Remote Work & Productivity for Teams in the New World of Work
Duration: 13 half-days
Organizations are always striving to find ways to support productivity, engagement, wellbeing and results in their teams, but 2020 introduced unprecedented challenges. COVID 19 amplified both the need for focus and productivity and the challenges that get in the way of it. Employees are needing to adapt rapidly to working from home, while also implementing huge shifts in the core business models and processes of the organizations they work for. This can feel overwhelming. It may not seem like it, but there’s a bright side. The forced shift to remote work presents an opportunity for organizations to examine and rebuild their foundations for driving performance, engagement and results in ways that support all stakeholders to reach new levels of thriving.
The Thriving Together While Working Apart program provides a big picture overview of fundamental skills, knowledge, tools, and mindsets that support teams to thrive no matter where they are working from. Many people theoretically “know” these fundamentals, but don’t apply them as fully as they could. For this reason, this training includes application assignments for each session to support participants to apply their learning in their lives and work. Reviewing the fundamentals of productivity, performance and engagement together with their colleagues has the added benefit of surfacing team processes and organization-wide systems that need to be optimized to support working from home and enhance performance overall.
During the pandemic, bringing your team together to (re)discover these foundations is even more essential. People are mentally exhausted from the changes that 2020 has brought and the uncertainty of how much longer this will go on (or what insane thing will happen next). This is bound to dampen focus and productivity – a key source of intrinsic reward for most people. This creates a negative feedback cycle that further increases their stress, dampens their energy and impedes focus and productivity. Bringing your team together in a structured way to learn new techniques for improving energy, performance and fulfillment no matter where they are working from has many benefits. It provides them with skills and knowledge, but perhaps more importantly it deepens the connections that build trust and strengthen culture.
Note: This session is designed for employees at all levels. Please see our Leading a Thriving Team in a Remote Work World if you are looking to train leaders and managers specifically. Leaders and managers can attend this program with their teams, but it is often beneficial for leaders to attend our leader-specific program just prior to their teams or in parallel with their employees going through the program. This supports leaders to model best practices and support their team members to apply the learning in their daily work.
Instructional Objectives:
Day 1 (3 hours): Foundations for Thriving While Working Remotely
Day one provides participants with an understanding of the foundations to put in place to stay productive, healthy and energized while working from home. Topics include:
- The 5 elements of thriving while working from home
- Creating a functional and focused space
- Finding your new work from home productivity rhythm
- Staying connected with your colleagues
- Tools and technology to support productivity and connection while working from home
- Key tips to stay healthy and energized while working from home
- Tips, tools and resources for parents working at home with kids
- Tips, tools and resources for people working at home with a spouse or roommate
- Tips, tools and resources for people working at home alone
- Assess your gaps and opportunities and create a plan to address them
Day 2 (90 minutes): Remote Work Foundations Integration Day
Day 2 is our first group coaching session to support students to apply their learning in their unique situation. It includes a review of successes, questions and progress on individual action plans and assignments from Day 1.
Day 3 (3 hours): Productivity Principles & Practices
Day three covers core principles of productivity that will amplify achievement and fulfillment regardless of where team members are working from. Topics include:
- Why you struggle with getting things done – the 4 productivity FOES
- Improving your Focus – principles of planning and prioritization
- Avoiding distractions while working from home.
- Remote work productivity pitfalls and best practices.
- Getting and staying Organized – a daily action planning framework
- Tools and technology for getting and staying organized
- A new mindset on procrastination
- Deciding where to start to improve productivity
Day 4 (90 minutes): Productivity Principles & Practices Integration Day
Day 4 digs deeper into participants successes and setbacks in applying the productivity principles from the previous week. This session often surfaces opportunities for the team or organization to improve productivity for all team members.
Day 5 (3 hours): Fundamentals of Delegation & Collaboration
Delegation and collaboration can feel much more difficult when people are no longer in the same workspace. The good news is that it can become even easier and more effective if people put in place the simple process taught in this session. Topics include:
- The six elements of effective delegation
- Understanding who to delegate to
- Getting clear on the results you want
- Solving the deadline dilemma
- Avoiding the need to micromanage
- Creating the conditions for initiative
- The differences between delegation and collaboration
- How to make your manager a better delegator
- Utilizing systems to track accountability and monitor progress
- Tools and technology to support effective delegation
Day 6 (90 minutes): Delegation & Collaboration Integration Day
Day 6 provides opportunities for participants to share their successes and setbacks from their delegation assignments the previous week. A common result of this session is for teams to develop the first draft of a best practices template for delegation that is unique to their team or organization.
Day 7 (3 hours): Fundamentals of Work & Project Planning
Whether people work from home or in a common office space, there isn’t usually much in common with their methods of project and work planning. It can range from holding everything in their head, to paper lists, sticky notes, spreadsheets or online project management systems. This session brings everyone up to speed with work and project planning foundations and best practices. Topics include:
- Why people resist planning
- The costs of not planning
- Why planning matters
- Types of planning
- Project planning purpose, principles, and best practices
- Daily, weekly and monthly work planning
- Show and tell of tools and technology for project planning and task management
- Dealing with the inevitable – what to do when plans get off track
Day 8 (90 minutes): Work & Project Planning Integration Day
Day 8 provides opportunities for participants to share their project and work plans and provide each other with ideas on how they could be improved. A common result of this session is for teams to develop the first draft of a project or work planning that is unique to the needs of their team or organization.
Day 9 (3 hours): Fundamentals of Systems Thinking
Change is a constant in the current and future world of work. This session provides employees with an introduction to the Result of Note™ systems-thinking method – a framework that empowers employees to lead and manage change more effectively by identifying solutions to address their frustrations and to optimize systems for the organization as a whole. Topics include:
- Who usually owns systems and why they shouldn’t
- The Result of Note™ mindset – the engine of capacity building
- The difference between systems and habits and why you need both
- The Result of Note process for saving time, money and stress
- How and why to build systems while doing your work
Day 10 (90 minutes): Systems Thinking Integration Day
Day 10 provides opportunities for participants to share the Result of Note systems they implemented in their work and life the previous week. A common result of this session is for teams to identify key Result of Note systems opportunities for their team or organization.
Day 11 (3 hours): Fundamentals of Resilience and Energy Optimization
Even before working from home became the new normal, technological advances were driving work life integration and blurring the lines between life and work. This session provides participants with tools to create a healthy balance between life and work (even when life might need to be happening in the middle of their home workplace). Topics include:
- The Life-Work Integrity™ framework for understanding what drives and blocks your energy, fulfillment, resilience, and results at work (and in life)
- The four foundations that drive energy, focus and sustainable performance
- Key habits and tools to solve your personal energy crisis once and for all
- Sleuthing your values for sources of energy leaks
- Filling your cup by spotting your strengths
- Why purpose matters (but maybe not how you think it does)
- The links between energy and authenticity
- Life-Work Integrity™ as a foundation for building an inclusive team and workplace
- Creating an Energy Action Plan to immediately amplify your energy and wellbeing
Day 12 (90 minutes): Resilience and Energy Optimization Integration Day
Day 10 provides opportunities for participants to share their insights from implementing their Energy Action Plan.
Day 13 (3 hours): Final Progress Report & Integration Planning Day
Any successful person knows that “It’s not what you know, it’s what you do.” For this reason we include this essential progress, planning and integration session as the final session in the program. At the end of session 12, participants will receive an assignment to do a progress report on their insights and results from the previous weeks of the program. They will also be tasked with creating a plan for how they will continue to integrate their insights from the training into their life and work over the coming 3-6 months. All sessions in this program are incredible opportunities for building connections, strengthening culture, building trust and strengthening inclusion, but this one goes the extra mile. It helps all team members to solidify their goals, ask for the support they need to follow through, and develop the authentic connections that will build that positive peer pressure research shows helps people to achieve their goals.
Optional Add-Ons: Follow-up Individual and Group Coaching
We highly recommend that clients plan to provide individual or group coaching follow up support to this and all our other programs. Research shows that learning dissipates rapidly if structures are not put in place for it to be applied. Talk to us about including a package of coaching hours with your program that employees can access, putting together monthly group coaching sessions to help people stay accountable to their goals, a performance buddy system, developing peer coaches, or even certifying your internal trainers to deliver our core programs to your staff on an ongoing basis.
Note: All above sessions are condensed versions of our more in-depth programs on each topic. If you would like to have your team focus in on only one of the areas outlined above to address an immediate need, please contact us for more information on the area of interest.
Measurable Learning Outcomes:
By the end of the program, participants will:
- Assess their working from home setup, optimize it for their unique situation, and create an action plan to address key immediate stressors;
- Understand the time management FOES that are blocking their energy, productivity, and results at work;
- Feel motivated and inspired to move forward to higher levels of thriving instead of hoping for the day that things will get back to normal;
- Implement concrete action steps throughout the program to address their productivity gaps both as individuals and as a team to create a thriving remote or hybrid team that can adapt quickly to working from wherever they need to as business needs shift; and
- Feel more competent, confident and in control of their focus, productivity, time, results, and wellbeing while working from home.