2 — Friday, April 10, 2020
News
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
In a webinar delivered to more
than 2,000 University of Michigan
alumni and business professionals,
Lindy Greer, associate professor
and faculty director of the Sanger
Leadership
Center,
explained
how remote working can change
a workspace for the better by
allowing
for
productive
team
communication
and organized
leadership.
In
her
discussion,
Greer
acknowledged
the
downfalls
of
remote
work
before
diving into the
benefits.
She
discussed
the
struggle of not
being able to
sync up with
a work team as well as the lack of
excitement in video chats. Greer
sympathized with workers around
the nation who are working from
home
throughout
the
current
COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m super excited again to talk
about why remote work sucks and
is kind of awful at times as many of
us have realized,” Greer said. “But
at the same time, then how do we
take these challenges to get really
intentional about the peoples’ side
of work?”
Greer responded to questions
from
employees
of
companies
throughout the country who were
viewing
the
seminar.
Melanie
Weaver Barnett, chief executive
education officer at the Business
School, spoke on behalf of remote
viewers, taking questions and ideas
from the webinar’s chat.
Barnett asked if there is a
specific personality and aptitude
needed to be successful in remote
management.
“For me, if I’m doing remote
work, what are the three things
to look for,” Greer said. “(For
me, it) would be productivity
or independence, comfort with
technology and social support.”
Greer transitioned to discuss
the positives involved in remote
working,
noting
that
many
successful remote teams work to
build a family culture. She said
by keeping a company’s values in
mind, such as customer service
or trust, leaders can create a
community for their workers. With
a feeling of belonging, Greer said
employees become more engaged
and more willing to handle the
issues at hand.
“One of the unique things that
they mentioned that I thought that
was very interesting about what
makes them work well remotely is
culture and having a really strong
culture where they really promote
this idea of family,” Greer said.
“They put a lot of effort there to
build a family-like culture where
they check in with people a lot.”
Barnett
engaged
in
the
discussion,
exploring
what
methods and technologies have
worked best for her own work.
“We’ve been starting out our
meetings by saying we’re going
to do a quick check-in with your
teammate.
And
immediately
everybody’s paired up with one
other person, you don’t know who
you’re going to get paired up with,”
Barnett said. “You do a quick check-
in: What’s working for you/What
are you struggling with? Is there
anything you need? And people
have expressed really benefiting
from that.”
Business
freshman Noah
Cox
said
he
was interested
in
how
businesses
are
transforming
their
communication
while
working
remotely.
“Business
is
all
about
communication,
but
communication is only 7 percent
the words you say,” Cox said.
“So even work that can be done
remotely is hugely impacted in this
environment, but businesses have
to learn to adapt like using video
conferencing as much as possible.”
Greer ended the webinar with
a few key takeaways. She offered
advice on how to manage a remote
team in an organized, intentional
manner.
“Scaffold together your team to
be intentional about the core things
that teams need to do well,” Greer
said. “This includes the culture,
the objectives, the processes and
the ability to experiment, and write
and use those playbooks to run
your virtual meetings.”
Contributor Laura Millar can be
reached at lamillar@umich.edu.
LAURA MILLAR
For the Daily
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OLIVIA CELL/Daily
Assistant photo editor Olivia Cell has been spending a lot more time at home and with her fluffy dog, Coffee. “We’ve been going on a lot of
runs together recently. We run as far as Coffee can go, which is about two blocks.”
Professor Lindy Greer talks
teamwork on virtual platform
Webinar reaches several thousand U-M alumni, professionals to
discuss ways of optimizing remote workspaces, organization
Scaffold together your team to be intentional
about the core things that teams need to do
well. This includes the culture, the objectives,
the processes and the ability to experiment,
and write and use those playbooks to run your
virtual meetings.