EP010 - Head of Remote - A new way of remote leadership with Valentina Thörner the Empress of Remote
About the episode
This episode focuses on remote leadership - specifically, the newly emerging title, head of remote. We cover the evolution of the title, the principles of remote leadership, the differences between business operations and people operations, and the intersections between remote processes and HR. To discuss this, I invited Valentina Thörner, remote leadership expert and head of remote at Klaus.
About the guest
Valentina is a Remote Leadership Expert with over a decade of experience teaching remote best practices. As a trainer and coach she focuses on middle managers who want to improve their remote leadership skills. As a consultant she works with companies that want to align their remote operations with their values and company goals. Originally from Germany, she lives in Spain raising primary school twins as a single mom. She also runs in the mountains to think. Connect with Valentina on LinkedIn or on her website.
About the host
My name is Peter Benei, founder of Anywhere Consulting. My mission is to help and inspire a community of remote leaders who can bring more autonomy, transparency, and leverage to their businesses, ultimately empowering their colleagues to be happier, more independent, and more self-conscious.
Connect with me on LinkedIn.
Want to become a guest on the show? Contact me here.
Quotes from the show
The way people work together influences the product like no other thing. So if you can help people collaborate and communicate more coherently, this will always have positive effects across the entire business.
If you have a hybrid company but want to be remote first, send everybody home for a week and see what breaks.
No one really teaches us how to make friends when we are adults. Take away the social and supporting network of those who had their friends in the office, and you suddenly created a challenging remote setup.
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Welcome everyone yet another day to talk about the future of work and the future of remote leadership. Today we dive deep into remote leadership, which is one of my favorite topic, if I may say so. I have fellow leadership expert on the show, Valentina Thörner. Valentina, it is so great to have you here.
Thank you for having me.
So can you tell me what are you doing and how you are helping other remote leaders to succeed?
So I am a remote leadership expert and specifically remote leadership for people who lead people. So I work a lot with managers with hr or with founders who basically need to know how to lead their people who are going to work remotely. Mm-hmm. I work as head of remote in a fast growing SaaS startup where, which also sometimes is a little bit my experimental playground because we went from 12 to 70 people. And it's interesting how you actually have to change your approaches as a company grows. And then outside of this company, I help managers, individuals to actually hone their leadership skills. I have a bespoke program for this, it's called a remote leadership accelerator, where we kind of tried to combine the good thing about cohorts, having people that you can discuss things with mm-hmm. With the I can start whenever I want to idea. So you can sign up and then you get in alternate weeks, you get information and then on the weeks in between, you have a one-on-one call with a coach, which can be either me or one of my colleagues. And then once a month we get everybody together who's currently doing the course or who has done it in the last six months for expert lessons with external experts that we come in. And in our experience, that means that people are not tied to a specific date or time to do what is typically in the cohort driven classes that you need to be there on Wednesday at five o'clock. Mm-hmm. Oh, Wednesday's five o'clock is school pickup. I guess I'm not doing that course. And me being a mom myself, like I know how times and then if we add time zones to the mix are not as flexible for everyone as remote stories would like us to think because very often when we think about remote work, we think about async, plan your own time, work when you want, what you were want in the place that you want. But even though, for example, I am location independent, my kids' school is not. So I understand that a lot of managers who are now at an age where they may have people who depend on them, actually need a flexibility not only from their side, but also from the other side. So we try to like build this into the program because there's no better way to teach than to actually show how you can use flexibility for everybody's advantage.
I have so many questions, but let's just quickly, thanks for sharing. But to quickly reflect on the async version of learning. How do you solve then the, so there is a option where they can discuss stuff. Mm-hmm. live or synchronously, I guess. Also with you.
Well both. So you on, let's say on. 1, 3, 5, and seven. You get an email with lots of resources. Mm-hmm. and you can work through these resources whenever you feel like it.
Sure.
You will get homework, which means there are some tasks that you will have to do because we want to make sure that you not just like mark the email as read, but that you actually engage with the things that go in there. And then in week 2, 4, 6, and 8, you meet one-on-one with your coach for 40 minutes to discuss basically your homework to get feedback on your homework. If you prefer to do some of the things on Slack, you can also already ask questions or submit your homework with a lot more time so that your coach can, for example, already Comment on your Google Doc, and that way you can basically start the conversation. But because one of the tenants of good remote leadership is having regular one-on-ones with your own reports. For us, it's important that the people who go through the course see how one-on-ones can look like, which is why we have one-on-ones within this course. Because the thing is, if you became a leader during the pandemic and you have no remote experience, which examples do you have to emulate? Yes. How many good one-on-ones have you had in your life? Probably none because before the pandemic, if you weren't in Office, there were no structured.
Yes. And where do you get feedback from?
Exactly. That's, that's because it now, it every happens in your computer and it's more difficult to get peer feedback because the moment somebody sits in on your one and ones they morph into something different because now everybody feels basically looked at.
Yeah, it's super hard. It's super hard to find a fine balance between self-based learning, asynchronous learning, shall we say and synchronous consultation.
And for those one-on-ones like I work with so some people sign up and they really want to work with me, and we'll find a time that works for both of us.
Sure, sure.
Even if it's, if my kids go, my kids go to bed at nine, so I can still do like something at 9:30 PM but I also have colleagues in the US and in Europe who can cover time zones as it works best. So we just look at the student, okay, when is good for you? Do you want to do this during your lunch break in your time zone? Do you want to do it when the kids are in bed? Do you want to do it on a Saturday morning? Maybe because this is the only time in the week where you can actually invest in yourself. You're like, there is a solution because it's not just one person on the other side, but we have like a team that can like, look what, where do we have a match?
Yes, and by the way, it's always harder if you sign up individuals mm-hmm to any kind of program that you have. By the way, this is not just for remote leadership, but if anyone who's like doing a consulting or whatever and listening this show now it's super hard to to sign up individuals first because their own individual dependencies, of course, kids, their life, their work, their whatever. And that is why it's mostly a little bit more easier to sign up companies because all the activities that you do as a consultant or coach or whatever you do will happen during work. Because obviously the company won't, you know organize a training workshop, whatever, during, I dunno, 10:00 PM or whatever.
Well, with the caveat, if the companies in the time zone as you are, I think what happens to a lot of solopreneurs is if they are in Europe and they work with US companies, their day can get later than expected.
Oh, tell me about my life.
Los Angeles is very far away from Barcelona. I can tell you.
Oh, I. Maybe I am lucky, but I had one client from the west coast once, but most of the clients are from the East coast and that's kinda like, like manage Highest coast is good. Yeah. It's well, it's not good. It's manageable.
Yeah.
And yeah. I personally value remote work because of this same reason my internal biological clock if there's any works geared towards the Eastern time zone anyway, so I rarely do any kind of work before 10 or 11:00 AM but I usually work after simply eight or 9:00 PM mm-hmm. . So I'm fine with that. But again, this is individual, so it cannot be applied for anyone.
And it's not only individual because it's also structural. Like I also had a workday that started around 10, 11 and then went into the evening. The moment where I became a mom, that changed because the entire childcare system in the world set up from nine to five, more or less.
And that's what I mean, I didn't want to go into the family stuff but I'm not a father, so I don't have a kid. And that I truly believe because I do have people around me of course with kids and yeah they're simply not available during the evenings, only maybe after 10 or 11 when the kids are sleeping. So yeah, it's hard. And I'm not saying that it should be applied for everyone. It works for me personally. Mm-hmm. , because that's my life set up, whatever. And also I heard that some people usually work before 8:00 AM because it's unattended. It's yeah. It's a quiet moment. But I dunno, I was never an authorizer.
So, I like the idea having worked at 8:00 AM.
Yeah, I think I did once and because, because I read all this, you know, this morning routine of yours and whatever.
Well, a 5:00 AM club or something, like, there's a whole religion around this.
Yes. And all the people with, with cold showers and stuff like that. I dunno. It's, it's simply not me, but I tried it once or twice. And yes it works. You get things done because there are no distractions and you can focus on what you want to focus on. But yeah, I don't know. It's like, just, just for me it's unmanageable. Yeah. But again back to you. You mentioned a very prominent keyword, sorry to jump on that head of remote. So on this show, you are the first one whose job is actually head of remote. And you know, we know all the, all the great examples around head of remote like Chase Warrington and the others who made the whole like title, mm-hmm popular. And so I guess the main question is that, what the heck is head of remote, I guess. So what are you doing on a day-to-day basis? You and what do you think. Maybe because maybe it's not aligned with what you're doing, what head of remote should be.
So head of remote is, is an interesting role because it basically is a little bit what you make of it because there is no real definition for it yet. So for me, head of remote is somewhere at the intersection between HR and operations. Yes. Which means they need to be on the leadership team. Like it cannot be just an experience manager on the HR team because they just don't have enough influence. They need to both look at how do we do our work and also how, like who is being affected by how we do our work. So it's kind of on the one side, a very people centered position where you actually need to get the feedback on a day-to-day basis from the people work every day in this remote setting. And on the other side, it's like looking at processes and if you, for example, have a scaling company, how do processes get obsolete and how can you change them? Because the thing is, in a remote company, you don't necessarily see the bottlenecks as much as you would see them in an office where you can kind of hear people bitch about something in the corner, like in a remote world, that doesn't really happen. So you need somebody who actually looks at everything and looks at new ideas, new processes, not only from the perspective, how will this make our work easier, but how will this affect the people who don't have access to an office if you have a hybrid environment, or how will this affect the people who are in a different time zone? Because it's very rare especially for the companies who moved to remote during Covid. Mm-hmm. to have a completely remote balanced setup when it comes to the employees. Usually if there was an office before Covid, you have the bigger amount of people clustered somewhere closer around the office, even if it's within the same time zone. And when you then started to add somebody in a different time zone or who's really far away, then inequalities can creep in that are not really intentional. But if you have no one who looks at these in inequalities, then you might end up alienating the people who live farther away, which then means they don't perform as well, they might quit, and then suddenly the company says, oh, we tried remote, it didn't work for us. Which is like, yeah, the way you did it didn't work for you because there was no intentionality behind the whole planning and design process.
Yes. I loved how you phrased it, that it's still in shall we say, the figuring out phase for the title of head of remote. I've heard a lot of different definitions. Some said it's the new chief of staff or or head of staff. I disagree with that because it's not just, and I'm not devaluing the leadership position of HR leaders, but it's not just an HR position. Mm-hmm. It's not just about people it's also about the business, the operations, as you said. And others tend to lean towards the business side and they say it's, oh, come on it's just a new fancy title for the COO mm-hmm. And as someone, for example, I was a COO for a company before but for a remote company but my role wasn't tied fully towards people, so it was more into operations, business, sales, marketing, and all the goodies. So I guess it's interesting to see how people are figuring out this role, but I agree with you. It's around 50 50 people and ops just to make sure that the business is growing, but it's also growth position, I think, which people tend to forget to mention. It's, it's very geared towards growth, but not that growth that is like a marketing or sales or revenue growth, but more like the, I don't know, it can be still based on numbers because of the people analytics industry that we have now but still it's very much valuable for companies who are scaling up.
Well, at the end of the day, like the way people work together, influences the product. Yes, like no other thing. So if you can help people to collaborate and to communicate with each other in a more coherent way, this will always have positive effects across the entire business.
Yes. So I wouldn't ask this question, but what are your KPIs as ahead of remote? So what do you think would be the, what great metric for a head of a success of a head of remote position?
Yeah, that's a very good question. And I also think it's something that is still being figured out. I think the Employee Happiness score, or every company has their own definitely goes in there. And then overall business, metrics from the operations point of view. Like how many tools do we use? How do we use these tools? Which goes into very much like process analysis, like what do we need, what do we need newly, but then also do other policies around how people can work, where they can work, when they can work. And sometimes it's even very basic, like, can you work in a public library? Yes or no? If that, that it's a alleged question that may not come out, but like your policies need to regularly be reviewed and contrasted against what is actually happening. Because until you have somebody working in the public library, we probably don't even think that this happens. But within a remote organization, you have constantly new things happening simply because you don't put everybody into the same container, so to speak. Mm-hmm. So how can you, as the head of remote, be aware about all the new things that are being experimented with, which also means that how can you create the trust with the people that you work with, that they tell you these things? Yes. Which is also one of the reasons, and I'm sorry for all my colleagues in hr, people tell me things because I'm not hr. Yeah, because HR has a bad rap it and it's like you can be the most trustworthy, the best person, the most interesting person in the world. The moment you work in HR people directly, because there's a lot of people who've had like trauma with past HR people directly of course are like, oh, I'm, I'm going to tell you what I want to be perceived as I'm a great employee. So they're not necessarily going to come with their Yes, with their own drama or call it as you will, so like the head of remote, because they are not part of the hr, part of the company can work on creating this like almost more intimate relationship when it comes to, you can trust me and tell me what you're experimenting with because if what you are experimenting with works, we want to make it available for everyone. And if it doesn't work, yes, we want to learn from this and make sure that other people do not make the same mistakes. And that's something that requires a lot of trust.
Yes. I agree with the, with the HR part. In terms of KPIs, I think one of the. So half of the the metrics should come and can come from the HR side. So I think you're right when you mentioned like employee satisfaction, wellbeing, happiness scores feedbacks and whatever because that's how head of HR or any kind of like mm-hmm. HR leaders are measured with now mm-hmm. , and that's fine. And that's again, people didn't change. The technology and the setup of the work changed. So why should we change the metrics around people? So yeah. Stick to what, what we already did. That's fine. In terms of operations, so when I was a COO, my KPIs were all tied to the high level of business growth. Mm-hmm. And that's why I'm saying that head of remote sort of like a growth position to me. Mm-hmm. If the business is growing, that means that you as head of remote are doing something great because you are indirectly contributing to, well, directly on your end, of course, but indirectly in the performance of other teams to, to some of the, the performance like operations. How simple are your processes how can you apply it to, as you said in a freaking library or, or in an airport situation or in a hotel, or you still need to go to your own home office or even if you're working hybrid into the office how much time do you does it take for your team to organize a collaboration event and and stuff, and how do you document processes. How much time it takes to onboard someone, a new person to all of your, not just HR wise, but like to the operations side. Hmm. And yeah, these are the metrics that should be measured, I think for it, or I don't know.
If you have a hybrid company but you want to be remote first, send everybody home for a week and see what breaks. Yes. No, because every single thing that is being postponed, oh, I'll do this Monday when I'm back in the office. All those are improvement opportunities. Yes. Because like, why do you have to wait? Like why does it, not necessarily, why does it, why is it easier to do this on Monday in the office, but why does it feel easier? Yes. And then what can we do to take this bottleneck away?
Yes. Right. You are a hundred percent right. Right now we have, we had this pandemic and everyone like, turned into like a remote company now. But before the pandemic, I still talked with, I am working remotely since like 2014. So I still talk to companies they didn't know that if remote is, is something that they should do. They knew the benefits, the employee happiness, the cost. No one talks about the costs, by the way. But it saves a lot of money for the company...
Which should partially be reinvested into your remote workers. That's another story, but yes, ah, no. It drives me crazy that like, yes, because, because the office costs is a different bucket Yes. Than the get do, do a team event once a quarter. Yes. And the savings that we get from not having the office, part of it should be channeled into making the employee experience outside the office as successful as possible. But because it's different buckets and it's different people who are responsible for it. Yes. In a lot of companies that doesn't happen. And then yes, one side of the company is like, oh, we don't have the budget to do this. And the other side is like, sounds like a you problem, not like me problem. And like that's where the conversation stops. And I think there the head of remote is actually the bridge.
Yes, yes. Again, fully agree. By the way, it's not just the office cost, it's also you are not hiring people from San Francisco mm-hmm. So even though you are a valley based company so that's very safe anyway. And and I always told the very same that you just told me now, if you, seriously, if you want to know that remote is good for you, send everyone home for a week. See what happens. Come on. You can, you can still do that. It's, I mean, business won't stop, I guess. I promise you, I hope that, I hope No. Yeah. Yeah. I promise you that, that some stuff will be messed up. But maybe don't send everyone home for a week when you have like product launch next week. But, you know, in a calm situation or calm ish situation do the trick. It's pivot. So why not do that? It's a test. Mm-hmm.
Then look at it from two lenses. Like, look at it from the what broke, from a process point of view. Where did people not talk with each other and what broke for the individual people.
And what worked, what they, what do they say? Maybe you will see that that people are much more productive.
And if they are not, it's also the question like, Because it's one thing to send somebody home who lives alone and maybe even has like their creative corner set up where they can just work away and something very different. If you have somebody who, because they're never home anyway, don't even have a proper table and then end up working on the couch because there the problem is actually not that remote doesn't work. There the problem is that maybe you kind of need to figure out how that person can get access to a work desk that doesn't need to be at home. Because I think that's another thing. Remote and working from home is not the same. Like work from home is a sub-category of working remotely, but it's not the same.
Yes, yes. Yeah. By the way, I always told them that if, if they have a family at home or something like that, or they are super not happy to going home and working from home, then pay for a week co-worker, ask for a co-working. I mean, come on. Like hundred dollars. Okay. Let's talk about the leaders then. I am specifically curious about what the challenges that you see with the leadership. Let me tell you some examples that I encounter with to get going. What I see usually is that they apply enterprise based practices to not, I'm not saying startup mentally, but for the, the remote work mentally. Meaning what I mean by that is that they are not writing much, they're more talking much. Mm. Meaning that they are trying to solve every problem with a meeting. Mm-hmm. And not by briefing or gathering feedback and it's not because. Again, I'm sorry to be frank, but not because they're dumb or stupid, but because there are two leaders I think during, in remote work leaders who just became leaders because of remote work and they are still young-ish, 30 something, and leaders who were leaders before remote work mm-hmm. And just happened to be working remotely now because everyone is working remote or whatever. Yeah, yeah. And I'm talking about those who became remote leaders because they previously was in the office. They obviously socialized and learned and knew everything they knew around leadership from an enterprise perspective. Mm-hmm. And these practices are, you know, they're dated back for like a hundred years now. And changing that is super hard, I think. Yeah. And it's not their fault that they're not changing it. Meanwhile, others who are remote first leaders because they never worked in the office in a leadership position before they just need to know the techniques and the, so they're much more easier to to any kind of change mm-hmm. and by the way, they can still learn a hell lot from enterprise leadership practices mm-hmm. So somehow bridging the two I think is, it's one of the most crucial challenges that actually I see.
Yeah. Yeah. No, absolutely. And it's two different, like, types of leaders both I think struggle with similar set up like the people who have been leader. If you've been a leader for 20 years and then like a remote leadership consultant who's like 20 years your junior comes up to you and tells you you are doing this wrong. Yeah. It's like, what are you talking about? I could be your mom.
Like G T F O.
Yeah, exactly. So I understand that sometimes the remote movement is so condescending to people who have a lot of experience in something that is not remote work. That makes it a little bit difficult to connect with these people. Yes. And then the other part is leading remotely is fucking heart. And no one recognizes this. Like everybody is like, oh, you just sent everybody home. And then they'll figure it out and like, this is not the case as a remote manager as a remote leader, it is your responsibility that the people who report to you know what they should be achieving. Which means you need to define outcomes. You need to define goals. If they need your help to define how to do it, you need to be there and help them learn the things. Because even if you define OKRs, you cannot just drop those OKRs into your employee's lab and be like, well, you figure it out that like, that's not how learning works either. So you have had all these, they need to define what to do. They need to help the people who are stuck. They need to be present and they cannot just do the, I call it fly by management, which is when you walk through the open office and you just can see that Lauren didn't sleep the entire last night, looks like hell, and you're like, what's wrong? And then you start a conversation because in a remote world you don't see that. So you need to be a lot more tuned into I almost pattern recognition when you're in Slack and you're like, Oh, that was a very aggressive reaction from this person. Let me just check in a DM and say like, Hey, is everything okay? And see if something comes out of it. So it's a lot of expectations where suddenly it's not just you are leading a team. No, you are now also the personal trainer of every individual employee. You are representing all of the work upwards, and you probably don't get any guidance from your manager either because they are from the olden days where you would get together and have a coffee. So like this middle layer, they are really suffering at the moment and it's not their fault. It's, they're not getting the support that they need. That was my vent, I guess.
Well this is why we are here for so I guess you're a hundred percent right that some of the remote work, shall we say, remote work consultants are a little bit condescending. So I had a LinkedIn post that I saw from someone else today, and it was about an article and the article detailed the the fact that gen Z, which is the new millennial thing. So everyone is blaming them for everyth. For obvious reasons, and which is again, not true, but, but still how they behave at workplaces, that, that's what the article is was about, was all about that they put their legs on the, on the, on the table. They don't show up on meetings. They don't come into the office because I mean, I'm working home today and whatever. And it was from a UK based banking sector commentary. So like one of the most old-fashioned Culture that I can imagine banking.
Plus they usually have a lot of investment in real estate, they are not interested in people not having offices.
And it's all it is, by the way, also the industry that is destined to be changed this decade anyway. So, but again, if we accept from that I'm 40, so, but I can still remember what I, how a jerk I was when I was 25.
It comes with the age.
It's come with the age. Yeah. Okay I worked in the advertising industry, but same city, London. So and okay it's much more open and forgiving culture within the industry for I dunno, rebels like me. And again, I wouldn't do the legs on the table thing now. But still it's, it's an age thing. They have to change the status quo. This is how they, they, they view the world now and you should be thankful because they are there to challenge. And you have to manage the challenge. That's always great. That's how we, you know, go forward. And when you said that for example, remote work advocates or consultants are a little bit condescending, I also heard these comments you don't work remotely you don't see the future or something and I personally cannot imagine how someone can go into the office and whatever. So these kind of examples, yes, it's true, but the, these people usually view the world as it is from their own perspective. Mm-hmm. So I'm always forgiving for these viewpoints.
What we shouldn't forget as well is that these young professionals who basically came of age during a pandemic Yes. Hopefully have their social network outside. Yes. Which means they don't need work in quotes in order to get their social batteries filled up. Yes. But a lot of people who have been in the labor market for a lot longer are used to actually having their work peers as part Yes. Of their social network. So taking that network away, I mean, it's a surefire way to put you into depression. Just take away your entire support network. Of course, of course. And for a lot of people, the support network is at work. So, and that's yet another task for remote leaders. How can you make sure that your employees invest the time and the energy to create a support network outside of work? And there as a manager, you actually get conflicted advice because on the one side, You know that your people need friends, they need the hobby, they need to get out of the house. But on the other side, there are still a lot of old school leaders who are afraid that people have interests outside of work because they might leave or find something different or not give 100% to work. So like it's a little bit of a balancing egg. Like how can I make sure that my people are actually not languishing at home with depression, but actually go out while also acknowledging that, Hey, I need you to go out and go for a run in the morning with your friends and I also need you to get done this thing today because we have a deadline. Like, yes, balancing these two.
I don't, you are a hundred percent right. Again I don't want to be the guy who is like the calling out the ageism card, but who are clapping for remote work usually are those people who either never worked in the office, so like super young or those who have small kids mm-hmm. Like below six or below 10 or something because, you know, after 10 and you cannot really manage anyone. But, but before that you need to, you know, prep school and whatever you do your thing. And because of remote work, now you have more time to focus on the kids. Yeah. And I guess in like 2023 that we have right now everyone is kind of like acknowledging that, you know, focusing on a family is kinda like the thing that they should do. That wasn't a thing, I dunno, 20 years ago, I guess. Mm-hmm. Sadly. And But those who have grown up kids or they are 40 plus people, not because they are older, shall we say, but because exactly what you said, most of their social network, like friends are coming from work. Why? Because most of their, like university friends or whatever. By the way, friends also came from the circle that they went in the university. Mm-hmm. . Those already had kids and they are just now maybe reconnecting. Now they have time because before that, you know, they, they went to work, then attended the kids, and, you know, spending time with the, with the friends was like the priority, I dunno, 10 on, on the, on the list.
Yeah. Proximity, brief friend proximity, of course. I mean, your best friend in primary school, and I see this with my kids, the best friend is the child who was sitting next to them. Yes. No conscious decision. Simple, nothing proximity. We are working on every single math problem together. Hence, you are my friend, which means we are going to the birthday party together, which means, et cetera, et cetera. And then you end up being best friends for life because at the very first day of school, yes, turns out you both, your surnames both start with B or whatever and you were sorry. And that order like, but that's how it happens. Now then when you have small kids, and like the most social thing that if you have small kids is the parenting WhatsApp group. Which is Wow. Well, yeah. Yeah. That's a whole nother, it's a very active group and there's a lot of activity going in there because until the kids are around 10, every single birthday will be done with the entire class. So like there's, and which means we have like 30 birthdays every year, and then at some point they start doing birthdays per month together, or per quarter. But like you still get social interaction there. You get those other moms when you go pick up the kids. Yes. Some, some or other dad, but then the kids are out of, out of the house or the kids, like they don't want you to pick them up at school because that's weird. Yes. So then, then, I mean, then it's your work colleagues, because those are the people that you spend the most time with. And then you're suddenly at. And I think that's also why Coworkings are a great alternative because there people still can get a little bit of the social interactions. You take away one commonality because they don't have the same work anymore. And after all, like bitching about somebody at work or convalescent over a project at work also like creates this togetherness. But at least you have people around you. Yes, and no one really teaches us how to make friends when we are adults. And actually there is a really good book, it's called Platonic. It's research into like how, what makes friends, how to make friends and what activities you can do as an adult to actually find new friends and like, we need to look more into this because if more older sounds really bad. Like more and more people whose kids are out of the house and who don't have this automatic connection with other parents at school anymore. Like where do they get their automatic connections?
Yes, totally, totally. It was, that was, by the way, again, individual rumbling. That was the hardest thing to accept on my end. Mm-hmm. So I, I personally always had my own social network outside of work. Again, no kids, so I literally didn't get for like all more than 10 years that why others are so keen to make friends on the workplace when you are usually navigating through workplaces to another workplaces every two to three, three to four, four to five years anyway, so yeah it's weird. But yeah, now I get it because most of the people have either a family or other attendances that they mm-hmm. that they need to, and they're not that proactive.
And I think's that's harder on men actually than on women. Why, why that, that's interesting statistic like that. If you look at closest friends, on average, people have 1.5 close friends. Mm-hmm. , like really close friends that you can talk, like call to everything bury your buddy, basically. But if you disaggregate the, the data by sex on average, men have one and women have two. And it's usually the partner, like if it's a man, it's usually their partner who is the person that they most trust with. And for women it's usually the partner and a female friend. Someone and someone else. Exactly. And usually it's another female friend also, because the close friendship among women are like a lot, socially, a lot more accepted than like very close friend friendships among men.
Yes. And this is so interesting because maybe it sounds off topic by the way but it's not, it's simply how people build relationships. And as, as leadership experts or, or head of remotes building relationships is pretty much one of the goals. Mm-hmm. building and preserving relationships Yeah. Is pretty much one of the goals that we have, I think. And to me there are two magic words in relationship building. And it is true for friendships, at least on my end, but I guess it's kind of like universal in friendships, love interest, by the way. Mm-hmm. , this is the same for that too, and work. So being, and the two words are proactive in investment, so being proactive mm-hmm. proactively seek out, build and find opportunities and options and places and whatever where you can have any kind of connection and see what happens. Mm-hmm. And and invest meaning that, invest in those opportunities and options and see what happens. And the more you invests the more you can get out from the relationship. It's true for everything. Friendship, marriage and married marriage and and work as well. Mm-hmm. And it can be as you said, who called who, who invested where? Who did that? Who did that? It's the same for work. If you invest a little bit too much and people are still leave you, then you have a problem. Mm-hmm. , if you invest a lot in a friendship, but they never call you back, then you have a problem with the
Yeah. Maybe you should find somebody else.
Yeah. Maybe you should find another friend. Yeah. Yeah. Same, same, same, same. So it's interesting. And one thing that I personally teach to all of the leaders that I speak with is to proactive. The main difference between a non- remote and the remote leadership is the proactivity. Mm-hmm. So, because in an office scenario, like real office scenario, it's, I'm not saying it's easy, but it's, it's more organic. Mm-hmm. To fly by managed people. Right? Yeah. To grab someone in a meeting room and, and just quickly, five minutes, okay, what the heck is going on? Tell me whatever. And, and get, get a goal orientation and whatever. But in, in a remote setup, especially if you have asynchronous processes in place, by the way, that means that you need to be proactive. You need to create the opportunities to build a relationship. And the building a relationship, it just means that, I dunno having a meeting or a, or having a call or just get a feedback or, or whatever it is on work. So proactivity is really one of the key key factors.
Proactivity and teaching proactivity to the people who report to you. Yes. Because you want this to be, that's also important, two way of a relationship.
Yes. Yes. You have to be, ma you have to make sure that, that everyone not just sees, but understands that you're open. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Wow. Cool. , this is so interesting. It's time flew by. Okay. So by the way where are you based? Right now?
I'm in Granollers, which is 40 minutes outside of Barcelona. Mm-hmm. towards the, like if you go in land, not, not the coast. Oh, okay. Okay. Not on the coast. And yeah, I came here, I think it's now 15, 16 years ago to write my master thesis on innovation management and smaller, medium sized enterprises in border regions. I was studying in Denmark and the Danish German border is very rainy and very cold. So uh, , , I can imagine the plan to use the French Spanish border region instead. And my thesis advisor said that was fine. So I came here for six months and then never left.
Nice. And you're working remotely since when?
12 years or something now.
Wow. Yeah. I'm a dinosaur basically. Wow. I I found finally someone who's working remotely more than me. I'm so glad. Yes. I feel like a dinosaur as well. Yeah. But it gives you a lot of perspective. Like there's little things that I haven't seen in the remote world. I've seen work it very well, and I've also seen absolute drama, so Yes. Yes. And there I'm not, I'm not really faced by anything that clients tell me. It's like, yeah, I've been there, done that. There is a solution for this .
Yes. You pretty much started when digital normatism kinda like coined as a term, I guess. Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
At least that's and I have never been a digital nomad like...
Me neither.
I'm very happy to have my workspace at home and to work from home. Go for a run, come back home, go for coffee, come back. Like, I don't need to travel. I just like the flexibility that I don't have to go anywhere. I mean, now I have a commute because my kids go to school. But it's like, I like the fact that here I can have my tea, I can have the music that I like, no one is going to complain about the temperature. Like it's these things that I really appreciate.
Same, same, same. I traveled a little, but yeah, I have a dog at home, so I hate this dog kids correlation but still, in terms of travel, it's kind like the same, you cannot leave. That's a logistical cha challenge. Logistic, logistical challenge. Yeah. So I never did the digital nomading thing, but I traveled a lot. But but yeah, I started when, when that whole thing. Mm. Kind of like coined or I don't know, started.
I do it days at a time. Like for example, I did a mountain marathon in Murcia, which is like hour flight from here, and I stayed three days longer there to recover, and then I worked from there. Wow. But like, that's, that's my, wow. Like I wouldn't like move around there like three months. Here's three months there for that. I have a very strong network here. Mm-hmm. like to the point that if I need to make a call at 7:00 PM or something, the, my kids are absolutely happy to go with the neighbors next door or like, so I have a lot of friends who can, can call off. But of course the depth of friendship and of being able to rely on each other is a function of time. Yes. And of time spent together. So I have invested a lot to create my chosen family in an environment where I cannot fall back on my mom or an uncle or something, because there is no one here. So I've created that here and I am very aware that if I was here only like I don't know, once a month or something, it would be very difficult to maintain that. Not impossible, like I know that you can maintain strong relationships even when you're far away, but I just like the convenience of being able to call and say, Hey, do you want to come over for a coffee?
Yes. And what you just said, by the way previously that proximity builds relationships. Hmm. And friendship. It's, it's totally different to mingle and build relationships with expats, by the way. So I have two home bases. One in Budapest because I'm Origin Hungarian, and one in in in Verona in Italy because I love it. good enough. Good, good, good enough reason. And and yeah, in Verona mostly you can, you can meet with, with experts, right? Uhhuh. , like Italians of Barcelona is very similar. Yeah. But I don't speak Italian, so I will like, well, like Poco. So I'm still learning mm-hmm. And mingling and building relationships with those who are destined to leave. Or just there for, yeah. Half a year is super hard and different, right? Yeah. Anyway okay, so it is January the 17th. And last question and I ask this during the early times of the year from every guest I don't want to be put you in a spot that you should become Nostradamus of something, but what are your predictions on, on future of work for this year?
I think this year we are going to see a lot of pushback against remote work. I think that long-term remote work is here to stay, but I also think that we are now at the point where the pendulum is like swinging very, very clearly back while it's also being pushed back by the costs of offices, et cetera. So there's, we have like these two currents. One is, oh my God, I don't know how to manage these remote people. I want them to have here in the office because that's what I know and I want to go back to the old normal. I don't want a new normal, so make my people come back to the office and on the other side. It's very difficult to hire people if you make them go to the office just because it's an office and it's very difficult to maintain those that you have. So it's like two currents that are battling with each other. And I think at the moment we are in this tsunami where the wave is basically crushing on the rocks, which means there is a lot of chaos, if you just read the news or LinkedIn, like you don't know, it's like remote good or is remote bad because there's so many opinions and everything is expressed in binaries, which is my personal pet peeve. Especially in remote, there should be no binaries. Like there are so many options, like why do you put it all into one basket? And I think this year will help a lot to, for individual companies to cla clarify what they actually mean by remote. Yes. Because with the economic situations, a lot of companies now actually need to sit down and think about, okay, what is it that we stand for? And that's kind of the hope that I have for this year. There's a lot of companies get out of this saying, okay, we have decided we are only going to hire regionally. Unpopular, but works for us because we want to get people together once a quarter or like, okay, we have decided our people can work from anywhere, but they need to be in a co-working because we only trust the security and whatever. Mm-hmm. So like, I think we are going to get, see a lot of clarifications there once the dust has settled from the Yes. Everything crushing together.
And you haven't mentioned the economic downturn, which is about, about to happen as well. And I think remote work will be one of the possible solutions for cutting costs because of the insane real estate prices that you have for offices.
I hope that part of this cost then gets reshuffled towards the remote people, be it for heating costs. If you're in, I don't think it will happen, but like my wish is that part of the real estate, like if you're not heating the real estate, let's heat your employees homes.
Yes. Yes. Well, that's a wishful thinking. I don't think that will , sorry, sorry to say it. And broke, broke down your wings. But I don't think that will happen this year, but it will certainly happen next year. So I'm super pumped about the next year, not even this year. Mm-hmm. this year is as you were still in a transition time.
Like we're still not quite, I think this will be the first winter where Covid won't like rear its head quite as much as it has in the past. Mm-hmm. . So I think it's the first time where people actually stop holding their breath.
Yes, yes. And by the way, you have, you have kids, so you probably get the, the analogy I usually say that that remote work is a teenager now, so this is the time, this is the year. Where it challenges everything. Mm-hmm. throws up everything destroys everything, so there will be like a huge fucked up storm. But at the end, next year, I guess I don't think that we will even talking about remote work at all it'll be work work. Mm. And the location will not matter. It'll be a matter of choice because most of the companies will have sort of policies that, you know, let the employees decide what to do. Mm-hmm. That will, that will certainly happen and I'm truly optimistic about that. One other thing and last thing to mention, sorry, about about long, long recording that you are wearing a tiara , and you're wearing, you're wearing, I mean, it's audio only so people can see, but you are literally wearing a tiara and you're wearing a tiara on LinkedIn as well. Yeah. And pretty much everywhere. What's up with the tiara thing?
So it actually started when I started speaking at events. And it's much easier to tell the people, Hey, if you have any further questions, find the lady with the tiara. Then try to remember which of all these blonde ladies is the one that you wanted to talk to . And then at some point, a work colleague said, I bet you would never wear a tiara if you're not a speaker. And I said exactly. And then on that conferences I like, it was so successful because people would come up to me and ask about the tiara, which means that like, I'm not like, I'm an introverted by trade basically, so it's very hard for me to actually go up to people and just start the conversation because I'm like, I have no idea what I'm going to talk about with you. So the tiara makes it a lot easier because people come to me and start the conversation with the tiara, and that's where I was like, okay. I think I just found my magic bullet to make, like to make connections and also to be approachable because with the tiara, everybody knows that I'm not taking myself too seriously. I end up on video calls. I usually end up talking about tiaras and not about covid or the weather, which is a lot more entertaining. So like, it serves a lot of purposes Also, my daughter now says she's a princess because her mom wears a tiara with and she's not very them. No, she does. No, she's, she's not interested. She like, interesting. She used to take them when she was like three, but now she's more into unicorn stuff. That's okay. The unicorns are fine too. I mean, tier is working. It's easy to remember.
Thank you for coming where people can find you. And anything that you forgot to mention, this is the time.
So I'm actually most easiest approach on LinkedIn. It's my social network poison of choice, basically. And I think I answer more to LinkedIn messages than I do to my own emails. Also until my daughter comes of age I'm the only Valentina Thörner on there, so you won't nice find anyone else with that name for now. I also have a website, which is valentina turner.com. Most people go there clicking through from LinkedIn because my name with T h o e is not, is not the most easy one for, for non Germans to to remember. And yeah, those are the LinkedIn on my website or there's also Empress of remote Substack where you can subscribe and there I write weekly ish, kinda, yeah. So I have managed to do weekly this year, but the year is not very old yet. So I'm not going to to promise it's it. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you can subscribe, but most you can also, there's a paid subscription where you also get a consultation with me, I think I haven't paid walled one single post until now. Even though at the very beginning there was the idea. So jump in while you can
That was, that was a very entertaining call and thank you for all the insights that you shared. Thanks for coming and thank you for your well long time here.
Oh, well I had fun. This was a great conversation, thank you so much.
Appreciate it. Thank you.
