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We all know – whether consciously or just intuitively – that there’s a difference between someone who’s merely an authority figure vs an actual leader. Authority can exert its will upon you due to status, but real leadership is about behaving in a way that excites your team and gets their buy-in so they become active participants in everyone’s success.  One of the best ways to practice true leadership is to practice Be There, one of the core pillars of the FISH! Philosophy. Being There is about showing up for the emotional needs of your team, rather than acting merely as a removed managerial presence. This means that instead of just acting like “The boss,” you take an active role in standing alongside them through both good times and more challenging situations, and guiding your team as they learn, grow, struggle, and adapt.

“How can I improve my staff’s morale?” is one of the most common questions amongst managers and business owners, and it makes sense: we all want our team to be happy not just because we value their humanity, but because happier people tend to be more productive and make fewer mistakes. But what’s the best way to improve staff morale? For a lot of people, the assumption is that we need to “fake it til we make it” by putting on a big smile and a chipper voice, no matter what’s going on around us. However, the truth is that authenticity – not insincere positivity – is what raises morale.

While we profess to value curiosity as a culture, far too often we consider practicing curiosity to be almost self-indulgent. We conflate it with navel-gazing, day-dreaming, or knowledge for its own sake rather than something truly practical–and that’s a crying shame. In reality, curiosity is absolutely foundational in any success, both on an individual level and an organizational one. Curiosity is far more than just being wrapped up in your own thoughts; it’s a way to find new solutions, spark new ideas, and connect with others in a genuine, human way. That last point is truly underrated, too, so we’ll say it again: curiosity is crucial for fostering real connections with the real people that we work with to find our own success.

How do we find success, while avoiding failure? If that sounds like a question that’s almost too broad to have a good answer, don’t worry–you’re not alone. It’s not a question with a singular answer, but it’s a useful question that guides just about every person (and organization!) on Earth.  While there’s no silver bullet for success, one of our favorite lessons from our FISH! Culture workshop series focuses on building a path towards success by building a mindset around three ideas: Play, Trust, and Creativity. Each of these embodies the four pillars of the FISH! Philosophy to create a reliable methodology for finding success by confronting our fears of failure head-on.

How do we find success, while avoiding failure? If that sounds like a question that’s almost too broad to have a good answer, don’t worry–you’re not alone. It’s not a question with a singular answer, but it’s a useful question that guides just about every person (and organization!) on Earth.  While there’s no silver bullet for success, one of our favorite lessons from our FISH! Culture workshop series focuses on building a path towards success by building a mindset around three ideas: Play, Trust, and Creativity. Each of these embodies the four pillars of the FISH! Philosophy to create a reliable methodology for finding success by confronting our fears of failure head-on.

How do we find success, while avoiding failure? If that sounds like a question that’s almost too broad to have a good answer, don’t worry–you’re not alone. It’s not a question with a singular answer, but it’s a useful question that guides just about every person (and organization!) on Earth.  While there’s no silver bullet for success, one of our favorite lessons from our FISH! Culture workshop series focuses on building a path towards success by building a mindset around three ideas: Play, Trust, and Creativity. Each of these embodies the four pillars of the FISH! Philosophy to create a reliable methodology for finding success by confronting our fears of failure head-on.

Self-awareness is one of those skills that most of us think we have, but very few of us actually do–this isn’t just a truism; it’s backed by statistics: surveys have shown that nearly 100% of us consider ourselves self-aware, but in reality, only 10-15% of us actually practice this skill on a regular basis. And when we say it’s a skill, we mean it. It’s easy to think of self-awareness as just a state of being–either you are self-aware, or you aren’t–but in fact self-awareness is a practicable action that needs to be tended to and flexed in order to develop and become easier as time goes on.

Over the past few years, more and more people and organizations have had their eyes opened to the extreme power of simple gratitude. No longer just the domain of pre-Thanksgiving Dinner share sessions, scientific research has been showing that those of us who intentionally make an effort to think about what we’re thankful for and express our gratitude to those around us are generally happier, healthier, and live more fulfilling lives. However, the key word in that last paragraph is intentional. Our brains are wired like thermostats, and have a tendency to emotionally regulate themselves back to a default state in the face of extreme changes. When an emotion is experienced frequently, this trait (called “hedonic adaptation") causes that emotion to be felt less strongly, which can make it difficult to be fully aware of when something truly positive is happening in our lives. 

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.