Episode Transcript
Lars Nielsen (00:01.72)
Hello everybody and welcome back to...
This is the second episode where we are talking about remote culture and new challenges in the virtual world. We started last week with the first one, but we kind of realized that this is going be a long, long topic. So we had to divide it into two segments. But as always, I am so happy to have my co-host Pauline, co-founder of Culture Code Foundation and our...
cultural expert on the show. Hey Paulina!
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (00:45.465)
Hey lars, great to continue this topic today.
Lars Nielsen (00:48.742)
Exactly. We found out that it's going to be like, yeah, everybody has tried this during Corona, right? And it kind of continued afterwards. So this was a bigger topic than the other ones. And we want to try to keep our episodes into like bite-sized chunks. But this one, a little bit too big for that. So we had to continue today.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:10.575)
Yes.
Lars Nielsen (01:12.814)
Before we deep dive into a success story that you're going to share with us Paulina, should we just do like a very brief recap of what we talked about last week?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:29.093)
Yeah, sure. Let's do that.
Lars Nielsen (01:31.256)
Do we even remember what we talked about last week?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (01:34.125)
Well, we did talk about the signs that speak for a bad remote culture. And we also spoke about the fact that usually the remote culture only exacerbates cultural problems that were there before already. so that the problems that companies
do see with remote cultures usually don't stem from having gone remote, but usually a deeper level. We also spoke about typical mistakes that companies make when it comes to setting up their remote or hybrid work. Yeah. Theme or, or,
environment. was the word I was looking for. We spoke about Zoom fatigue, the pressure of digital presenteeism. And we started to talk about a couple of best practices when it comes to building a cohesive virtual culture. And in that specific topic, we talked about investing into face to face time, avoiding meeting marathons so that people don't spend just
continuous time on Zoom calls. And we also spoke about outcomes over hours, meaning that it's super, super relevant in this kind of setting to have a strong, strong basis in trust in your employees and to avoid micromanagement in that term. mean, we always call out micromanagement, but in a remote setting, it becomes even more crucial.
because it will undermine your people's engagement. On a very practical side as well, it will definitely cost the managers doing the micromanagement a lot of time. That's about it, I think. Did I forget anything?
Lars Nielsen (03:39.438)
about it. And again, it is a big topic, right?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (03:43.075)
Yes, absolutely.
Lars Nielsen (03:44.814)
So thank you very much for sharing that and remembering everything we talked about last week. So let's dive into today's episode and we're going to start off with a success story. So we're going to start off on a high note here. So can you please share a story or a specific strategy a company implemented that dramatically improved their remote culture?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (03:49.541)
you
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:00.143)
Yes.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (04:10.987)
Yes, I'm happy to. I'm also one of our listeners actually pointed out to me this week that sometimes we don't talk about cultures from hell, we're actually talking about cultures from heaven. And I like that. Because that's exactly what we're going to do right now. We're going to talk about a country that's a company that has put a lot of thought, a lot of effort.
into creating a remote experience that is really unique. And that is something that I haven't seen anywhere else. It's a German company, a small employer branding agency with roughly 25 employees. And it's actually incidentally the company that my husband works for. It's called YeahHR. And they are working fully remote since about a year.
Before that, they had a hybrid setup with an office in Western Germany in Dusseldorf and a couple of employees working remotely. And then they decided to go fully remote. And what I love about this, about the decision they've made is that they are now investing basically the entire money that they are saving on rent.
into their remote setup and into their remote culture. And that is incredible. Because it shows how important the culture is for them and how important it is for them to really make sure that their team is getting the best out of it. They actually even won awards for this remote culture setup because it is so unique. They call the setup Happy Place.
And it consists of three pillars, I would say. The first pillar is they make sure that the entire team does meet up in person once a quarter on regular basis for at least one day. Usually they do it two days. The second pillar is that every employee, when they start over the course of their career, they get a budget that they could spend on their home office setup.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (06:32.133)
So they all get, they can buy really good desks and chairs and, also do things with the money that they feel their personal office needs to make it more, feel more like theirs. So it's not just about the technical setup, but also they, yeah, whatever they need basically. And more importantly, probably than this second pillar is the third pillar.
because every employee gets the same budget that they can spend on working together with other colleagues. So they can, for example, rent co-working spaces where they work together. They can visit each other in their respective hometowns and work together there, either in their home office or again in a co-working space. Or they can even do workation together. So there have been teams that
went on vacation together in Denmark, they had rented out like like a little beach house in Denmark, we're working there during the day and then socializing in the evening. There have been teams that just went into into hotel somewhere for a couple of days working from there. So it's super flexible system. And more importantly, I think it's very individualistic so that
no matter what your personal preferences are, what is important to you as a person might be different for an introvert than an extrovert, might be different for a Gen Z employee or a BOOM employee and with this kind of setup all of them can make the best out of it for their personal situation. And honestly I've never seen
a better set up like that yet, because it's really thought through. And I know from my husband that the CEO of the company and the owners of the company, they really invested a lot of thought into this. Obviously you need to speak to lawyers, need like, you need to speak to tax advisories to, really figure this out, the intricacies out. it is not something you can just do like this. takes.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (08:58.573)
real thought, takes real investment, not just on the money side, but also from the thought process. And it really impresses me.
Lars Nielsen (09:12.658)
I like it. think I've mentioned a couple of times on the show that a lot of people see me as a extrovert person. And I probably am, but I'm also the kind of person that I like other people's company, but at the same time, it actually drains my energy. So for me, having the ability to choose when I want to sit at home and work, where I'm in my own company and
when I want to like go out and see other people, I would thrive in an environment like that. Because at the same time, even though I like my own company and so on, like I said, I like other people's company. having the ability to go and visit people in their home times, or having people visit me and kind of finding a co-working space where you can sit and work, that really appeals to me.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:07.834)
Hmm.
Lars Nielsen (10:07.97)
We had some of the same things going on in SolveMate where we met.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:12.025)
Yes. Yeah, we did.
Lars Nielsen (10:14.798)
I remember that you went to... Where did you go with Lyn?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:21.277)
yeah, with Lynn and Kelly, we went to Fuerteventura
Lars Nielsen (10:24.395)
yeah, that was like, that was a vacation remembering.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:29.113)
But yeah, that was definitely worth remembering, but it's also worth remembering that we pay for that ourselves. Yeah. Yeah. that was all out of our own, But it's was amazing and it was fun. It was so much fun. and what we did at SolveMate definitely was, really good as well because we could meet up regularly, but nobody was forced to do so. And we had the regular all company meet up.
Lars Nielsen (10:34.892)
you did? I didn't know that.
Lars Nielsen (10:40.847)
okay. Fair.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (10:59.351)
in Berlin, so that was really cool. And I think I spent, I was in Berlin for a couple of days every month to meet with, not necessarily my direct team, because not every one of you guys was in Berlin, right? But with parts of my team and parts of other teams, had like this designated co-working space where we would always meet and people that didn't like working from home, they would always work from that co-working space.
So there was a lot of flexibility there as well. And I think that is super important because especially when you do have officially a fully remote setup, because there are many people who don't work well from home, they don't want to work from home. And if you have, especially if you live, if you hire multiple people in the same city, that can be an amazing setup to say, okay, there is always, there are flex desks.
in a co-working space in the city and whoever wants to work from the, from that office on any given day can just do so. So there are a lot of things that you can do that are obviously specific to the situation of every company. Because yeah, and that's why it requires thought and and deliberation for a really good, strong hybrid or remote setup.
that's the thing with culture across the board. If you don't do it intentionally it will just do wild things.
Lars Nielsen (12:32.01)
Lars Nielsen (12:35.629)
Yes.
Lars Nielsen (12:46.478)
That's the beauty of a good culture, right? But also the downside of a bad culture. Okay, so Pauline, back on topic here. How does leadership itself need to kind of adapt in a remote first environment? What, let's call it, what new skills or mindsets are essential for leaders to effectively manage, mentor, and inspire distributed teams?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (12:51.385)
Exactly.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (13:14.297)
Yeah. So definitely what we discussed already last week, trust by default, right? You have to shift from control-based leadership to trust-based accountability. This is difficult, especially for leaders who are not used to working on that kind of basis. But the beautiful thing is, is that trust is the basis for effective collaboration in
any setup. So I would say this is not necessarily a specific leadership skill for remote or hybrid setup, but just for our modern workplace. The second part is outcome orientation, right? Don't focus on who spends who's visible, who spends most time in the office, but focus on results and impact. Not the
actual time locked. Right? That also, that is important, includes how to role model shutting down.
and not working at night. So what I mean by this is you need to make sure that as a leader to not be working at night or late in the evening or sending out emails really later on. There is this pre-plan sending button on every messaging app, every email thing. So that you don't have to put pressure on your people or make it the norm that it's okay to work like after.
after 7pm or whatnot. That is expected. And next thing for me is empathy. Always empathy, empathy, empathy. But in this kind of set up it should even be at scale. So you need to prioritize your emotional intelligence and creating human connection without the physical cues.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (15:24.941)
We spoke about this last week that because of the filters and bad camera situations and so on and so forth, you cannot read the gestures and the mimicry of your team as well as you can do when you're in person. So you need to be super aware of that. And that only works if you start asking more personal questions and are really aware of the individual needs.
Like you need to understand that the single mom on your team does have different needs than somebody who is more flexible in their overall work schedule, but potentially also has other things that they need to take care of. if they have a side business that needs attention or whatnot. So you need to really understand.
the specific personal situations that every team member is in. And, and then you need to see how you can, how you can support that ideally. So I don't know if you remember that it's all made, I specifically set up a mental health notion page where I would share tips and tricks, that worked really well for me in order to shut down or in order to get my energy up in the morning. And we also spoke about best practices from.
other team members regularly that we would also include on this page. So it was like, we normalized the conversation around mental health and about, and yeah, personalized needs, both in one-on-ones and throughout the entire team. And I think that that was really important that we did that.
Next point from my perspective, transparency as a norm. So you should default to open information sharing to reduce confusion and silos. So make your Notion page visible to the entire company, for example, have your calendar settings, not as private, as, as, publicly, publicly accessible and make sure that your communication is crystal clear.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (17:50.474)
and more frequent than in an in-office setting.
And last but not least, would say flexibility is super crucial when it comes to remote leadership, because you need to embrace asynchronous work and individual work styles. Because those things will support not spending time in too many meetings and not having those.
the zoom fatigue thing going on, if you do manage to have your teamwork asynchronously. Yeah. That's, my, my most important tips when it comes to leadership in a remote setting.
Lars Nielsen (18:42.926)
And that one thing that I noticed was the one you said about communication and being more frequent. I am a part owner or co-founder in a couple of startups and we all work completely remote and some of us also have like a job on the side and so on. And one thing that I've been really cheering for that we should always do is like doing like
At least like daily updates, like in Slack, just brief ones and so on. And a lot of people saying like, oh, but why do I have to do that? Maybe I have nothing to share because I haven't done anything since yesterday and so on. And for me was like, but you're missing the point here. The point is not to say like, Hey, I did this and this and this and this is just to like, let everybody know, Hey, I'm here. I'm okay. Um, we are on a team, a building that team.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (19:17.733)
Hmm.
Lars Nielsen (19:42.462)
spirit. it's kind of hard to explain because it kind of sounds stupid that you have to put in like saying like, hey, I didn't do anything, but I hope everybody's having a great day. Because it's not productive and I'm doing that in quotation marks. It's not productive in any way. But for me, it gets the sense that, I'm still part of a team and everybody's here.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (20:05.509)
And it also gives an understanding of, mean, you don't necessarily put in, I haven't done anything because usually they have done something that it's just not finished yet, or it's not the progress yet that they might have wanted to see, but it gives a better understanding for the rest of the team that how long things might take to actually finish. especially when it's cross-collab.
cross team collaboration, like when sales engineers are communicating, there's always so many things where you don't understand how the other people's work works. And if you have this kind of check in also across teams, you do develop a much better understanding and more sensitivity around, okay, an engineer might be working for weeks and weeks and weeks on end on the same exact
single task, because that's just how long it takes. While a salesperson would be like, okay, I've called those 25 customers today and I've sent these five emails and I've da-di-da-di-da. So it's just very different work realities. And these check-ins that you're describing can be an incredibly strong way of fostering more understanding for each other.
Lars Nielsen (21:32.696)
Exactly. So Paulina, again, when we're talking about company culture, you have all the experience because you kind of work with it in your professional capacity. And based on that, what's a common myth about leading remote teams that you like to debunk for our audience out there?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (21:56.293)
I love that question. Thank you. I think if I hear one more person claiming that remote teams are less effective or productive than in-house teams, I will scream.
I mean, again, it is a very individualistic situation and both for companies and for individual employees, but it is scientifically proven that the setting itself does not have an impact on your productivity. The culture and leadership that are being executed in each environment, that has an impact.
Lars Nielsen (22:44.616)
I agree 100%. And I have a hard time understanding. It's not that often anymore, but like, I think it was like half a year, one year ago, there was kind of like, again, I'm going to do this in quotation marks, like a trend going on that everybody has to come back to the office now and all the major companies is pulling people back and so on. And I don't get it. It's like...
pull the people back that wants to come back, but the ones that want to work remote are more productive at work and so on. I saw this guy on LinkedIn, when he was like, I think it was one of the bigger like tech companies in the US, like they were pulling everybody back and he just took a picture. He was sitting in his home office and he moved, I don't know, I'm just going to make this up. I can't remember to Utah or something, but have beautiful nature.
And he just took a picture outside of his window where he was sitting watching like in his home environment, mountains and beautiful nature and so on. And he just took a picture saying like, why do I want to go back? Like I'm here, the rent is one 30th of what it is in San Francisco, right? I have nature, I have free air, my kids can run outside. I don't have to water, worry about anything.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (23:44.197)
Hmm.
Lars Nielsen (24:10.83)
Why do I want to go back?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (24:12.549)
And that is a huge problem. unfortunately in Germany, the trend is still ongoing and to call people back into the office. And it really doesn't think things through. I mean, it can also be a hidden layoff round, because it is definitely scientifically proven that if you do announce a mandatory return to office policy, the only thing that really increases is your turnover rate.
Lars Nielsen (24:42.83)
Mm-hmm.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (24:43.273)
so you will definitely lose people and it can be a hidden, a hidden agenda in there that you're thinking, okay, if, if I announced this, then people will quit and then I don't have to pay severance packages or la de la de la, but it's so short term thinking because you don't know who is going to quit. And usually, you will just by the law of,
Lars Nielsen (25:13.55)
Law of attraction?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (25:14.467)
law of attract, not attraction, law of likelihood. I don't know if that's the absolutely right wording, just by mathematical statistic things, you will also lose high performance. You will not just weed out the weak because that's the myth that only the weak people want to work from the home office because they can hide.
and it affects the real, it has so many huge real life impacts for the people that you order back to the office. So for example, in Germany at the end of last year, Amazon decided to have a mandatory return to office for the office in Munich. And Munich is the city with the highest rent in all of Germany.
And so when Amazon did the hybrid remote thing, super many people moved out of Munich because it's so much cheaper out there and they have this, they have the beautiful scenery and the nature around it and all the things that you just described from your American example, right? And now, then Amazon ordered everyone to come back and I think it was just with three months notice or something like that.
And now imagine that in real life, you have to move back into one of the most important, most expensive cities, where it's really hard to find a a good apartment, or even an affordable apartment. Then you have to relocate your kids from one school to another. might've bought a house, so you're completely in...
Lars Nielsen (27:07.081)
You might have bought a house?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (27:13.145)
destroying people's personal setups and that's insane. That is really very short-term thinking and it will have an impact on the loyalty of your employees. Not necessarily everyone, but definitely for some because you force them to spend more money, you force them into more rigid routines that they don't want anymore.
and you create pressure on every aspect of their personal life. It's a mandatory return to office, especially with short-term notice.
It's just really not human-centric.
Lars Nielsen (28:00.578)
No, it's not. A critical point for many. How can leaders ensure fairness and equity in terms of opportunities, visibility, and recognition when some team members are remote and others might be co-located or in an office?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:18.415)
Hmm.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (28:28.969)
that's a really, really good question because that is a major hiccup. And I think the most important part is that for every department, you need to make sure that you goals, clear goals. I like the smart formula. So saying that every goal needs to be really specific, measurable, achievable, relevant for the overall outcome.
and time bound. And if you have those kinds of goals for every department, that will ensure that you can judge performance as unbiased as possible because you have black and white numbers and evidence for people's performance. Another thing is to run the weekly check-ins or daily check-ins just like you described before.
We can either do this with like a short zoom call or we can do it with a slack channel or whatnot and celebrate small wins regularly because that will ensure FaceTime for everyone and it will also ensure that the the wins of individuals get appreciated and get visibility.
I would also advise to offer public praise in asynchronous channels and really build rituals for recognition. So, and those don't necessarily need to be based on performance, right? They should definitely be built on performance or wins, but they can also be built on how well do you adhere to the company's values, for example.
because that's also an important thing that you can celebrate and praise people for. like so many times when we talk about good leadership, self-reflection comes into play here as well, because you definitely, every one of us should self-reflect on their own bias when it comes to FaceTime or favoritism.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (30:53.347)
I think every leader, including myself, has been guilty at one point or another that they have favorite team members that they just like more on a personal level. And that is totally fine as long as you make sure that you still give the same amount of meeting time to each team member that you make sure that everyone has.
the same, that you have fair goals that are based on individual situations. And when you make sure that your favoritism doesn't lead to you putting more effort on developing that person than you do on developing somebody else. So you can only do that if you do self-reflect on your own biases.
Regularly and if you check in with yourself saying okay, am I actually treating every team member the same? On a factual level right? I mean you can be warmer with somebody. don't that doesn't matter for me personally You can do that. That's fine. That's absolutely fine. But on the factual level you need to treat them on the same the same way Like have the same consequences if your favorite if your favorite team member
Lars Nielsen (32:01.557)
I think.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:24.287)
Fs up, they need to face the exact same consequences as anybody else.
Lars Nielsen (32:29.676)
You'll always have, I think that's, I know that is very human. You're always going to have people you kind of have a bit of dialogue with or interact with on common things. You and I, we both have a crush on Lula Lemon and people that don't know that it's great Canadian brand and we are not sponsored by them, but if they're listening, please sponsor us.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (32:54.693)
Hahaha
Lars Nielsen (32:57.928)
get like this is just a very tiny example, but this is something that we have been talking about like, like, hey, hey, I have to go to the little living store. We talked about that actually before the show went on. Right. So you always have these small things that people kind of interact with and that makes you talk more with them because you have things outside of work you want to talk about. Right. I'm a, I'm a training buff. And, and for me, that's always been a thing.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (33:07.77)
Yeah.
Lars Nielsen (33:25.932)
that people in a work environment, if there's something that are, or somebody who's interested in training or have a passion for training, of course I interact with them quite a lot because it's a big part of my life and it's something I feel comfortable and like to talk about. So that's, I think that's very, very common. Okay, Paulina, effective communication. love, you're going to love this question because that's something you master.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (33:41.413)
Mm.
Lars Nielsen (33:55.162)
and something you like to talk about. So effective communication is always key, but it feels even more critical and perhaps more challenging remotely. What are the kind of the biggest communication pitfalls you see in virtual teams and how can they be proactively avoided?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (34:16.303)
Hmm Good big question. I'll try to keep this my answer to a minimum, but I think My minimum Okay, let me start and Firstly the first thing I see quite often is silent misalignment. I Am what I mean by that is that a lack of spontaneous conversation
Lars Nielsen (34:25.698)
Which is impossible.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (34:46.359)
actually leads to misinterpretations, unclear expectations and worst-case scenarios in misaligned goals. And that is why it is so important to use asynchronous briefings and weekly alignment, either in person but ideally also in a documented form to clarify goals, priorities and ownership.
I would also suggest to start every meeting with a restate the goal moment where you can anchor the shared understanding what you're working towards.
The second point is the over-reliance on real-time communication. Usually in a remote or hybrid setup, because you can't just walk to the next desk, teams will default to meetings or chat threads. That in turn leads to constant interruptions, communication fatigue, and zoom fatigue as well.
because it will impact the time you can actually work focused on one topic. So I would, I recommend to establish asynchronous first norms. So for example, send updates via small loom videos, do put in updates in a Notion page, use shared documents where you can
and to suggest in suggestion mode or in comment form work on topics together. Then you should definitely define meeting free times and encourage people to silence all the notifications on their messaging apps and their email programs during those meeting free times. And then you need to rethink the way you use meetings.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (36:50.105)
You should, because we want to avoid the meeting marathon, right? So a meeting should not just be about a status reporting because that can beautifully be done asynchronously in a Slack thread notion, whatnot. So meetings should be focused on decision-making, brainstorming, or human connection.
And that also brings me to the next point, which is fragmented information across tools. So we see that a lot with our customers. That context is scattered among different tools like email, Slack, Notion, Jira, Docs and task management systems. And then you will always have a confusion. You will not know.
Which information will I put where? Which information can I find where? Super annoying. So you should have a clear definition which is the single source of truth. and that's all made, we used confluence at the beginning and we switched to notion later on and if you do use those kind of collaboration tools, you should make sure that you.
work with dates a lot so that you always know which is the most frequent information or the newest information. And then, so define this single source of truth and make it very explicit that this is where decisions, processes and updates are being centralized. And obviously you also need to train your team and also make sure that they link back to relevant resources.
It's not helpful if you just have the update there, if then nobody knows which version of a specific document or resource you should be using, so you should always make sure that you link up the relevant resource in that single source of truth.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (38:53.989)
Okay, what else? What else? When it comes to communication. passive participation in meetings. That's an important one. I think we've all been in those kind of meetings where people show up, but don't really speak up. So virtual meetings can easily become disengaged or dominated by the loudest voice in the room. So to avoid that,
You can use really structured agendas. You can use role-based speaking turns and rotating facilitators. You can encourage chat participation either in the chat itself or by really calling out people specifically saying, okay, Lisa, you haven't said anything yet on this topic. I'm super interested in your opinion as well. What are you thinking about this? Meaning,
You have to be really aware who has said anything and who hasn't. You can do live polls, especially on Zoom and Google Meet. And you can also do silent brainstorms in breakout rooms or you can just mute everyone and say, okay, just everyone take five minutes to brainstorm for yourself in order to include the more introverted silent voices in the room as well.
So all of those techniques can really help you break this passive participation. And I think the last one that I would like to mention, because feedback is super, super crucial and a remote setup or hybrid setup is to avoid the lack of feedback loops. So I've seen it time and time again, that feedback becomes very infrequent.
vague or overly formal in this kind of setup. Like you just, you have like this one big performance meeting in half every six months and that's it. And if you don't have more, more frequent and informal feedback loops, you will be eroding your performance and trust in the team because you're just not close enough to your people. So.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (41:18.985)
you should definitely normalize microfeedbacks, like smoke, quick nudges, appreciations, clarifications. You obviously need to be very attuned to, miscommunication here. You need to develop this kind of skill where you can say, okay, I think person A is talking about this topic and person B thinks he's, are talking about the same thing that he's actually talking about a second, different topic. And then just clarify that.
brings them back on the same page. And also make sure that you ask feedback yourself in this, because feedback loops is not just one-sided, right? So use your one-on-ones to ask questions like, what's one thing that I could do better? What's one thing that you, where you need more support from me? What is one thing that you need less of from me? And that will normalize this kind of feedback.
over time.
Lars Nielsen (42:20.214)
Yeah. And I think that I've been fortunate enough to have several leaders managing me that ask what is one thing I can do better or what is one thing I can do for you. And for me, that always kind of builds a lot of trust. And I feel comfortable saying like, hey, you said this the other day, I didn't like that. you're asking me to do this and this and this. This is not how
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (42:34.756)
Hmm.
Lars Nielsen (42:49.474)
You get me to be the most effective person. If you want me to be effective, please address me this way or give me these kinds of tasks or do it this way and so on. So it can kind of give this infinity loop of everybody being more productive and being more comfortable with everybody.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (43:10.713)
Yeah, very good point.
Lars Nielsen (43:13.56)
So Paulina, it has been incredibly insightful. Two full episodes on remote culture. If our listeners were to take, just to kind of summarize, like two again, two episodes, that's a lot of information. So if our listeners were to take away just two, maybe three key points from our conversation today and on the last episodes about building and thriving remote culture.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (43:21.721)
you
Lars Nielsen (43:44.012)
What would you want those to be?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (43:49.233)
the first point definitely for me is I want people to really understand that it takes a lot of intention and deliberation to set up a really strong striving remote culture. beautiful thing is this isn't only true for remote cultures. If you do this, if you use this deliberation and thought process for any culture and intentional culture building.
that will support every culture, no matter the environment. And the second point that I find most important is how important, especially in a remote setup, the building block of trust is. And it should be not just a default setting, but it is something that you need to teach
people, you need, is something that so many employees out there have never experienced or have experienced in a very small version. So you usually need to really live that on a very reliant, consistent basis for people to really trust in this, to trust the trust. and as a company, you probably will need to invest time in teaching your leaders also.
how to lead with intention and trust in an environment like this. And again, setting really smart, goals is a super, super easy way of supporting the trust. And the third point definitely is you need to be crystal clear in your communication and find ways to engage people in person
and engage them when you are not meeting in a live environment.
Lars Nielsen (45:57.454)
Thank very much. We have come to the end. This is the end. No, it's just for the end. It's just the end for today. Thank you, Pauline. Thank you very much for sharing your expertise. again, I love the practical advice that you always give to me and the listeners out there. So for our listeners who want to learn more from you or connect with Culture Code Foundation, where's the best place for them to find you online?
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (46:03.951)
for today.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (46:27.941)
The easiest way probably is our LinkedIn page. You can find us under culture coach foundation. You can also find our website under culture code foundation.com, but LinkedIn is like probably the easiest way to get in touch with us. And also my personal, you can also DM me obviously Lars will put again. Thank you so much for that. My Instagram handle and my LinkedIn.
profile on the show in the show notes. yeah. And again, like always, feel free to also reach out if you want to share your personal story, we would love to have you on the show, either in person or by us, yeah, retelling your story if you don't want to be on the show as a live guest.
Lars Nielsen (47:19.31)
Exactly. We love it. And that's, I remember this from my childhood. That's all folks. That was from a cartoon in my childhood. Now that's all the time we have for this episode of Cultures from Hell. A huge, huge thank you once again, Paulina from Culture Code Foundation. Don't forget to check out her work. are again, we're going to link to everything in the show notes. So just click and reach out to Paulina.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (47:27.397)
you
Lars Nielsen (47:48.696)
Join us next time as we delve into another fascinating aspect of and accompany culture. Goodbye for now.
Paulina von Mirbach-Benz (47:57.775)
Thank you everyone. Thank you Lars.
