Now Is The Perfect Time To Create A Distraction: Making Remote Working Work
Now is the perfect time to create a distraction for your employees. It’s your best strategy for making remote working work in what is a very stressful time for your employees.
Forget searching for data on how remote teams are more productive teams. Let’s take a step back from implementing new tools right away.
If you are having trouble embracing this thought, think of it as an icebreaker. When pulling your team together you will most certainly be discussing business. However, first, you are trying to set the tone.
Many employers and employees are being forced to embrace remote work. This isn’t a choice. They aren’t doing it in a time of sunshine and rainbows. People have a lot on their minds no matter if you’ve been remote working for years or not. Being thrown into this fire is not what anyone wanted. However, as Shawn Achor describes in his book The Happiness Advantage, (never a better time to read this book than now), there are three paths people go down.
- The path that circles around and keeps them coming back to where they are.
- The path that leads them to a place where they are worse off.
- The path that leads up through Adversarial Growth.
How do you help an employee or co-worker up a positive path? Well, first you must create a distraction. If they remain laser-focused you won’t be able to help point them to another path that exists. Now, let’s be clear, you can’t ever change someone’s mind. A person’s perception is their reality. Simply telling someone to “snap out of it” will not provide you with results.
I’ve been fortunate to have seen and read many thoughtful messages sent out by company leaders to help put fears at ease. Messages that are geared to proactively provide information. Not flame the fears. It’s not appropriate to try and distract someone in this situation, let alone try to make people laugh in those messages. Which means your company also needs to create another message. The message of distraction.
Distraction is not meant to play down events or feelings. There is, in fact, an elephant in the room and we will discuss it. However, we need to discuss it from a place where we are all working to find a positive path.
For generations, parents have used the distraction technique when children are ill. We play games, we watch movies, we tell stories. We actually try to get the child to laugh while they’re crying in order to distract from the pain they are feeling.
Laughter is 100% the goal.
Without playing down events in your company, here are some things you can do and encourage your employees to do for themselves.
- Create a “happy reel”. I’ve had one for years and it is Jimmy Fallon’s lip-syncing contests. It’s amazing how stressful a day could be and how easily it is to reframe my day by simply watching a funny, happy video. I can come back to the same situation and suddenly have a new perspective.
- Employees are also having a difficult time engaging positively with other employees. Finding the right words and the time to write them down is not easy. Create a dedicated email thread or Slack channel to share a funny, happy GIF that shows what is going on in their house.
- Encourage employees to share something funny about their remote working situation. Or share their best remote working hack. Did someone make a standing desk out of an ironing board? Is someone’s closet their new remote working office and the perfect place to find a quiet space for calls?
Now is the time to distract your employees in order to make remote working work.
I’ll be writing more in the upcoming days and weeks, providing you with concrete strategies and a game plan. However, right now, let’s all laugh a little. Let’s allow ourselves to be distracted in a good way!
Melissa Smith has been working remotely since 2013 when she became the first employee at her company to do so. Only a few short years later, in 2017, she became location independent. During that time she traveled to 16 countries in 12 months while running her business. Now Melissa teaches and consults others on how to make remote working work. Additionally, Melissa is one of the authors for the first online, globally recognized remote work individual certification through Remote-how Academy.
Melissa is frequently sought after for her knowledge and expertise on remote working. She has since gained international recognition and has been featured in Forbes, U.S. Chamber of Commerce, U.S. News & World Report, as well as many other publications. You can learn more about Melissa at https://melissasmith.io/.
