Lisette Sutherland on how to work together from anywhere

Pushpak Mundre

Hey guys, welcome back to another episode of be remote podcast for today’s episode we have with us Lisette Sutherland. She’s a director at collaboration superpowers and author of work together anywhere. I’m super excited to have you on the podcast. Thank you so much for doing this.

 

Lisette

I really appreciate meeting you and being here with you.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Awesome. So let us begin with the introduction like and what exactly you do. Yeah.

 

Introduction

 

Lisette 

Okay, so I run a company called collaboration superpowers, like you said, and what we do is we focus just. We’ve always focused on helping teams, and companies and individuals sort of work better together remotely. And we’ve been doing it for I think, almost 10 years now, in this farm, and the way that we do that is we have a bunch of free resources available. We also have a podcast where we interview people, and then we offer workshops. And they are online interactive workshops about all the different facets of remote working. So whether you’re interested in just remote working in general, or hybrid teams, or leadership in particular, we’ve got specific workshops designed to inspire people to find new ways of working, because I think as you know, what we’re seeing is remote is a new medium of work. And we have to think of it as a new medium of work. So these workshops help people make the mindset shift from, you know, being office first to being remote first. Not that we have everybody needs to be remote. But I think in this new hybrid way of working, if we think of the office as one of the many places we go to get our work done. That’s a more helpful model.

 

Pushpak Mundre

Yeah. So you, as you said, you started this 10 years back, right. So like, was it started in United States, or you started this in Netherlands and like, in which region, people were going remote, like in Europe or USA?

 

Lisette 

Well, it’s interesting. So it started in California. And it started because I was working at the time for a company that was building an online project management tool. And this was almost 20 years ago. So it’s really quite a long time ago, we were one of the first like base camp had just started. And zoho, had just started like it was really a different landscape back then. And so online project management tools were brand new. And so I was working for this company. And the reason why this guy was building this tool was because he didn’t want to die. And he thought that if he use this online project management tool, he could get the right scientists working together, from around the world to solve ageing. Like he really and when I heard his story, I was like, Whoa, you know, I was so inspired. And I started thinking about like, what else could we do? If, you know, what if we didn’t have distance between us? Like if we could just get the right people from anywhere working together and collaborating online? Like think of the things we could solve? Yeah, so it started that started 10 years ago. And then from there, you know, I ended up in the Netherlands. It’s a long story. But, you know, I ended up in the Netherlands and just kept running the company. From there. I just started asking people how they were working. And it developed into a this whole thing.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

So that’s how you started like, collaboration superpower. So that’s the story behind it. Like,

 

How collaboration superpower started

 

Lisette    

yeah, okay, so I’ll, I’ll give a little more thread because it gets more interesting. So I’m working at this company, and all of a sudden, you and we are able to work from anywhere because it’s an online project management tool. Yeah, out of the blue, I get a call from one of my favorite bands in the world. And they’ll they’re called the legendary pink dots. Nobody, you know, like, they’re a very small cult, psychedelic band. But anyway, they were my favorite band since I was a kid. And it’s a long story of why they called me but they called me and asked me to go on tour with them. And I thought, oh, my gosh, oh, yeah, I was like, of course, I’m gonna say yes, right. It’s my favorite, no matter what I was going, but I can’t say that to my boss. So I go back to the to the boss of this company of the online project management tool. And I say, This is my dilemma. Like, I’ve got to go, right. This is my this is my band. And he says, no worries, where you have an online project management tool. Here’s a mobile router, put this on the window, like at the time, you have to stick it to the window of the van. And he said, just make sure you get your work done and have a good for at that time. I worked for five weeks from a van during the day as we drove from city to city around the United States. And then at night, I was the merchandiser and the you know, for the for this band, and when the band the tour ended, they asked me to come to Europe, and that’s when I decided that I was going to go to Europe and start Yeah, I worked out of a van for almost two years I was on bandwidth relies on

 

Pushpak Mundre  

you imagine managing them or you would like playing thing with them. How was it

 

Lisette 

one No, no, I was not the musician I was. I was behind the scenes running all the logistics behind the scenes. But for me, it was really exciting to see what was possible at the time. Like I was actually living and working from a van while on tour at the favorite band working at a real company doing real work for a job. Yeah. And so I started asking other companies, I saw other companies doing this. And I started asking them, how were you doing this? What are you doing this to make it right? And that’s when I started the book and collaboration superpower started there. Because I started collecting all these tips from people. Yeah. And then I turned it into a workshop. And then I turned it into a book. I didn’t know what else to do with all the information. You know, it’s like I was doing all these great tips. So I made something with it.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

So like, you were, like you were working with band on the daytime, and then under, like, after that you would like working? Right?

 

Lisette

Well, during the day, I was working with the project management company, the band, okay. I mean, we were driving during the day, right? So we were just in the van for like eight hours between cities. It’s really in the United States, the cities are really far apart. So it’s like, yeah, you’d have to drive a whole day. And then at night, I was working for the band, you know, because that’s when the show was so

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Got it, understood. Yeah. So tell us about your book. That is more important. Yeah.

 

About Lisette book

 

Lisette  

So work together anywhere was written because I had all this information. I started talking to companies, I started recording my conversations with companies. And that’s where the podcast came from. I just was talking to people and thought, Oh, this is interesting. Like, these are great conversations. Other people need to hear this. And then I turned all those tips into work together anywhere. So I had all this, you know, I had this mountain of tips. And actually, when I first started the podcast, I used to tell people, like, Hey, I’m writing a book, and I’d love to interview you for the book. But I wasn’t actually writing the book. It was just, it was just to get people on my podcast, because not many people had heard a podcast. But then people started asking for the book. So at one point, I actually had to write the book. So I, I got together with a friend of mine from San Francisco when I lived there. She’s an editor. That’s who my co author is on the book, you’ll see Kirsten Nelson on the book. So she’s co author. And she’s a professional editor. And we got together and we wrote the book entirely remotely. We had one telephone call over three years and the rest complete asynchronous communication 100% asynchronous work to write the book. That’s amazing. Yeah, it was, it was a fantastic experience. We knew each other very, very well. So and she’s a professional writer. So the written communication was very good.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

That’s really amazing. Wow. Okay, awesome.

 

Lisette

Well, I like about it, as it shows that it is possible. You know, like all these teams that have way too many meetings, there is another way, it’s a different way. But you can learn how to work asynchronously more to save time.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

Yeah, I think a lot of companies are going for asynchronous communication right now. And

 

Lisette 

yeah, because everybody’s exhausted from the meetings

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Yeah. And with the asynchronous communication, like, you can have a team which is working, you know, globally for you 24 hours, basically, like, not technically, but yeah, I suppose if there’s people are there are people who are in Australia, the other people, if you have people in India, and USA or in Europe, then basically they’re working in their time zones, or, you know, this could work.

 

Lisette

Yeah, I mean, pros and cons to every situation, right? When you go with time zones that are so far apart, you start to lose the team building aspect of it, because you can’t really talk and you know, like that. There’s a level of team building that you can do asynchronous for sure, like, you know, the no question about it. But you start to get a little bit less team building, and you get more workflow focused when you have timezone so far apart. So asynchronous work is not for everybody. There are people who really like to be synchronous with each other. They’re not you just have to design what the kind of work that you like. 

 

Pushpak Mundre 

So do you think the async like, if the company is remote, so like, they don’t need to go asynchronous? They can be synchronous as well and work remotely in a proper way?

 

Lisette 

Oh, sure. I mean, there’s tons of there are many tools out there that facilitate this kind of working, for example, virtual offices. They’re literally offices that you go to online in your browser. So you’ll see a floor plan of an office. Yeah, a lot of people go to work this way. Like in the morning, you open your virtual office, your colleagues are there in the virtual office, you can see them you can see who’s meeting and who’s talking. And that’s how they work. And I would say, you know, like for teams that are in startup mode, or if you’re collaborating around a really hard project, and you need to be talking and thinking to each other I always say Star Trek mode, right? You want to be able to like push a button and be like, set the bridge.That’s then you need to set yourself up for that kind of work. Plenty of teams need that. So not everybody can go all asynchronous.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. So let’s talk about the qualities of a remote leader. Great. Yeah, yeah.

 

Lisette 

Yeah. Okay, so anything specific you want to start with or

 

Qualities of a remote leader

 

Pushpak Mundre

like, like, basically, like managers who are managing a remote team? Or how should they lead their team? And what what are the important politics, qualities that they should have basically, the top three qualities every remote should have, maybe we can start from there.

 

Lisette 

So it’s a really interesting topic, I’ve just spent the last few months doing a whole bunch of research on this, I built a course for the University of Wolverhampton on distance leadership. And what I found is that the difference between remote leadership and in person leadership is that when you’re in person, you can rely on your personality, you know, in your charisma to inspire people and to align people, right. Like, you know, when you’ve got a great leader that’s like, you’re like a Jimi Hendrix type, where everybody’s like, wow, you know that that’s like, great, when you go remote, that kind of personality doesn’t come through in the same way, what people crave from remote leadership is more work style. So I always say when you go remote you want to go from failing to doing right, you want to be less personality based and more workflow based. Because what people want from their remote leaders is they want for them to be more organized. And looking at my notes, I’ve got my, my board over here, they wanted, they need people to be more organized, more dependable, and more productive. That’s what we want from our leadership. We don’t need them to be charismatic in order to run a remote team. So really all comes down to defining what does success look like for the team? And then how can you help them get there? What can you do to take the roadblocks out of the way? How do you structure the work in such a way that it’s helping the team? So it’s, uh, I would say, if you’re, you know, if you’re thinking about leadership, you really got to think more about how to be more organized, how to set expectations, how to set what the roles and responsibilities are? And who’s doing what, that’s really where the focus should be? I would say, as a leader,

 

Pushpak Mundre 

sure. So how can a leader make you know, the more team work in a proper way? So how do we make sure that everyone is on the same page, like, you know, like a lot of people feel like they’re left alone? Maybe not a lot of people that but if you’re working remotely, there might be some people who are not communicating with colleagues or managers properly. So how do we work on these kind of challenges?

 

Lisette 

So there’s two things in combination that I think are really powerful one is create an agreement with your team for how you’re going to work together. And the other is set up regular feedback loops to evaluate how you’re working. And I would say they should never be done with those are like two that should always be done together. And so as a leader, of course, when I say like, what we want our leaders to do is set the expectations. That’s where a team agreement comes in. I as a leader, if I were going to start with any team, I would sit down with the team and say, Okay, let’s sit down and talk about what information do we need to share? Where is it stored? Are there any security protocols, right? And what tools are we going to use to talk with each other? If I need to talk to somebody on the weekend? Like, how do I get in touch with them? Do are we expected to check emails, you know, like, how online do we need to be? What are our working hours together? Those setting those expectations in advance, takes away a lot of the misunderstandings on a team and lets people know what the expected behavior is on that team. Super important. And of course, the team is coming up with it together. That’s the best part is everybody has a voice in doing it. Now the feedback loops come in because the way we work is evolving over time. And especially right now we’re going through a huge change, sort of change management period. Right? The COVID is, you know, COVID turns everything on its head. So I would say that the feedback loops are incredibly important because we need to evaluate like is this is what we’re doing working for us. Like, are we enjoying the work that we’re doing? How can we do better as a team? Yeah, cuz you could set your team agreement and two months later, it’s going to be totally different. No, because we’re evolving. There’s new tools. There’s new ways of doing things. We have new insights along the way. So I would say as a leader, if you have a team agreement and a regular retrospective, you’re not going to go too far. You’re not going to get too far off. Before you just can’t be led astray with that model

 

Pushpak Mundre

 Thank you. So what about KPIs? And you know, all that thing? Suppose you have specific goals, I think that also works, that that could also help.

 

Lisette 

Yeah, there’s all kinds of things. There’s a, there is a great book called Managing for happiness. It’s written by Jurgen appelo. And in that book, there’s a whole chapter on performance metrics that I recommend people read. What your game does is he recommends build, that we want to be able to measure productivity and progress and what it starts by measuring how do you measure your own productivity? Right, like, think first about Like, what do you do for your own productivity? And then start thinking about like, what can we do to measure team productivity? So I like to focus inward, because then you start to think like, oh, yeah, how do I measure my own productivity? And then what he recommends is building a scorecard index, he calls it of a number of different metrics that you start to measure. And those too will evolve over time, as your goals change as the way you work changes. And so it’s kind of a, you can’t think of it as a thing you set up, and then it’s just there and running. Yeah, it’s like an evolving thing that you have to massage over time.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

Right, totally. I think, yeah, feedback loops, and everything matters. If you have one conversation, and there’s so like, DeLonghi working on the same thing, I think, yeah, this all things matters. So

 

Lisette  

yeah, and also as a leader, right, like, not just retrospectives, but you want to do one on ones with your team, you want to like set people up and just be like, how are you doing?

 

Pushpak Mundre

I think this is very important. Yeah. I think a lot of people don’t do this, I guess. But I think this, this is the one thing which I think leaders should really do. And it could like totally, you know, like, it could make employees feel like they’re kind of special. And maybe or like, it’s you know, a human thing to do it makes a lot of difference. I think

 

Advice for remote leaders 

 

Lisette  17:12  

we do I have I have my own anecdote on this. And that is that 10 years ago, I had a client who was in California, and I was in the Netherlands. And every morning, my boss used to call me on the way to where he was, it was a company I was like doing regular work for so I call I always called my boss or chief or chef or whatever. So he would call me on his way to work in the morning, every morning, just because he had a 30 minute drive. And nobody else was awake at 6:30 in the morning. And for me, it’s three in the afternoon by 330 in the afternoon, so he would call me and just be like, Hey, what’s going on? Just wanted to check in anything you need. You know, in some days, it was like, No, I’m in the middle of something, boss. I’ve got this. And other days, it was like, hey, while I have you on the line, I just had a call from the marketing person. And I have a quick question. Right. And over time, like one, it helped us work better together. But the other thing is, is we are still friends to this day. Then years later, because of those phone calls. Yeah don’t underestimate, talking over you

 

Pushpak Mundre 

know, so like, I think this happens a lot. Suppose if you’re working remotely, and you just so wake up in the morning, and when you talk to someone from your team, so you kind of push each other, otherwise, you’re just sitting there and you don’t know what to do. And you kind of you know, I think this talking to someone, especially if you’re working remotely helps a lot. This is a really good, good point.

 

Lisette

You know, it’s interesting, because there are very different personality styles for this, like some people really like being alone, like thinking and deep like alone. And other people really like being around people. And one of the main complaints we hear with remote working is the loneliness that people feel being alone. And like, even if you’re talking with people on Slack, you’re still alone in your room. Right. And so for those things, there’s there’s two things that I recommend on that. And, and also just because we start to talk about, like what is presence mean on a team, but one is, we have to take responsibility for our own social needs. So if you’re used to getting your social needs met by going to the office and being around colleagues, that has changed since the pandemic, right, like it’s no longer available to us, we’ve really got to make an effort to go out and build a community outside of work to fill those needs. But the second thing is, is that we don’t have to just do, we don’t have to just be with our colleagues on Slack. We can also be with our colleagues like in a virtual office so that it feels like they’re there or like just have the video on for like have virtual co working sessions where you don’t have to work or meet about the same thing. You’re just working together, but you’ve got the video on and the sound on and you’re just hanging out, working together like those are great. Those are really Lovely ways of just hanging out with the team while working and it feels like somebody is there. So while they’re not physically there, it’s the next best thing until we get holograms.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

Yeah. So I think sometimes it’s better to meet, like without any agenda, like gorgeous to have a chart. And when you’re just hanging out with team members, and at the same time, maybe some topic would come. Yeah,You know, as you mentioned, I had a call with this marketing guy. So, like, you’re working as well. And you’re also communicating and like, things are getting better. This is good. Yeah,

 

Lisette  20:33  

yeah. But that’s the hard part about remote, right, is that you have to schedule those informal conversations. So it’s, like, it’s so awkward in that way. So what I would say is, we have to find we have to build those informal conversations into our everyday activities. So for example, an icebreaker at the beginning of the meeting, you know, something super simple, like, What’s your favorite food? Or what’s your favorite sport can bring out a lot. So then then it gets built in or you have a Slack channel, where people talk about their recipes, or their pets or things like that. So in this remote world, we have we do have to those informal conversations have to happen, but we have to build them in deliberately, otherwise, they’ll never happen, right? Like otherwise, we’re just fine. Now we’ve all got piles of work to do.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Yeah, definitely. Like we already have a meeting. And then suppose we set up informal meetings like this. And some people will be like, Dude, we already have all meetings. But why do we need another meeting?

 

Lisette

the last thing you want. So the last thing you like, the end of a long week of meetings, the last thing I want to do is go to a virtual pizza party, even though it’s a pizza party, I don’t care. I just want to take it off.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

So yeah, this kind of challenges are always there. So what are your thoughts on global remote ecosystem? Like, where it is right now? And where and where it is going? The entire ecosystem? Yeah, the global remote ecosystem, like how people are working remotely, globally. And we know where it is going How do you? Oh, yeah.

 

Global remote ecosystem

 

Lisette  

I mean, one thing I can say, you know, I have no idea where it’s going. I do, I don’t think anybody knows where it’s going. But what I see is that everybody that I’m speaking to everybody that I see is focused on how to make hybrid work. Because it’s becoming very clear that we’re not going back, most of us are not going back to the office 100%. Of course, there’s a percentage that will. And I do want to make the distinction, like I think it’s totally great and totally fine. I’m not anti office by any means. I think the hybrid way is, if we can make the hybrid way of working, it’s the best of both worlds. But it is important to recognize that we do have some culture, some offices, office cultures, company cultures that are office cultures, and some that are remote cultures. And so there are some companies that even though they could work remotely, they work better together in person, that’s just the culture. That’s what the people like, yeah, so do that. Right. Like whenever as soon as it’s safe, do that. But for the rest of it, I see, hybrid is becoming the new normal. And, it’s very hard for companies because we’re switching our mindset completely from an office base to a remote base, but hybrid is going to be the new normal. And for the companies that can make it work, it’s going to be amazing, because, you know, individuals get to design their lifestyles around the jobs, that’s kind of amazing. And companies get to hire from anywhere in the world. So you know, you’re no longer, I was talking to a group in Armenia this morning. And they were saying like, in Armenia, the job market is really tough, especially for software developers, because the all the companies are hiring, you know, like one company pays more, the other company gives more flexibility and like, these people are Gods within their country, like they can hire outside, that they open up the possibilities a little bit more. So it’s the best for both for companies, but you can’t go into hybrid without a plan. Like don’t just hope that it’s going to work out like have a plan it’s going to change along the way but like have a plan create a plan with your team to make hybrid work and then you will succeed. Yeah, but so that’s where I see the world going. So I see hybrid and then the next thing that I see people coming to me too is leadership, just like we talked about before, how do we lead in this remote world?

 

Pushpak Mundre  24:33  

So when when it comes to hybrid, like I think it’s really challenging because if you are fully remote then everyone you know everyone is working remotely then it’s quite alright. Right. But and if if the entire company is not remote, like if everyone is working from office, and that is also cool, but when it comes to hybrid, don’t you think that’s like a bit challenging? I think it’s very, very challenging. Like when it comes to communication like, if I’m in office, and you’re at home, suppose and we are having a meeting. So this kind of challenges are a lot when it comes to hybrid.

 

Lisette  

Yeah, that’s why I say really want to go into this being intentional. So with hybrid, one of the things that I think it’s important to do is to switch our mindset from being office first, where the office is the primary place to being remote first. And that’s what I mean, like, it doesn’t mean that we I want everybody to go remote. But I want us to think of the office as one of many places, it could be a co working space where people are working. So if you set up your systems and processes with that mindset in mind, like your files are accessible from anywhere, if you’re at the office, great.not at the Office, no problem, like whatever you know, and your meetings are accessible from anywhere. And I really tried to drive people away from having hybrid meetings. I would say if one person’s remote, everybody’s remote, like save yourself a world of pain, and I know it sounds silly, because you’ve got maybe you’ve got eight people at the office and two people remote. But I promise you that your meeting will be better when everybody’s remote. So I can’t remember your question now. Why wouldn’t the hybrid Oh, the

 

Pushpak Mundre  

challenges? Like it wasn’t a question like, basically, it was challenging?

 

Lisette 

Yeah, I’ll agree. It’s challenging. It’s really the worst. I mean, when everybody’s remote, it’s, it’s one thing when everybody’s when you’re hybrid. It’s like herding cats, man. That’s why Like team agreements and feedback loops. Yeah, I got other way.

 

Pushpak Mundre    

Yeah, yeah. The point that you mentioned about co working spaces, I think this could be a game changer here. Like. So basically, like people who go to office site, they have this, maybe they are outgoing. And they are, you know, very social as a person they are they want to have a social life. So if they go to the co working space, so even if you know, they don’t have office colleagues, but there will be lot of other people from other companies, so they can have a social life out there. So I think co working spaces could be a future in hybrid, it could help a lot when it comes to Oh, yeah.

 

Lisette 

Yeah, yeah. I mean, the pandemic has really put something you know, I love working from home. But even I really miss I used to go every Monday morning to my favorite coffee shop here in Delft in the Netherlands and like, do all my finance stuff there, you know, like, changing the place of where we work is so important, exactly the kinds of work that we’re doing and the inspiration that we get going to the same place every day. You know, it’s not the best for creativity if you have a non creative job, and no problem, but most of us like to change up our space.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Exactly. So I wanted to ask about what are your favorite tools when it comes to working remotely? Yeah.

 

Remote tools

 

Lisette  

All right. I’m a tool junkie. So I’ve got I got a lot of tools. So beyond the basic setups, let me say so some of my favorite tools. I mentioned virtual offices. And so among those kinds of Virtual Office tools are things like SoCoCo or Wii LO is probably one of my favorites. There’s a whole bunch of virtual offices. So I’m going to say those tools. I’ve tried to think of things that people don’t usually use, like you know, like Trello and slack and all the usual things let me pull up my tools list really quick so I can get some inspiration on this. Can’t believe I’m so let’s see. I’ve also got my Elgato lights. So what people I’ll do a quick behind the scenes for the post the video anywhere.

 

Pushpak Mundre 

Oh, Yeah, it will be on youtube. Yeah.

 

Lisette 

Okay, great. Okay, so let me just show what the behind the scenes look. Yeah, sure. So then when people see it, so you can see here I’ve got this green screen curtain. Yeah, but I can pull back and forth across the room here. So that’s, that’s really fun. Yeah, and then I’ll show off the here the lights I’ve got these two Elgato lights. So that shine down because I also give a lot of you know, it’s dark in the Netherlands. So I want to have the the lighting controlled at all times.

 

Pushpak Mundre

You know what? When the call started I thought this is your real background. Like I had no clue this was behind the green screen.

 

Lisette  

So thank you, thank you. I tried to professional you know, it all started actually in the very beginning when I was working at a really small apartment and I was giving you know, I’ve been giving professional workshops online for a long time. And but right behind my apartment right behind my desk was my bed. And so I’ve always tried to think like Like, how can I get a more professional background? Because I don’t want to come with my bed online, you know, it’s just too personal. So I started with like a room divider. And then you know, now I’ve got a new house. And now it’s turned into this green screen so I can have anything I want. I could be on the like starting spaceship and stuff. Yeah. So I would say, you know, by my noise canceling headset in terms of tools, like these are all physical tools, but I would say, oh, a virtual whiteboard. That’s a tool that every team needs to have is some sort of a virtual whiteboard. Because on remote teams, we talk to each other a lot via text. But we need to visualize our ideas, because pictures are so much more powerful than words. Yeah. So if we can draw together and ideate together, so I would say, you know, Miro mural jam boards, any of the virtual whiteboards, they’re all really really good.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Awesome. Amazing. So what about your top three favorite books so when it comes to the more talking or just, you know, you’re like, maybe your personal favorite books?

 

Fav books

 

Lisette 

Ah, oh, this is a great question. This is a great question. Okay. So, you know, besides mine, and I do you know, managing for happiness is not necessarily a book about remote working, though it does address it, but I have to say if you’re looking to lead a team in the remote world, managing for happiness is brilliant. The other, let me take a peek at my bookshelf, behind the screens here, I’ve got all I’ve got a whole bunch of books here. Ah, a world without pants. That one was written by Scott Birkin. And that was a very interesting behind the scenes look into how does WordPress organize themselves. So WordPress, they host almost I think like 90% of all the websites out there. And they have a 100% Now all remote team. And so a year without pants, talks about how WordPress organizes themselves or how they even did before the pandemic to work as an all remote team. I thought that that was a really brilliant book. So that’s, that’s only two out of three.Give me some time to think of my third Yeah, I recommend. I’ve got a list of books and guides actually. Let’s see. I’m going to say, from chaos to there’s a book written by Mark Kilby and Johanna Rothman from chaos to distributed agile teams is what it’s called. And that is also a really great book that is focused on agile. So those are the three. Yeah,

 

Pushpak Mundre

awesome. So any recommendation from you like, who should we invite on a podcast like in terms of remote space, or tech leaders or remote leaders, whom you recommend?

 

Lisette  

Recommend for what again,

 

Pushpak Mundre  

recommend for inviting for our podcast like whom we can invite on a podcast? Like basically someone, someone who you follow as well, like someone you admire, maybe? Kind of that? Yeah.

 

Lisette 

So one person that I can recommend, right off the bat is a woman named Judy Reese. And she wrote a book called Clean Language. And I recommend her for being on the podcast. Because Clean Language is a it’s a visual way of working with each other. And it’s a different way of communicating. And she’s also a virtual teams expert. So I would say getting Judy Reese on the podcast. She’s one of the best facilitators out there. And she really understands virtual teams, and you can learn a little bit more about Clean Language.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

So is there any message you have for remote leaders, any last message to all the remote leaders?

 

Lisette 

My message, I guess, would be one, trust that it’s possible. So if you’re doubting whether or not you can go hybrid or remote one, trust that it is possible. So if you want to do it, and you want to be remote, it is possible. And also trust that your team will make it happen. Most people when they’re you know, a lot of leaders don’t want to go remote or hybrid because they can’t see their workers. But I will say most people out there want to do a good job. We’re all coming to work to bring our best selves, whatever it is, like we want to solve problems and we want to work on a team. You know, we want to do something good in the world. Most people want to do that. So trust that the team wants to do the job that you’ve hired them for. Set the goals, and then get out of the way so your team can take you there. That’s what that’s what I would tell leaders is really trust that it’s possible and trust your team. And if you don’t trust your team, then you’ve hired the wrong people. So that’s a different, that’s a different problem.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

So how does our audience should reach out to you? So should they reach out to you on Twitter or LinkedIn or any other platform if they want to reach out?

 

Lisette  

I would say the best way actually, to get in touch with me, I get messages on every platform, and I’m active on Twitter and LinkedIn. So but I get really overwhelmed. Because there’s so many, the best way to reach out to me is via email. But I will say I also have a parting gift for the audience that I wanted to give. And that is just the I have a remote working success kit that I’ve put together that has really fun things like, like these cards, like, Oh, you’re on mute, or I love that idea. Or one of my favorite one is like, What’s that behind you? Like, huh? So anyway, sometimes these cards that I’ve got a whole remote working success kit for people that they can download, and the URL is collaboration.superpowers.com/superkit. Awesome. We can put that in the show notes.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Yeah. We can add this in the description as well. Awesome. So thank you so much. Yeah, I had a great time talking to you and it was super fun. Yeah, I had a great time talking to you and with full of learnings as well. Thank you so much for being on the board. 

 

Lisette

My honor to be here. Thank you for inviting me.

 

Pushpak Mundre  

Thank you so much.