By Kirsten Lora, VP of Learning, Catapult
Starting a new job is always a challenge. This time I started something new during the week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve; during a pandemic; with a group of people who were just being moved into a team together. It was a set of hurdles that were unique to the moment.
The challenges of assimilating as a leader have been interesting in a remote environment. I did not honestly think it would be that different, as I have worked remote for years. I always would start with facetime in the office before I spent time remote, which wasn’t possible this time. During this past month, though, I have learned just how much that facetime meant to me, so I found ways to work around not having it.
In the first 30 days, I had three main objectives—learn the company, learn the team, and learn why they hired me, meaning what I can do for the organization to help us serve our members.
Learning the company
So, what did I do to learn the company? In a virtual world, I have no hallway chatter, no dropping by and meeting the team casually, no way to easily gauge the corporate culture. I do not truly know what the dress code is, as I only see folks from the neck up on video (and I assume that they are wearing sweats or pajama bottoms because why wouldn’t you be as comfy as possible right now?). Missing are the cues about people’s likes, learned by seeing books on their desk shelves, photos of families on a counter, or awards or sports team banners on the wall. The obvious things that I could use to connect with people are gone; I get glimpses into homes, but they are less informative as we are all finding spaces for work in environments that may not have been designed for that originally. Instead of seeing the office setup that reflects the individual, I see kitchens, dining rooms, laundry rooms, bedrooms, and when I am lucky, I see pets, adorable children, and sarcastic teens like my own. Gone is the chance to grab lunch to get to know my peers and casually ask what my boss is really like and which things I should never, ever do if I want to stay on her good side.
I have no way to listen and learn in larger discussions, as meetings seem to be more 1:1 than one-to-many. I must listen harder than I have before because I do not get the background chatter and information flow typical of an in-person office. There is no “how-everything-works” folder, so I seek out data in Salesforce, on websites, and on our file server to learn what I can. I am also lucky to have my predecessor here to help me understand the learning business. I ask a LOT of questions and introduce myself to people across the organization who others have said are great sources of information. It is like a treasure hunt of resources and insight, and it’s fascinating to hear the perspectives firsthand.
I may never have gotten these same moments if we were in the office together; I probably would have been introduced in large meetings, hearing their names and roles but never taken a moment to deep-dive into what someone does on the advisory hotline or on the events team, and I probably wouldn’t have connected with our partners during the first month. I am learning that taking time to connect across the organization will help me understand my team and role with context. If you haven’t sat down and spoken to contributors across your organization, I encourage you to do so—it is amazing what you will learn and the opportunities you will identify!
Learning the team
At the end of month one, I can identify the things I relied on when I started a job in an office—but there is so much more that I have found by being without the office. Because of the things that are not there, I have had to be more intentional with my team to help us form as a working group. I am asking them to take joint ownership of many tasks, so that we can share information and so that bonds can be forged. They immediately formed working teams, and I can tell they are excited to collaborate on joint projects that will help our team grow in new directions. We will be doing group activities to help us bond—one of our first is learning how we can all gain back time by using Outlook to maximize business productivity. We are lucky that someone on the team teaches that class—look for it to hit our schedule soon so your teams can learn as well!
For my team, I have forgotten many things that would have come naturally if we were together. At first, they did not know how formal and informal I am about the mechanics of a team. Thankfully, a team member spoke up and asked if we could add a “ask Kirsten anything” segment to our team meetings. Round one was about requesting time off, comp time, and flex time (in a pandemic I am beyond flexible as we are all crazy juggling life and work). I am guessing I will hear questions about status reports someday (meh), openness to new ideas (BRING THEM!), best way to communicate (email, text), and who knows what else. I am looking forward to hearing the questions, as it helps me learn what we all should be doing to form team dynamics while remote.
I am building relationships with my team and I love spending time doing that. I have asked many questions about what they want from their careers, as now is the time for me to adjust the team as we all start working together. I am learning who welcomes early mornings and who is more than willing to answer text messages on the weekend. I have had great moments sharing homeschooling stories, discovering other LEGO fanatics, and chatting about the stubborn parents who we adore. I am holding myself accountable to continue to connect with each person individually – as the ways I encouraged folks to drop by in the past just don’t work in a virtual environment. I can’t find out everyone’s favorite candy and keep it in a giant bowl in my office so they can drop by, grab a piece of candy, and chat for a couple of minutes. I’m still trying to figure out how to have that casual interaction—I’ve heard others use things like Slack with multiple channels—some for work, some for fun things like pet photo of the day; we will see what we figure out.
Learning why I was hired
I am an idea person who loves change, and I’m always looking for what’s next. I am still in my first month here, but I’m already stirring up changes within operations and in our content. Even with those changes swirling, right now my focus is more on learning the organization and learning the team—especially the team. We’ll only be able to do ALL of the things we want to accomplish if we’re firing on all cylinders. Alone I will accomplish nothing—but with a team who enjoys collaboration, gets excited about change and growth, and who has ideas with which we can run, I know we’ll be successful. I hope that all the ideas currently swirling come to fruition, as I think we are all going to have fun this year working together and challenging ourselves to add even more learning solutions for our members.
I can say that there are many things in the works—we know that learning is so important to organizations, and we have more ways to partner and support. We also recognize the uniqueness of the pandemic and the constraints it places on people’s time; there’s a greater need for us to flex how we deliver content to you. You’ll see new products soon; I always welcome new ideas on how we can improve and expand upon what we already do as well as the new learning opportunities we can try. Feel free to reach out so we can connect and talk about your ideas!
If you have questions or feedback on this blog post or other learning issues, she can be reached at Kirsten.lora@letscatapult.org.
