The Hidden Method to Empower Your Team to be More Productive in a Virtual World

There's no question remote working is beneficial to both employees and employers. Most large employers have told many of their people they will not be asked to return to the office when the pandemic subsides.

Remote working is here to stay.

It’s a wonderful ecosystem for efficiency and reducing wasted time in commuting, parking, and all the associated costs with an office environment.

But it's also fraught with challenges such as attention, focus, distractions, timing, scheduling and several deep-seated anthropological and communication norms we simply aren’t wired for.

When it comes to being productive, how do you make sure that employees or team members are being as effective on their own as they were in the office? At home, many of us have hundreds of non-work distractions. It’s not simply the errant child who walks into a virtual meeting with a client. The pictures on the wall, the noise of a lawn mower, and even the relaxed (or anxiety-riddled) home rarely bring an employee into the zone of work, let alone give them an opportunity for their “A” game.

What does this have to do with improving the performance of your digital team?

In order to keep people engaged and thriving in a virtual world, we need to clearly understand how we are wired as human beings. Otherwise, all your remote working tools will be like putting whitewash paint over a rusty bumper.

To make this work, we need to go deep into how we operate as humans.

Two Brains: One World

Our conscious brain is the area of our brain we invest most of our time and energy. We go to school, read books, and study our craft. Our thirst for knowledge and improving our lives has literally transformed our species and our planet. Our cognitive thoughts are used for therapy to improve our relationships and we use cognitive-based language for interpersonal communication to further our relationships.

…or so we “think.”

In actuality, it is our subconscious brain that runs the show in our lives. Millions of operations from sending white blood cells to heal a cut or digesting your food are complex operations done without conscious effort. In fact, all of our decisions, cultural norms, and communication style is all based on neurons firing without our direct control. Our primitive, or crocodile, brain triggers our “fight or flight” response. That response is the foundation for 100% of our decisions, actions, and feelings.

Even if you believe “sleeping” on a big decision is utilizing all of your powers of analysis, you’d be wrong. You always tap into the base question, “Will this hurt me or help me?”

The same is true for developing the human capital of your organization. A virtual workforce is a new thing for many organizations. While your cognitive brain is asking about employee engagement and productivity, there are better and deeper questions that should be addressed before you bring out the toolbox and train your team to switch the camera on their laptop.

Why Are We Here?

What is the purpose of work? That answer may be different depending on your role in an organization. The C suite may be focusing on shareholder value while managers focus on creating a productive team.

• What your employees are working for?
• What is the mission for your organization?
• How do you align the answers to these two questions?

A man happened upon 3 bricklayers one day. They were all doing the same job with equal skill. However, each man had a different energy and vibe about them. He asked the first man what he was doing. “I’m laying bricks.” He walked up to the second man and asked the same question. “I’m earning $30 an hour.” He walked up to the third man, who appeared to be the happiest and most productive and asked what he was doing. “I’m building a cathedral,” was his response.

If your team members are building cathedral; is it their cathedral or is it yours?

What's the purpose of your business?

If your response is to, “Increase shareholder value…” well, you get the point.

If your purpose, your “cathedral,” is aligned with your individuals and the company, you're off to a great start. But what if your team has other ideas?

What if their cathedral does not come with the same blueprints, work ethic, or materials?

How do you not only align your mutual purpose but develop a deep understanding on the manner of each other’s thinking and the subconscious parameters and boundaries that actually draw the blueprints?

Ask.

Start with asking yourself and don't be afraid to ask your employees and team members. There are dozens of assessments, 360 reviews, and a host of methods to assess and align individual and corporate values. But, simply asking and having someone fill out a survey is unlikely to result in the truth.

Hierarchical structures, unknown intent, and dozens of other “fight or flight” ideas will most likely taint any assessments you drum up without going deeper into the subconscious. Don't rely on a suggestion box to make your employees feel "engaged."

The Fatal Flaw of Asking Weak Questions

Instead of structuring an anonymous survey or hiring a firm to find the “pulse” of your people, it is vital to ask the right questions. After you have those questions designed, you can build any anonymous mechanism to shield egos and protect the innocent (or guilty).

Most assessments and questions are not only tainted by the format or modality, but they are surface level questions that appear to get to the heart of the matter.

• “Where do you want to be in 5 years?”
• “How can your supervisor best serve you?”
• “What improvements could you suggest for the firm?”

Great start, but you won’t ever get to the core value, principle or ideal with such surface level questions. Let’s take the example of a car salesman. Put yourself in his shoes and follow along with the questions, intent, and deep meaning of selling a car.

What solution is the car providing?

“Transportation,” you might suggest. But there's a lot of choices in cars. What is the differentiator? All cars are transportation, so why do we choose one over the other?

If you think it’s the fancy brochure, gas mileage, or trunk space, you’d be wrong.

All professional salespeople will tell you we buy on emotion and use logic to back it up. We imagine ourselves in this particular car. We envision driving our family on a vacation. Our thoughts, subconscious and conscious, go deep into that emotional decision; that croc brain decision of “will this hurt me or help me?”

You pick the sporty red one with a 4.2-liter engine and seat warmers. What does that mean to you? Your new, sporty red car is a luxury piece. It's a statement. It's a status symbol. It makes you feel good. It makes you sexier. It gives you pride and may make you feel more confident.

That’s a win for making an emotional decision.

Go deeper.

Are the savings in payments going to help you save money to put your kid through college? What does that mean to you? If you are able to put your kid through college more easily by saving $100 month, what does that mean or do for you-personally? Will it increase your status with family? Will it reduce the stress in your marriage?

If you have less stress at home and increase your status with family, you could easily use those same two outcomes if you were a silverback ape and you needed to mate with a female and assert your dominance over your tribe. All decisions boil down to fight or flight. Sex or war. Safety or danger. When you get to the deep root of a client’s emotions, you're going to win.

Which brings us to your other “clients” …your employees or your team members.

When you tap into the emotional, subconscious mind team of your team and make them feel great about what they're doing; increasing productivity and eliminating distractions become less of an issue.

Alignment of Purpose

When you're developing your virtual team, understand they're all working towards something. Your corporate purpose may not be identical to your team, but there should be alignment.

Is your corporate mission to improve the environment? Great, then ask your team how important it is to leave a cleaner world for their children and grandchildren? Is your corporate mission to reduce the suffering of abused spouses? Great. Then align what that may mean to the families of your team.

Alignment of purpose requires those deep questions and equally important, intentional listening to their answers. Your mission won’t be identical, but the values and core results should be similar.

It is your job as a leader to connect with them emotionally. In order to make the distractions of a virtual environment less of an issue, leverage the absolute power of their subconscious and primitive brain. Sure, it’s fine to train your people on launching zoom, working remotely, digitally reporting to their supervisors, but without a strong purpose behind it, it's just numbers on a page.

Gamification & Endorphins

If you’ve ever been hooked on Sudoku or Candy Crush you are a bonafide, croc brain lab rat.

Gamification works the same as the Pavlov’s dogs experiment. We crave the reward or stimulus of an action. Smashing a digital candy or completing a puzzle releases endorphin in our brain as surely as turning on the faucet. When it comes to designing your virtual work environment, consider gamifying your outputs.

Competitions. Running a sales contest is easy and those members often thrive on a competitive environment. What about operations, accounting, or human resources? Can you gamify any elements there? Financial rewards for a balanced spreadsheet are a bit simplistic. What if you incentivized your bookkeeping like speed chess? How about putting your competitive research in the hands of your entire staff-rewarding any player who finds out the most about your competition?

Align purpose and embed rewards into your team’s subconscious.

In order to thrive in a virtual world, align your team’s values with your organization. Go deep into their needs, desires, and values. Once you are there, alignment inside of a game, contest, or community activity may not bring you together for a company picnic, but in a virtual world, it’s the next best thing.