Without a Stick and a Carrot: Three Life Hacks for Managing a Team

Regular meetings and daily standups are good for team workflow, there's no doubt about that. For many remote teams, new tools and frameworks are being introduced to help streamline routine and work processes, facilitate communication and increase productivity. And it's becoming increasingly important to keep your team motivated without using a "carrot and stick" approach that puts employees at risk of a nervous breakdown or burnout. There are simple ways to help your team thrive and be happy. Here are three unconventional life hacks that I use myself (and that definitely work).

Introduce a forced day off 😉

Work well, but don't know how to rest. Sound familiar? Well, I can certainly say that about myself and most of my team. It seems they find it easier to meet deadlines than to plan vacations. And as we all know, accumulated fatigue reduces efficiency, and even stress-free weekends have little effect.

For this reason, I've adopted the practice of forced vacation. This is a day off that I give to a person without giving them prior notice. I send a funny certificate with a checklist of "duties" for the day: eat right, sleep well, take a walk, breathe fresh air, and relax. Everything is strict: the certificate is canceled when the person begins to respond to emails and messages.

At the same time, it is important that the certificate be issued regardless of how hard the employee has worked, because it should not encourage them to work even harder, but rather convey the idea that everyone needs a break. Even if they are "not tired and feel perfectly fine." That's why everyone on the team gets a forced day off every three weeks or so.

And yet such certificates have a positive effect on the 'official' vacation. Even after two weeks at sea, many people come back to work and still do not feel fully recovered and invigorated. This is because we often do not accumulate resources on the plus side (energy, inspiration, and health) while on vacation, but rather go to zero, so to speak, in terms of resources. And that's at best, sometimes we go from conditional -40 to +10 points.

Therefore, every person needs many small vacations to learn, systematically regain strength and enthusiasm and not fall into the state of "I hate my work" and "Please, I need a doctor". Only then the vacation will not become a kind of struggle for survival, but a real vacation.

Learn the language of your colleagues 🧐

A remote team should not turn into a digital organism where we only talk on Zoom or text in messengers. You know what we send each other in a team chat, aside from briefs and cases? Tests. I am not kidding, it's a great work tool, not just for entertainment.

There are many different personality typologies - for example, if you take a 40-question test and find out that you are, as it turns out, some kind of "philosopher" or "magician". But you need it to get to know your colleagues better, not for self-study.

Let us look at how this works, using a fairly simple DISC profile typology as an example. Imagine a circle divided into four sectors: Dominance, Influence, Stability, and Compliance.

🔴 D (red). They are achievers and leaders who are all about performance, difficult tasks, and competition. Straightforward in expression and successful in results, they are not always diplomatic. Therefore, they are not good team players as they consider others a resource for completing the task.

🟡 I (yellow). They are team players who are responsible for the idea, love attention and know how to inspire others. Such employees are attracted by novelty and that is why they often struggle to bring the process to the final result. For such people it is difficult to delve into details, to analyze numbers, processes or documents.

🟢 S (green). They are sensitive, very perceptive and pay close attention to details. They naturally play the role of "glue" in the team, but never know how to say "no".

🔵 C (blue). They believe the world is logical and rational, love diagrams, regular patterns, a clear roadmap and expected results. Their weakness is communication skills and perception of innovation.

After the test, you will understand the patterns of their behaviour and adjust the language you speak with each person on your team. For example, with a D person, you need to be clear whether you are giving them a task or feedback. In contrast, with an S person, you should have a long and detailed conversation that focuses on the team's results.

Of course, there are no "pure" psychotypes. But recognizing them and their characteristics will help you work more effectively and humanely.

Host casual team building events 🥳

What do you think of when you hear of "team building"? Basically it is an official company party with trivia games and an evening buffet, slides about the team's annual or quarterly success, or the classic Secret Santa. They are all good. However, real team building is not about formal things. It's about the little things that unite your team: playing games every Friday after work, texting each other memes, talking about travel instead of discussing office matters.

Here is a list of my favourite non-serious team building activities.

**1. Three facts about yourself \ Friday night one of the team members throws a question into the chat: name your three favorite movies / embarrassing moments in your life / strangest dishes you have tried / unexpected facts about yourself, etc. Generally, anything. One can go a step further and ask extended questions.

It's a bit therapeutic and always fun.

With this questions you can cover three things at once:

• calm down at the end of the work week;
• reward yourself with simple and fun entertainment;
• get to know each other better.

2. Five o' clock

These meetings work perfectly without tea. The idea is that one person picks a subject that interests them, researches stories and interesting facts, and discusses it while the others learn something that they probably wouldn't learn anywhere else.

3. Warm moments that you create yourself
Always keep in mind that the individuals working with you and seated on the other side of the screen are real people with interests, objectives, and good and bad days.

Last year, I wanted to wish my colleagues a happy new year, but I didn't know how to do it because everyone worked from home and resided in different cities. And I got a brilliant idea from a Russian football coach Leonid Slutsky. He once prepared a handwritten letter with unique wishes for each player and sent it by mail on New Year's Eve. So I bought envelopes and paper and wrote a personal letter for everyone. The team claims to save these letters, but I'm not sure if I should believe them or not.

To create those warm moments, you are free to select anything that fits the culture and values of your team.