Kevin Eikenberry, the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group and the Co-Founder of the Remote Leadership Institute, joins Melanie Parish and shares how to lead a remote team and how to develop them. Tune in and learn more!

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Leading A Remote Team With Kevin Eikenberry

Hi there, it’s so great to be here live with you today. I am Melanie Parish and it’s just great to be going live and having the opportunity to be with you in real time. I’ve been thinking about my own leadership this week, and I’ve been thinking about how we’re going along as leaders, business owners, and life happens. And something kind of knocks us for, you know, out of our comfort zone out of our routine. This week, I found out that one of my kids coaches, we had gone to the US the spring and one of them one of their coaches died. And earlier in the month, another friend had lost a grandchild to crib death. And these things take us out of our routine as leaders.

And I’ve just been thinking about what the messages are, what the thought is, on leadership during these times. I know as a coach, when the you know, when my knees get knocked out and out from under me, I’m still doing a role, I’m still doing a task, I’m still there. For others, I’m still doing a lot of emotional work with them. And so I really have to double down on self care. I take care of myself very carefully all the time. But in these times, it’s even more important.

And what I noticed for myself is that I really need spaces, I really need time, I really need things to just slow down. I can’t operate at the breakneck speed of my typical life, I’d be really curious to know what it is for you in these times that you’re still a leader, you’re still a parent, you’re still, you know, in charge of a team or a project lead on something, and something comes from out of nowhere. What do you think of for yourself? In those times? How do you ground yourself? How do you keep yourself walking forward? And what’s the pace of all of that for you? I want to stop there about my leadership.

But I’m really excited about our guest today. Our guest today is Kevin Eikenberry. And he’s a world renowned leadership expert. He’s a two time best selling author. He’s a speaker. He’s a consultant. He’s a trainer. He’s a coach, he’s a leader. He’s a learner. He’s a husband and father, and I am so excited to have Kevin on my show today. 

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Welcome, Kevin.

Well, thanks for having me, Melanie. I mean, it’s like turnabout is fair play. You were on the remarkable leadership podcast. And now I’m on live with you. And I’m happy to be here.

Well, it’s so fun. And yes, we had a great time talking before. And it’s always fun to get to ask questions. I always think it’s really fun to learn about people on my show. I get to ask whatever I want. So well, I would love to know right away, I’d love to know what you’re up to, and your work your life right now.

It was amazing. I have fond memories of it too. It was so much fun.  

Well, we don’t have that much time. I’ll just say it this way, Melanie, that I’m honored to lead the team at the Kevin Eikenberry Group and the Remote Leadership Institute. And we do a tremendous amount of work every day to help leaders and teams around the world, especially now in the times of helping them do it all differently at a distance or remotely or virtually, or hybrid or whatever word you want to use. And so we’ve been helping organizations do that for a long time. And we started the revolt Leadership Institute seven years ago, and I’ve been leading a hybrid team for a decade over a decade. So you know, things for us are, are exceptionally good. We have a lot of exciting projects going on. And I said, I’m happy to be with you today.  

Well, I’m so curious, because I was thinking about talking with you today. And I was thinking, gosh, you know, I don’t think it’s anyone’s dream. I think a year and a half ago, people were excited to go and work from home. I think some people like it, but there’s a lot of people who are really ready to return to whatever they view as normal. What what are you seeing out there?

Well, we’re talking about human beings. So everyone’s different. So we can certainly talk about some, some trends. But to say that everyone wants to come back or everyone wants to stay home. I think No, none of the generalities are accurate. I think that all of the research that I’ve read and all the work that we’ve done sort of right up into. Say last week, I would say that there are far more people that want to spend at least some time at home, working from home, or working in a place other than an office than ever before, for lots of reasons. But I think, you know, everyone wants to talk about the future of work Melanie as being about where we’re going to be. But I think it’s much more gonna be less about where, and more about win than anything else. And so there’s so much of our language is based around the place, right? It’s the work place. What we do at work, both of those things imply a location. And I think the reality is that most people want flexibility and choice in that matter. And for many, that means more time away from the office than in

Hmm, what do you what do you think that, I do know that people who have had kids home from school all of last year, might really like to work at home without their kids being home with?

Well, yeah, that’s a whole different experience. That’s like people who worked at home before all this, right? People used to work at home for a day or two. And as a man, they got so much done because they didn’t have 12, other meetings and all the other stuff happening. But now of course, all that other stuff is still happening. So you know, if you look at if you look at research from two years ago, three years ago, four years ago, and talking about productivity, working from home, and it was through the roof is skyrocket because people had fewer interruptions, but all the interruptions that they had in the office are now back and more. And I’m not even talking about the kids, that, of course, adds a whole another layer of complexity to it, for sure.

Well, I’ve worked at home for you know, decades. And all of a sudden, my family never left my workplace. And they were 24/7, you know, in my office, letting dogs out in the middle of my, you know, coaching calls, and they’d let them out and then wander off. And then the dogs are barking out the door, and I’m tied to a zoom screen. I’m sure everybody has their own version of their zoom hell, but, but that was mine. And I was so happy at the beginning of September, when, when my family went to their things. They went to school, they my husband went to work.

You know, he went to the office, he was hopefully already working. See, there’s another example of that where the language, right, like it’s not returned to work, everybody.  It might be returned to office but hopefully they’ve been working. Hopefully your husband was working, right? I mean, and I’m not picking on you. I’m just reinforcing that point.

I know, I think it’s I think it’s really interesting to think about our language. I think that’s, I think that’s a really good catch. And I’m fascinated by this whole idea of it’ll stick with me, which is really fun. Let’s let’s talk about leaving a remote team in 2021. So you know, we’re recording this September 2021. And what do you think people should be thinking about today about leading remote teams?

When we go through any change situation, everyone wants to focus on what’s changed, and no one wants to remember how much of it hasn’t changed.

Well, if you’re going to be doing it, like if that’s what your future state looks like. Or even if you’re in a situation where you don’t know what your future state is but that’s where you are today. I think the most important thing you need to remember is that it’s leadership first,  location second, meaning that whatever you already knew about leadership shouldn’t be tossed away. So often, Melanie, when we go through any change situation, everyone wants to focus on what’s changed, and no one wants to remember how much of it hasn’t changed. And the thing about leadership is people have been leading, and people have been following for a long time. And so just because we’re now doing it with zoom, and now we’re doing it with Microsoft Teams we’re doing with Slack, and we’re doing it even more with email than before, doesn’t mean that leadership is completely different. We need to remember what’s the same, and then focus on what’s different.

And what’s different, I would say number one is that we have to be more intentional about everything because some things we kind of got solved because we were around people saw them were reminded I needed to talk to Joe about that, etc. So I would say number one, leadership first location second, and number two, be intentional about everything. And number three is this is that you don’t have to have all the answers for this. Your team has been living through it with you. And so don’t you don’t necessarily need to know it all you need to ask your team What do we need to do? What do I need to do? How can we succeed as a team as opposed to trying to come up with all the answers yourself?

I fully agree this is not any time you’re in an unknown environment. Which is all of innovation really adopting of voices a leader. This is the path is probably just not the not the way that you should be leaving because you have one brain working on the problem instead of, you know, the whole team of brains with so much more input on the ground.

Yeah, there are some times when we don’t need to bring everybody in, like, if there’s smoke at the door, we need to know where how we can get out of the building. Like we don’t need to have a big old discussion and come up with some to come to consensus about how to leave the burning building. But on the other hand, there’s many times when we don’t have to have all the answers, we don’t have all the answers, and we’d be better off to engage or even hand off some of that to the rest of the team.

For sure. So 2021 now people are coming back to an office location, partially fully, what should you think of as a leader as that change is occurring? What needs to be in your mind?

Well, as you said, we’re talking in September of 2021. And so here’s what I know some organizations have made that decision sounds like your husband’s organization has done that work coming back to the office, some organizations have made a decision, it’s either all in all out or something in between, some organizations are on hold, they’re pumping the brakes to wait to decide what they’re going to do. And some haven’t yet decided what they’re going to do.

But I would say this regardless, Melanie, of where we are, the following is true, that there’s not been another time in our certainly in my professional life, that’s as momentous and important as this one is to the future of work. The only two that come close are the introduction of the PC into the workplace. And that and the widespread use of the internet, both at work and in the world. Both of those were see changes to the nature of work the and the the work itself. But neither of them happened as quickly as this one. And I think that too many people are trying to do exactly what you said was how can we get back to what we had. And I would just take everybody back two years ago, because two years ago, we weren’t we couldn’t spell COVID. Right. We thought Corona was a beer.

And so the reality is that two years ago, if I asked people in organizations, how they were doing this, see, we got this problem and this problem, this problem, this problem, this problem. And the longer we go in this in this virtual world, the more we have a hankering for the good old days, it says man, it wasn’t a great when. And the reality is it wasn’t necessarily great, then. And so the reality for us now is if we try to go back, number one, we’re going back to something that wasn’t optimum, first of all, and second of all, we can’t go back. And the reason we can’t go back is because we’ve all been living for the last 18 months in a different reality, working in different ways at different times of the day. And so even if we want to go back, it will never be the same. And I would challenge if that’s even what we really wanted. So we truly are at this moment that matters. And we couldn’t go back from the internet, right. But we probably didn’t want to write because it happened differently. So this is a very different sort of moment than any time certainly in my professional life in my lifetime. And so therefore, because you know, I’m older than many that are probably watching or listening in your lifetime, where you’re working time. And so I think that the biggest message I would leave Melanie is that we absolutely need to recognize that this is a moment that matters, and not just try to scurry back and not just try to get back and not just try to reopen. But think about what do we really want? What is what will really serve us in getting our work done and serve our team members and what they want and need as well.

When we think about team members, and I love asking this, these kinds of questions to all of my guests. But I always like to talk a little bit about equity and diversity and those kinds of things. When we’re in a time like this, you’ve been a senior leader for a long time. What do you try to remind yourself around equity diversity, marginalization, privilege, those kinds of things in times like this?

Well, that’s something that I don’t know. So first of all, I’m a white man. Right? So let’s just be clear about that. And the second thing I would say is, I don’t know. In terms of the workplace, I’m not talking about society, but in terms of the workplace, I’m not sure where we work. I can only I put it this way, I can only speak for me. And I think that the way that I need to be remain grounded on all of those issues, is to stay completely focused on have an open ear and an open heart to my team. And so as long as I’m doing those things, Then I think we’re heading in the right direction. As long as I’ve done my job as a leader to create a space of openness and psychological safety for people to tell me, Kevin, you’re straight. Kevin, we’re screwing up. What do you think about this, then I think that we’re we’re going to head in the right direction, though, the one word, and all of that list that you didn’t mention is, I think, an incredibly important one. And that’s inclusion. And you know, we put all those words out and usually inclusion gets included, I’m not saying that you didn’t leave it out intentionally, just you just didn’t say it. But to me, that’s the one that I focus on a lot. Because inclusion means more than just what’s what’s in our program, what’s in our course. But it’s really about the way we we really engage with everyone on our team, regardless of whatever kinds of you know, generalizations you want to use.

I think that’s really interesting. I like the idea of the open heart. As we grapple with all of these things. I’m quite aware of times like these, where all the chips go up in the air, and they start flying around how people who are marginalized, the chips don’t always fall down in the right ways for them. So I think that’s sort of the heart of my question. You know, what I would want to say about that is just that I think, as we’re looking at, you know, the fruit basket turnover of the last year and a half this change in the way that we work, I think having an eye and ear and, and just a view that the chips don’t always fall as easily for people who are coping with some sort of lack of privilege. It makes it harder to shuffle in these times.

Yes. And, and I always like to look at the both sides of the coin, the other side of the coin that I would say is that this turning over of the fruit basket, if you want to, if we were gonna use that metaphor, has created all sorts of new opportunities for folks of all sorts, including the opportunity to potentially find a job in a place other than where you live. Yeah. Yeah, right, including the fact for us as leaders to to create a more diverse workplace, but by recruiting, selecting and attracting people from parts of the country or world or from groups that might have been underrepresented in our organizations as well. So I think that that, that falls to us as leaders as well to take that up people as opportunity to say, How can we strengthen our organizations through that moment, as well?

Oh, it really I really like that. I talked at the beginning about some of this self care that I do, what do you do to take care of yourself as a leader?

Well, I’m so glad that you started there because, you know, I’ve been saying to people for, I don’t know. Approaching two years now that self care isn’t selfish because so often people are saying, hey, I need to take care of my team. I want to take care of my team and really good leaders, effective leaders, remarkable leaders, we would call them, our folks. Our other focused and thinking about their folks but it’s kind of like the old question Oprah used to ask. How can you take care of your others if you’re not taking care of yourself? And so I think the the heart of that is that we must think about self care. And so number one is we’ve got to make it a priority. And number two is we have to find the rhythms for us. And you know, I think what I do specifically is less important than thinking about finding what works for any individual because my team, Melanie will be the first to tell you that well, Kevin is not exactly normal. So the way I go about it might be quite different than others. The most important thing is that we recognize number one, that is important. And number two that we are it’s it’s not three quarters of the way down the list.

Whatever that is, whether that’s a walk with the dog, whether that’s a bike ride with your spouse, whether that’s 30 minutes playing a game on your phone. I don’t know what it is. I don’t care what it is. What you need to do is find it and it needs to be near the top of the list, not somewhere down the list. And if I get around to it, I’ll do it. Again, find a way to create a metric around it so that you’re actually doing it not just thinking about it, talking about it when I get around to doing it.

I’ve realized recently and especially in the last year and a half, that I have clients who don’t know how to fill their own cup. They just don’t know how.  They don’t know what to try. They don’t know the patterns that have kept them where they are. Almost like structures in their minds that keep them from, you know, allowing a different way to to fill up so I find this a deeper and deeper dive myself to think about how people do this,

I will tell you that I was at a conversation. We had an event last week called Virtual Leader Con and I had the chance to have 40 different leadership experts join me over the course of a week live. So I know that I know about being in the seat you’re in right now. And when James Chaco was with us, we talked about this and her suggestion, it’s a really, really good one is everyone should build what they call what she calls a recharge list. What are the things that recharge me? Well, that’s things that take a minute, an hour, a day, a week, whatever, like, you should have a recharge list, you should keep it close. And when you feel that need, you’re looking at the list and said, that’s what I’m going to go do five minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is, whether it’s five minutes of deep breathing, whether it’s exercise was reading a novel, whatever it is, like, we’ve got to do that. I was watching, I’m behind, but I’m watching Ted Alaska with my family. And I know there’s like one or two we haven’t seen yet to catch up before they get to the end of the season. And in the episode last night that we watched one of the characters really loves her significant other, but he’s they’re now working together, they’re actually going to an office space, but they’re working together. And she feels like she has no space. And when he finally figures it out, he runs her a bath and says you will not hear or see from me in three hours. And there was this moment of we all need to figure out what it is that recharges recharged us what is it that creates a space now I don’t want three hours in a tub. But that person does. And we need to know what it is for us. And we need to know what it is for those around us, including our teams, and then giving that and helping them and supporting them in that as well.

Yeah, I think a lot about development like how do we develop our teams? Like how do we scale them up? How do we help them progress in their careers? I think about these things all the time but I love the idea that part of that development is also in that recharge list, helping them develop their recharge list is a really lovely thought.

Yeah, my team knows that if they you know that they can, I’ll get a note in slack from someone on the team on a regular basis says, going for a walk back and 40 minutes, if you really need me, here’s how you can get me Otherwise, I’ll be back. I trust them. They know what’s expected in terms of the deliverables. And I trust them to deliver the work and to do and to deliver the team work with the team. But it doesn’t have to be about place. That’s part of what we’re talking about Melanie, but it doesn’t always have to be about time either. We no longer have to always be driven by synchronous work, synchronous communication. And, and I think the more that we as leaders let go of some of those needs, the better off we’ll all be to.

Well and also, I think one of the other things I’d love to see us let go of is the idea that tactical tasks work as the only throughput or output. Thinking also counts. Like vision, thinking, taking time to do that is also work.

Is 100% work. In fact, it may be the most important work. And here’s the thing. So let’s go let’s take that for just a second. There’s some work that, let’s call it the soft work is when we might need to be collaborating we we might decide that we want people in the office a couple of days a week, we want people to do some kinds. So here’s what we need to do. If we’re going to go to a hybrid model, we need to make sure that we’re being careful and intentional about what work we do when because that thinking work in many cases might be better off when I’m not with 12 other people in the cubicle farm. But that collaboration work might be better served, although I believe we can collaborate when we’re when we’re not in the same physical proximity. But the reality is that might be better served in those times. And so one of the opportunities for us as leaders moving forward, it’s a total shift. No way we think about it is when will we do which work with which people?

Yeah, yeah, I love that. Where can people find you, Kevin?

We’re everywhere. People probably based on the conversation today. Many people can find us at the best place probably is remoteleadershipinstitute.com. You can get take a look and get a free chapter of our latest book the long distance teammate by going to long distance teammate calm. Or if you can spell my name Kevin Eikenberry, and you can find me there it is right there. You can find me on LinkedIn, we’d love to have you just connect with me on LinkedIn as well. Lots of resources there on a daily basis.

Oh, that’s fantastic. Again, it’s been such a great conversation. I’ve really enjoyed being here with you today. Thank you so much for being on the experimental leader podcast.

It’s my pleasure. Thanks for having me.

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Well, that was just so much fun to get to talk to Kevin.  And I really want to double down on this idea of this wellness list. This idea that you can have a recharge list a way that you think about your own self care, your own recharging. And it’s a perfect place for experimenting. You can experiment with this list and you can think about what your criteria are. Do you feel refreshed? Do you feel invigorated? Do you feel excited? Do you feel rested? So you can really put some criteria and then you can try things and some things. So for me personally, I don’t meditate. I’ve tried meditating. It doesn’t recharge me it makes me nervous. I hate it. But to swim for an hour and a half. I get the benefits of what is meditation, my brain is clear I count 1234 strokes I count laps I count and that were charges me. So you can experiment with all sorts of things and don’t be afraid to take some off the list. Maybe you hate to have your feet touch so you don’t want a pedicure or you don’t like to go for long walks in the woods because you don’t like bugs or whatever it is. It’s a beautiful place to experiment. I hope that you will work on your own recharged list. And this is Melanie Parish. Go experiment.

Important Links: 

• The Kevin Eikenberry Group
• Remote Leadership Institute
• LinkedIn –  Kevin Eikenberry

About Kevin Eikenberry

Kevin is the Chief Potential Officer of The Kevin Eikenberry Group and the Co-Founder of the Remote Leadership Institute.

He has spent 30 years helping organizations and leaders from over 40 countries become more effective. Inc.com has twice named him in the top 100 Leadership and Management Experts in the World.

His books include, Remarkable Leadership, From Bud to Boss (co-authored with Guy Harris), The Long-Distance Leader, and The Long-Distance Teammate (both co-authored with Wayne Turmel).

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