Getting Back in the Groove

I always love this time of year. The weather begins to change here in the Pacific Northwest. Nights are getting cooler. I can see the leaves beginning to turn to their vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows. I bid a fond farewell to summer and turn my sights to the last four months of 2021. We are rolling into the final quarter of the calendar year!

I also notice that many of our clients “re-emerge” in September and the dominant mental model in our collective consciousness seems to be “going back to school.”

We have several public programs opening this fall:

• Build your facilitation skills in our Virtual Facilitator Trainer Certification course, opening in October.
• Build your producing skills in our Virtual Producer program (in Zoom) coming in October.
• Encourage your leaders to enroll in our first-ever public offering of NetSpeed’s Virtual (Hybrid) Leader program, designed to develop the skills of hybrid or virtual leaders. It includes five web workshops plus a bonus session on Meeting Change with Resilience.

There are so many exciting projects happening here at NetSpeed Learning as we navigate our way through this pandemic. Perhaps the most interesting is the completion of our new white paper: Building Effective Hybrid Workplaces. This white paper is based on the input of 235 people who completed a comprehensive survey this summer. Here are a few key findings to tickle your interest:

• 88% of survey respondents thought it was important, very important, or critically important for their organizations to support a hybrid workplace in order to retain staff. (We define “hybrid workplace” as any organization that has leaders who manage employees working from home and/or in multiple geographic locations.)
• The top two challenges of working virtually were video meeting fatigue and the blurring of work and home life.
• The top two leadership skill gaps were 1) attending to the potential negative and positive impact of my actions on people working remotely, and 2) ensuring that employees who work remotely feel visible and in-the-loop (not isolated or invisible).

You can download the entire white paper at our website.