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Let’s not mince words here: for countless managers, executives, and professional team leaders, the move to remote work during the pandemic caused them to pull their hair out in frustration and fear. And when it became clear that work-from-home wouldn’t just go away, this caused even further consternation: many felt like they were forced to either bring employees back to the office against their teams’ will (potentially losing strong talent) or continue to offer remote work as a possibility (making their own jobs harder).

In the past few years, remote work went from the domain of contractors and a special perk from generous companies to something that almost every office worker has experience with, and many are still doing–whether part-time or for their entire job schedule. And while remote work has a multitude of potential advantages for workers and companies–from less commuting time to less overhead spent on office space–it also comes with new challenges for everyone involved.  For managers, they have less direct oversight over their team, and for workers, they have less opportunity to spontaneously collaborate and engage with their teammates. When working remotely, many teams only call meetings “when necessary” so people can return straight to their independent work–and while this can make for efficient time management, it can also result in the loss of space for people to connect and share ideas.

Remote work became almost every office professional’s day-to-day experience a few years ago, and to this day, many of us are still working either fully remote or with hybrid schedules. For a lot of people, this is a huge benefit–less time wasted stuck in traffic, more flexibility to get all your work done while being able to use your breaks to tend to your house, and an opportunity to make your workspace truly work for you. But it also adds a new challenge for managers, who have had to adapt their team-building strategies to a culture where we only really engage behind a computer screen, and those common everyday interactions are fewer and further between.

Over the past 3 years (let’s not mince words–since the start of the COVID pandemic), most of us have been thrown into the waters of remote work, and if office building occupancy rates are any indication, many of us are still working remotely to this day. When most–or even all–of your interactions with your coworkers are behind a screen in a Zoom call, how do you continue to show up for your team and strengthen those bonds when you’re miles apart? This is the first in an ongoing series about applying the core principles of the FISH! Philosophy while working remotely. Whether you’re an international team that’s been 100% remote since day one or just a regular office adapting to post-pandemic flex schedules and remote work options, this series will explore how the FISH! principles can continue to benefit your workplace, even if that workplace isn’t physically shared amongst coworkers.

We talk a lot about one of the core concepts of the FISH! Philosophy, which is Be There. Be There is all about showing up for our team and our coworkers, treating them like real humans with real successes, challenges, and emotions–both positive and negative. By being there for others in the workplace, we create and foster these simple human connections that result in stronger team bonds, more open and transparent communication, and ultimately greater achievement by everyone. But it’s not always as simple as it sounds–like any other practice, in order to Be There for others you need to build a habit out of offering this type of support and compassion. And as we all know, building habits isn’t easy. Various sources pin habit-forming timelines at anywhere from 3 weeks to 3 months of daily practice before a new part of your routine becomes automatic, and that can be tough to achieve.  So how do we build a habit at all, and how do we specifically build a habit of Being There for our team in a way that helps advance our professional goals?

Burnout is one of those feelings that happens to many of us when we’re working at the same job for a long time, or when that job becomes particularly intense or throws our life off balance. When burnout hits, it can be hard to overcome–but it’s possible with the right set of skills, which we’ve talked about before. But for anybody who’s managed to overcome burnout in the past, the more crucial question then becomes, “well, how do I avoid it again in the future?” And that can be just as difficult, if not more so! Avoiding burnout requires thinking proactively and practicing new skills before you ever think you need to do so–and sometimes it can even be hard to quantify, as preventative measures always are. After all, you can’t measure all the bad feelings you don’t have, can you?

Choose Your Attitude is one of the FISH! Philosophy core tenets that people pick up on fairly intuitively, but have a hard time actually putting into practice. Yes, it makes sense on the surface–when you adopt a beneficial or effective attitude in the workplace, it’ll lead to more positive interactions with your team and help you reach your goals. But the truth is, it’s more complicated and more difficult than that. How do you know what attitude to choose? How do you choose your attitude without suppressing or burying your emotions? How do you slow down and make it a conscious choice, rather than simply giving into your emotional urges in any given moment? Choose Your Attitude is a necessary tool to pick up, so here are just a few ways to help you put it into practice: Adopt a “growth” mindset.

Energy is possibly the single most vital resource for the overall health of your organization. It’s not just not feeling tired, but it’s about that positive force that gives us the hard-to-come-by motivation to not just survive work, but thrive in your workplace with passion and drive.  Without energy, the work might get done, but at what cost? Demotivation, burnout, and poor mental health are all individual factors that lead to dysfunction on an organizational level, and we can avoid those by making sure our team is energized and excited to do their very best work, all the time. As individuals, energy is what keeps us going and pushes us to do better and better each time, and as a team, energy is what helps us work together to create positive outcomes and keep the organization moving forward to greater successes. So how can your organization keep your team energized and working together happily and passionately? 

Difficult conversations are part and parcel of any professional job, much as we may not want to admit it. It’s comforting to think that if we put our heads down and focus on our own job, we can do great work without dealing with confrontation, but this is rarely the case. From managers needing to deal with performance issues, to team members collaborating to find solutions to tough problems, to officemates navigating interpersonal conflicts, we all find ourselves having difficult conversations in the workplace at some point or another. It’s also easy to feel like the best way to get through them is to shut down, not talk, or simply avoid them–but this is far from true. When we clam up, issues don’t get resolved, and can often get worse as individuals fill any knowledge gaps with assumptions rather than hearing the facts straight from the other person.

We all know what it’s like to go around the Thanksgiving table and share what we’re thankful for, but that shouldn’t only happen one day a year–the most effective people who are the most in-tune with the emotions and needs of themselves and others are often those who express gratitude as a daily practice within their lives. This may sound a little “woo”-ey, but there’s real science to it: Even the Mayo Clinic acknowledges the link between regularly expressing gratitude and improved moods, lessened mental health symptoms, better sleep, and more. But practicing gratitude isn’t always easy. It requires awareness of your surroundings, both your physical and social external surroundings but also your internal emotional surroundings. Practicing awareness and gratitude are often intertwined, and the better you are at one, the better you can be at the other. But how can we use the FISH! Philosophy to practice both these skills and improve our lives at work and at home?