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Building a remote culture that enables your team is no easy feat. If you succeed you’ll unlock the agency and autonomy that comes with a well managed remote operation. If you don’t succeed you end up burning out from bad habits.

In this biweekly podcast you'll hear, from both Alix and guests, all about remote teamwork from a zillion different angles. It'll be focused on fresh perspectives, and always include suggestions for you to put new practices into place.

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Episode 7 | The rhythms and rituals of remote with Hera Hussain

E07
/
May 31, 2023

In this week’s episode, Alix talks with Hera Hussain of CHAYN about the rhythms and rituals of remote work.

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about the episode

As the leader of a remote team, you set the pace of work. When things get tight, this probably means asking folks to push to meet a deadline or take on more work. But what if you asked your team to go more slowly and do less instead?

In this week’s episode, Alix talks with Hera Hussain of CHAYN about the rhythms and rituals of remote work. Hera discusses how slowing down and making time for reflection can energise a team, and she shares both big and small rituals you can implement on your own remote team.

For more from Hera, you can say hello here. To connect with Alix check out our website or follow along on Twitter.

our key takeaways

1. You set the beat

As a team leader, it’s your job to establish the pace for your team. Through the rituals you establish for meetings, retreats, and other annual milestones, you set the beat upon which your staff does their work. These repeatable rituals don’t constrict work or limit individual creativity. They fuel it by giving staff members a predictable beat upon which they can build their own working rhythms.

Pace-setting is particularly critical in remote work, where we lack the contextual clues of hallway meetings and in-person debriefs. In this vacuum, everything feels urgent, so it’s important for team leaders to step in when needed to adjust the pace of work.

2. Reflective work has to be intentionally scheduled

If you’re feeling ‘on’ more often than not, it’s so easy to push reflective work to the back burner. Hera and her team carve out intentional time for this critical work in December through what she calls the “Winter Wind Down,” three weeks at the end of the year for uninterrupted documentation, learning, and reflection. In addition, Hera and her team are experimenting with a summer reading week in which normal work and regular meetings are paused, and team members spend time reading and reflecting together on recent research in the field.

Even if your team can’t yet dedicate a week (or three) to slowing down for reflective work, what might a dedicated documentation day look like? Or even a few hours to read an article and reflect together? Intentionally slowing down (even for a small amount of time) can do wonders to energise a team, especially at this midway point of the year.

3. Rituals don’t have to be big

Dedicated reflection time is amazing, but not all rituals have to be big. In fact, there are some beloved rituals at Hera’s organisation that don’t take much time at all: a fun icebreaker question at the start of each meeting and a shared appreciation exercise at the end of every year.

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Get your free Remote Ready starter kit.

Discover the 5 states of remote (and which one you’re in)

Find out the #1 dynamic that holds teams back

Get a sneak peek of our signature course

Thank you! Your submission has been received!
Oops! Something went wrong while submitting the form.