This week’s Five From The Island has an overall theme of communication across remote working groups. The first several articles explore the nature of “asynchronous” communication and the related notion of using “bursts” rather than nonstop streams.
Closely related to how communications are different in remote teams, we bring an article that discourages leaders from dictating hours of work. Now that the hours and the styles of communication are covered, here are a couple or articles that share some powerful productivity habits, and finally we touch on that super-sensitive topic of “how do I look” and “how do I lead” from behind the screen.
Our bonus this week is how an animal rescue farm has posited in the pandemic from a visiting business model to laughter and “awww” inducing Zoom bombing and ice-breaker into online team meetings, called “Goat-to-meeting.” Finally, we close out with an article written by a friend of Remotely, Brian Solis, on the challenges around distractions, and the surprising stat that it takes 1,395 seconds (23 minutes) on average, to regain your focus, once distracted by some rabbit hole activity or interruption.
1. Sustainability over speed: adopting asynchronous communication
2. Successful Remote Teams Communicate in Bursts
3. Don’t Tell Your Remote Employees When to Work
4. 8 Habits of Super-Productive People Who Work From Home. How to keep yourself accountable, collaborative, and productive — even when working from home.
5. Your webcam is killing your leadership presence. Save it in 3 steps. Pro tips from a speaking coach to remove the dissociation we all feel when talking to someone else on a computer screen.
Bonus 1: Goat-To-Meeting
Bonus 2: It takes 1,395 seconds (23+ minutes) on average to regain your focus.