How Do You Encourage Connection With Your Remote Team?

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We have almost a hundred employees all over the world.

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Europe, south Asia, east Asia, middle East, north Africa, south

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America, Canada, the United States.

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They're everywhere.

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And the thing that's really important to me is making sure

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that we foster team connection.

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You want people to feel like they're a part of something that's more than just,

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remote resources and, spokes to the hub.

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In the hub and spoke system, if I'm getting that analogy right.

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here's some ideas for you to foster remote team connection.

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And by the way, I'm not an expert by any means, but I've been at this

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for, nearly two decades and these are some of the things that we've

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stumbled upon that have really worked.

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None of these are my idea.

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They're all borrowed or stolen or inspired by members of our team.

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Actually the first one is a really good example.

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We host challenges that are so much fun and they're usually

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recommended by members of our team.

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We have month long fitness challenges, reading challenges, meditation challenges.

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We always have a cash prize, and it's never like, insane but it can

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be tax relevant, especially depending on where you are geographically.

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I think the last cash prize was a hundred bucks.

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Which, it's not too shabby.

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And what's nice about it is we build a slack channel specifically

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for the challenge, then people are asked to participate by logging

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their hours in a Google sheet.

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So if there's a reading challenge, for instance, every hour that

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you read is logged in the sheet.

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Now the person who reads the most doesn't necessarily win, because if that happens,

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then what we've noticed is like within the first couple of days whoever's taken

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the lead kind of un inspires the rest of everybody else to be like, all right, I'm

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never gonna catch up with that person.

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Instead, every hour is like one.

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Ticket in the raffle bucket, then we do a random drawing based off of how many

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hours or how many tickets you have.

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And then that's the person that wins.

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And so it's really fun.

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We get to announce the winner at the end of the month.

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And we usually do that on the Friday call.

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But it's just fun to have these things that people can connect with and over

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outside of work, which is so important.

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as an employer, an entrepreneur, a business owner, or a manager

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When you're trying to catalyze connection over work alone, I think

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that's a one-legged bar stool.

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I think you can connect over meaningful work for sure,

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but add other things in too.

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Add other interests, other opportunities, other things that have nothing to

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do with work, which is a perfect segue to our theme Slack channels.

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We have Slack channels, not just for the challenges.

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We have Slack channels for reading book clubs, pets, food

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the foodie Slack channels.

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I'm worried about those people, to be honest with you.

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They're special.

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With their obsessions.

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it's a good opportunity for water cooler talk.

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It's like, Hey, go talk about something.

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The pets channel is so much fun.

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People are uploading pictures of their, pets all the time.

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We have one young lady that works for us.

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She's gotta have 50 cats, like an UN and I think she fosters cats.

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And you know, she's like, she has birthdays for her cats and she uploaded a

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picture most recently and the cat's got a little birthday hat and there's a hole.

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Dead fish with a candle on it.

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And it was just like the most picturesque thing.

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I would've thought it was AI generated meme if I didn't know her.

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But like, what a fun way to get to know people.

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And what a fun opportunity to check out for a minute too.

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you're overwhelmed or you're bored, or you're tired, or you're sick

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of work, and there's a lot of places that that energy can flow.

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What if it flows into building, with your team and engaging with other employees.

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Like what a good opportunity that is for you to help foster closer connections

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with your work with your staff.

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And speaking of Slack, we have a kudos channel.

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And what I really wanna do, I'm obsessed with the kudos channel.

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I want everybody to drop kudos all the time because, You have to

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catch people doing things right?

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I'm not nearly as good at this as I should be cuz I should

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be leading the charge there.

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I should be setting the example.

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I'm so far removed sometimes from the day to day that I'm, I'm just, it's no excuse.

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There's no excuse for that.

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But at work, you're going to be corrected at one point or another.

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And it's always, so I remember that I've had like, 30 jobs.

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When I was a kid before I struck out as an entrepreneur, I was a horrible employee.

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But I just remember the feeling of like, oh, you didn't fill

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out the TCM report, right?

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And I'm gonna just sit in this room across from this jackass

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that really doesn't care.

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And he is gonna walk through what I already know and I

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just, happen to have missed.

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And I'm gonna be treated like a child and it's gonna feel condescending, and then

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I'm gonna be demotivated the entire day.

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and that's going to happen.

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That's the thing.

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People are gonna mess up and you're gonna have to talk to 'em, and you're gonna

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have to make sure that they understand.

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And those are, conversations that are going to take place no matter what.

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The way to mitigate the negative impact is to make so many deposits

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ahead of time that one withdrawal doesn't bankrupt the account.

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So you can't soften the blow because then you don't address the issue properly.

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Instead, you make sure that you've built an environment where people

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are celebrated on an ongoing basis for everything they've ever done.

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Right.

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That way when they do something wrong and say, Hey, dude, it's no big deal.

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there's a whole slack channel full of everything that you've ever done, right?

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you're amazing.

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We're so lucky to have you.

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It's just this one mistake that we have to address and I have to make sure that

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we're on the same page with, now people feel like that's not just lip service.

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When you celebrate people, it makes it feel like they're important.

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Cuz guess what?

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They're important.

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Like people are so important we forget that we lose sight of it.

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Especially in the agency world, people are the most important thing you have.

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the agencies only have three things to sell.

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I say this all the time.

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They have programs, processes, and people, programs, easily purchased, processes

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easily developed and easily stolen people.

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That's it.

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Like celebrate.

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People find a way to really love on people.

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Which I already shot a video on this, but we have a weekly all hands meeting.

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If you want to see details on the all Hands meeting, go check out that video.

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It was recent.

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But the all hands meeting includes an open mic segment where one employee

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is chosen to present on any topic of their choice, and you get to see

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really who they are as a person.

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you're not a Google ADSD specialist, bet money.

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That's not like of all the things about you.

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the 10 most important, not one of 'em says what you do for a living, really.

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Let's find out who you are.

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and putting people in a position to be able to showcase that

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in front of their peers.

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That's how you make them more than just work associates.

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And then we also do an employee spotlight, which is so much fun.

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You can see it on the Solutions Eight website.

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Our content team writes, it's basically a blog, but it's, a

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spotlight on every employee gets one.

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and we have a superhero avatar for every one of our employees.

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They're on our About Us page.

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And so you take your superhero avatar and then you take the spotlight and we

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just explain, like, oh, this is Usama.

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And Usama lives in Toronto and think he's got a master's degree

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in like, Brain science, which is what dumb people call, whatever it

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is, he has a master's degree in.

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And he's insanely brilliant and he's entrepreneurial.

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And his family's from Karachi and he likes Chinese food.

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I don't know if that's true.

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I forgot what his employee spotlight says, but you should go read it.

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Cause your son was like such an amazing person.

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He's so much fun.

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And he's so sarcastic and he's so hysterical.

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But you wouldn't know that.

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the thing I like about the employee spotlights too, is they,

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they give us the opportunity to share more with our, clients.

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You know, a new client signs on and I can be like, all right, well

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here's your strategist is Usama, and you might talk to him twice, right?

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you don't really know who this guy is, but if I can send you the

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superhero avatar on the spotlight now it's like, oh man, this dude's a

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super impressive, and B, interesting.

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Like I'm actually excited about getting to know him.

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So that's the employee spotlight.

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The other thing I think we do really well are team-based pods.

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So we break our staff up into smaller groups.

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Anything more than 10 is massively excessive.

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As a matter of fact, I really like groups of five.

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Somebody, I think it's Bezos, had the one pizza rule.

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Never have a group bigger than one pizza can feed.

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You wanna be able to sit around and straight up kumbaya with everybody.

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Sometimes that's just not practical.

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Fine.

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Where possible.

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Break up your groups into smaller groups.

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And then as that group grows, break that group up too.

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And as that group grows, break that group up too.

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what you'll notice is this helps make sure that people don't get lost.

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it's easier to build trust.

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, easier to maintain accountability.

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When you have these small groups, and so you'd have like a pod leader,

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which by the way doesn't even need to be a supervisor per se.

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It's just somebody who's responsible for making sure everybody gets seen and heard.

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But I like those small team pods and incidentally make sure that

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you're distributing your groups by skillset, not by country.

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This is really important for remote teams.

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We have a ton of employees in Canada.

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We have a ton of employees in the Philippines.

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We have a ton of employees in India.

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I'll stop at those three examples.

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Okay.

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We have more, more people in more countries, and I, don't mean to,

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under-represent them, but just for the sake of our discussion,

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there's 2 trillion years of evolution at play when it comes to your and my

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in-group preference and novelty response.

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And I'm not talking about prejudice or unconscious bias or any of those things.

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I'm just talking about.

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When in doubt, you tend to.

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Gravitate towards that which is comfortable, familiar.

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if I live in India and I speak Hindi and I celebrate Hindu cultural, Traditions

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and holidays and I'm on this time zone in this city and so I have these traffic

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patterns and I, watch these shows.

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it's so obvious that I would just be more comfortable talking to other people

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that have all of those things Also true.

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I don't have to explain myself.

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I don't have to struggle to understand or be understood.

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And so what you'll notice in distributed teams is all your Filipino employees

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end up kind of, gravitating towards other Filipino employees, and all

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your Indian employees gravitate towards other Indian employees, and

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all your Canadian employees gravitate towards other Canadian employees.

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and then you end up with a, with a lack of integration that hurts.

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And that lack of integration can sow seeds that are much more damaging

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later because, There's already not the bridges built that would

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necessitate understanding and empathy.

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what we like to do is instead of breaking up country employees by

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country, we break them up by skillset.

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So it's our quality assurance team.

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And our quality assurance team has, whoever's responsible for

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quality assurance in that team.

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Now, sometimes that's not possible.

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We just built a Latin American team.

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We needed Spanish speaking employees.

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And so it's like, all right, well we're dealing with Latin American customers

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and we need Latin American employees.

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Fine, but where possible distribute groups based off of skillset.

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I don't care how it sounds.

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You should have a meritocratic environment.

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We have strategists are the highest ranked employees that we have to be a strategist.

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Basically be a triple PhD at Google Ads.

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And some organizations might not take an employee in India.

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They're offshore and put them hierarchically speaking over employees

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in the Western world for whatever reason.

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I think that's flawed.

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I think it's massively flawed.

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I think it's shortsighted.

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there's some awkward conversations to be had when you do things like that.

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Mostly that stem to be frank, around cost of living.

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But I think that those conversations are worth.

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Having, and I think that making those moves are worth making because then you

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show people there's no ceiling here and it has nothing to do with your geography.

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It has to do with your merit.

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and to be frank, I think everybody on both sides of the aisle really respect it.

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for whatever that's worth, I'm trying not to get too dicey.

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These conversations can always go off the rails and, either be

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virtue signaling or offensive, I'm never good at navigating that.

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So I'll stop here, but I'd be really interested in how you

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connect with your remote teams.

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How do you encourage that connection?

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How do you create a community?

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Drop it in the comments.

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I'd love to hear from you.

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I'd love to learn from you.

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I appreciate you watching, and I'll see you tomorrow.