonstrated willingness to get down and dirty builds trust.

If you’re going to manage, don’t just be a cat-herder

Not everybody wants to be an up-in-the-treetops leader, and that’s just as well. Project managers and operational managers can still provide value if they approach their work with the right mindset.

Even today, top talent doesn’t need a task-master telling what to do when they walk in the door each morning. Good individual contributors can understand the commander’s intent and set their course accordingly. In the near future, that kind of self-direction and self-motivation will characterize every job still being done by humans.

This should make any manager who simply acts as a task-master nervous. Very nervous. What’s needed now, and into the near future, are the kind of managers who look after the needs of their teams — be they logistical, physical, or emotional — as they work together making their leaders’ vision a reality.

Whether you’re a manager, a leader, or a person who aspires to become one, there’s a lot you can do to hone your craft. Start by browsing our curated collection of articles on leadership and management, loaded with tips from the pros. Read more about leadership.

Also published on the Atlassian Blog.

Are managers really as horrible as you think? was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Can we all agree that companies who call their remote workers back to the mothership are simply delaying the inevitable?

Remote work is here to stay. No matter what product you sell, people are your most valuable asset. And being remote-friendly is a good way to maximize it for a number of reasons:

• You have a better shot at hiring the perfect candidate if you’re flexible about where they live.
• The tech to support remote work is getting better by the minute. (Stride, anyone?)
• Decades of experience has shown us that being under a microscope doesn’t lead to intrinsic motivation.
• Urban office space ain’t getting any cheaper.

Instead of sticking their heads in the sand and wishing it away, smart leaders are devoting their energy to making sure their companies are poised to take advantage of remote work’s upsides — not to mention mitigating its downsides.

Got remote? Then you’re a distributed team

The key to all of this is actually to stop thinking about “remote workers” per se, and start thinking in terms of “distributed teams”. With that tiny mental shift, you’ve gone from focusing on an individual — an edge case, perhaps — to taking a holistic look at what’s going on at the organization level.

Once you embrace the idea of being “distributed” you realize it’s not just about your company’s own employees. Suppliers, partners, and clients don’t have desks at headquarters, either. And yet, they are integral to your success. They are, in other words, a part of your extended team. So building muscle around distributed work benefits your relationships with them, too.

What’s more, you can lay the groundwork for being awesome at distributed teams even if your company is 100% co-located right now. (Which we agree is a temporary situation, right?) Turns out, the three key ingredients for successful distributed teams also make for successful co-located teams. Two birds, one stone.

Treat team health as an investment — not a tax

There’s no magic formula for calculating the pay-off of investing in team health, but you know in your gut it’s going to be positive.

Back when I first started at Atlassian, we got really curious about the fact that some teams in the company were crushing it, whilst others were struggling to hit even soft-ball targets. Same company, same culture, same tools and tech… so why the difference?

After an extensive internal study, we found the healthy, high-performing teams had several things in common. Unsurprisingly, the low-performing teams had few (if any) of these traits.

Fast-forward to today, and we encourage all our teams, whether co-located or distributed, to look after eight areas. For example:

• Shared understanding — The team has a common understanding of the problem they’re solving. They’re confident they have what they need, and trust each other.
• Full-time owner — There is one lead accountable for results, and champions the mission inside and outside of the team.
• Balanced team — The team has the right blend of people and skills. Roles and responsibilities are clear and agreed upon.
• Value and metrics — The unique value in the team’s work is understood. Success is defined as a measurable goal that both the team and stakeholders agree on.

This framework (which we call the Team Health Monitor) is what turns good teams into amazing teams. It’s also what pulls failing teams back from the abyss.

Whilst team health is important for co-located teams, it is absolutely vital when you go distributed. Problems — whether with the work itself or with team dynamics — are amplified by distance.

Get comfortable with autonomy

If you don’t already have a culture of delegation and decentralized decision-making, now is the time to build one. You’re going to need it when your team sits in different timezones.

The most successful companies I’ve worked with are the ones where leaders recognize that, 90% of the time, the best people to make a decision are the people closest to the work it affects. By contrast, companies where leaders hoard decision-making authority move at a snail’s pace and (surprise, surprise) can’t hold on to talented people.

When the risk is high, the context is complex, and/or the impact ripples across the whole company, decisions should be owned by leaders, with input from subject matter experts. Everything else can be entrusted to the teams and individuals doing the work.

Think “open by default”

We all like to think we’re open, but most companies are actually built on information silos and hoarding. The negative effects of this get amplified with distributed teams who miss out on all the tid-bits shared in water cooler conversations.

To work effectively in a distributed team, information and insights need to be shared in a timely manner. Without this, hours (days?!) get wasted on work that isn’t relevant. Plus, everyone needs to base their work on the same version of the truth.

I’m a big fan of using an internal wiki instead of Google Docs or (horrors!) MS Word. When project plans, policies, updates, drafts, and reports are simply created as pages, information isn’t just accessible — it’s discoverable. The result is a free-flowing exchange of ideas and feedback that sharpens everyone’s work.

Distributed teams aren’t easy at first. It’s a bit of an acquired taste. But you can set yourself up for success by embracing the principles of transparency, autonomy, and continuous improvement. Try it with your co-located teams now and get a taste of the future of work.

For more on how to embrace remote work, grab this handy ebook from the Trello team. They’re over 60% remote, so they probably know what they’re talking about 😎

Also published on the Atlassian Blog.

How to prepare for the remote-friendly future of work was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Remote workers are giving our calcified attitudes about collaboration and office culture a much-needed shake-up. They’re just as — if not more — productive than co-located workers, and enjoy a high level of job satisfaction and general well-being to boot.

But let’s face it: not everybody has what it takes to be successful working from home full time. The last thing you need is a new remote hire who (oops!) doesn’t have the right stuff.

The good news is that the most successful remote workers have several things in common. And you can sniff these qualities out with a few strategic interview questions.

1. “What’s the most ambitious project you’ve ever dreamed up and pursued?”

Speaks to: self-motivation.

Contact between managers and remote employees is unavoidably sparser than with co-located workers. You need to know they’ll keep plugging away (on the right things) without constant check-ins from you.

People who are self-motivated will have a solid answer to this question. They love a good challenge and stay focused on it, even when they face a setback or a shiny new object enters their field of vision.

2. “Tell me about a time you took a calculated risk and failed. What did you learn?”

Speaks to: growth mindset.

The collaboration practices that worked well in their last job, might not work in this one. Especially if your team isn’t used to having a remote member, or if this would be the candidate’s first remote-based job. You need someone who is flexible, persevering, eager to experiment, and doesn’t assume they already know the best way of doing things. Sound familiar? Those are key components of a growth mindset.

If your candidate is all about growth and continuous improvement, they’ll probably tell you more than one story in this vein.

3. “If you’re hired, what’s the first thing you want to work on?”

Speaks to: amazing communication skills.

It’s unlikely anyone you’re interviewing would walk in with enough information to answer it authoritatively. And that’s the point. A good remote worker will ask clarifying questions right away. What are the team’s priorities right now? What projects are already in flight? What have we already tried that didn’t work?

Once they’ve got enough context to formulate an answer, look for candidates who get right to the point. A low signal-to-noise ratio is key for effective, efficient remote work.

It’s also important that remote workers communicate openly and effectively via multiple mediums: email, chat, talking live, slide decks, etc. Make a point to incorporate as many mediums into the interview processes as possible so you get a holistic view of their communication skills and style.

4. “What are 3 things that struck you about… “

Speaks to: initiative.

This question varies based on what type of role you’re interviewing for. If it’s a design or marketing role, ask what struck them about the company’s website. If it’s a finance role, ask what struck them about the numbers you released last quarter. And so on. “What struck you about our company values?” is a good all-purpose variant.

What you’re sniffing out here is how pro-active the candidate is. Did they take the initiative to research the company a bit? You have better things to do that prod remote workers into action all the time. So make sure you won’t have to.

5. “What worries you about not being part of an office community?”

Speaks to: self-awareness.

Even the most introverted of remote workers needs a little social nourishment. How does your candidate plan to get it? It’s less important what exactly their answer is. Really, you want to see that they’ve considered how being remote will affect them and have some idea what they’ll do to adapt.

In an office setting, people look out for each other (“Hey, you look really tired today — everything ok?”). Remote workers, on the other hand, have to be keenly self-aware and good at self-care or they risk burning out.

6. “What excites you most about this role?”

Speaks to: purposefulness.

Effective remote workers are hyper-engaged in their work. They understand why it’s valuable and that shows through. It’s hard to course-correct someone’s sense of purpose if they’re remote, so make sure your candidate nails this one.

Ideally, they’ll say that their passionate about the company’s mission. Or they might be excited to hone a new skill. Or work at a different type of company. However they answer, make sure their sense of purpose and yours are in alignment.

Remote work is here to stay, so you may as well embrace it (if you haven’t already). For more tips on sourcing and hiring remote workers, grab this ebook brought to you by the good folks at Trello— a team that’s over 60% remote!

Also published on the Atlassian Blog.

6 interview questions remote workers should be able to nail was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Trust makes your job as a leader easier in just about every way possible. Your teams make decisions faster (and revisit them less often). People pro-actively admit to and learn from mistakes instead of scrambling to hide them.

It’s easy enough to know your own level of trust in the people you lead. But gauging how they feel about you is a different story. You can’t ask point-blank — not if you hope to get reliable, authentic responses.

Fortunately, you don’t have to. Ask yourself these proxy questions instead.

1. Do people say “no” to you?

If everyone always says “yes,” you’ve got a high-compliance environment — which is not the same as high-trust. People who trust you will offer respectful dissent. They’ll engage in discussion and, ultimately, rally behind decisions (even when they disagree).

2. Do you use high-trust language?

This includes saying “we” instead of “I” or “you” when talking about successes or failures. Does the company generally prefer the term “team members” or “teammates” over “employees” or “co-workers”? “Leaders” over “managers”? The choice of words provides subtle clues as to how your staff view their place in the company — and yours.

3. Are failures and lessons learned publicized across the company?

Tolerance for honest mistakes encourages creative thinking and calculated risks. When you share your failures and what you learned from them, it sends a strong signal to others that the tolerance is real. The last thing you need is people covering up their mistakes and (worse) unknowingly repeating someone else’s.

4. Do people live the company values?

I don’t just mean the executives and other taste-makers around the company (although it’s obviously extra-important that they embody the values). If you see examples of people from front-line customer service reps to accounting to your top brass using your values to guide decisions and behavior, that’s a sign you’re working with true believers.

P.S.: If they’re not living the values, consider whether you have values worth living.

5. Is information open and easy to find?

Transparency demonstrates trust in your people, which pays dividends of their trust in you. Opening up sounds scary at first, but in truth, there’s very little that needs to be locked down (salary and other personal data come to mind). At Atlassian, even information on revenue, expenditures, and customer count is discoverable by anyone on staff who cares to look for it. And in 15 years, we’ve yet to experience any leaks.

Of course, you don’t have to take it to that extreme. Making network drives, shareable documents, wiki pages, and chat rooms “open by default” goes a long way.

6. Does everyone know what the business is focusing on and how it’s performing?

Being cagey about focus areas and strategies not only encourages distrust from your rank-and-file, it’s downright foolish. Nobody can think about how their work contributes to the bigger picture is they don’t know what that bigger picture is. Similarly, sharing performance data only with a blessed few guarantees everyone else will be making decisions about their work based on a combination of rumor and assumptions — most of which will be false.

7. Do team members share company news on their social channels?

When a major publication mentions your company in a favorable light, people working in a high-trust environment will be sharing the heck out of it — and not just the PR team. Social sharing is a sign that team members are confident in the direction the company is headed, proud of their contribution, and want to incorporate that into their personal brand. On average, you might see 7–10% sharing company content on social. In uber-engaged workplaces, it might rise as high as 30%.

8. Is it easy to give and invite feedback at any time?

Professional development and personal growth thrive on feedback throughout the year (not just at annual review time). When trust is high, you’ll notice a steady flow of high-fives and respectful-but-challenging questions coming your way. You’ll also notice feedback being given informally amongst teammates. Peer reviews of work in progress, design sparring, code reviews, project retrospectives… if these are baked into your business-as-usual, that’s a Good Sign™.

9. Do you crowdsource strategy and major initiatives?

Too often, the C-suite gets seduced by the notion that they’re the only ones with the vision (and in some cases, intellect) to know where to steer the company. But a new breed of executives understands that being on the front lines working with customers and/or making the product have the perfect vantage point from which to see opportunities. These execs make a habit of soliciting ideas for major initiatives and strategic focus areas. By asking for input, you demonstrate confidence in your staff. In return, staff tend to rally behind whichever ideas are selected for action, even if they would’ve chosen differently.

10. Is it easy to connect with you?

In companies with high-trust cultures, top brass typically have open-door policies. Anyone in the company can schedule a few minutes to talk about product direction, career development, internal operations, etc.

If you’ve answered “yes” to all 10 (and done so with a straight face), congratulations! You’ve got the key ingredients for leading a company that is collaborative, creative, and generally crushing it. If fewer than three questions got an affirmative, you’ve got some work to do — but take heart.

Building a culture of trust takes time, but it starts with you. Even if you’re not in a position to influence big things like opening up tools and information, there are lots of things you can do as a leader. Remember: leadership is personal, not positional. Anyone from the CEO down to the intern who started last week can lead by example.

I’ll leave you with 17 ways to be the change you seek.

Originally published at Atlassian Blog.

10 questions that reveal whether your team trusts you as a leader was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

If there’s anyone out there not feeling dizzy after a topsy-turvy 2017, I’ll eat my hat. (Also, would you please share the secret to your serenity?) Between the debate over remote work, Facebook’s near-daily changes affecting branded content, and the fact that robots might take our jobs, we’re being pulled in a hundred different directions. Not to mention the socio-political landscape.

Times like this require mindful refocusing — especially if you’ve got big audacious goals for 2018. It’s one thing to make New Year’s resolutions, but setting yourself up to actually manifest them is quite another. To that end, try these five rituals that help you regain your focus.

1. Re-phrase your goals as outcomes

It’s no good simply resolving to go to the gym regularly. If I don’t sweat when I’m there, I’m not making any progress toward my actual goal of lowering my blood pressure.

If your top objectives for 2018 read like a glorified to-do list, take a moment to articulate them as outcomes instead of outputs of effort. Think “increase revenue by 20% through creative campaigns” vs. “run ad campaigns in six major markets”. The beauty of focusing on the outcome is that you allow yourself the liberty of getting there in whatever way suits.

Identify the result you’re ultimately after and use that as your North Star.

Take action: Use the OKRs technique to set ambitious goals and lay out how you’ll measure success.

2. Reflect on what worked this year, and what didn’t

Once a quarter, I sit down and write down what I’ve loved, loathed, longed for, and learned. From there, it’s clear what to keep doing and what to put a stop to.

The magic of this “4 Ls” technique is not letting the lists get out of hand. I don’t allow myself to add a “longed for” until I’ve removed a “loathed”. And if your “loved” is also your superpower, don’t be afraid to amplify it. Own it!

Take action: Here’s how to do a retrospective exercise using the 4Ls variation. (And yes: personal retrospectives done by yourself are totally valid.)

3. Clean up your calendar

That goes for your professional and personal calendars. It’s not just about reclaiming time to pursue your goals. It’s also about preserving the mental and emotional bandwidth to make it time well spent.

We all have a recurring commitment we dread because it never feels like a valuable use of time. Opt out. You can always get back in if you start missing it. And if you do, you’ll go back in with a renewed sense of purpose.

4. Clarify what you’re not doing (and why)

Every mission involves trade-offs, but it’s hard to make the choices that keep you focused on your goa– “Ooh look! Shiny object!”. *ahem* The most successful people I know think through their priorities in a structured, dispassionate way so they can make rational choices in the moment.

Take an hour to step through a thought exercise like the trade-off sliders workshop I run with teams. You’ll walk away knowing what’s most important in your pursuit, and just as importantly, why. Then, fend off potential distractions. Let the people around you know what you’ve decided not to do.

Take action: Use the trade-off sliders technique to visualize the relative importance of everything on your plate.

5. Invest in relationships that fuel you

There are a handful of people in our lives that stir us up, heal us, and/or just make us glad to be alive. We can safely debate ideas and expose our failures with them — in all cases, they help us learn. Draw up a list of their names, and invest more energy in those relationships while scaling back on the relationships that leave you feeling drained.

Don’t forget to be awesome

If there’s a bonus ingredient for staying focused in 2018, it’s trust. Trust that you’re pursuing the right things now, and will have the clarity to recognize if that changes. Trust the people around you to support you when they can, and step out of the way when they can’t. Trust that it’s a marathon, not a sprint, and pace yourself appropriately.

Bring your full self to 2018. It’s going to be awesome.

If you enjoyed this, follow Smells Like Team Spirit for stories about leadership, diversity, and fresh ways to make work feel less like, y’know… work.

Also published on the Atlassian Blog and Inc.com.

Feeling scattered? Regain your focus with these 5 rituals was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

It’s no secret that our world moves quickly. Start-ups launch at a rate of about 1240 per day in the U.S. alone. New technologies pop up faster than toadstools after rain and change the way we think about pretty much everything. Geographies previously thought of as “remote” are now connected and ready to buy.

In such a volatile business climate, the only safe assumption is that what worked for you this year won’t work next year. At least, not as well.

So as we look to 2018 and beyond, there are a few bad habits we should drop right now if we want to be successful in the year ahead.

1. Delaying investment in training

It’s so, so easy to procrastinate on adding a new skill or strengthening skills you already have. After all, you’ve got the fire-drill du jour to contend with and a deadline that’s already past due. Training might feel like a tax on today’s productivity, but it’s really an investment in being more effective tomorrow.

Think about elite military and athletic teams. There’s a reason they’re on top: they’re training 40+ hours per week, and doing the job for maybe 1 hour. They’re developing new skills, new muscles, and drilling new scenarios that help them deliver ever-better performances.

Compare that to your average office worker who is delivering work for 40 hours a week and maybe learning for 1 hour. (Maybe.)

2. Acquiring knowledge

Wait. How is acquiring knowledge a bad habit? Didn’t I just tell you to stop putting off training?! Here’s the thing: knowledge and skill are different.

Thanks to the internet, information is available quickly and easily. It’s cheap. It’s ubiquitous. It’s commodity. The value is in the application of knowledge. Instead of reading about active listening, practice it. Instead of talking about “failing fast”, run an experiment and be open to it not working.

It’s not what you know, it’s how you apply it.

3. Looking for ideas at the top

In traditional organizations where information is hoarded and privileged, and where seniority is assumed to equal smarts, it’s normal to look to the top of the org chart for inspiration. But those organizations are either dying or trying their damnedest to change so as to avoid their own demise.

Take (yet another) page from Steve Jobs, who knew that great ideas can come from anywhere. In other words, we need to listen everywhere.

Staffers on the front line interact with your customers many times every day. Millennials may not dominate your C-suite, but they’re digital natives and have a keen nose for trends. The best ideas won’t come from leaders in the top echelon (who have the most to lose and tend to play it safe). They’ll come from the most engaged employees, regardless of where they sit.

4. Doing more stuff

Wherever you’re born, whatever your background, you get 24 hours in each day. The traditional approach to getting the most out of your time, and your employees’, is to dangle a carrot while holding a stick. But we’re not donkeys. And we’re way past the era when being busy meant you were accomplishing more.

Instead of obsessing over so-called productivity metrics that tell you about outputs, focus on outcomes. Set a long-term vision, and create an environment where your staff can make decisions autonomously. Then get out of the way. Trust in their curiosity and creativity. They won’t be any busier — but they’ll make a bigger impact.

5. Speaking in business BS

Hey everyone, let’s huddle up to cross-conceptualize and identify long-term synergies in our macro portfolio vis-a-vis digital disruption and cultural transformat- *ahem*… excuse me, I just threw up in my mouth a bit.

You’re chuckling right now, but we’re all guilty of speaking the time-honored language of business BS. It creates a comfy little security blanket by making us sound intelligent (though only to ourselves!) and excluding the people that don’t get it. But it has to stop.

Not only does business BS turn you into a Grade-A oxygen thief, you’re killing your own authenticity and hampering actual progress. Speaking in simple English (or your language of choice) so you can be easily understood is a sign of good leadership. Be direct and inclusive.

I’ll leave you with this gem from the venerable “Weird Al” Yankovic. Enjoy. Then, block off time for training, have a plain-spoken conversation with a front-line employee, and get ready for an effective, successful 2018.

Now that you know which habits to drop, replace them with a good habit. Follow Smells Like Team Spirit for stories about leadership, diversity, and fresh ways to make work feel less like, y’know… work.

5 habits to drop immediately for a successful 2018 was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

The debate over remote work rages on. At the heart of the issue is collaboration and, by extension, creativity and innovation.

How well can teammates really work together when they’re not in the same building? Don’t we need that intense level of interaction to spark new ideas? Surely, teams are more effective when they’re sitting side by side… aren’t they?

This is what we heard from several major companies who banned remote work in the past few years.

It’s absolutely true that bringing people together builds relationships faster and more deeply than distributing team members across locations. It’s also right for companies to focus on using the best approach for the work being done.

There’s just one problem: the underlying rationale. Disallowing full-time remote work in the name of collaboration or innovation is fundamentally flawed (if well-intentioned).

People problems vs. proximity problems

There are perfectly good reasons to keep everyone co-located. But collaboration isn’t one of them.

That’s because collaboration doesn’t require co-location. If it did, no company would ever expand beyond a single office site. But expand we do. And the level of interaction between offices is only increasing. Nor does collaboration require a bunch of fancy tooling (though a bit of the right tech does keep the machine well-oiled).

Given the right environment, remote workers enhance your business rather than tax it. If they’re off on their own little islands or generally ineffective, that’s a people problem — not a proximity problem.

The problem will follow them right back to the corporate office. Using outputs of effort to measure of productivity saps the life right out of your workforce. And telling them how their work should be done throttles their capacity for creative problem-solving.

“There are perfectly good reasons to keep teams co-located. Collaboration isn’t one of them.”

So here’s a radical idea: focusing on open communication, autonomy, and building trust makes people more effective no matter where their desk is.

Instead of fixating on location, companies are better off obsessing over engagement and empowerment. Investing in culture pays off when your entire company sits in one building, when you’re collaborating across multiple offices, and (inevitably) when some of your staff works from home.

Think “why”, then “how”

For a distributed team to function, you need to understand why you’re distributed in the first place. (Follow-the-sun customer support? Real estate constraints?) The context is important because it informs how your distributed team will work together.

Then sniff out practices that were adopted with colocation in mind, and work with your teams to evolve them.

I’m on a team comprising people from two office sites, plus one person working remotely. So we’re very intentional about sharing updates and ideas online, either through shared docs on our wiki or our messaging app. For meetings, we use video conferencing. We’ve even managed some pretty damn productive brainstorming sessions thanks to group video and a Trello board.

Relationships count

Google, among others, talk about the importance of psychological safety and belonging as part of a healthy team. In other words, relationships are a sound investment.

Building a relationship from scratch with people you never see in person can be done, but it takes a long time. And along the way, you can expect a few setbacks due to misunderstandings.

It’s best to create relationships in person, then maintain them remotely. That’s why companies fly people out for interviews, and if they’re hired on as a remote worker, bring them back for a week or two of face time at the start. If you can get the entire team in one place once or twice a year to “break bread” together, so much the better.

Getting to know each other’s quirks, working styles, communication patterns, and personalities is a powerful adhesive force for teams. It gives us permission to be our full, authentic selves at work — to suggest a new idea, or speak up when things have gone off-track.

It’s a matter of trust

A collaborative culture is rooted in trust no matter where the work gets done. Give your people the right guardrails to work within plus the autonomy to make decisions, and they’ll perform well. Tell them exactly how their work should be done, then look over their shoulder to make sure they’re “doing it right”, and they’ll phone it in.

Make no mistake: remote work is here to stay. Urban real estate prices and the war for talent are making sure of that. There’s no doubt that wrangling a distributed workforce is complicated, and that old-school ways of working don’t naturally transfer to remote and virtual teams. The key is evolving your practices.

If you dig this post, please give it a clap (or two?) and follow Smells Like Team Spirit — making teamwork a better place, one story at a time.

When companies ban remote work in the name of collaboration, this is what they’re really saying was originally published in Smells Like Team Spirit on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.