Jun
15
2016
This habit that we studious home workers have – head down, nose buried in our work – is why people believe that we are actually not working. Odd isn’t it? Those habits we have that make us great workers, are the reasons why we are perceived (on occasion) as slackers. Here are three things we can do to help deflect this perception.
Whether you are a teleworker for a Fortune 100 company or an entrepreneur working from your home office, you know that how you start your morning can set you up for a great day – or an utterly miserable one. I’ve had my fair share of both, and I found that there are some key things – five of them in fact! – that you can do to help prep yourself for a day of success.
It happens. You’re having a highly productive morning, when suddenly you realize you haven’t received a response from your boss regarding that really-important, time-sensitive project. You scroll through your emails and realize they haven’t sent you anything for the last two weeks. You check your instant messenger service: The boss is in a meeting.
The boss is always in a meeting.
You start to panic a little. What if your boss has been avoiding you because all of those meetings… well – they’re about you! You’re getting fired! Nothing left to do now but wait for the inevitable. So you wait for the boss to make the first move.
And you wait.
And you wait some more.
Then the boss sends you an email. “Where’s that project report?”
ARGH!!The curse of invisible leadership!
The other day I was pondering a virtual communication variation of the classic tree falling in the woods scenario:
If a virtual leader shares information that no one ever sees or hears, have they really communicated?
The answer from many folks is a quite emphatic “No!” Why then do so many of us throw out information and say that we have communicated, when we haven’t been mindful about the medium of our message or the context of our receivers?
