Remote Teams

Does this sounds familiar —

You and your team have been working remotely for quite some time. And in the beginning things were going pretty well. You were checking off all the boxes. Getting all the tactical things completed.

But, now that you’ve been in the mode for awhile and see that you’ll likely be here for awhile longer, you’re starting to become concerned. You’re seeing a lack of problem solving, higher level thinking and creativity. Ultimately, you’re concerned with the lack of motivation growing in your team.

If this is how you feel — you are not alone. Many of the leaders I’m speaking with have experienced the same thing.

There is actually some research to back this up. The research looked at 20,000 employees working in the office, voluntarily working from home, and being required to work from home.

What they found is that the last group, those required to work from home, were the least motivated of all the groups.

So, how do we increase our employees motivation while getting them to think higher level? 

It all comes down to one-on-one meetings. In these meetings we have the opportunity to place emphasis on problem solving, experimentation, and play.

We can do this through asking the right questions.

Try asking —

What’s a problem that we could experiment on right now? 

How could we proactively improve a particular situation?

These are the kinds of questions that help employees to get out of tactical-level thinking and start imagining higher-level problems.