Greg Voisen
Welcome back to Inside personal growth. This is Greg Voisen, the host of inside personal growth. And joining us from Las Vegas is Wayne Turmel, and he is he and his partner here, Kevin, I have written this book called the long distance the long distance leader revised rules for remarkable remote and hybrid leadership. And I was just telling both these gentlemen that I just finished a discussion with Vern Harnish at scaling up. And it is an issue these days, you guys, is this whole issue of leadership and leading remotely and inspiring people and reducing the level of how do we want to say it? I don't want to say turnover, but really getting keeping people inspired and keeping them going on the jobs and the little huddles and the meetings and all that. So both of these gentlemen's have been doing this for years and helping people develop leaders. And I'm going to read the bios for each of you so that our listeners know a little bit. Kevin is the chief potential officer at Kevin eckenberry Group, a Leadership and Learning Company based in Indianapolis and international with teams across the United States. He spent over 30 years running organizations and leaders from at least 53 countries become more effective. Global gurus has listed him as the most influential thinker on Leadership for the last three years. His blog is Kevin eckelberry.com, blog, forward slash blog. And the podcast that he has, which is remarkable, is called remarkable podcast.com and it's among the most popular on leadership. So definitely go tune into that Wayne in the upper left hand corner there, he's been writing about how to develop communication leaderships for over 30 years. He's taught and consulted at Fortune 500 companies and startups around the world, and for the last 18 years, he's focused on growing the growing needs to communicate effectively in remote and virtual environments. In addition to his writing, Wayne is sought after speaker at business and leadership conferences. He's authored 15 books himself, and he's a frequent guest at ATD international conferences and expos and learning expos. And he's also the host of the long distance work life podcast, Marshall Goldsmith calls him one of the most unique voices in leadership today. Love Marshall. You gotta love Marshall.

Wayne Turmel
Well, like that about me, of course,

Greg Voisen
Yeah, boy does I say? Boy does he get around? He used to live in a town adjacent to me, and I used to go to his house in Rancho Santa Fe and we'd have little breakfast in the morning and do walks through the village and things. And it was always fun. But he is definitely the consummate amazing coach living in Tennessee now and but thank you guys for being on the show. And I think let's start this off. You guys didn't need to write another book, but you decided to, and I always like to know what inspired both of you to write the second edition of the long distance leader. And I think, more importantly, how is remote leadership evolved since the first edition of your book. Because things are faster. More is expected of leaders, more as expected of middle management, people as well. Explain. Well, I

Wayne Turmel
think really the thing is that the original book came out in 2018 and I don't know if you've noticed, the world is a different place than it was in 2018 there. The book was lovely and it was very good, and a lot of people in seven languages, and, you know, have found it helpful. But there were two main things that needed to be addressed. One is just the pure technology has changed so much. You know, when we start, when we wrote the book, Zoom literally did not exist, and it went from what zoom to a verb to a syndrome in like, two years, as well as you know what is now, Microsoft Teams was then Skype for Business. So the technology changed. And while the book isn't about technology, I think to maintain credibility, you need to speak people's language. The second thing that I think ultimately was more important is that in 2018 a lot of people were saying, Yeah, we got to start thinking about remote work, and we need to start planning for it. And now, you know, a third of the workforce has done it, and many of those people continue to do it to this day, so it's less. Here's what you're going to need to think about to Okay, here's what's happening. And by the way, even with the push to return to office and everything else, the genie is out of the bottle. And while there are fewer people working purely remote than there were during the pandemic, hybrid work and flexible work has just continued to increase, and people need to know how to deal with that stuff well

Greg Voisen
and and Wayne and Kevin, you know, I have a son who's an executive at Adobe, and I think one of the things you find is where is talent. And so when leaders are responsible for developing software or developing a new rocket or whatever it might be. You're looking for talent in all the different places around the globe. And so when you have a team in Argentina and a team in Germany or a team in Yugoslavia, and you got to get on Zoom, like we're doing here right now, and my son says the biggest challenge he has as an executive at Adobe is really managing those teams and all the Zoom calls, okay, and so I'd like for you guys to address this, because it is, I know it may sound silly, but it's really not silly, because this is truly an issue for every company out there, finding the talent, managing that talent, and then leading that talent toward a common vision and goal that the company has. So Kevin, you want to take that

Kevin Eikenberry
one absolutely so. So, first of all, you know, we say in the book that, first of all, you said the subtitle of the book is revised rules. And so the first rule in both edition one and edition two is, think leadership, first location, second. So all those three things you just said, find talent, keep talent. Keep them engaged. All those things like those things, have always been true for leaders. Leaders have always needed to be thinking about those things. Now that we're doing it, whether we're spread out across countries, in continents, as you described, or whether we're just trying to get the right people on our bus that's domestic, having the ability to bring people from a wider geographical range actually gives us a broader group to find right to find the right talent from

Greg Voisen
the gene pool is bigger

Kevin Eikenberry
the pool, yeah, the talent pool we got. We got a bigger pool we can swim in, if you want to look at it that way, right? So I think that all of those things you asked have always been true for leaders. What's different now, of course, is the context is different, right? So the the principles of leading haven't changed. We want to attract and retain talent and have that talent be engaged, and want to do great work where they are. We just have to think about some of those things differently. Now, if we're doing it at a distance, right? 20 years ago, we didn't 15 years ago, 10 years ago. 10 years ago, we didn't have to think about things like zoom maybe we got on a conference call every once a month. Remember those every once in a while, but not like we're doing now. 3456789, times a day, getting on a meeting like the three of us are on right now, and like your son is talking about getting on. So leaders have to still understand that human nature hasn't changed, group dynamics haven't changed, but the context that that's happening in has changed a great deal. So we have to get better at things like using the technology, and I'm sure a lot of the other kinds of stuff we're going to talk about during this conversation. Greg,

Greg Voisen
well, you say in your under the section of the book, under practical challenges and solutions, you say Rule number one is to think leadership first, location second. Can you provide some examples of leaders who set successfully embodied this mindset? So I get leadership number one and location second. But if again, I'll bring this back up. If I'm managing a team of developers, let's just say, in Ukraine, location does become an issue because of time zones and things and issues I've got to deal with, also making sure at certain times there's even a bit sometimes language barriers, because we're dealing with people in different languages, so we've got to have Google Translate, and we had to do all kinds of things. So tell talk about rule one and embodying this mindset.

Wayne Turmel
Yeah, I think we saw this in the early days of the pandemic, because when we think about leadership, it's what you need to do. I mean, you were saying you need to set the vision. You need to manage you need to manage performance. You need to give feedback. Yep, you gotta do all that stuff. What we do as leaders doesn't change regardless of where people are. What's changed is how we do it. And there are two big things. Number one is we need to do it mediated and mitigated by technology in ways that we never did before. And the second thing is that we need to be more intentional, because we don't get all of the unconscious cues. If I walk through the office and somebody's banging her head on her monitor, only a monster would not stop and say, is everything okay? The problem is, if I'm in the office, I can see that there is a problem. If I'm working remotely, I may not be aware that there's a problem unless I'm consciously checking in. And that notion of how technology impacts it, it's funny. The worst story I ever heard I lived through my wife was once fired by instant messenger, and your stunned silence tells me what I need to hear right? Which is, any sentient human says that's a terrible thing to do, but the technology allows it, and if I'm a lousy Manager, which, surprise, surprise this guy clearly was, it's really easy to do the wrong things. It's harder work to set up a zoom call to have those difficult conversations in the richest way possible.

Greg Voisen
So question for you. You know, in that interview with Vern, we got talking about people like Steve Jobs, and we were talking about Elon Musk, and there's a huge difference between a visionary and a leader, and many of these people, so the way I take it is they've said Elon Musk is a brilliant guy and a quite a visionary, and he holds the hey, we're gonna shoot this rocket and we're gonna end up going to to Mars, Right? And he can get a group of people around that vision, but he can't coach them. He's a miserable coach, and he's supposedly a horrible person to work for, in other words, directly. So what would you guys say around how leaders overcome the challenges of kind of maintaining trust, connection with the team members that they actually rarely see in person, because imagine running a company like Tesla, right? It isn't Elon Musk running that company. He's got a whole line of people that are running that company to keep it in and deliver those cars and do whatever. And believe me, it's definitely remote. It's all over the place. So explain to me how you guys, this book in particular can help any of these leaders out there managing at a distance when they've got all these complexities going on.

Kevin Eikenberry
The first thing I'd say, I'll say this about to your point about visionary versus leader, and so we think of leadership is about reaching valuable outcomes within through others. And so I would suggest that both jobs and musk pretty good at the outcome side of that clear picture, clear vision. But there's a but there's the how are we going to marshal the folks, engage the folks, develop the folks to make that happen. And the only way Jobs was successful, and Musk is and will be, or should be, we expect will likely be, is that he's got other people making sure that the people part of that, the leadership part of that is happening. So leadership is about both of those things. And I would say both of those guys really good at one, not so good at the other outcomes, but not necessarily others, right thinking about maintaining trust and connection is less about the outcome, at least, at first we think, Well, we're just trying to get the work done, and yet we know that if we have the kinds of relationships and the chance to build trust, then we have a better chance of getting those outcomes to happen. So it's it may seem secondary, and yet it's foundational to making the rest of it work. So what I would suggest, if I'm not seeing my folks, which I don't my team, is spread out. I'm going to see Wayne next week for the first time since May, and for the first time in our office for a year. And yet, I would suggest that we have a level of trust and connection, because it's important, right? So like in the book, we talk about trust being about purpose, competence and motives, and so is our purpose clear, and we can make that happen regardless of where people are located, if people understand the purpose what we're going after, but but the time that we spend and the interaction that we have and the expert expectations that we set have a huge impact on those other two how do people view us as competent or not? How do we view our folks as competent or not? And then are our motives in alignment? And if they are, then the chances are that trust has a chance to grow if we don't intentionally make this a part of what we're trying to accomplish. It won't happen, and it won't happen if all we ever do is transact the business and talk about work and weather. So we have to get as leaders. We have to talk about more than just the work and the

Greg Voisen
weather. Well, look, we've talked about zoom, but there's all kinds of other tools, right? And you said in the book, you stressed the importance of using technology as a tool. There's a lot of tools we can choose from in the tool test today, from Asana to zoom to you name it, Microsoft's got all kinds of tools as well. So there's a proliferation of this stuff. What guidelines do you recommend? And I've heard this before, because, look, you can get too many of these tools and think that they're actually doing well, oh, we're on Slack, oh, we're on this, oh, we're on that. So what do you guys actually say about for selecting and implementing the right tools? Where do I start when I see this plethora of stuff to keep people connected while we work remotely. Well.

Wayne Turmel
As a non techie guy, I will tell you that a simple and somewhat somewhat glib rule of thumb is you want to use the least amount of the technology that it takes to acquire the greatest good right and ultimately, what that means is you need to choose the right tool for the right communication job for the right reasons. So you know, the guy who fired my wife by instant messenger clearly was not using the right tool in the right way. Yes, the job got done, but so was the damage right. What we did was we actually adopted a model which isn't even ours. It was originally invented by a Swiss researcher named Bettina Bucha, who said that all tech, all communication, is a balance of richness versus scope. There are times when you need rich communication, there are times when you need it far, wide and fast. So if I'm having a coaching conversation, you don't want to do that over email, right? Ideally, you would have that one on one across a table with a cup of coffee. It's not always possible or practical in today's workplace. Well, what's the richest thing you can do? And it's probably a one on one, private, personal zoom. Or I'd

Greg Voisen
agree with you, but I'd also say that Marshall Goldsmith was the first one that came up with AI coaching. Now, and I don't know if you guys are aware of this, but he literally program. But there again, it absolutely does,

Wayne Turmel
and there are level just as there are levels of feedback, right? Nice job is feedback. So is let's look at what this project entailed, right? There are levels of feedback, there are levels of coaching, there is formal coaching, there's informal coaching. So if the only interaction I got, I love Marshall to pieces, but if he decided he never needed to talk to me and all the coaching I needed was done through a bot, nope, over time, that's not going to work, because I agree to we need to build relationships. We need to build trust. We need to do those things, and so all these rich communication needs to be done richly. It's Al's birthday. There's cake in the break room. Doesn't require one on one, in depth conversation totally.

Greg Voisen
We still need that human connection. But here's what you see happening, and you guys definitely with remote have to be totally on top of this, which I know you are. It's like businesses, businesses moving at a much more rapid speed. People are using things like AI to scale. A Marshall is a great example of using the tool to scale, to be able to get more people underneath the umbrella and get them coached and help them. And I think you find lots of companies like this saying, hey, how do we have a better interaction? Whether it's a hybrid of AI and a real person, or this or that, or whatever it might be, it's moving that direction, right? It is moving that direction. Comment from you guys,

Kevin Eikenberry
yeah, so 100% like, we're working on AI tools, like we all we, we believe in the value and they are, whether they've got Marshall's name on or Kevin's name on them, or whoever's name on them, they're a tool. They're a tool that didn't used to exist, right? We should use the tools that are helping us, and they aren't necessarily, and I don't believe they are a replacement. So for having a leader who is your coach. So it's one thing to get process help from the expertise of Marshall. It's another thing to be able to get coaching and validation and feedback on what's happening in the real world, in real time, on the work. And so having tools, whether they're AI or otherwise, whether they're other sorts of technologies, are incredibly useful. Like, think about how hard the pandemic would have been when all we had was a fax machine. Like, of course, we wanted to use the technologies. The question, then, is your original question? How do we pick the right ones at the right time, and so having an AI tool, yeah, of great value. Well, I'll just put it this way, like I have a bunch of hammers, and my favorite hammer happens to be a sledgehammer. I won't tell you all the reasons why, but if I want to put a nail in the wall, I shouldn't pick my favorite one. I should pick the best one, which is attack hammer,

Greg Voisen
yeah. Well, and, and with that being said, you know, I remember this, this video, and you guys probably remember it as well. Tony Robbins was interviewed by a robot. Do you guys remember that? Did you ever watch that video? If you didn't, you should so the robot was all AI, and it had this super intelligence, right? And this was those back aways. And I was amazed at how definitely look it up on YouTube, Tony Robbins being interviewed by a robot. You'll get it. You guys just answered my question regarding asynchronous and synchronous. Look, this is, you know this part right now is synchronous, but asynchronous has its place. Rinse, repeat a we can have a video. We can put it up there. People watching it, midnight, 1am whenever they want to watch it. And literally, it's there. It's on demand all the time. So I get that, whether it's Marshall or you guys, all of this data now exists either in a synchronous or asynchronous category, and I think people want to come in to break out rooms in zoom, talk together, come back together and work on problems and situations, which is wonderful. So how can leaders foster cohesion and collaboration amongst the team members in hybrid, which I just said, a hybrid situation or fully remote environments.

Wayne Turmel
Well, I think where you were going with synchronous versus asynchronous is a huge part of that, that's what makes hybrid work possible, is, does everybody need to be on the clock, connected at the same time every minute of every day? Right? You get companies that claim to be hybrid, but everybody needs to be logged on at 9am East Coast time because the sun revolves around the Statue of Liberty. Well, if everybody has to be online at the same time, you are not taking advantage of the fact that people's brains work differently, and sometimes it's better to be disconnected so I can think and do deep thinking work and not be constantly interrupted. And so as we're thinking, I mean, first of all, what we define as hybrid work frequently isn't but the big thing is, as a team, leaders are responsible for leading the discussion around what work needs to be done synchronously, what work can be done asynchronously and creating guardrails so that you're not on zoom nine times a day, very because that's an over reliance on synchronous work, and ultimately it kills productivity.

Kevin Eikenberry
And to your point about cohesion and collaboration. Too often we think collaboration must be synchronous, and it doesn't like people will say we had to get back to the office, we could all use the whiteboard. And like, how many whiteboards Have you seen that no one's written on because it says, Please save this and no one's looked at it or changed the whiteboard. So my point is, if we want it to your point about cohesion and collaboration, it doesn't have to always be synchronous. However, if we want greater levels of collaboration, we, as a leader, need to model it, and we need to expect it, and we need to make sure that we're creating space for it to happen, and that I find a lot of times in a hybrid workplace, is that having the space, having the time to do it, is sometimes the challenge. I'll

Wayne Turmel
give you a real good example, personal example, that Kevin and I are dealing with right now. We have a meeting next week in Indianapolis. I have done a bunch of thinking about some future projects and different things. I could have held them and walked into the meeting when we're having our meeting and started the discussion there. Instead, I created this list and I brainstormed, and it took me a couple of days. I sent it to Kevin. Kevin has a chance to look at it and think about it and change it and make notes. When we get together, we're starting the conversation halfway through, and able to get productive really quickly, as opposed to brainstorming, where we're both starting from zero, because we're depending on being together

Greg Voisen
well. And that brings me to this issue. You know, it's like, what is the outcome that people want to have at these meetings? We're finding today that people, obviously, a lot of companies, are saying, Hey, if you're calling a meeting or you weren't invited to the meeting, but everybody has these meetings. They're wasting so many, so much time in meetings, right? And this is I've interviewed the people from Franklin Covey and the people from all over who have written books on hey, you know what? Here's our rule. And there are new rules inside of companies, just around meetings, and who, who sponsors the meeting and who should show up, and why they should show up, and what the outcome is, because teams now is saying, Hey, we're going to put a a thing that tells you how much this meeting cost, right? So we're going to tell you that you had these five executives in this meeting and these four other midline managers, or whatever, that meeting just cost you 5000 bucks, right? The point is, is that we're we're doing too many of them. It's an overkill, and the reality is we need it. And this brings me to this concept of of the proximity bias in hybrid teams. You wrote about it in the book. What strategies can leaders use to ensure these equal opportunities and recognize them for all team members in the situation. So anybody who wants to feel that, well, again,

Wayne Turmel
the simple answer right is to be aware of it. Because if you're aware that proximity bias exists, you're going to automatically take efforts to make sure that you hear from everybody, not just the people who are under your nose. Kevin, I think you know as the guy who does more day to day people leadership, you can probably talk about this better, although admittedly, proximity bias is something of a sock for me to chew on like a dog. You

Kevin Eikenberry
do like to chew on that? On that sock? Here's the thing. So our team is spread out across the United States. Most of our team is is at a distance most all the time. There are two people that are in this office two days a week, the same two days, but only if I'm here, like they don't come if I'm not here, and even today, one of them would have been here, except I said there's really no need for you to so don't come. But the point is that when we see people, they're the people we reach out to. And I can guarantee you that I have more interactions with those two people on the days they're here than when they're not. And I think that's good, because why wouldn't we take advantage of that when we can proximity bias becomes a problem when we start to lean on those people because they're handy, rather than being the best people, or either. I mean, they might be prepared and able to help, but maybe the person that needs that development more is someone else, and if, and if Marissa wasn't down the hall, I might not reach out to Marissa, but then I do, because it's just easy, because she's there, that's where proximity bias becomes a problem. So we have to remain as leaders, really intentional about about why we're asking, who we're asking, who we're engaging for, what purposes, what we're trying to delegate, and all of those things, because if we don't, our natural reaction will go to our line of sight, which is the people we see.

Greg Voisen
I think it's so true. I mean, you point out a thing about proximity bias. You're gonna go to those people that are closest and easiest to kind of get to, right? So that's what you said. You default to the two people that are near you. I want to let our listeners know the long distance leader. You can pick this up on Amazon, will have a link. One of the things in the personal growth area and reflection that's recurring theme in the book is self awareness and intentionality. And you know, look, this is a very important thing, whether it's in any company, what exercises or practices do you recommend for leaders to kind of enhance these qualities? I mean, look, you could say, oh, we'll be mindful. That's going to make you more self aware. Well, it's more than just that. You can't just say that. You can say, well, do meditation. Can say, Yeah, well, I can be here now because there is no tomorrow and yesterday's a canceled check. You can say that is too What do you guys really want to tell the listeners about self awareness and intentionality so that they can practice this and become better leaders

Kevin Eikenberry
as human beings, we have this amazing thing, it's called habit. And habit allows us to operate on autopilot for anything, for all kinds of things. Intentionality means Breaking the Habit pattern enough to say is that habit serving me in this moment or not? So there, as a leader, I did a lot of things when people were around me, and so I just did a lot of things on autopilot. I did them automatically. So being intentional means breaking that enough to say, is that the right answer here or is it not? And that's and that means we're being mindful, right? And so intentionality means going past the natural, automatic response to say, What's the best in situ, best thing to do in this context. And given that we're talking about this in terms of long distance, the context is different. That's our whole point from the beginning of leadership location, excuse me, leadership first, location, second. Now the the other piece, though, is that it's not just okay. I'm going to try to break the habit, or move past the habit, or think about those things. That's hard enough. The way to work on that is we can't always be doing that in the present. What we can always do, though, is reflect back, so I can look at the end of the day, at the end of the week, the end of the month, whatever, and say, like, what's working, what's not? What are those situations where I did something on purpose that wasn't necessarily that did something without thinking that wasn't necessarily serving me best? So I would say two things. Number one is intentionality means we have to be willing to go past the auto response and to help relearn or reframe those routines. Requires us to do much more self reflection.

Greg Voisen
You said something really important that I want to bring out, and then Wayne, I'm going to come to you for these last few questions, or both of you. So you know I remember it Stephen Covey, senior, not Junior. Maybe as much when Franklin Covey was at its peak, he used to tell the leaders, put a sign on your door. I'm thinking right now. The reality is we we've kind of stopped thinking, because we're always going so fast, and we haven't given the leaders time to be as intentional and to have that self awareness of that, I think, really, just taking the time to say, our company and culture embraces you, just taking time to think, right, like, hey, just close your door and turn off your phone and sit there and think, I mean, that's Wow, That's quite a little bit of a epiphany. So this brings me to your leadership models and frameworks, which I think are important. Here. There's the 3p and the 3c right. In the 3p It's about, how do you apply this to achieving productivity and potential in remote teams? And the 3c is around cultural collaboration. So which one of you wants to address which one and talk about the two different 3c and 3p models?

Kevin Eikenberry
Why don't you take the P's? I will

Wayne Turmel
do that a little context. This model was created out of a conversation, which is what makes somebody a great teammate, right? Especially if they're remote, what makes somebody a great teammate? And we discovered that there were three things that needed to happen, and they all start with P because Kevin loves alliteration. And so it started with productivity, right? If somebody's on my team, and they aren't productive themselves, and they don't help the team be productive, they're probably not a great teammate and but that was the easy part. That's the the floor is productivity. What we found in interview after interview and survey after survey was the number one thing that people said made a great teammate was proactivity. Not just if something needs to be done, you do it, but do you reach out? If I'm on a call and somebody seems to be struggling, do I reach out to that person? Do I proactively offer my assistance, or do I wait to be asked? And the third P the potential is, if you are proactive and you work on productivity, do those things, there's a long term impact. Kevin was talking earlier about communication being transactional. If the only time you and I talk is you need something and you send me a Slack message, hey, can you send me that file and I go, here it is, and that's the only communication we have. We're not really building a long term relationship. We're not building trust, we're not doing all of these things. And so if we think about productivity, proactivity and potential. We are doing the things and creating the environment that makes us great teammates. So that's where that model came from.

Greg Voisen
That's a great I like how you worded that Wayne and I, and I'm going to use a term to describe what you just said. You know, those 3p are productive harmony, okay? And the reality is, is that people are saying, hey, well, I've got to be productive, but they feel stressed. You don't have to be stressed when you're thinking about those three P's. Okay? So now to you, and I want to say this as a I'm going to open it up to this page. All my listeners, you see this little QR code in this book on page 173 that you're going to go by. You can hit it. And all the online resources are there, including conference call checklists, right? And these QR codes are in this book. Buy the book just for the QR codes to get the references and the work.

Kevin Eikenberry
Don't hold that up there too closely. They'll go grab it right from there and then get there. Well,

Greg Voisen
they didn't see it. Nobody's getting it. But anyway, my point is now let's talk about culture and collaboration, and what practical steps can leaders take to improve communication, collaboration and cohesion?

Kevin Eikenberry
Yeah, those are the three C's, communication, collaboration and cohesion. And we could spend a long time, but Greg, I just want to make a couple of comments about this. Number one is, and we've hinted at this early, we've got to use the right tools. We want to have more effective communication, and we've got more tools at our disposal than ever, but we've got to pick the right tool for the right job, as we said earlier. So if I want, if, if we want, as a TEAM, to have better communication, like, for example, on our team, we use Slack, and we use email, and we said a long time ago, some very clear expectations about when we would use each one, which saves us time. It saves us frustration, and it's hopefully, it aimed us at using the right tool for the best possible purpose this. The second thing I would say is that we're thinking thinking about collaboration and cohesion. We have to have expectations about how we're going to do work. So again, so many people have identified that coat. To have collaboration, we have to be physically together. So what happens when we're all working in our the north end of our dining room table, as Wayne likes to say, or in the extra bedroom in our house, we don't have any connection to other people visually, and so we've got to set clear expectations, to say, here's how we're going to do work, and here's how and when we're going to collaborate, and what that's going to look like, and what we need to expect of each other. In that too often we just think about expectations, about what are we delivering, what I would call the what expectations. But we need to be really clear in terms of building communication, collaboration and cohesion, on the how expectations and the why expectations, taking us back to purpose and vision. Why are we trying to do all this? And we do those things, and if we do what Wayne said as well, which is to make sure that we give people time and space to actually communicate beyond just the work. And if we expect that as well, that that having a working relationship with the people that you work with is actually part of the job, not like if I have time, I will then that will make all the difference for that too, Greg,

Greg Voisen
I like what you said, because, look, it's about giving people their autonomy. And you have to have autonomy when you're working at a distance, and you have to trust, right? There is a big T you have to trust, because you can see when the work is being done or the work is not being done, like the work at hand here, you know, hey, you're responsible for so much code today. You didn't get it done. Kind of what got in the way of you being able to do that, or whatever it is you were supposed to write this paper, or you were supposed to get this done, and we didn't get it done. And I think your book, The Long Distance leader, gives people a lot of opportunities to think about how they can better manage that as a leader, manages expectations, improving cohesion, improving communication, checklists for the calls that you're going to make. I mean, that's pretty basic, but the reality is, I bet you a lot of these zoom calls occur, and no one has a checklist ahead of time, right? People think that, as a podcaster, I'm a little crazy, because I send them the questions ahead of time. They say, oh, there isn't very many people that send us the questions ahead of the podcast. And said, I like to be prepared, because I like to know where I'm going, right? So the point here is, is some of this stuff might seem so obvious, but to a lot of people, it's not. And so in closing, here for both of you, what are two or three things, nuggets that you guys in this updated version of this book would like to leave the listeners with that if a leader out there today is listening and has made it This far in the podcast, could really take away and utilize and apply

Kevin Eikenberry
Wayne, you want to go first? No,

Wayne Turmel
you go first. Well,

Kevin Eikenberry
I would say this. So first of all, thanks for listening all the way through and and I will, I will say what I say at the end of every episode of the remarkable leadership podcast, which is now what, what are you going to take from it? Rather than me telling you what you should take, I would say, think back on what you heard and say what something that would apply to me and my team immediately. And then go do that thing. Not just say, Well, this was interesting, but what am I going to do? And so the most important thing is to take some action. And the other thing I will say is something Greg we were talking about a minute ago, and that's being in 10 that's being intentional. If the leadership hasn't changed completely, but the context of it has changed if we're not with our people all of the time. And so the complexity that comes with that means that we have to be ready to adjust, and that means we've got to be more intentional, rather than just operating the way we've always operated.

Wayne Turmel
And I think one very practical thing that people can do is stop and put that sign on the door that says I'm thinking, and ask yourself a couple of very basic questions, what is the work we need to get done? And in a perfect world, what is the best way to make that work happen? Because we're so busy doing it the way we've always done it, that either we don't think of new alternatives, like flexible work, or we think it's going to be too much trouble to change. So what is the work that needs to be done? And in a perfect world, how could we do it? And then that will give you ideas for incremental change and improvement.

Greg Voisen
Well, both of your gentlemen are the Peter druckers of long distance leadership, and he was somebody that I studied a lot. Oh,

Wayne Turmel
did you record that down? Right?

Greg Voisen
Write that down recording this right. You guys are the Peter druckers of long distance leadership, let me tell you, but I want to thank you for being on inside personal growth, spending some time with our listeners, sharing the wisdom from your book, obviously, as well. And again, for my listeners, there's QR codes in here. Use those QR codes in the book. Get the book. Get the checklist. I think. Look that one page 173 I don't know why they waited to page 173 to put the checklist, because the reality is that would be worth the price of the book, right there. Just having a trick

Wayne Turmel
people into reading at least to page 173

Greg Voisen
so you're going to get this great tool that you're going to be able to use. Thank you both. Have a beautiful Thanksgiving. Namaste to you both for being on the show and spending time with our listeners today.

Kevin Eikenberry
Thanks, Greg.