Hybrid Teams And How They Bring The Best Of Both Onsite/Remote Worlds!
Are you ready to unlock the secrets of ‘Building Healthy, Happy, Hybrid Teams’?
Our latest episode is all about guiding you to creating the perfect blend of remote and in-person teamwork that makes sense for your team!
From the early days of skepticism to the current era of widespread remote and hybrid work, we’ve come a long way, haven’t we?
We’ll navigate the intricate hybrid landscape, uncovering challenges like communication hurdles and accountability dilemmas. But fear not, we’re also celebrating the incredible opportunities – the ability to scout talent globally and the freedom and flexibility that the modern workforce craves.
Join us as we dive into the keys that unlock success for hybrid teams: crafting the right culture, mastering communication, nailing accountability, and embracing strong leadership.
But that’s not all – we’re also sharing tips on fostering team dynamics that make work feel like a happy family and striking the right balance between flexibility and structure.
Stay tuned for more insights and practical strategies to cultivate an exceptional team dynamic that leads to success.
545 | Building Healthy, Happy, Hybrid Teams
Chris LoCurto 0:00
On today's episode, we're diving into building healthy, happy hybrid teams. Join us as we uncover the secrets to creating a harmonious and productive blend of remote and in-person teamwork that is coming up next.
Welcome to the Chris LoCurto show where we discuss leadership and life and discover that business is what you do, not who you are. Welcome to the show, folks, I hope you're having a fabulous day, wherever you are. Today we are talking about something you know, I will be honest, in my early year years, gosh, I shouldn't just say my earlier years, up until about the time of COVID, I have never been a leader who loved having remote workers. I'm just gonna tell you that right up front. That is something in my 30-plus years of leading people that I have just never been excited about.
I've always preferred to have people in the same spot to be able to work with people face-to-face. If I needed something, I could go to them if they needed to get with a team and solve something that could solve it. So the remote piece for me has just never been a great thing in my mind until I was forced into it. We didn't have an option until it became something that was a must. Because of COVID the way that things are just like a lot of you out there who are listening to this. It actually changed the way that we did our team. It changed a lot of things actually. And for me, it became something that was a must we had to do it. And so for me, it's a figured out, let's do it. Let's get in and let's make it happen. And Praise God, we had phenomenal relationships, friends like Magnus and Arson who runs Good Night, I don't know 60, some remote people or more.
Actually, it's probably more than that. Now, at this point, guys, I think it's over 100 people that we could turn to and say, Hey, before we dig heavy into this, give us the ins and outs. And very quickly, it became something that we were very glad to have. It was something that we could see was a benefit to us. And I'm going to walk through some of those benefits and you know, some of the difficulties and some of the the great aspects and bad aspects. I'm going to hit a bunch of those and I couldn't this isn't going to be a colossal deep dive, but it's going to be the things that you need to be hearing right now. Because it's something that everybody I shouldn't say to everybody, it's something that a lot of people should consider. So, again, what was my hesitancy? Well, one of the things that I've always struggled with is if I can't see you get to talk with you, how do I know that you're busting it? How do I know that you're making it happen? How do I know that you're not just slacking, I've never been one to hire slackers. But it's something that I have come to discover with certain people that when you give them the opportunity to not have the accountability, then they're a little bit more difficult or considerably more difficult to lead.
Accountability is the number two biggest issue we see in every business. We see it everywhere. There's not a company who comes into what we do and into, you know, how we lead leaders or lead businesses or do strat plans or any of that, that communication isn't the number one issue. And accountability or lack of high-quality accountability isn't the number two issue. And right behind that culture almost always tends to be number three, no issues with culture. So the accountability piece for me is big. And it's something I've taught for decades, you have to have accountability. And because of great communication and great accountability, our team is probably half the size of what most people would hire to do the amount of stuff that we do. Yes, half the size, because we have an incredible team who busts it and gets things done. They're highly effective. They're highly efficient. They have great accountability, they have great communication, do we make mistakes of course we make mistakes, we script things all the time. But our processes and our accountability cover that. It helps us to get things done and move on. So one of my biggest hesitancies before I got into you know a wide-scale remote worker I've always had somebody you know, Brian incessantly, as a remote worker, there's people that I've had, you know, one-offs here and there. But for the most part, almost all of our team is remote right now. Now, in probably a couple of months, there will be a handful of us that will be back together on a daily basis, or, you know, at least a few days a week. But for the most part, we're remote. Now we do all of our events together, you know, obviously, we all have our Next-Level Life, Strap Plans, quarterly Retreats, all that stuff is still happening in our offices. But we have discovered that we can be more efficient in getting things done by having a remote team. And another thing, you know, a hesitancy of not being, you know, face to face, was I really have never loved the concept of hiring somebody who's not even in the same town. Right?
So that because then what do you do? How do you make sure that you control the culture, you know, I've always believed the culture must get rubbed on somebody, right? They have to be in the building, experiencing the culture experiencing the communication, experiencing, you know, the core values, all of these aspects, how we treat people, how we treat clients when they come in. And so that's always been one of those things, where it's like, I just, I don't want to spend the time trying to get somebody who's not here in town to get all the culture, all of them. So these were the hesitancies that I went into it with, I'm sure you guys probably have other ones. There's, you know, there's other things that that, you know, communication for us is not that big of a deal. So, we're gonna make communication happen. But it's those other pieces that I wanted to make sure how I know that there, they are living out our core values, at least, you know, during their workday, right? So these are things that were concerns of mine. And I'm glad to say that over the years, our team has just killed it, has just nailed it, and has done a phenomenal job. So we're gonna kind of talk about that today. So in the first aspect of this or the first segment of this, I want to talk about kind of navigating, the hybrid landscape, if you will. So the things I just laid out the biggest things, leaders should be worried about, let me say, if you're not concerned about this, that should be that that should be a concern in itself, that should be a problem right there. If you're not concerned about communication issues, understand that remote work is not going to be good for you. And I don't mean that in a way of you're not concerned because you do the things that we teach, and you kill it, and you you follow this stuff.
That's not what I mean, I'm talking about just the average person, it's like, I'm not worried about communication, I'm sure it's gonna work out just fine. If that is the if that's the mindset that you have, I can promise you remotes gonna suck. That is not going to work well. All right. So this needs to be some, even me, the guy who teaches this on a continuous basis, the company that teaches this on a continuous basis, I can tell you that that was a concern. We had multiple meetings about how are we going to make sure that we were communicating really well. What are we going to do to survey our team to find out where the communication failures are happening? You know, what are we going to do when we find out that a team member is not doing a good job communicating? So first thing is, I want you to be concerned, that communication is going to drop, if not tank, let me say the quality of communication. So that needs to be the first thing that you're focused on. The second thing is man, listen, just trust me on this. This is a gut punch, and I know it, but you need to hear this. Most likely you have accountability issues with your team members. Right now, if you've been through Strap Plan if you've been through a lot of the leadership, and if you're in the Next Level Mastermind group, if you've been through the leadership stuff that we teach, then maybe it's not that bad. But I will tell you, really, I want you to think about what are your processes for accountability in your team. Now, if you do not have phenomenal accountability, great accountability, then I can promise you, you're going to be battling this on a continuous basis now, but without even going remote. You're probably battling this, and you may not even recognize it. There are a lot of companies that have these issues that just keep coming up over and over and over again. And then when I sit down with them, our team sits down with them and they go, you know, hey, well, where's the accountability for this? You know, where's your where's your care is at the bare minimum.
Where are your KPIs? You know, where's your processes? Why But how do they understand your core values? What's the what's the mission and the vision that you've got? As we go through fundamental things? What we discover is people just don't have them. It's not there. It's a struggle. Or if they do have it, they're not done. Well, you know, and I will be the first to admit that IRAs are very difficult to do well, I will never sugarcoat carrots. You know, there's a lot of stuff you can do. Well, that's, you know, it isn't that difficult. But carriers are tough to get done. Well, that's, that's just the way that it is, right? That's why we have an incredibly long couple of lessons on how to make that stuff happen. There's a reason for it. Because people tend to not understand what it means to create a phenomenal expectation, not a task, right? We're not looking, how do you describe a task? How do you do a job description? Those aren't the things that we're focused on? What is the expected result that we're looking for? I know, I'm simplifying the daylights out of it right now. But I think you get the point. If you don't have all of these accountability processes in place, you should be concerned, that remote is not going to work. If you suck at accountability. It's just not. Well, Chris, surely we can make anything happen, you can make anything happen. But over time, lack of quality, and accountability, is actually going to create way more issues, where you might find yourself doing really well, early on and with a hybrid teen, only to discover later on, that the lack of accountability, reveals 20 issues that you've now got to go and solve, and you don't have time to do it.
So the second thing I want you to really think about is what it looks like to put quality accountability in place. What does it look like to make sure that people know what winning looks like to know what's expected of them to know the results that you expected them? To know what it looks like to do their job successfully? When they're not? In the office? Right? And somebody's not side by side? What does it look like to make sure that they're still living out? Your company's core values your mission? What is the purpose for them to show up every day at work? Even if it's, you know, at home, behind their computer in their PJs? What is the purpose of that today? Why are they there? How do they treat team members? How do they treat leaders? How do they treat vendors? And how do they treat the client? You know, how do you make sure that they're doing a great job, that's one of the things that I learned early on, is that sometimes you can have team members who aren't treating your clients very well because it's just them, it's them sitting in their home doing their thing, and they don't feel that pressure of leadership being right around the corner, that they can't, you know, treat a client badly, right? They get off a call with a client, and you know, they're staring at their computer, you know, petting their cat, but, you know, they don't, they don't have the immediate response of somebody who's sitting next to them listening to how the way that they treated a client.
So you will find that if you don't have things in place for all of these aspects, and there's, there's so much more accountability if you don't have those in place, it's going to be an issue, right? The culture piece that I talked about, what does it look like to make sure your team members are actually living out your culture, and your core values at the bare minimum during the hours that they work? Right? What are the things that are the most important things to you and your business or your team? Do you have things in place that cover that to make sure people are responding that way? Do you have you know, if it's vitally important to you that people respond to emails in a certain amount of time phone calls and a certain amount of time? Yeah, what does that look like? You know, how do you make sure that it's being done? How do you make sure that they are caring for people the way that you expect them to care for how do you make sure that they're starting on time? You know, how do you know that they aren't if you have a set number of hours, you know, for a lot of folks, you still need somebody? eight to five, right? Because you have clients that are probably calling in or contacting or right. So how do you know if they're actually doing that? How do you know if they're not taking advantage of the time and have fallen behind on client details? Whatever it is, that is important to you in your culture now for us You know, God and grace, those are wanting to know how do I make sure that people are treating people the way that we think that they should? You know, how do I make sure that, you know, we're being graceful to each other graceful to, you know, vendors that we whatever it is, how do I make sure that we're being excellent excellence is a core value of ours? What does that look like?
So these challenges are things that you as a leader, need to be thinking through. And the funny thing is, is, you know, if you're a parent, you know, if you have a child that's going off to college or something, if you have a child that's going off to a, I don't know, an internship somewhere, if you have a child that's starting a new job somewhere, what does it look like for them to follow your home core values, so things to be thinking about as you send people off, or allow people to go off on their own and do things on their own in this hybrid type. So next aspect of this is something that I have loved discovering. And I've always known this, and it's just it's one of those things you think about, but again, the issues that I had kind of overrode this, a great aspect of the hybrid team is finding people with great skill sets, finding great talent, right, great gifts, it is amazing to me, the team that we have that is the most remote, the furthest away, you know, they are quality, they have better skills.
So it's interesting, I got really frustrated, I'm not going to share the the aspects of it, the details of it. But there are certain roles, that it just drive me nuts to try and hire locally. And, you know, it is something I'm trying not to give too much information about, you could probably figure it out if you listen long enough. But it drives me nuts to go out and hire these roles that I need the specific jobs and pay an incredible amount of money for people who don't get things done. And the pool you have is the pool that's around you. Now a lot of you get that a lot of you understand that, that when you look around you that sometimes the pool around you just isn't that great. And if you could just reach outside of that. Now, again, if they don't have to be physically there, then I really want you to consider remote. I want to I want this to be something that you walk through all of these processes and ask yourself the question, can I find better talent outside of my pool, you know, outside of my local area, and I'm born in the small area? I mean, the Nashville area has been exploding. But it's interesting that there are certain roles that there's always this mentality, that you know, you need to pay me and I can't prove what I'm going to accomplish for you. And it's just it's ridiculous. So after being really frustrated about it, and COVID hitting, you know, I gave Joel our president a hey, go get me people outside of here. Go find go build a team outside of here and praise God he did. And again with the help of somebody like Magnus, human arson, we put together a grass and I just approved it.
Joe put together a great team that was absolutely killing it. They're doing a great job. They are happy. They function well. They approach each day with excitement about what they're going to tackle. I mean, it's just been incredible. So a great aspect for you to be thinking about is what it looks like to hire talent. Because they can be remote somewhere that is not local? Can you get into a different market can you get into a different area and find people with skill sets that can actually knock things out instead of keep showing up and you know drinking your coffee and eating your snacks but not producing anything?
So that for me has been fantastic. It is great to be able to provide my team with another team to back them up and accomplish things and if we don't we don't just all sit around going I wonder if this person is going to do something in the next three months. I wonder if they're gonna actually you know show us some money in the next six months right so that for me as you can see that's that has been in its only one area of business It's only one area that drives me nuts. The other areas I'm great with, you can be local, you can be remote. But this is something that I found that is better for me to get remote. Now, with that also being said, there's also the options for the possibilities. And this is again, this took me a little while to be okay with this because I've always liked people being available while the team is available. You know, if the customer believes that we're available eight to five, then we all should be available eight to five, well, guess what, you don't always need everybody available eight to five. And when Brian went on to Sicily and started working part-time for us, doing his missions work over there and working part-time for us here. That became very evident, you know, he did not need to be working the same exact hours, he just needed to be available in specific hours when we did team meetings and stuff. And that wasn't difficult to make that happen. You got to stuff done, he got his job done, he did a great job, he killed it, and we loved it. That's great. Well, that allowed us to open that up to other folks, as well, we now have a team member who has literally just moved to Spain, I don't know if it's a forever thing or a part-time thing, or what that's gonna look like. But she's over there. And she's loving it and joining it. Well, she just got there. But this gives another opportunity, her role is one that doesn't need to be available during the eight to five, you know, time slot that we are, right, she's available for team meetings. In fact, I mean, when we're starting the day, it's in the middle of her afternoon.
So it allows us to really meet with her get things done, and then she can go on and doing her own thing. So. So that's another great aspect of having a hybrid team is if it works out, for them to be more flexible with their time and you're okay with it, and it doesn't affect you in a negative way, then that gives you another ability to change your pool of people you're drawing from. So with all of this being said, there's also something that is incredibly important, and that is strong leaders. So yes, you've got to develop the culture you need, you need to have high levels of quality communication, or it's just not going to work out, you have got to have quality accountability, or it's just going to become, you're going to be fighting fires the whole time. But if you do not have strong leaders or a strong leader, depending upon how many people you have remote, if you don't have strong leadership, then your biggest failure here is going to be a massive lack of productivity. You're going to spend an incredible amount of money, paying people who don't know what the heck they're supposed to accomplish today, who are trying to get questions answered, but nobody's there to answer them who are frustrated, because, you know, they don't feel like they're winning, and they're taking money from you and good quality people are gonna hate taking money from you. And feeling like they're not doing something while themselves.
Or you may have people who are very glad that there's no leadership, and there's no accountability, and they get to do whatever they want and work two or three hours a day, because nobody's checking on nobody's making sure. So it's vitally important that you have strong leadership. Now, I always say do not hire anybody, without a leader to lead them. Now, you would say, Well, no doubt, Chris, that's obvious. No, that's not obvious. There are a lot of times people will hire somebody for a role. And then there isn't an available leader to lead them. They may have somebody they report to, but that person is not available. That person is not leading them. It's this kind of island that that you create, because you convince yourself that the roles of good role and we need to put somebody in the role. Do not hire people without quality leaders to lead them. Do not do a hybrid team, do not go remote, without making sure that you have a leader or leaders to lead your people that are remote. Don't waste your money on folks who are sitting there twiddling their thumbs, because they have no clear direction. They have no clear vision. They think they're doing the things they're supposed to do, but they're not absolutely sure. Don't waste your time.
So if you're going to make this happen, make it a must. If we don't have a strong leader in place, or if you're doing multiple teams, strong leaders. If we don't have those folks in place, then we cannot move out on remote yet. We have to make sure we're setting people up for success. We have to make sure that We are allowing people to understand what direction we're moving in. You hire a role and they don't know what the role purpose is and what direction they're heading in, then guess what? You're doing the shotgun approach? You have people going in multiple directions, because they just don't know. So nobody gets hired without strong leadership. All right? Section two, segment two, Process Two, I don't know, how are you going to look at this to fostering healthy team dynamics so that you can create happy and engaged team members? So relationship is a must. Let me say it this way. And I think everybody is going to get this because it's, it's how you would feel? So, you know, check me on this. Do you want to feel cared for as a team member? Now, if you're an entrepreneur, business owner, you know, leader, that may not be a place that you are anymore. But there was a time there was I can tell you as I stepped up into leadership, throughout time, I wasn't focused on being cared for. I was focused on creating things, I was focused on moving things. I didn't sit there and think, man, I I don't know if my leader cares for me. Right. But as a team member, absolutely, I did.
So did you probably every single role you've had, at some point some way or another, think about just a role as a family member. How much do you want to be cared for? How much do you want to feel valued? Come on. Think about this for a second. How much do you want to feel valued? Tell some of you young folks listening to this. You might be sitting there thinking I don't feel cared for or valued, I'm gonna go quit my job. Don't do that yet. Don't get your nose off to spite your face. You know, there's there's options. There's things you could do. But it's a true valid thought, right? What if you don't feel valued and cared for where you are? Well, then you're probably not something that's super important. bought in, you're probably not bought into the team, you're probably not bought into the role, you're probably not bought into the business. Why? Because there's no value to you, or at least you feel like you what you're experiencing is, you just don't feel valued. So leaders, guess what, you have to make sure that your remote people that listen, if you if you're not doing it at home, right now, if you're not doing it in the brick and mortar that you're in right now, if you're not doing it in the place that everybody shows up to, you know, day after day, you're definitely not going to be able to do it in a remote setting. So start there, right, make sure you're creating phenomenal relationships with your team members in your brick and mortar now, to make sure that they feel cared for that they feel valued, that they have ownership that they feel bought into what you're doing. Then as you look at this hybrid role that has to be a full court press, that's got to be something that you let them and I'm not saying you got to go spend 30 minutes a day, just having, you know, silly conversations about stuff that doesn't really matter. That's not what I'm talking about.
Make sure that you're communicating that your team members are cared for and valued. Make sure that you're putting things in place to ensure that the team members are bought in. Right. So don't don't do it fake. I used to. I used to have a leader in my early days that he'd walked down the hall and it was like a checkbox went right above his head. You know, he saw me in is you could see his eyes go. I gotta say something positive to Chris. And then he would say, hey, great job on this thing over here. And I can tell it wasn't sincere. It was done from a task instead of a, you know, a place of heart. Right? And finally, one day I just said, dude, listen, you don't have to say that to me. It's okay. And he goes, Oh, I don't I want No, it's okay. Never got another compliment from that guy. Cracks me up. I was like, well, that checkbox didn't pop above his head anymore, I guess. Listen, it can't be a checkbox. Your team members need to feel bought in your team members need to be valued. If you're going to have bought-in team members, they need to feel valued. They need to feel like you actually care about them. And being remote. I can tell you this, it's tough. Sometimes it's tough for people to feel cared for. Right? It can be difficult that we that was one of the things that we ran into with some of our team members is feeling alone. You know, feeling out there feeling like But they aren't around people, and they wanted to be around people. And so we put things in place. There are certain meetings that happen certain lunch meetings, Erin West does a specific lunch meeting with his team, just to make sure that they all are coming together as a community and spending time together, right? Because it can be tough being out there by yourself, right?
So that's something that you have to make sure you are doing also, one of the things that we do, and it's yes, it's very expensive, but we have a tendency to fly people here. So when we do events, when we do retreats, when we do our Next-Level Leadership Live Event, we have an incredible line item. Travel amount for people who are coming during that timeframe. Because we want people to feel a sense of belonging. We want them to, you know, experience each other. We don't want them to feel isolated. We don't want them to feel like they are alone. And I talked about this too. You have to watch your personality styles. 99 eyes, this is very difficult for it's very difficult for a 90 Now, I'm not saying that they can't do it. That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm just saying that if you have a 99 I Who is not spending time with people all day long, you know, at least on the phone, talking to people experiencing others, then you're probably going to find that person leaving and going to a brick and mortar. Folks, I've seen it a ton of times, I've seen a lot of folks that don't even have to be 99 that could be 67, I've seen folks that will leave their role, some for less money to go be around people because people matter so much. Now you DS and C's, you're like, I don't get it. Great, you don't have to get it, you just got to get it. Right, you have to understand that if you have a personality style, that is feeling super isolated and not feeling a part like you belong to something a part of a team, then there's a really good chance that over, and even no matter how much you pay them, that they will be leaving and going to something else. I've seen it a lot lately. I shouldn't say I've seen it a lot. I've seen it probably half a dozen times where people are choosing to get out of their role. And even cash out. I don't know what the percentage at least 50% of those probably would be leaving less, you know, more money for less money. Because they needed to be around people. So things to think about how do you make sure that they are feeling like they are a part that they are that they belong? Right? Do not let them feel isolated. And I'm not saying you got to fly your people, you know, all to your brick and mortar. I'm just saying think of ways what does it look like what you know, even just, you know, as Aaron does putting in a lunch from time to I think he does it once a week. Spending that time with the teams they all eat lunch together? Oh, I don't want to see people see me eating food on camera, trust me, you will get over it quickly. The key is not judgment on how you eat your food. The key is just spending time together. So third aspect of this is that we talk through hybrid teams. the third segment, I guess I could say is balancing the flexibility in structure. So what what is remote work? Best practices, so I can't get to all of this. So I'm just going to have to really pound at-home processes. And tools are huge. If you're going to be successful. So what am I talking about here? Guys, you have got to have great processes in place. This is how we do stuff. This is how we do this role. This is how we do this communication piece. This is how we do this with clients. This is how we do whatever it is. This is how we build this aspect of a website. If you're working on I don't know what it is right? Whatever you're doing. The thought processes have to be in place. Now. I will say this is something that comes out of every strap plan. Every strap plan we find that processes are behind, haven't been updated, aren't written down aren't documented, are just crazy outdated because they've changed so many things or we're not even doing those things anymore. We have some stuff that's documented, but nobody does that anymore. People can't find the processes, they don't know where to find a process. So let me just say, that is a huge part, you've got to make sure that you are and I'm just gonna give you the quick rundown, we go through this, in so much more detail as we walk through something like strat plan, but I'm gonna just give you the quick rundown, you got to make sure that the processes are defined, you've got to make sure that they are optimized, you've got to make sure that they're written down there documented somewhere, you've got to make sure that people have access to it, and you got to make sure that they're trained. They have to be trained on the processes, and you need to put something in place to optimize them as you go. If you don't have quality processes in place, then you're literally giving people the opportunity to go do this role and figure it out on their own. Now, some people might do a great job doing that. But I'm going to bet a lot of people are going to shortcut things, I'm going to bet that there's going to be a lot of things that get done that aren't to the standard that you would have that the excellence that you would have in your team. But can you blame them? If they don't have quality processes? What do they do? You know, a good team member will figure it out. Even if it's not a great process, they'll figure something out. What about tools? Do you have the tools in place that they need to create quality communication? Do you have the tools that they need in place to do their job? Well, do you have the tools in place for them to have accountability for themselves? A lot of people want accountability. They want to know what it looks like to be successful. They want to know what it's like they they want you to see that they're doing a great job, right? So are the tools in place for them to do the best job that they possibly can? Do they have quality computers? This is something that you know, as the world, you know, seems like every time the world revolves, uh, once computers are just outdated and old and slow? Do they have the quality computers to do what they need? Do they have the software programs? Right? Do they understand the structure of how things are supposed to work? Do they understand who they're reporting to? Do they understand who they work with? You know, if you have teams working on the same projects, is there a hierarchy? So they know, who do I listen to? Who do I report to? Who has ultimate responsibility of this thing? Whatever it is, are those things in place? And is there solid communication and solid visibility on the tasks on the projects? Can you know one of the things we use just amazingly, is Asana, we use Asana all the time, and that is big for us. It's not only tasks, it's projects, it's, it's everything we use, like crazy. And that helps us to have a lot of visibility. So it helps the team members to have visibility on what they're supposed to be doing. What tasks are supposed to be focusing on? It helps the leader to be able to assign stuff out left and right very easily.
I don't live on the only one in the company who doesn't live in Asana. Because I don't have a job that does daily tasks like everybody else does. I'm doing things like this, I'm doing the show, I'm doing coaching I'm doing Next-Level Life, I'm doing strap plans and retreats and all that stuff. So I don't live in task, right? And yet, I still have a decent amount of stuff that comes out of Asana. It's just people aren't assigning me a bunch of tasks in there. But I can the other direction. All of my leaders can assign tasks, team members can assign tasks to people, all kinds of great visibility, helping out with projects, being able to look at a project and see where is it. Is it advancing? Well, are the right things getting done? Are people there's a oh, there's a program out there that we help a lot of folks with, I'm not gonna mention the name. But there's a program out there. That's a great linear program that a lot of folks follow. And then they get into this thing and there's this process of where are you on this project. And people are always Oh, everything's great, no problem. And then three months later, they're finding out things are falling apart. We help a lot of clients to navigate that program a heck of a lot better. Some of you may be able to figure out what I'm talking about. By putting in all of the stuff that we teach the accountability pieces, the communication pieces, the how to run a project really well all that kind of fun stuff. If you don't have a solid program and maybe That's something you should really take a look at, maybe you're in this program that is super linear, and it doesn't have good accountability and it doesn't give great visibility to folks, then you need something. And your team needs something, right? So to help them to be really cohesive, on how a project is going, you know, basing for us, one of the things that we will do is we'll base things on, you know, there's this aspect of this project begins as soon as this person finishes this aspect of the project.
So this is contingent on what this person does over here, right? A great leader can watch that and see how are things going. Are people doing what they need to do? Are they getting things done in a timely manner? are they focusing on the right stuff that they have the right priorities in place, and that's a big, that's another big piece is making sure that they have right priorities, don't let them go after all the easy stuff, because the thing you need them to focus on is his conflict. We'll say we are all all of us. 100% of us are guilty of that, right? Let me go work on this easy thing because that conflict piece I don't really want to hit right now. So all of these things need to be in place so that you don't have scattered distracted people. You don't have folks who are working on things that aren't a priority to you don't have folks who are working on the easiest aspects and you're the complicated things are the most important things that aren't getting done. So what are some great examples, you know, we use, like I say, Asana, we use Dashlane is phenomenal. We love Dashlane. Maybe there's a better something out there. But we are big fans of Dashlane. And Dashlane is the password keeper.
So you know, I only have to remember a couple of passwords nowadays. Praise God, hallelujah. I think everybody if you've not moved in this direction, why not? The great thing is we can assign them to team members, all of our team members have a Chris Locurto email, right? So when we do all of these apps, your email is what gives you access to the app. So if somebody quits or if somebody you know, gets let go or something like that, then we kill the email, it kills all of the access to everything that we've given them, right? But that also allows you to give them access to a password without ever knowing what the password is. So if you give them limited access, then they can use that password. They never know what the password is, they can't change it, they can't give it out. But they can log into the apps that you want them to. You know, if you want them to have greater access and be able to change stuff, you can do that as well. But Dashlane is big first Dropbox is big for us. Because you know, that's, our cloud version of everything that we use Evernote, and only a few of us use Evernote. But just think through those are just some examples. But make sure that everybody has access to the tools and the software that you need. Now, with that being said, I will say this, you're going to have a lot of folks that believe that the software program that they use is the one that they need to use and that everybody in the business should be using. That's one of the tough ones we have. I don't know how many subscriptions to software programs that we have that the team uses, and we go through them once or twice a year to make sure are we still using this. If we do not get rid of it, I don't want to keep paying for it.
So make sure that people are using the same stuff. Get them on the same page. And if you are not the person to be leading that up, I am not that person. You know, people have come to me in the past and like, hey, we need to be using this app over here. And then you know, I'm like, Okay, let's try it and then come to find out. We were paying for that thing over and this app over here. And nobody wants to use that. It just creates this muddy water. But as our company grew and more, tech became more sophisticated, I wasn't the guy. I will be honest, I'm not a big Google Doc fan. I'm not why. Because I came up with Lotus. I came up in the early days. So for me, I'm still when it comes to things like Excel and Word. And I don't barely use words anymore. But Excel is a big thing for me. Right? I know it inside and out. I can understand formulas, I can understand all that kind of stuff. However, my team convinced me that there was a time when we needed to really shift to Google Docs because it had better opportunities. We're already paying for aspects of this stuff. And it made sense, right? So make sure that you're not going out and doing 400 different subscriptions because every week somebody tells you you need a new subscription. Right? You got to vet the daylights out of that. But at the same time, don't hold the team up if there's a better program that your team He needs to be using and it's going to make things easier, more cohesive, great, get the stuff available for him, make it available. And that will make the remote the hybrid aspect. So much better.
So with all of that being said, I didn't go into heavy details on the importance of personality styles, you have got to make sure if you're going to do hybrid teams and listen, I don't care if it's a hybrid team or local team, whatever, you've got to be working through personality styles, you've got to make sure that you're utilizing the disk products that you are communicating with your team members, this way, that you're teaching people to lean in each other's directions, this will definitely enhance your communication. For so long, people have told us we thought our communication was great until we went through your video as a team. And then we discovered that our communication was actually chaos. And we started putting all this stuff in place. And man, now we really communicate well. So make it happen. I'm always gonna tell you you should do DISC and Values, because that also helps you to see what motivates people. And I think that's super important for you to understand. But at the bare minimum, you got to be doing the disk stuff.
So to get to the DISC products to make sure your communication is working to make sure you have better teamwork to make sure you have a greater understanding with your teams go to Chris LoCurto.com/store. For more details, get the information, trust me on this, it's going to change and revolutionize the way that you communicate with your team, Chris LoCurto.com/store. And there you have it, folks, we've unraveled the mysteries of building healthy, happy hybrid teams. We're going to continue on this type of stuff. So I want you to stay tuned for our next episode. I remember it's about embracing the best of both worlds. Yes, it is. If you've got a brick-and-mortar and you have to have people local, great, that's fantastic. Make it happen. I'm still always going to prefer that. It's I love, you know, as we're building our new office spaces, and we're going to be having the local folks coming to the office space, the new office space, I look forward to it. I can't wait. I'm excited about it. It's a great thing for me. But it is so much better having both aspects having both worlds. Because of the talent that we have on the team that's out there, we got them all over. We have all over the US we I'm all over the world. So it's great. I love it. It's fantastic. So we'd love to hear your stories and insights we really do. I'm telling you, we would love to hear from you. So feel free to share a podcast at Chris LoCurto.com. Once again, that's a podcast at Chris LoCurto.com. Well, that's all the time we have for today. I hope this information has helped you to make quality decisions on moving forward on remote teams, and hybrid teams. Hope that has really helped you out. As always take this information, change your leadership, change your business, change your life. And join us on the next episode.