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. 

