Empowering Teams and Professionals in the Digital Age with Lorraine K. Lee

Speaker 1: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast, where we explore cutting edge strategies to keep teams human- centered, drive innovation, and empower you with the tools and insights needed to help your team excel and thrive in today's rapidly changing world. Your host is Dane Groeneveld, a seasoned expert with over 20 years of experience enhancing team dynamics and innovation. Quarter one is a great time for renewal in our professional lives. Today's episode offers a wealth of insights for those aiming to enhance their digital savviness and leadership abilities. We're joined by Lorraine K. Lee, who will share her insights on maximizing LinkedIn for professional success, leading impactful virtual meetings and presentations, and effectively building and managing remote teams. Whether you're seeking to elevate your online presence, enhance your virtual communication skills, or foster stronger connections with your team, this episode is your guide to starting the year off with a significant professional edge. Lorraine is a globally recognized keynote speaker, consultant, and instructor at Stanford Continuing Studies and LinkedIn Learning. With over 300,000 followers on LinkedIn and more than a decade of experience leading editorial teams, she's an authority on enhancing professional presence and excelling in virtual environments. Lorraine's work, which spans from teaching organizations how to create engaging virtual presentations, to leading remote and distributed teams effectively has earned her accolades such as being named a top virtual speaker by ReadWrite and a top 15 LinkedIn expert in San Francisco by Influence Digest. In this episode, we'll uncover first maximizing LinkedIn's potential. Discover expert strategies on optimizing your LinkedIn profile, effectively building your personal brand, and connecting with others to expand your professional network. Second, leading meeting and presentations with impact. Gain valuable tips on conducting meetings and presentations that not only capture attention but also drive engagement and collaboration, essential for today's hybrid environments. Third, onboarding and fostering comradery in remote teams. Learn effective techniques for onboarding new team members and nurturing comradery among remote workers. Crucial for building a cohesive and high- performing remote team. So teamwork makes the dream work and we're here to inspire your next collaborative breakthrough. Gather your team or put on your headphones and let's dive in together.

Dane Groeneveld: Welcome to the Future of Teamwork podcast. My name's Dane Groeneveld, CEO of the HUDDL3 Group. And today I'm joined by Lorraine Lee out of San Francisco. Lorraine is the founder of RISE Learning Solutions, she's a keynote speaker, and Lorraine is an instructor with LinkedIn Learning and Stanford's Continuing Studies program. So she's doing a lot of great work out there in the community, and it's going to be great learning more about her story and what it is to supercharge professional presence, I've got here. So welcome to the show, Lorraine.

Lorraine K. Lee: Thanks for having me, Dane. I'm really excited to chat.

Dane Groeneveld: You bet. So I was checking out your LinkedIn profile before the show, and you've done some cool work. I saw Prezi was one of your previous employers, too, which I've always been a fan of. Tell me a little bit about how you came to be growing and driving impact in this space.

Lorraine K. Lee: Sure. I have spent about 10 years leading editorial teams at tech companies, and it was actually exactly a year ago that I got laid off from Prezi, actually. But I had been doing a side hustle while I was there, doing the speaking, doing the teaching with LinkedIn Learning. And I just decided, you know what? This is the year that I'm going to try to be a solopreneur and break out on my own and try to build that side hustle into something bigger. And so I actually just posted yesterday one year of reflections on my journey. But that's how I got to where I am today. And as you've mentioned, I do the keynote speaking, I consult, I'm teaching at various organizations. And so it's been a wonderful adventure so far. I'm looking forward to continuing it in the next year.

Dane Groeneveld: That's awesome, and congrats on one year.

Lorraine K. Lee: Thank you.

Dane Groeneveld: It's interesting that you turned a side hustle into a fully- blown job and career path. What was it that caught your eye in starting that side hustle and starting to do the work?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, it's funny. I put this in the article that I published, but a lot of people when I was in corporate, they would ask me, " Lorraine, do you ever think about wanting to become an entrepreneur or doing your own thing?" And I would just say, " No. I like the stability of corporate. I don't really feel like an entrepreneurial path is for me." I've always been in corporate, at reasonably large tech companies. But then I realized corporate is not that stable. All the layoffs happened. And so I had been doing this side hustle, but you only have so much time in a day, so you can only build it to so much if you want to still have weekends and time to spend time with friends and all of that. And this year a lot of personal things were going on. I got married. A few of my girlfriends got married in Europe, just for whatever reason. Just a lot of weddings in Europe.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: I have lot of travel planned, and so I figured this would be a nice year to try to have that flexibility and try to build that foundation for the business. And hopefully, with family and all of that coming later, to have that foundation set and then to keep building on it as life continues to get more hectic.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Absolutely. It's interesting. I heard a great podcast that one of my friends runs this morning, and they were talking about entrepreneurship and how a lot of people have traditionally been afraid of entrepreneurship because they felt corporate was more stable.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: But in the last couple of years we've seen that change dramatically. And that's a big reason I'm fascinated by the future of teamwork, because I think the future is lots of small teams playing well together. So a lot more entrepreneurship, hopefully, where you rely on yourself and your team members for your stability, and not a large organization that you don't have a huge amount of control over.

Lorraine K. Lee: Exactly, exactly. Times are changing.

Dane Groeneveld: They sure are. And on that point, LinkedIn is a huge resource for professionals, for teams within organizations, across organizations. I've been fascinated in my journey with LinkedIn, starting out as a recruiter and then moving into more the content space and learning. What was it that first really captured your spark and attention in the LinkedIn platform?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, it was actually in college. I think that's when LinkedIn was starting to gain traction. And I've always just been someone, even in college, all my favorite classes were the pre- professional classes. The very real world, tangible skills classes. And LinkedIn came out. I was obsessed with... at the time, you only had the profile. You didn't have all the content and all that.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: So obsessed with filling out my profile. LinkedIn was always a company that I actually really wanted to work at. And I ended up meeting, at a barbecue, the future chief of staff to the then CEO, Jeff Weiner.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And he was so impressed with my profile and he had applied to a role at a company called SlideShare, which LinkedIn owned at the time. And they pushed my resume through and I ended up getting the job at SlideShare and then later moved on to LinkedIn proper. And so obviously I loved LinkedIn before, and then I worked at LinkedIn for six years. Continued to love it, and a founding editor of the team. So we were really crucial and instrumental in building out all the content pieces like the LinkedIn Influencer program, the LinkedIn news stories you see in your feed in the top right- hand corner. I actually moved to Hong Kong for a year to help build that. So I'd be, during my day, typing up the news. And then in the US you all would wake up and have your news ready in the morning. That was me. So yeah, I've always really appreciated it. I've always been very professionally focused. I really realized over the years the value it provides in allowing you to build your personal brand, to have that thing that you own outside of a company. You always will have your brand no matter what. And then also just a really wonderful place to meet other people. Actually, the person who introduced me to you, Dane, Jenny Wood, met her through LinkedIn. I think she just sent me a cold outreach message and I was like, " This woman looks amazing." And we chatted, and then we ended up meeting in person. So just a lot of relationships built out from there.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. The relationships are massive. It's an amazing platform. And you're probably going to know the numbers better than I do, but everything that I hear is, when you look at the millions of users on the platform, there aren't that many people that are regularly active. So it seems to be untapped.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. There's actually one billion members now, which is crazy. They just hit it like a few weeks ago. And then there's about, I think each month... I'm already forgetting the stat. It's like 1% of their monthly active users are posting content. So still a lot of opportunity there. Still a lot of people not posting content or just still thinking, oh, LinkedIn is just to use when I need a new job.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So that kind of leads me into some interesting questions. You yourself said, even with Jenny, you get to build relationships in LinkedIn. When it comes to LinkedIn presence, how do professionals, teams, I guess it's all through the lens of the professional but they can be talking about themself or their team or their organization. How do they start to create visibility? Where are some practical tips there?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. I would think of your LinkedIn profile. I always like to say it's your online landing page. And so many of us, if we get outreach from someone or we just meet someone new at a networking event in person, we'll always go to their LinkedIn to get a better sense of who they are and to assess them, their credibility and all that. So filling out your profile first is just the really foundational thing that you should do. Once you have that, then that's when you can start creating the content, reaching out to people to try to connect. But I always like to say, " Start with the profile first." Make sure it's really complete. A lot of people, for example, are still not leveraging their background cover photos. They're just using the LinkedIn stock template photo, which doesn't tell me anything about you, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: Or they have very simple headlines. So it'll be, " Job title at company," and that's all they put. But we have 228 characters for a reason. They want you to fill it out. It helps you be discovered in search. Lots of good stuff. And of course if you keep going down the profile, a lot of nuances and things to fill out to enhance your brand and also your credibility, and just showing your experience.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. And so once you've done that visibility building with the profile, I saw one of your posts the other day which was like, " Don't just say, " Love it," or, " Great." Actually engage, share your point of view, answer questions." So does the way you interact with posts then drive the algorithms, bring your profile a little further up?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. You touched on a really good point, Dane. LinkedIn, again, there's the content piece, but LinkedIn is really focused now around community and conversation. So not just the job searching site. And so commenting and interacting with other people's posts are going to be a really big part of that. So I always like to say for people who might be nervous posting under their own name. People get very nervous to do that. Start commenting first and adding value through your comments. They're kind of like mini posts. I don't know if mini is the right way, but just alternative posts, or post- adjacent, where you can add your own opinion, add your own insights. It's a little bit less in your face coming from your own profile, but it will help you get more seen by others in your network. And then also when you do decide to start posting, those comments that you made are going to help boost your posts in the algorithm, because LinkedIn does look at commenting as a really big influence on the algorithm and how active you are and how helpful you are in the community. And so the posts you were referencing, I said a lot of people on LinkedIn, they think commenting is saying like, " Love it!" Or, " I agree!" Or just very simple comments. But you really want to add your own area of expertise, your own opinions, your own experiences. And I like to say aim for about 15 words to have. I feel like 15 words, it's a substantial comment. So that's a good goal to aim for.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice. And when you look at other social media, LinkedIn has its moments, but you look at some other platforms and there's a lot of conflict in the post. Probably more X and some of those others have a bit more of that going on. How much does taking a provocative or a conflicting point of view harm or hinder an individual? Where does that play?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. I only post on LinkedIn right now.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: I think it's okay to post those viewpoints. And the reason is because it's attached to your professional identity, so you have to just feel comfortable. If you can stand by what you want to say and what you're putting out there, it's fine. That's your opinion. LinkedIn, the great thing about it being connected to your professional identity is there's an added layer of, hopefully, respect and screening. Like if you want to have a crazy thought and put it out there, just assessing, like, " Do I really want this attached to my name and my picture and my company and all these things?" So that's one of the good things about LinkedIn. I think it tampers down that craziness of people just wanting to scream and shout and just say crazy things. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, yeah. No, that's a great point. And it's a good reminder to people who are starting. Yes, you can delete posts these days, but it's still better to try and slowly build up. Start with the comments, then your posts. Find your... you're going to have a level of expertise and interest in certain domains anyway, but you've got to try and find your voice, I guess, over time.

Lorraine K. Lee: Exactly, exactly. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. And video. One thing I've found, Lorraine, you might know a lot more about this than me, is that I can have a great conversation with a guest like you and I can put a little piece up. But if I dress up in a costume and have a video of me surprising a child or let my daughters paint my toenails, for some reason, that tends to get way more impressions than anything smart that I say out there. Where's that coming from?

Lorraine K. Lee: I think there's just been a shift, especially since we all went remote from COVID.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: Just people feeling okay showing more of their personal lives, showing the behind the scenes. Showing the cute and funny moments with their family or with their pets and all of that. So yeah, there have been complaints that LinkedIn has gotten a little bit too much like Facebook.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: I think LinkedIn is adjusting its algorithm accordingly to reward people who are experts within certain topics and all that. But yeah, I think it's good, though, to share personal posts every now and then. Like the posts I mentioned I shared yesterday about my one- year reflections on my solopreneurship journey. I posted a funny picture of me in my wedding dress. That's something that no one would've seen normally.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: But yeah, I think just showing that side of you, it helps people connect with you. Especially if you're trying to be a content creator and build an audience, build a following. People want to feel that, yes, they're learning from you, but also that they feel connected to you.

Dane Groeneveld: That's neat. So when you're a supercharging professional presence, the degree to which you might share some of those more personal or fun moments, does it depend what sort of profession you're in? If you're in a very serious,, scientific profession, do you find that you tend to be a little different in what you put out?

Lorraine K. Lee: It might be. I feel like finance people, they're a little bit more buttoned up. And their company might not even want them to post on LinkedIn, for example. But I feel like, definitely tech, people are very open, I feel like, with sharing those things. But yeah, you use your best judgment understanding your industry, understanding what your manager's opinion is, who your team is. All of those things have an effect. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Neat, neat. And when you're supporting professionals to build their presence, another big part of just building your visibility is how you develop your network. So how do you find people can evolve their professional network in a meaningful way? There's always an audience you want and an audience you get, and they're not always aligned.

Lorraine K. Lee: Definitely. I think it's really important to feel okay reaching out to strangers. I feel like... and again, we'll talk about LinkedIn since we're on the topic already. I think a lot of people think of LinkedIn as, " Okay, I'm going to connect with the people I met maybe at a networking event in person, or just someone I've worked with before." But really, connecting with strangers is where the magic happens.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And so there's a little hack that I'll share with your audience. If you click connect with someone on LinkedIn, what a lot of people do is they connect and they send their request. And then it shows up in my connection tab and I have no idea who this person is. Instead, you click connect. You will see a button that says, " Send a note." Click that it's not too many characters, but you have enough to write a few sentences saying who you are, why you're reaching out to that person. Doing that does not use up any InMails. You do not need a premium account. But just that little tweak makes it so much more likely that that person is going to accept your connection request and want to build a relationship with you, because you're giving them a reason, like, " Oh, I follow your content," or, " I want to learn more from you," or, " What you said here really interested me." So reaching out to strangers and not being afraid, because I know a lot of people, rejection is a scary thing. And some people might reject you, and that's fine. Who cares about those people? In the end, you reach out to a lot of people. Most people, if you send a nice and polite message, will accept.

Dane Groeneveld: The nice thing about rejection in LinkedIn, though, is that often you don't see it. They just ghost to you.

Lorraine K. Lee: Unless you're like actively searching their name again. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: They don't have to send you the sorry.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I like that power of reaching out to strangers. And in a virtual working world where so much has changed. It's not just virtual. We're living in a much more global economy now, too. Reaching out to strangers for a perspective on something that's happening in your industry or something, like you said, that you've seen in their post. People seem to be more and more willing, particularly in that platform, to collaborate. It seems like the stakes have been lowered and it's a safer place to share ideas and thoughts now.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, that's a really good point. I've been reaching out to a lot of L&D leaders and ERG leaders and marketing leaders, just trying to understand, what are their challenges going into the new year? What upskilling topics are important to their teams? And of course having that strong professional presence on LinkedIn and that full profile helps a lot, but I think the majority of people are agreeing to get on a video call. They have no idea who I am. And it's just become so much normal to meet people over video, so that's been a really nice thing. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it's neat. Actually, one of my teammates, when he was transitioning from the Military into the business world, I think one of his coaches said, " Go and do 50 cups of coffee. Just reach out to people on LinkedIn in fields that you want to work in, and just do a virtual cup of coffee."

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: And he had great success in doing that.

Lorraine K. Lee: That's great. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: It's something that you couldn't do when everyone was in the office because, number one, you'd have to be getting in a car on a train or a bus going around to a whole bunch of people and places.

Lorraine K. Lee: Exactly, yeah. Oh, that's great.

Dane Groeneveld: It's super cool. So that's how to evolve your professional network and reach out to people when you do think about... probably the last question on that. When you do think about the war for talent that we've seen over recent years, even this year's been tough, this last year, as you said, about layoffs in the tech sector and other sectors.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: There's still a shortage of good people for the right roles. Often there's a displacement. That means they're not easy to connect.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: We're seeing a lot more evidence that candidates, job seekers, particularly in some of these professional roles that are more active on LinkedIn, are very heavily drawn to the manager. They'd like to learn more about the manager that they're interviewing with. So they might be checking their profile before the interview. Maybe even later stages when they're getting an offer and they've got a couple of offers. Are they weighing up not only the company they're joining, but who are they going to work for? And how does that person show up on a place like LinkedIn?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, that's smart of them.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, it is.

Lorraine K. Lee: Your manager really dictates your experience.

Dane Groeneveld: Big time. So do you see any evidence in the people that you're coaching or working with that they're building their story of how they manage and who they are and how they work with teams? Are you seeing more or less of that content?

Lorraine K. Lee: I don't know if I'm seeing more of it. I do feel like there is a shift generally towards more transparency with people just sharing their working style. There's something I created, I don't know if, Dane, you're familiar with this concept, but something called a read- me or a personal operating manual.

Dane Groeneveld: I love it.

Lorraine K. Lee: And so I when was a manager, I created this. And it was just very explicit, like, " This is how I manage. This is my communication preferences. These are all my communication quirks. Like, if I send you a Slack message, I want an emoji to know that you saw it. And this is how I give feedback. This is how I like to receive feedback. This is how I want to support your goals. Here are my..." just very detailed. And so I feel like I'm just seeing, yeah, more conversations around being transparent in how you lead, I think, and doing things like that. And I know whenever I post about the read- me, and I have mine online as well, if people want to see, people seem to get excited by it and resonate by it. So I am happy to see that. I do remember, too, there was this one post. It's not something I see very often, but one post by a manager. They posted the job description and then I think there was a read- me type document attached to the job description saying, " This is me as a manager." I thought that was wonderful.

Dane Groeneveld: It is. I think if we're really honest, very few job descriptions are ever written to accurately reflect what it's like to do the job. It's a bunch of tasks and responsibilities but it doesn't say anything about how you're going to work in that team or in that organization or with customers.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's a great add. I hadn't thought about doing a read- me or a user operating manual in that environment, so I'll definitely get online and check yours out, too.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, please.

Dane Groeneveld: That's cool. All right. I saw on your profile here that you also do work in designing impactful meetings for productive and happy teams. That one jumps off the page because we've all been suffering a little bit with the volume of meetings.

Lorraine K. Lee: We're Suffering a lot. You're being nice, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That's right. Suffering a lot with a lot of meetings because it's easy now to go from meeting- to- meeting- to- meeting, because you're not getting in that car.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So tell me a little bit about how you work with individuals and teams to get that meeting design right.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. I've created a lot of different frameworks around meetings. I have a keynote about meetings that has been quite popular. Something I created called the Passive- to- Active Meeting Framework. And it's a very simple framework to follow for meeting facilitators, but clearly a lot of people are not doing it. The steps are to warm up the audience, so to speak. To invite them into the conversation. To make sure you pause long enough to let people think and actually respond. And then to listen and observe when people start responding, and to show that you are actually valuing what they say, and listening carefully. And then to interact. So ask questions, engage with them, the person who's speaking, and then you start back at the beginning. But one of the things I would say that a lot of people are missing in meetings is that warmup piece. Starting the meeting off with the right energy. So I always like to say that meeting facilitators are entertainers now, like half entertainer, half facilitator. And so you really have to start off the meeting on the right foot with that energy, and of course have all the essentials down, like the agenda, for example. I like to share things like that to get people thinking a little bit more strategically about meetings. It's not something you just show up to and wing it and just hope that you end up with the right outcome. There's a lot of very specific things you need to do beforehand, during, and after the meeting as well.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I actually had a guest on a show that we were shooting earlier this week, and she shared that the more you prepare shows, the more you care about the team.

Lorraine K. Lee: Oh, nice. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: And I like that because it's easy to remember-

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Oh my gosh, that's so true.

Dane Groeneveld: But it's true, to your point. If you prepare that opening warmup and the agenda, and how am I going to invite people in? And how am I going to take pauses? How am I going to invite not only interaction between myself and the speaker, but interaction between two other people in the meeting? There's an art as well as a science to all of that.

Lorraine K. Lee: There is, yeah. And I think a lot of people maybe get intimidated or just don't want to bother with it because it does take a little bit more time, but put in that little bit of extra time and you're not going to need 10 extra meetings to get to the goal that you wanted in that first meeting, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: The reason we keep having all these follow- ups is because people are not focused and intentional about that initial meeting when they set it up.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, definitely. Any thoughts on how to balance the frequency of meetings?

Lorraine K. Lee: A few things come to mind. The first thing I would say is to leverage asynchronous communication. For anyone who's not familiar, synchronous communication is communication that you expect that immediate back- and- forth in real time, whereas asynchronous is not dependent on time. So email, for example.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And so I think a lot of people could benefit using asynchronous communication. Before meetings, have a Google Doc and say, " Okay, let's..." or even before you schedule the meeting, have a Google Doc. Have people add their feedback, their comments. You'll get everyone's thoughtful opinions because they are tackling it at a time that works well for them, when they're most productive and they're tuned in, versus a forced meeting that they have to be at. And then something I've done is I have asked my team before, " Do you want to do this live or do you think we can do this async?" And almost all the time people want to do async.

Dane Groeneveld: Wow.

Lorraine K. Lee: And it works. And you're giving people the option. And if it doesn't work, then maybe you reevaluate and go back to live. But I always think starting off with async is a really solid strategy.

Dane Groeneveld: I like that. It's interesting. Last year we had Kian Gohar on the show, and he and Keith Ferrazzi wrote a book about how the world of work's changing, which talked a lot about asynchronous meetings. And one of the things that they shared about the asynchronous meeting is that it's a far more inclusive format because you might be someone who's web smart and quick and bold, and you'll just share your thoughts in the moment. And I might be someone who's more introverted, considered, maybe a little bit cautious or shy about, do I really want to say that? I don't know who's in the room. So it gives different people time in which to assess how they want to contribute. And even it actually allows people to team up and say, " Hey, Lorraine, I'm thinking of making this contribution, but before I put it out to the group of eight people, what can you tell me your initial reaction is to this?"

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, so true. And I'm in that introverted camp. And to your point, both groups can be web smart, but they just think through things differently.

Dane Groeneveld: Good point.

Lorraine K. Lee: And so yeah, you're giving that space for everyone to contribute in the most optimal way possible.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. No, that's very cool. And then as far as how many meetings, is there a rule? Do you see a view on only so many meetings per day, or more short meetings versus a couple of large meetings? Do you see anything in that?

Lorraine K. Lee: I do. I think there's no optical number that comes to mind. I think, for me, a team meeting once a week to connect and talk about team matters. But I always come up with an agenda ahead of time and I ask my teammates to contribute. And if no one has anything to contribute and I don't have anything to say, people would prefer to have that time back, so just cancel it. And that's one of the benefits of having the agenda, is that you're actually structured and thinking, does this meeting really need to happen? What do we actually need to talk about?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And then there are tools I use, for example. I've used Clockwise quite a bit to create focus time on my calendar. And I usually like to try to have free time in the afternoons and my meetings in the morning, just to get them out of the way. That's my own personal preference.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I think that's important, too. And we see, particularly when we're working across time zones, you talked earlier about working in Hong Kong, we don't always have the luxury of setting our schedule.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: But we should definitely be buffering and blocking time where we say, " This is my focus time. This is my non- wetting time," and sharing that with the team, because there's nothing worse than a day when you go back- to- back for eight hours and you miss lunch.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Well, I literally had a meeting with someone scheduled today, and she didn't show up. And I messaged her and said, " Is everything okay? What happened?" She's like, " Oh my God, I just had a crazy day of meetings. Everything's been running over. And I'm so sorry I missed it." But that shouldn't be a thing, where it's just so crazy like that that you're not even remembering other commitments, and that meetings are running over. That's another thing, ending meetings on time and just being respectful of people's time is important. A lot of facilitators are not focused on that so much. Starting and ending on time. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: I can see that, actually. And it's tough because you're right in mentioning the professional courtesy and respect. Everyone's busy not just at work but in their home lives, particularly when they're working virtual. So if I'm taking this call right before I get in the car to go and pick up a child or go to the gym or walk the dog, the stress at the end of the meeting can be palpable.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So that's neat. And video. Have you seen... I guess video is another way of doing asynchronous meetings, giving people updates. It's a different way to engage. But a lot of professionals aren't very comfortable getting on video. I guess there's a self- consciousness that's bubbling up there.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, yeah. That's true. But it's important, though, to learn. And the really good thing is that video can be a learned skill. I teach it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And I had to learn it as well, myself, at the start of COVID. And so the thing is, video can be a really big differentiator when you know how to present yourself confidently on camera, when you look presentable and professional people, subconsciously or otherwise, think more positively of you and have a better impression of you.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: So just making sure that you take the time to learn. I think a lot of people are like, " Okay, I know how to join a Zoom call and therefore I know how to be on video and have a good video presence." But there's a lot of little things that go into it. It doesn't have to be a super complicated thing, but there are certain things that you have to think about before getting on a video call or doing a video recording, for example.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: One thing I've heard, I don't know if you've seen this as well, Dane, is that a lot of company leaders, more senior leaders who record videos for all hands meetings or whatnot, don't present themselves very well on video. I'm not sure if that's a trend that you've seen, but that's just something I've been hearing, which has been interesting. It's good they're trying to do more of that, but they still need a little bit more of the training, I think.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. And tell me about the types of training you do. Is it about preparation and scripting? Is it about where your eyes go on the video? What are some quick tips?

Lorraine K. Lee: Sure. Actually the course I just finished teaching at Stanford Continuing Studies was all about virtual communication. I had a course on establishing your virtual and video presence, a course on virtual presentations, and then a course on virtual meetings. So these are all three very essential elements, I think, to the virtual workplaces. So some quick tips: yes, eye contact. That's of course a big one. In person, when we shake hands and have that skin- to- skin contact or make eye contact, we're releasing oxytocin, which is a social bonding hormone. On video, the closest way to get that is to create eye contact on camera. Also, curating your background is important, so making sure that you don't have a messy bed behind you or just whatever it is.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: I know some people are limited in their space and where they can set up exactly, but really you just need that six feet of space behind you looking good. The rest of my room right now, you don't want to see. It's messy. Just that six feet of space behind you. And then there are also hacks, too. You can have a room divider behind you, or I had this coworker who worked in the kitchen, and I think the pantry was behind him but he hung a curtain behind him, so it was just kind of a solid color behind him. That was a good trick to make it look a little bit more presentable. So yeah, those two things, very important. And then you probably see me using a lot of hand gestures right now. That's also really good to just help connect with the other person and just add a little bit more energy into the call. As we mentioned before, energy gets muted on camera, similar to meetings, so you really need to be a little extra. A little more extra than you think.

Dane Groeneveld: Bring a little extra. It's interesting because at the same time, in early public speaking courses in high school, I was told to take a comfortable stance and not be throwing my arms around all the time. But if I'm honest, if I think about when I'm best presenting, whether it's on video or on stage, I like to walk around and engage with people. So I guess different people are going to have slightly different styles and appetites for some of that, too.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, You don't want to be up here, but I think moving around, that makes sense.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. Yeah. No, that's very neat. And script. A lot of people get caught up with reading, other people love prompts. Do you see a golden rule in talking from memory or key points versus going off a tight script?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, I think writing out a script, I assume you're talking about presentations, writing out a script I think is always a good idea, just so you have a general sense of what you want to say. But memorizing is never a good option, and that's when people can really get in trouble because if you memorize something and then you just forget what that next line is or forget what that word is or trip up, it's going to completely throw you off. So write the script. Just practice a lot, a lot, a lot. I think the golden role that my speaking mentor taught me was, for every one minute of presentation, you practice an hour. So a 20 minute... if you're getting on the stage, 20 minute presentation, 20 hours. And that will have you really internalizing the content so that you don't need to memorize and that you're really comfortable with the content. And it'll change a little bit each time, but you get to that point where you're so comfortable that you don't need to memorize. It's just, you know the main points that you want to make and then you just speak naturally because you're so familiar with it.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, absolutely. It's interesting. I did a stage presentation a couple of years ago. We co- sponsored, actually, an event with Milestone, one of our insurance brokers here, and we brought Daniel Pink in, which was a great day.

Lorraine K. Lee: Oh yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: But I was super nervous because I've been up on stage for my own company events, but not up on stage for an external audience with a big speaker following.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: So I found that, not only did I do probably the one hour to one minute of practice, but I recorded myself a few times. And then when I was driving to work, I'd listen to myself delivering it.

Lorraine K. Lee: Oh my gosh. I've done that, too. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: That was powerful, and it gave me this kind of sense of confidence. And I knew where I was slipping or not hitting the note or not pausing. So it's amazing the way that the technology we have now, it gives us these kind of extra tools.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, no, that's a really good strategy, I think.

Dane Groeneveld: Okay, cool. So we've talked about effective virtual meetings. We've talked about building a LinkedIn presence. Productivity in a remote environment. That was another topic I wanted to dive into with you. We've heard the horror stories of people putting these productivity measurement softwares down, and then staff having to leave a-

Lorraine K. Lee: Like the moving mouth.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, a kitchen implement on a key or whatever they've got to do to get around the hack. But how do you measure and boost productivity without micromanaging and running your best people out of town?

Lorraine K. Lee: Oh my gosh, yeah. Well, if a company is making you do something like that, I feel like it's time to look somewhere else. But what I would say is, if you're a leader with a remote team or a distributed or hybrid, you really want to focus on outcomes, not how much time people are at their desk. And this will also help with things like proximity bias. So for hybrid offices, proximity bias is a very real thing, where you favor the people you see who are closest to you. So if you focus on outcomes, it's going to be more performance- based versus, " Oh, I see you in the office all the time, and we're buddies, and I really like you, and I'm going to assess your performance on that." And so I think, yeah, the outcomes is a really big piece of that. And to your point, as a leader, you do not want to be micromanaging your team.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: Trust is such an important thing, and trust is what will make your team more productive, will make them happier. Micromanagement is just a way to quickly turn them off and just not feel good about working with you. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: No, I like that outcome approach. And it's interesting, we work with Carl Cox, who was also a guest on the show, from 40 Strategy. And he talks about leading indicators versus lagging indicators. Often when you're looking at metrics, you're looking at stuff that's been done. How many emails did you send? How many of this? But the leading indicators are like, what are those key outputs that you do that drive productivity?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: And he had a great example of a charter school principal, a head teacher, and they were looking at how to run admissions. And they worked out that the most important thing to look at was, how many new families coming onto campus was he able to shake hands with? Because that would create a really good first impression, and those people would then continue their tour with a more positive mindset. Now, I know no one was managing him, but it's a good example of finding those important things that our team members do, whether they're remote, distributed, or hybrid. And just saying, " Hey, how many of these have we done this week?" And not diving into the data or the monitoring in too heavy a way.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. One other thing I would add if you're trying to increase productivity is the flexibility piece of it all. We talk about remote or hybrid, which is very location- dependent. Flexibility I feel like is the next frontier of work, where it's really time... depends on or flexible on time. So I could be someone who's a night owl and I'm most productive in the evening.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: Sure, I'll have a few hours of overlap with my team or my manager, but let me work in the evening. I'm going to get a lot more done. I'm going to be my best self.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And that takes a lot of trust, but I think it's the way of the future for the teams who want to be high performing and who want to excel at what they do. Flexibility is the way to go.

Dane Groeneveld: I truly believe that. And there's a lot of great team members that do do their best work at night, some of them on the weekend. And at first you're like, " That's not healthy," but if people want to do their work when they don't have customers calling them and colleagues bumping into them, it's their prerogative, as long as they're not burning themselves out Monday to Friday as well.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, exactly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. That's cool. And we were talking before the show about innovative ways to remotely onboard team members with today's technologies and approaches. So tell me a little bit more about your tips and tricks in that space.

Lorraine K. Lee: Sure. I mentioned the read- me before, which is, I think, a very good, welcoming document, and also just helps eliminate a lot of questions that someone new might have and be maybe nervous to ask. Another thing I would say is to just have an onboarding document that's very specific to your team. HR will almost always have, or they should have something to onboard that person, but having something very specific to your team. So when do you have team meetings? Who's on the team? What are they working on? What are some acronyms you might hear around the office? Who are some cross- functional partners who you might want to meet who work very closely with our team? So just having that key document I think goes a long way. And I would also say make sure to meet with new teammates, remote teammates, every day.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And I know this can be hard to do with our busy schedules, but every day until they feel comfortable not meeting every day, at least even for a few minutes, because yeah, remotely, you don't get that immediate feedback, passing each other in the office or saying, " Hello," asking how things are going. And so that initial everyday meeting I think is really key in making people feel more welcome and just a little bit more confident with their work and how they're onboarding.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that. I've never heard that one before, Lorraine.

Lorraine K. Lee: Really? Okay.

Dane Groeneveld: I love that.

Lorraine K. Lee: Nice.

Dane Groeneveld: And it's like one of those ones where I'm kicking myself. I'm like, " Why haven't I been doing that with some of my remote employees?" Because you're right, it's lonely and scary when you start a new job.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Do you think that's just the manager- report relationship, or can that be a team effort? Can you have like, " Hey Andrew, make sure you're catching up with Jenny every day this week just as she's settling in?" And they're just peers.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. I think so. And I think that you touch on another thing that I've done before is creating a buddy program.

Dane Groeneveld: Yes.

Lorraine K. Lee: So you have a designated teammate, and they're that person you can ask all the random questions to that you might not want to bother your manager with. Maybe you're nervous to ask your manager. Things like, do people work around the holidays? Things like that. Like, what's the culture? So yeah, I think having a buddy is great. I think, yeah, if other teammates are able to and open to it, meeting with someone, a new person every day would be great. Just makes them feel more welcome and just get up to speed more quickly.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, that's very cool. I love the buddy systems. And it also makes me think about some of the other fun stuff. We've done a few. There's a tool called Kahoot, and you can do almost like a pop quiz format. And you can all get on teams. And so sometimes it's not just about the work, it's about creating a bit of play for those remote and hybrid workers.

Lorraine K. Lee: You know what you should try? Two ideas. One, they have remote escape rooms led by-

Dane Groeneveld: No way.

Lorraine K. Lee: ... someone.Yeah. Someone in person. Well, I've seen actually a few different kinds. The ones we did, there was a literal person in an escape room and panning the video around and being like, " What do you want me to pick up?"

Dane Groeneveld: That would frustrate me. I couldn't do that one.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. There's, I think, more expensive, elaborate ones where they actually integrate virtual and use like Google Maps and Street View, and it's a lot more comprehensive. So you can out to me later if you're interested. My husband's company did something like that.

Dane Groeneveld: Nice.

Lorraine K. Lee: And then there's a lot of murder mystery games that you can download from Etsy that are not too much at all. Those, I've done quite a few with remote teams, and those have been fun.

Dane Groeneveld: Have fun. Thank you for those tips. I'll take those up. Very cool. So my final question for you: as you're helping professionals and teams build their professional presence, build their networking, create happier and more productive ways to work together, and as you continue to see the way technology flourishes, what is your hope for the future of teamwork? What do you hope that individuals and teams start to enjoy more in the years ahead?

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. I think the flexibility piece is big. I think also I would love to see more companies supporting their employees in building their own personal brands. I think a lot of companies still get nervous, and if someone has a brand, they're thinking, " Oh my gosh, is this person trying to leave our company? What's going on? Are they looking for a new job?" Because they updated their LinkedIn. And it's not that. It's, you can have a personal brand. And if you have a great personal brand, it just does wonders for the company. For me, I started building my brand. I got asked to do podcasts, I got asked to speak.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And always the company name was promoted alongside my name, right?

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah.

Lorraine K. Lee: And so just being supportive in that way and not being nervous that it's something that will make them leave. And it's just a way to also empower the employee and also help build company awareness, brand visibility in a positive, organic way.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah. I think that's a great point. And actually I'd add to that, which is it's not just external. In some of these large corporations, you look at Jenny and what she's done at Google.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: There are very clear ways that teams within corporations can benefit from knowing who key people are across the organization, not just their regular teammates, that they might be able to collaborate with and bounce off based on their various passions and expertise.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah. Yeah, and that actually reminds me. There was an opportunity at work. I got asked to participate in a media round table because they knew I was doing more public speaking. If I hadn't put myself out there and been out there in the world, I might have not gotten that internal opportunity. And I could add that in my performance review and just get more visibility internally that way. Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: And that brings a bit more fun to everyone, too.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah.

Dane Groeneveld: Gets you out of the routine. A little bit of variety is good for everyone.

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, yeah. It was fun.

Dane Groeneveld: No, that's really neat. Well, Lorraine, it's been a wonderful conversation. Thank you for coming onto the show and sharing your expertise and passions. If any of our listeners want to find any of your learning courses on LinkedIn or with Stanford Continuing Studies, or engage you in your new business, how do they best find you?

Lorraine K. Lee: You can find me on LinkedIn. Just search Lorraine K. Lee, and I'll pop up. Or you can also subscribe to my newsletter, which is the QR code here. And you can also send me a note at contact @ lorraineklee. com, if you prefer.

Dane Groeneveld: Awesome, Lorraine. That's wonderful. And I'll make sure we put a note in the show for Alicia to share your read- me. Your personal-

Lorraine K. Lee: Oh, yes. Great.

Dane Groeneveld: Because I think they're brilliant. We use those in our teams, and yours sounds a little bit more complete than perhaps the template that we're using. So I'd love to compare. And I'm sure so many of ours-

Lorraine K. Lee: Yeah, I would love to see yours as well. I'll ask Alicia to send me a copy.

Dane Groeneveld: Yeah, we'll do it. All right. Thanks again, Lorraine.

Lorraine K. Lee: Thank you so much.

Speaker 1: Thank you for joining us. Remember that by embracing vulnerability, trusting our intuition, and approaching challenges with compassion, we not only strengthen our teams but also pave the way for a future where collaboration thrives. If you're hungry for more insights, strategies, and research on collaboration, head over to thefutureofteamwork. com. There you can join our mailing list to stay updated with the latest episodes and get access to exclusive content tailored to make your team thrive. Together we can build the future of teamwork. Until next time.