Inspiring Remote Tech Teams

Keys to Leadership and Purposeful Performance

Hubbert Smith

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2021
• Print ISBN: 9780367644758
• eBook ISBN: 9781000392807
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Financial Engineering
• Index: Computer Science

For me and other tech people, leaders, and members of remote teams, we will be awakened by all the fantastic hands-on hints, best practices, and guiding principles based on solid ground that Hubbert provides in Inspiring Remote Tech Teams. We will be better prepared and better equipped to both contribute and lead efficiently in the digital economies that shape the future of our world.

— Thomas DiGiacomo, President of Engineering and Innovation at SUSE

Inspiring Remote Tech Teams is a trail map to building effective teams and organizations—now, as world health dictates remote work, and in the future, as global talent pools contribute to our digital economy.

Humans are wired to be social, and world events require social distancing from our office community. The absence of "community" triggers primitive brain responses. These instinctual responses of survival, social belonging, and the power of story all profoundly surface during our reaction as we adjust to remote work.

This trail map for team leaders improves team execution despite physical separation. The book covers simple neuroscience as it applies to our "separation." It is a hands-on guide to maintaining and improving teamwork while working remotely. It is also a hands-on guide at the intersection of teams + remote + laymen's neuroscience to create a positive sense of enthusiasm, engagement, and contribution, even when working apart.

Remote teams, now and for the future, are the pathway to using global talent effectively. This book examines the combination of the "hard skills" of tech team project management and the "soft skills" of healthy distributed teams: remote offices, sales offices, partners, suppliers, customers, and teams engaging global talent pools. Practical examples and best practices offer hands-on methods to use neuroscience to help teams be their best, to improve collaboration, and to deliver consistent team results.

Chapter 1

Our Wiring and Our People

This section introduces workplace neuroscience. Specifically, the brain chemistry associated with your instincts can be your best asset to achieve effective teams and tap into global talent—or workplace neuroscience be the worst enemy of effective teams.

1.1 Everyone Needs a Place, Everyone Needs a Purpose

We all have primitive instincts. These primitive social instincts come into play with remote teams. Sometimes remote teams work, and sometimes remote teams fail spectacularly. This book explores remote teams, the impact of our primitive wiring, and actionable suggestions on how to make the best of our new remote workplace reality, to become a standout leader.

Our instinctive wiring is further challenged by remote teams. Being away from the office takes away our “place,” takes away our “community.” When we are isolated, we feel loss. We may feel the loss of our place, and we may feel we have lost our purpose.

Creating effective remote teams starts with our most elementary needs as humans. These fundamental needs are better understood with insights provided by basic neuroscience.

It is not my intention to teach you the various parts of the brain and anatomical responses. Although this may be interesting, it would be mostly irrelevant for remote teams. Rather, the mission is to offer a practical trail map for effective remote teams, and neuroscience and psychology are referenced to better understand “why” people are the way they are in teams and what to do about it.

It takes attention to create that healthy “place” in which people feel they belong. The way to prime the pump is to work together on shared goals, place a priority on helping each other achieve our parts of the shared goals, and help each other longer term with career mentoring. Everyone can be a mentor in some form or fashion.

Mentoring creates tangible benefits to everyone. Trust, respect, belonging, friendship, are developed just by the simple and repeated act of helping others learn. Mentoring is its own reward to mentors, to the team lead, to the employer, and of course to the person learning and being mentored. To create a healthy team, encourage mentoring and learning. More on this later in the book.

1.2 Our Primitive, and Fearful, Wiring

Seventy thousand years ago, humans used gestures, expressions, and primitive language to communicate.

• The tiger is in the west (negative stimuli, immediate)

• The edible berries are in the west (positive stimuli, can be deferred)

After a bit of trial and error (aka, evolution), our primitive human wiring caused us to magnify and listen to the immediate negative stimuli and stay away from the tiger, ignoring the feel-good food stimuli. Our primitive wiring comes into play in these modern times. When we feel alone, our primitive instinct kicks in. When we feel threatened, our survival instinct kicks in. And neuroscience shows clearly that primitive stimuli causes primitive parts of our brains to override the advanced frontal lobe brain activity—we literally stop thinking logically when presented with primitive stimuli.

Our primitive reactions to stimuli apply to remote teams today. In most work scenarios, it takes teams of people to accomplish anything of significance. Teams fail, and projects fail, with alarmingly high frequency. Virtual, remote workplaces, social distancing, contract workers, experts, partners, work-from-home, and 100 percent remote organizations are with us now and into the future. Remote teams are more than a simple convenience—remote teams are a necessity driven by global competition.

Primitive stimuli are at play in today’s modern remote/virtual workplaces. We are more alone as a result of the ability to work from home, virtual teams, and 100 percent distributed businesses. Sociologists note that our societies have ever-increasing stress levels.

Why is that? It is reasonable to connect the dots between our primitive wiring to survive and belong, to our perceived “loss of community.” We once had a community of coworkers and cohorts when we went to the office; now we experience the absence of that community caused by social distancing and remote workplaces.

We, as leaders, can avoid pushing all those “negative” buttons in our primitive wiring. We can easily avoid “survival” responses. We can instead push the “positive” buttons to restore our sense of “community.” Push the buttons to stimulate anticipation, focus, learning, and the desire to be successful. When we apply the right stimulus, we improve both job satisfaction and the results of remote teams.

GOOD PRACTICES

»Before any meeting or conversation, think through your words carefully.

»Make a conscious effort to avoid survival wiring, which diminishes our ability to think logically. If there is a problem, say, “We are challenged to find a solution,” rather than using negatively burdened phrases or placing blame.

»Make a conscious effort to build belonging and community. When there is a success, say, “We did this together”: the team gets the credit. Emphasize team results (not individual results).

This is my “place.” This is my “purpose.” I am part of something important and bigger than myself. I anticipate team success. I participate, my contributions are valued. I am safe.

1.2.1 Surviving → Belonging → Becoming

Our instincts are strong: → Surviving → Belonging → Becoming is so obvious.

• Surviving is foundational and immediate, processed by the most primitive parts of our brains. When our neurological survival response kicks in, other higher-order parts of our brains, such as those controlling reason and logic, are shut down. Survival thinking overrides all other thinking.

• Belonging. Community wiring happens in those slightly more advanced parts of our brains that control emotion. Our instinct to belong is bit less immediate but is nonetheless foundational. Our instincts tell us that our chances of survival and reproduction are significantly increased within a community. And our behavior, bearing, and emotions vary depending on whether or not we are with our community. Processing basic emotions such as fear, reasoning, creativity, and physical capabilities are altered if we are (or are not) with our community. Ever notice why we powerfully respond to a good story, why we cannot put down a good book, why we cry at movies? This is “group belonging” wiring, and it overrides other higher-order thinking—other, that is, than our survival instinct.

• Becoming. Our ambitions driving our need to learn, achieve mastery, security, reputation, status, wealth, and the like are processed by the most developed part of our brains, the frontal lobe. We are able to use these most developed areas of our brain to think logically—but only if survival or primitive wiring doesn’t get in the way. Keeping our thoughts in the higher order of logic and reason is also known as emotional intelligence, meaning we consciously overcome our lizard brains and think with logic and reason, even when our lizard brains are grabbing for the steering wheel.

1.2.2 Instinct

Instinct is something we just know. Merriam-Webster defines instinct as a behavior mediated by reactions below the conscious level. Instinct is not consciously learned. Instinct is below the conscious level. We know how to breathe, eat, and drink. We know how to use our hands and feet. For 80,000 years of human evolution, for 4,000 generations, our instincts have evolved and been strengthened. Then modern society happened, and the modern workplace happened. And our instincts have not kept pace with these dramatic changes in the nature of our existence.

• Our instincts...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Foreword
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• About the Author
• Chapter 1 Our Wiring and Our People
• Chapter 2 Building Healthy Teams
• Chapter 3 Day-to-Day Remote Teams
• Chapter 4 Innovation and Uncertainty
• Chapter 5 Remote Teams Capability Model
• Chapter 6 Improvements for the Whole Organization
• Chapter 7 Closing Thoughts
• Appendix
• Index