63. The Loneliest Employees + Connecting Remote Teams

Transcript – Episode 63: The Loneliest Employees + Connecting Remote Teams

 

Joe:

Did you know that twice a year, I hold a one-day interactive virtual conference to help leaders become better bosses? We call it the boss better virtual summit. And the only way to get tickets to these events is to be a subscriber to our BossBetter email newsletter. Just text the word BossHero to 66866 to get signed up and be the first to know when dates are announced. That’s BossHero, all one word to 66866 or you can visit BossBetterNow.com to subscribe. Now, on with the show!

Joe:

Are members of your team feeling lonely? Why they might not even know it and what to do about it. Plus let’s brainstorm some ideas to help remote teams develop more connection and camaraderie. That’s what’s ahead now on Boss Better Now.

Alyssa:

You’re listening to Boss Better Now. Please welcome speaker, author, and habitual coin collector Joe Mull.

Joe:

Welcome back BossHeroes. As you continue to navigate so many challenges, staffing shortages, and crushing burnout and rude customers and difficulty getting away, know this: You’re also inspiring those around you. Whether you know it or not, when you keep showing up, keep caring about people, keep your standards for quality and compassion high. When you keep reminding people that what they do matters, it is your very presence that lifts people up. So thank you for continuing to lead and continuing to do what you do wherever you do it in gratitude. We will do our best to make this week’s show interesting, fun and restorative. So let’s get to it! Please welcome my co-host professional coach, Alyssa Mullet.

Alyssa:

Hello? Wow. That was really nice. I, I felt those words.

Joe:

Good.

Alyssa:

They felt nice. They felt nice.

Joe:

Good! We gotta do that every once in a while we gotta buck ’em up.

Alyssa:

That’s right. And hold them with kid gloves. Cradle them. You deserve it. Care for yourself as much as you care for others too, make sure that you turn that inwards as well. Yeah, absolutely. Now this coin collecting thing that’s not like, are you like a, like you got the book and you like keep the coins and you don’t use the coins.

Joe:

No. You know what it is? Habitual coin collector means I have piles and I’m not collecting them cuz I’m like, you know, trying to hold on to rare coins that might have value. I don’t like having coins in my pocket. And so whenever I find myself having coins, if I pay cash for something, I get, I’ll just empty my pocket. And so I have these little piles of coins in various places. I have coins in my car. I have a pile of coins on the nightstand next to my bed. I have a pile of coins in, in the kitchen next to where like we put all the mail, I’ve got a pile of coins in the office and I’ve, I’ve a pocket full of coins in my air travel bag. Cuz I can’t stand having coins in my pocket. It’s the weirdest thing. I even have a coin jar. Like you know what people save coins at the end of the year. Like you turn it all in.

Alyssa:

Yeah.

Joe:

Oh there’s a jar. But there are still piles everywhere. It’s weird. I’m a weirdo.

Alyssa:

So it’s more of the, the, the rid of yourself of these said coins. Rather than the collection of them.

Joe:

Yes. And every once in a while it comes in handy. Like if I’m in line somewhere and in the airport or if I’m you know, buying something to drive through and it’s like $4 and 1 cent, I’m like, oh, okay. I got a penny. Here you go. Or if I’m at the car wash, I’m like, oh I don’t need a roll of quarters. I don’t need to go to that machine. I’ve got all these quarters here in the truck.

Alyssa:

Yeah. Yeah.

Joe:

You know, but other than that they’re more just more, just an annoyance. I think I said Morely. Did I just say Morely? Sorry.

Alyssa:

It’s all words. All words. I would have a problem. Like not if I had that many stacks of, of coins, not like secretly taking them from you and putting them in a coin star machine. Right. And then just getting all the money for myself.

Joe:

Meanwhile, I’m like everybody in the house don’t touch. That’s mine. The kids pick up like, oh I found a quarter. No you didn’t. That’s my quarter. That’s my pile of coin. Get your own quarter. Okay.

Alyssa:

Oh my goodness. That’s funny.

Joe:

Well, we’re glad you’re listening BossHeroes. Today I wanna talk a little bit about loneliness and the degree to which it might be impacting maybe you or maybe members of your team. And this was born out of an article that Gallup published a couple of weeks ago about the impact of loneliness on employees. And this is certainly something that has shifted and changed a bit since the pandemic arrived. And since so many people have started working from home What I thought was interesting is that according to this article two out of every 10 workers reported feeling lonely at work yesterday. So this is a very recent timely thing and you know, feelings of loneliness of not being connected to others. I think a are really interesting and, and sort of distinct emotional experience to talk about that’s, that’s different from the autonomy that people enjoy, some people enjoy about remote work. I think they’re different. I also saw that stat and thought to myself, well that number’s probably higher because I think there are a lot of people who experience loneliness and don’t know that it’s loneliness. I think there are a lot of people who feel stress and maybe who are feeling disconnected, or maybe feeling lethargic or some of the languishing that we’ve talked about. And that for some of them it’s born out of this lack of connection that they’ve had as the rise of remote work or hybrid work schedules or having to be quarantined over the past two years now. And so when I hear two outta 10, I think, well it’s two outta 10 for people who could self-report.

Alyssa:

Yeah.

Joe:

But for folks who are less aware of, of those feelings or what to call them they, they they’re having it too and don’t know it. What do you think, Alyssa?

Alyssa:

I, I absolutely agree. And I, I can say for my own experience as a entrepreneur, now I have to work really hard.

Joe:

Yeah.

Alyssa:

On making sure that I do have touch points of connection that are solely for not solely, hopefully the other person gets something out of it too, but that are exclusively for my connect to a colleague or, you know, a fellow coach, whatever might be so that I don’t feel like I am kind of out here on this island all alone and no one really understands and nobody gets it. And all of those other swirling kinds of thoughts that I might describe as lonely. Yeah. that lack of connection for me, I, I name that specifically. It’s like an emotional connection. Right. You know, which isn’t necessarily how everyone experiences. Right. but that’s, for me, how I experience some people experience it in, in perhaps a different way than emotional. How about, what are your thoughts on specifically how people experience connection? Because we’ve talked a lot about how, how we garner that connection, how we foster it. Right. Yeah. So I’m interested to understand what your thoughts are on the feelings of disconnection.

Joe:

Yeah. I, I, I do think that for a lot of folks it’s there and they don’t know it or they don’t know how to name it. I think that’s a, a big part of this. I, I, and I, I do think some, for some folks though, it has come into their consciousness. We see a lot of folks saying I do miss the office, or I can’t wait to get back to the way things were, quote unquote air quotes because they don’t realize how much they missed that sort of camaraderie and the, and the less substantive interactions that we get to have with people at work, where we talk about our weekends and our kids and where it actually turns out that those are pretty substantial. They’re a substantial part of human connection. When Gallup published their article, they talked about social wellbeing as one of the foundational elements of a thriving overall life. And that social time is an essential element of human nature and of building an engaging workplace. And that when people don’t experience those things, positive emotions and the enjoyment of that, and the happiness of that, that it actually then correlates with a higher incidence of negative emotions, such as stress and worry and sadness and things like that. And so it’s easy to dismiss some of the rudimentary interactions that we have with people at work as being meaningless, but it turns out, turns out that there are pretty meaningful in terms of all being tiny little deposits into the piggy bank of connection every single day. And I think we we’ve talked on our show before about the difference between introversion and extroversion and where people get their energy from. And I think there’s an important, important distinction to be made here, which is that energy and connection. Aren’t the same thing, right? Extroverts are chomping at the bit to get back in the office because their gas tank gets filled up when they’re around people. Whereas introverts tend to like working more autonomously and, and don’t necessarily mind a little bit more isolation because that’s what fills up their gas tank. That doesn’t mean that both don’t feel lonely. And that doesn’t mean that both don’t crave connection, it’s just that how they connect is different. You know, the extrovert’s gonna wanna go to the big meeting where there’s 30 people and have work the room time at the beginning and catch up with everybody. Whereas the introvert’s gonna go to the meeting with 30 people and gather with three and chat with those who are familiar with them. But both of those folks can leave that meeting with their gas tank filled up. They just went about it in a different way, and they can, they can maybe disconnect. That’s not the right word, but they can maybe proactively prevent feelings of loneliness by filling up that gas tank in their own unique and different ways. And connecting with people in their own ways that are the right fit for them. You know, the second segment that we’re doing here on the show in a few minutes is all about ways to help remote teams connect. And so there’s a reason I put these two together. And so we’re gonna get into some ways to do that. And I think some of those ways are gonna speak to this difference in how people where they get their energy from. But, but what about you? Do, do you see that correlation between that sort of social wellbeing as one of the foundational elements of a thriving overall life and, and where it might be lacking for folks now who have had to do more remote work?

Alyssa:

Oh, sure, absolutely. I, this whole thing of, you know, the water cooler experience. Yeah. You know? Right. even, I, I know it is for myself. When I go to the grocery store now, like I couldn’t tell you before the pandemic, like, I, I would’ve, I would’ve thought that the luxury of going to a grocery store and not really having to smile at someone or make eye contact or speak to another human or say hello, I would’ve counted that as gold standard. And now it’s kind of like this treat, like, if someone like it makes eye contact with you, like, and you make eye contact with them. Yeah. And you can’t necessarily see that they might be smiling at you, but you can kind of feel it from under the mask. Right. And you and you’re, and you get maybe a hello and you, and you offer a hi or you hold the door, which is like, again, a rare thing. Yeah. Those are like little treats now to me. Whereas I would’ve never ever thought yeah. That I would’ve experienced those things that way. Yeah.

Joe:

You know, and, and I talked in, in last week’s episode about how I’m in the throes of writing this next book, and it’s about creating a more humane employee experience because that’s where commitment comes from in this new age of work that we are in. And one of the elements, the fundamental elements that has been true forever, like since the Dawn of humankind, is that people thrive in community. And so one of the things we know that we need to cultivate in the workplace is a sense of belonging to a community. It’s why we do teamwork. It’s why we try to connect people. You’ve heard me say on the podcast on literally every single episode that people find when people find things in common with each other, it builds camaraderie and camaraderie is an essential ingredient for high performing teams. And so one of the things I think that we need to recognize is that as there has been a decline in people finding things in common with each other and being able to access a feeling of community or belonging because of remote work environments, the price that we pay for that has been this rise in loneliness. So the loneliness is actually the symptom of the larger problem, which is a lack of community or belonging. And so when we think about what leaders need to prioritize and, and need to work on, especially for remote or hybrid teams, is how do we help people continue friendships, continue those sort of rudimentary interactions like we talked about before? Sometimes it’s easy to get into all business on our work calls or our zoom calls without going around the room and, and having some of the conversations that people would have as they were coming into the room if we were in person. But those matter, because they are a sense they are, do contribute to a sense of community and a, a sense of belonging in one way. The other thing is, is obviously we need to try to create some connectedness between everyone on a remote team. I, I was just having a conversation the other day with a guy who runs a consulting agency based in Chicago and, and his workforce is entirely remote and they’ve hired a lot of new people and they are spread all over the country. And he said, it is absolutely a challenge to figure out how to help these people feel connected to this place. And these people who have worked together in, in a space together. And so I think if we really take time to think about what are the, the habits and the rituals and the interactions that we would engage in when we were all in the same physical space together, and how do we duplicate those in a virtual environment, even if it’s just taking a moment to say, okay, I got my coffee, who’s got coffee, anybody have anything stronger? You know? Yeah. Just, just, you know, okay. I, I actually knew a, a, a colleague who would, she had a very small team. She had like three or four people who reported to her. So every once in a while, she would actually order door dash, like some Dunkin Donuts for them in the mornings for their virtual meetings and send it to their house and be like, okay, everybody got their donuts. You know, instead of putting donuts in the lounge, we got donuts in our lap because that’s what we gotta do now. And so just find a creative ways to, to create those kind of connection with people matter because loneliness costs us.

Alyssa:

Yeah. Wow. I, I, this sense of community and belonging, we need it. And yet we are in the midst of trying to figure out where that fits, right. Because it, it fits in our life professionally, but not to the extent that it has previously. Yeah. Meaning I, I want to belong and I want a sense of community that I have you know, folks that I can trust and that are committed to the same kind of professional goals that I am. But I don’t, I also have to have that same level, if not more of trust that they are not going to exploit that so that I’m connected to them all the time. So it’s like this push and pull and tug of war, even within ourselves to figure out what is the right amount of that feeling of connection that we need. Right.

Joe:

And, and that’s the struggle that workplaces of every size and shape are having right now, because we have this continuum of people who went remote and loved it so much. They say, I’m never going back to the office and you can’t make me.

Alyssa:

Right.

Joe:

And there’s, there’s nothing that says we have to be in an office together to be a, a highly accomplished successful team. Well, I’m not sure that’s entirely true. And then we have groups on the, the other end of the continuum, especially leaders who say, no, no, no, we need to be together all the time in order to be a highly successful team. And I don’t think that’s true either. There is a friction point that is being driven in some ways, between this difference between introversion and extroversion of folks who say, I wanna work autonomously and I don’t need, I don’t need this other stuff. I don’t need to be friends with my coworkers. I don’t need to be social. I just need to do the work. And what we know about teams is we actually need it a little bit. If we want the teams to perform and we wanna have trust and we wanna have innovation and we wanna have creativity, then we do need to do some of that connectedness stuff and build more sophisticated relationships with each other, but we don’t have to be together 24 hours for that to happen, or, or eight hours a day, six days a week or five days a week, or whatever the schedule is that people are being asked to work. Yeah, there is a happy medium where you can sort of cultivate and source teamwork and connectedness in a social kind of way by having people gather together in person from time to time, also creating more flexible worker arrangements that meet the needs of and wants of a workforce who really is gravitating toward remote work. Now you can have it both ways. And to say that it only works one way is actually a disservice to people who are on the opposite end of that continuum.

Alyssa:

And so I think that that’s a, even more of a reason that we continually, right, as part of the experience of the employee are asking our teams, am I getting that balance right? Are we not? You know, what are you feeling like, are we getting together too much? Are we getting together too little? Do you feel a sense of community? Do you, you feel like you belong on this team, so that constantly you are understanding where the, the temperature is, where the barometer is. And it’s gonna, as different people come in and off of your team, that the whole environment of it is going to change again. And so that’s part of your role as a leader is to constantly be taking the temperature to figure out where that balance is. Yep. And how you achieve it as long as possible.

Joe:

And, and when Gallup writes about this, this issue of loneliness, they’re doing it through the lens of an aspect of employee engagement that they’ve been writing a studying about for a while called wellbeing and, and where they talk about how, you know, social wellbeing and things like loneliness can have effects on employee performance. And on employees lives themselves. We know that when employees experience a more holistic wellbeing in their life, it actually translates into higher levels of performance at work and higher levels of satisfaction with their job, with their life. And so wellbeing is important for us to consider. That social connection with people on our teams is important to consider quite simply because people don’t leave their human nature at home when they come to work. We bring all of it with us. And so these are conversations that we need to have and continue need to continue having especially as it relates to, to nurturing community and belonging for the individuals who make up our teams. And so I, I thought this was a really interesting way to think about it in terms of loneliness, not a word that’s getting thrown around a lot, but certainly is a, a core part of, I think, what a lot of people are experiencing right. Experiencing right now, even if they are going to work, right. You could still be lonely, even if you’re going to work every day because of a lot of the social isolation that we’ve experienced over the last two years.

Alyssa:

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Joe:

Well, what say you, BossHeroes, have you felt lonely? Have you noticed a change in how people are engaging? Have you on unlocked the secret to connecting people, to overcome these things on your team? We’d love to hear from you. We’d love to have your voice heard on our show, and we’d love to hear about the problems or challenges you’re facing releasing related to this topic or any others. So get in touch with us, send us an email at BossBetterNow@gmail.com.

Joe:

All right. Let’s lighten the mood, my friend. Though we are aligned with theme. We know that camaraderie is important. Connection is important. That’s why we give you a Camaraderie Question of the Week here every week on the Boss Better Now podcast, because camaraderie is good for teams. We know that bosses build camaraderie on teams by making it easier for people to find things in common with each other. And so our question this week, Alyssa: What is the closest you’ve come to experiencing something paranormal? I felt like I should have had like a spooky music going with that. Like, Ooh, what is the closest you’ve come to experiencing something paranormal.

Alyssa:

Well, okay. So can you go first? And then maybe that might spur something for me.

Joe:

Okay.

Alyssa:

Cause honestly, I, I, I, I so much do not live or spend time in that kind of head space. I mean, I go as so far as to like anything remotely spooky and, or not thoroughly explainable. Yeah. I turn the channel on the television.

Joe:

Right, right. Okay. Yeah, no, no. Good call. So my answer to this question is, so to your point, I have not had really a lot of any experiences with this though. I, I do believe, and I am very much in the camp of, I ain’t messing with that stuff. Like I, you know, when I was in college and went to the party and people pulled out the Ouija board, no way I am out of there, I’m not gonna wake up in the middle of the night with some specter floating over my face because you opened up a portal at the party. No way! I’m not doing that life and death in the, in between. I, I believe there there’s something going on there, but I don’t wanna mess with it. You keep your Poltergeist to yourself. Thank you very much. But the closest I’ve come to experiencing accepting paranormal was probably right after high school. I, I started at a performing arts college and we were freshmen were not allowed to perform in the shows. We were the grunt work crew backstage for the productions. And so I was in the fly loft, which is the upper loft that you use to raise in lower curtains and set pieces. And the theater that this production was taking place in had long been rumored to be haunted. There are tons of stories about this place. And one night on a show, I came up to the fly loft and found the smoke machine running, and it wasn’t plugged in.

Joe:

And it was just one of those things where I got on the headset. And I was like, ah, but as soon as I came up, it stopped. So I got on the headset and I was like, did anybody else see the smoke machine? They were like, yeah. Why is there smoke on stage? We were doing a production of Brigadoon. And so in the, in Brigadoon, there’s a scene where like the guy goes to this other place. And so they had a smoke machine, a fog machine for effect and the stage manager was like, yeah, why is there smoke? And I’m like, I came up to the fly loft and it was running and they were, well, turn it off. And I’m like, it’s not plugged in. And they were like, oh yeah. Shit like that happens around here all the time. And they attributed it to the ghosts and I’ve never forgotten that it was really weird.

Alyssa:

That gives me the heebie-jeebies, Joe. I don’t like the heebie-jeebies. Maybe that’s why, why, like, things like that. Don’t, don’t mess with me, knock on some more wood here. Because I, I feel that what it brings up for me is like just the automatic scaredness. Like I have this fear and I don’t like to live in that place fear. And so I will like move away from it at all costs. So I’m sure that I have probably had experiences that don’t have explanations, but I have made them up

Joe:

Dismissed them or yeah. Rationalized it. Sure.

Alyssa:

In order to make sure that I was psychologically safe in my own head.

Joe:

But I, that’s a really interesting point because I think people have such differing levels of comfort with this. Some like people, some people are really intrigued by this. There are people who are like, I wanna go find a ghost. I wanna see a ghost and they seek it out. That’s why, kind of why I think this is a really neat question for camaraderie, because you ask this in a team meeting and somebody might be like, oh, my house is totally haunted. I I’ve seen a, I’ve seen an old lady carrying a, a briefcase three times in the past year. And we’re just like, Hey, Ethel and then we move on with our lives. And I’m like, Nope. Gone. House is for sale.

Alyssa:

Never would’ve moved in. Yep. Yeah.

Joe:

So this could be a fun one in terms of like, you, you hear from people about the, the spooks and the experiences that they’ve had, you know, and paranormal could be different things. Maybe one of your team members thinks they’ve been abducted by aliens and they decide to share that with you. Who knows what’s gonna come out on this. So, so let’s put a general reminder out there that we should not judge. We should only invite connection.

Alyssa:

Very good reminder.

Joe:

And that’s the Camaraderie Question of the Week.

Joe:

Um we’re gonna wrap up today with a question that I have gotten consistently over these last few months. This will come as no surprise from team leaders who are now working in remote environments that haven’t been, been required to do so for the years prior to where we are now. So I constantly get asked, Hey, Joe, what are some creative ways that we can help connect remote teams to one another? Connect, the individuals who are working in those little zoom, Brady bunch boxes together. And, and obviously this is for all of the reasons we just talked about here at the top of the show, that connection is really important. And so I thought we would brainstorm some ways to do just that. I’m gonna put you on a spot here, Alyssa. Are there any pieces of advice or ideas that you have for helping remote teams connect more to one another?

Alyssa:

So I, I think the one thing that comes instantaneously to my brain-hole is, you know, in terms of making something fun and with the sole purpose of fostering teamwork, right? Yeah. Not every meeting has to be all about that there, but there does need to be some time set side exclusively for that. And one of the best things about the summits that you put on for me is the way that you bring in an MC I don’t, what is that? What we call Rob an MC?

Joe:

Yeah. Rob has done MC/DJ work for us at our summits before. Yeah. We’ve had, he’s done like a game show host kind of thing, and done a lot of kinda, you know, there’s an element of silly to it, but it’s, it’s fun with a purpose.

Alyssa:

Yes. Fun with a purpose. And to be able to have this kind of third party person just be responsible for the heavy lifting of move, moving you through those things. And in making it seem seamless and fun and appropriate music and disco balls. And like, just, that was one of the things that really made me feel connected to like thousands of other people was just having this shared experience of, of fun together. Yeah. In this very, I mean, we weren’t obviously together, but it was a virtual summit and it was wonderful. I was just also thinking about we have allowed some level of modification of like what we used to do right. And what our risk tolerances are with exposures and maximum numbers of people getting together. So maybe it’s, you’re doing something, but it’s scaled down in terms of, you know, different groups or meeting at different times or front rooms you know, taking what historically has really worked really worked, not, not just some of the things that have been fun, but have really worked in to build teamwork for you and just doing them in maybe a slightly different scale.

Joe:

Yeah.

Alyssa:

So trying to figure out the hybrid, the middle right. Of where we are going to reside.

Joe:

Right. I, I think your point of about figuring out how to just inject some fun from time to time is really important. And I think there are a lot of creative ways that we’re seeing teams do that. You know, they’re, they’re playing games in zoom windows. You can look up on, on the internet zoom games. There are third party apps. Now that you can connect to the zoom platform that allow you to do polling that allow do different kinds of, of interactive fun things that are designed to just make that virtual environment a little bit more captivating and, and more engaging. I think your other point is a really great one too, which is to not feel like it always has to be about entertainment, but it’s a, it is about connection. What are the things that people have typically connected around and learned more about each other around and that’s the opportunity to do more intimate work with each other, right? If you, if you group people together on smaller project teams, or you ask them to work on something together, we can do that in virtual environments. And it forces people to have some of those conversations where they get to know each other a little bit better. And you can even make that a mandatory part of the project work. You can break people into much smaller groups, duos, and trios and say, you know, you’re gonna own this piece and you’re gonna own that piece. And then you’re gonna come back together in three weeks and we’re gonna put all this together as a group, but in the, in-between times when you are working together here, here’s a camaraderie question of the week from this podcast. I listen to that. I want you to, to talk to each other about, at the beginning of each of your work sessions, when you do this project work, but you had to be intentional about naming, why you’re doing it. Otherwise you’ll always have that person who’s like, can we just skip this? Like you got a lot to do and I got a lot to do, right. Let’s just skip over that part and get to work. Yeah. You gotta be able to say, no, this is just as important as the work you’re going to do. And we cannot give it short shift because then we’re giving our whole team function, short shift. So that kind of a partnered or trio project work, I think matters and, and providing people questions or icebreakers, or just small ways to connect are really important. You you’ve heard the phrase that we’ve used on this show over and over again, is that helping people find things in common with each other that don’t have anything to do with work is a big part of this. I, I know some organizations who are doing things like creating an internal company podcast where employees interview each other, I’ve heard of organizations saying we’re actually not going to have a zoom call. We are going to have phone calls and they’re gonna be individual phone calls, and you actually have to talk to somebody on the phone and you don’t have to sit in your office chair just as a way to break that up. I think it really is about helping people find things in common with each other that don’t have anything to do with work, doing office tours on your zoom. Okay. Lift your camera off of your desk there, or pick up your laptop and give us a spin. And we want the trinkets tour. What are of like the trinkets you have on your desk? What are the pictures on the wall that’s gonna help us get to know you a little bit and just, it gives us a chance to talk to each other about something not to do with work. Hmm. And even that alone helps people feel connected.

Alyssa:

Yeah. I, I would love to hear from our listener. I, you know, this is meant to be a space too, of sharing of, you know, pulling from our best within our audience. So yeah. Be brave. Do whatever you need to do in order to shoot us just an email say, Hey, this was really cool. This was fun. This is a way that we built teamwork. This is what’s worked for us. Because sharing that is a form of your legacy as a leader of what you can give to other people. That impact can reach a lot of people that you might not have reached by just keeping it within your team. So I would love to hear from our listeners as to some of the best practices they’re doing,

Joe:

I have an idea. Let’s do this. The last two or three episodes. We’ve talked about how we’ve got our Boss Better Virtual Summit coming up. It’s going to be in June date is to be announced. But how about this? If you’ve been listening to this segment and you have a way that has really been a fun way or an effective way that your remote teams have stayed connected and nurtured relationships and built camaraderie, email it to us, we’re gonna assemble all of the entries. We’re gonna share them as a big list on an upcoming episode. And we’re gonna pick one and the winner’s gonna get a free registry to our Boss Better Virtual Summit in June. How about that?

Alyssa:

Wow! That’s awesome. Ooh, just upped the ante. Nice!

Joe:

So if you wanna enter, if you wanna win a free registration to the Boss Better Virtual Summit, send your idea for how remote teams can connect and continue to nurture relationships to BossBetterNow@gmail.com. Email it to BossBetterNow@gmail.com. We will share the entries with you in a couple weeks so that everybody listening ends up with this kind of big menu of ideas. And then we will pick one. Maybe we even have voting, I don’t know, we’ll pick one or we’ll have voting. We’ll figure this out. But listen, if you, if, if listeners, if you give me some kind of two word generic answer, ain’t gonna make the list. Like have people talk to each other, like thanks for the entry, but that ain’t it. But you gotta give me like a couple sentences or a very specific way, a specific game or a specific kind of activity or exercise that you use that your team has said, we really enjoyed this. It helps us feel connected and it doesn’t have to be a game or a silly thing. Maybe it’s a habit or a routine or a practice that you’ve implemented and embraced for your or team. Email it to BossBetterNow@gmail.com and you could win a free pass to the Boss Better Virtual Summit in June.

Alyssa:

That’s awesome. Yay.

Joe:

All right, friends. That’s our show this week. Don’t forget that the only way to make sure you do not miss an episode of our show is to subscribe wherever you are listening. Why not do that? Right. Take a moment before you click off, look for that subscribe button, give it a push and you’ll get each additional new episode. You’ll get that little like red dot with a one that pops up that says new episode available. Now you get that when you subscribe until next time friends. Good luck out there.

Alyssa:

This show is sponsored by Joe Mull and Associates. Remember commitment comes from better bosses. Visit JoeMull.com today.