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Karen Stock is a professional assistant professor at Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio. She is also a doctoral student at the Weatherhead School of Management at Case Western Reserve University. Her research focuses on applications of experiential learning with equine-assisted education and the impact of immersive experiences in regards to deeper learning. She can be reached at kstock@walsh.edu or karen.stock@case.edu.

Karen Stock

Cross-functional work teams, managers and their employees, union and non-union co-workers often attend training as a means of learning how to work together more successfully. For relationships to improve, these individuals need to find common ground.One way to achieve this goal is to share a common experience. More important, it is essential that none of the participants are already an expert—in order for titles and positions to disappear.Case in pointOne such experience that levels the playing field for these groups is equine-assisted training. In this example, participants typically spend a day working with a herd of horses in small groups accompanied by a trained facilitator.Throughout the course of the day, groups interact with the horses by conducting various exercises, such as leading and bridling the horse and taking it through an obstacle course. The facilitator assists with learning by periodically pausing for reflection and prompting participants to share their interpretations of the actions of both the horses and themselves.So, just what do participants have to say about equine-assisted training and what did they learn as a result? Here are just a few responses:“We were sharing things in conversation that we would never ever do outside of that environment.”“Working with animals that are 1,800 pounds that speak a different language and are somewhat unpredictable levels the playing field for people.”“Horses give you really clear, unadulterated feedback. They could care less if I’m a CEO. It didn’t matter to them. I’m not a CEO in their environment.”Tips for your own learningDon’t have access to a herd of horses? Try another unique learning experience with your team. Here are a few tips to consider for creating a learning space that enables participants to find common ground.Take a learner-centered approach to facilitation. Probe for insight and guide participants into understanding how their actions impact others and themselves.Create a safe environment for learning. Individuals should feel free to share opinions without being reprimanded and are encouraged to take risks.Connect with the natural environment. An outdoor location cannot only relieve us from our addiction to technology gadgets, but also reminds us of the interconnectedness we all share. In the end, a shared unique learning experience that creates a level playing field will result in better working relationships among team members, regardless of a member’s position or status.

Leveling the Playing Field with Unique Learning Experiences

Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski is a Professor in the Department of Technology and Society in the College of Engineering and Applied Science at Stony brook University.  Karen is also the Founder of Virtual Distance International (VDI) and the Virtual Distance Institute, organizations that specialize in helping companies maximize productivity and innovation among the virtual workforce.  After 18 years on Wall Street, Karen pursued a Ph.D. and discovered the new phenomenon of Virtual Distance, a measureable concept that predicts the success or failure of organizational outcomes.  Karen is internationally recognized as the world’s leading expert on virtual teams, leadership in the wired world and managing global organizations. She is the author of two books:  “Uniting the Virtual Workforce:  Transforming Leadership and Innovation in the Globally Integrated Enterprise” and “Leading the Virtual Workforce:  How Great Leaders Transform Organizations in the 21st Century”, showcasing executives from major corporations around the world.  Karen’s clients include large Fortune 500 companies, governments and non-profits.  Karen’s award-winning dissertation, “Virtual Distance:  A New Model for the Study of Virtual Work” has launched a new field of academic studies into this area and Karen is now affiliated with many other renown universities including Wharton, Babson College, the Stockholm School of Economics and more.  Karen is a highly sought-after public speaker, executive advisor and consultant on the topics of global leadership, innovation and distributed work.

Dr. Sobel-Lojeski

This is Part Four of a four-part series on using improvisational behaviors to drive performance.Most people believe the improvisational skills are something you must be born with. But guess what? Everyone improvises.You improvise every time your boss asks you to work on a project you know nothing about—that sounds completely scary—and you say, “Sure, I’d be happy to work on that.”One aspect of improvisation that is especially helpful to leaders is the ability to deal with the unexpected, with mistakes, and with surprises. Indeed, the unexpected is an improviser’s stock in trade! We never know what will happen from moment to moment, and we’re making it up as we go along. I’m sure that sounds like a lot of your days at work!That flexibility and the sense that anything can happen, keeps us on our toes and ready for anything. It’s a critical skill in an ever-evolving, global professional world.Consider the quote from management guru Peter Drucker: “The model for management that we have is the opera. The conductor has a very large number of different groups that he has to pull together. The soloists, the ballet, the orchestra, all have to come together – but they have a common score. What we are talking about today are diversified groups that have to write the score while they perform. What you need now is a good jazz group.”Here are three steps for dealing with the unexpected.See it and say itWhen the unexpected occurs, many try to sweep it under the rug. Act like nothing went wrong and perhaps no one will notice. All that does is breed an elephant in the room. It’s the big, uncomfortable thing that everyone really does know about, but that no one will talk about.In improv, we have to acknowledge everything on stage. That takes the power away from the event and gives it back to the people. By acknowledging an event, even if it’s ugly, you regain control.Flip itIt’s often a mental moment. You train your brain to see something as an opportunity rather than a problem. Going to Plan B is not always our preference, but it’s sometimes necessary. For example, penicillin and Post-Its both began as huge failures. It was the ability of scientists to look beyond the “mistake” to see that something great was underneath.Leaders need to have the courage to say to the team, “The unexpected has happened. We feel pretty unhappy right now, and that’s understandable. Let’s take some time to consider how we can flip this. How can this be an opportunity for us?”Use itOn the improv stage, if a troupe has a train wreck (the common term for a scene going completely wrong) we have to use it. By moving on or ignoring it, we lose the audience. When we’re able to use the incident for a better scene, a new character, or a plot twist, the audience is wowed and the show is a success.Case studyThe CFO of a midsize advertising firm made a million-dollar mistake. The day it happened, she visited me, almost physically ill. She knew she would have to fire people, beg vendors for extra pay time, and make it right for the client. It might ultimately mean her own job as well.She said, “In the 15 years I‘ve worked at this firm, I’ve never made such a mistake.” I let her have a moment of silence, then answered, “And the way you deal with it will define your next 15 years at the firm.”We spent some time talking about all the things she had always wanted to improve, change, and turn around at the firm. Why couldn’t this stressful event be the catalyst for re-examining all their processes? She began to nod, dug in, and put together a plan for the CEO the next day. It was bold, not only managing the event at hand, but addressing several other looming issues for the firm.Bottom line: Her example helped them leverage a very difficult third quarter into a record-breaking fourth quarter.Oops to eureka!By coming to an issue with an improviser’s mindset—a scientist’s mindset—you can transform how you and your team manage the unexpected and reap the benefits.

Leadership Improv: Turning the Unexpected Into an Advantage

An unusually astute sense of self translates into an ability to understand the world and the people around you on many levels and in many different contexts. Purpose to ‘change the world’ coupled with a powerful strength of conviction keeps leaders pushing forward even in the face of obstacles or when pressured by others to do something else, while never forgetting their responsibility to satisfy the needs of the board, shareholders, customers, or employees. Recall how N.R. Narayana Murthy, one of the co-founders of Infosys Ltd., the Indian-based business consulting, technology, engineering, and outsourcing services company, stood up against political corruption in his home country to change the way business was done in India.Many of the truly exceptional leaders I have worked with possess a rare capacity to rapidly absorb, synthesize, and organize information that helps them understand the world around them, even when that world is radically different from what they have experienced before. Almost simultaneously, they are able to use that new worldview to determine how best to lead themselves and their organizations going forward. This multi-level processing enables them to respond more quickly and effectively to market changes and opportunities. The ability to make connections and interconnections across industries, technologies, markets, and geographies is an incredibly important skill for the global leader. It is essential to the process of developing strategies and collaborative relationships that keep a company, even an entire industry, relevant over the long term.              Another essential trait is in knowing when that which has worked in the past is destined for failure going forward. The dilemma faced by many leaders is that when they find a good model, say Dell's "Build it to Order," they have a hard time letting go. For global leaders, this dilemma is amplified, given the need to operate multiple business models simultaneously around the world. Truly global leaders need the intellectual acuity to know what to keep, what to destroy, and what to recreate across their organizations, in order to remain relevant to myriad markets and constituents. More importantly, they need the emotional intelligence and the mettle to take action, especially when what must be destroyed is exactly what made them successful in the past.  Consider how LEGO dramatically undertook an aggressive diversification plan (i.e., changed its business model) expanding its business beyond the traditional interconnecting building blocks to include a new line of clothing, theme parks and video games to improve revenue and capture greater market value.While more of an operations focus and engineering mentality may have been successful in the past, today's leader needs to be more of an inventor and an experimenter, willing to try out a new idea (a hypothesis) and recognize that failure (disproving the hypothesis) can be just as valuable, if not more so, than when the hypothesis turns out to be correct. Experimentation is a critical component of the reinvention process—whether you are reinventing a product, a solution, your business model or organizational structure, and even an industry platform or standard. [Let’s Recreate Leadership Series – Final PostBlog #4: The nature of organizations has changed, and the leaders they require in the future will be fundamentally different from those they require today. It is time to recreate leadership for the requirements of the modern organization.](http://stockmonkeys.com)[](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=6ddcewZIeuHIBM&tbnid=GF-iv8QA4q-dTM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/duboc/7896404652/&ei=5JkJUru\_CImsiAf\_goDoBQ&bvm=bv.50500085,d.aGc&psig=AFQjCNFm5h4mgyFMC0GTeXZYwhLGf5W\_Fw&ust=1376447315952368)Over the years, serving as a management consultant and as the corporate lead in charge of executive development, I have assessed and developed thousands of leaders, most of whom were either preparing for or already in significant global assignments. Working closely with these individuals, I have learned that there are certain notable traits that distinguish those who hold global positions from those who are truly (deep in their being) global leaders. Interestingly, the differences have little to do with age, gender, where they were raised or schooled, and not even the kind of "on the job" training they received or the number of countries stamped in their passports. These are certainly important factors that contribute to one's ability to do global work; they provide the playground in which budding leaders can learn and grow, but they do not make a global leader. What I have found is that the true differentiating qualities are more psychographic than demographic in nature.  [Failure is a necessary ingredient to success. Leaders need to learn how to fail: How to understand it, learn from it, and importantly, how to recover from it. Learning how to fail is essential if you want to know how to be successful. As Winston Churchill said, "Success is the ability to go from one failure to another with no loss of enthusiasm."  Failure is not the opposite of success but rather an integral part of the invention, reinvention, and innovation process.  Within each failure are lessons that develop experienced judgment to apply to subsequent reinvention or innovative projects. Today's leaders need to see their corporations as if they are part of living systems, in which the success of the individual is dependent upon the success of the larger whole. In the business world, they understand that the success of the corporation is dependent upon the success of the broader ecosystems. For Jim Whitehurst, CEO of Red Hat, improvement of his company's core product, Linux software, depends on cooperation among software developers around the world far beyond those on Red Hat's payroll.  This approach is in sharp contrast to the more common economics of scarcity in which something of value is protected by copyrights and is only available to those willing to pay for it. In Whitehurst's world, value is actually created by maximizing access, which increases the size of the brain trust working on a given problem. This approach, long lauded by the free software movement, can yield unprecedented results.Today's leaders also need to not only learn to live with, but also to appreciate, messiness on the outer edge of their organizations. This requires co-existing in two worlds, one that is more reminiscent of the past, where a certain level of control and oversight is important to drive today's performance expectations, and another where the leader sets the vision and then gives permission to those working on the edge to self-organize and find solutions—often to problems that have not even been considered or created. By understanding and balancing the needs of both worlds, leaders can help their organizations stay profitable today, which can help financially support innovation for the future. To do so, leaders need to be comfortable with the messiness inherent in a knowledge (versus industrial) economy.  Leadership, especially at a global level, has a tremendous capacity to change the world, for good or for bad. Unlike industrial age thinking that at times disregarded or diminished the importance of environmental and social responsibility, leaders today need to be much more aware of the impact their operations have and are adjusting processes and policies to promote sustainability. Growth going forward must depend upon business models that support sustainability: of communities, of workforces, of the environment.For many businesspeople, a word like empathy seems too soft for the fiercely competitive, results-driven world in which they live. But empathy can yield some very tangible business results on many fronts, from employee engagement to product design to identifying new market opportunities.Authenticity is even more critical in a world of social networking, where anything you do or say can be captured and shared with the rest of connected humanity in a matter of minutes, if not seconds. For Frits van Paasschen, CEO of Starwood Properties transparency is a fact of life. In his manifesto on leadership, written in early 2012 for the employees of his worldwide hotel and resort network, Frits says, "It is not enough to have a strong brand or a great product. People expect to know about the company behind the brand and the people behind the product. Thanks to Facebook, Wikileaks, and LinkedIn—there are virtually no degrees of separation anymore. All the world's a digital stage."  The author would like to thank Karen Conway for her contribution to prior materials that inspired the content of this blog.](http://images.google.com/url?sa=i&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&docid=qAIj51xYsMFmfM&tbnid=1OxD7ZSM5jTkuM:&ved=0CAUQjRw&url=http://www.keral.com/index.php/narayana-murthy-to-head-infosys-again/&ei=f5QJUpD6D4yFiAeywYHIDA&psig=AFQjCNHPU3lz2G-TvW0hht3mg\_cULvPjjg&ust=1376445937659029)

Let's Recreate Leadership Series - Final Post

You manage your time. You manage your energy. You manage your engagement and enthusiasm at work and in the rest of your life. And you manage your boss—whether you know it or not. If you learn how to manage the relationship with your boss well, your work can be more gratifying and your relationship might build into one that could serve you years after you stop working together. Tip #1: Help Your Boss Deliver Results Your manager's position requires projects to be completed on time, under budget, and with expected levels of quality. Your boss needs help to accomplish these parameters. A wise consultant once said, “Smart employees know that their primary job is to make their bosses heroes.” By helping your boss be seen as a hero by more senior managers or executives, you become a valued performance partner. The 2013 Gallup Poll on Employee Engagement pointed out that only 30 percent of employees are fully engaged at work. That means your boss is spending an inordinate amount of time and energy pushing, pulling, cajoling, and negotiating with the 70 percent who are not engaged. They also are educating, dragging, and managing performance improvement plans for the 23 percent of employees who are actively disengaged. Imagine how exhausting this is! Delivering results is the number one tool at your disposal to manage your supervisor, manager or executive. If you are a member of the 30 percent of engaged employees, you not only make your manager successful, you also save your boss's energy. All results are improved and you have a boss who will view you as someone who eases the stress of the job.  Tip #2: Help Your Boss See Your Value If you boss doesn’t already have regular weekly or bi-monthly meetings with you, schedule them. Suggest an agenda and then stick to it. If you already have these regular meetings, make sure you add five minutes to the agenda for a short brainstorming session for mentioning your ideas to reduce waste or improve outcomes. Some managers will welcome the addition to the agenda, others won’t. Some may even feel threatened by your suggestions. If that is the case with your boss, start slowly by finding natural points of entry in the meeting conversation. Over time, even the most oblivious of bosses will start to wonder how your ideas might play out. Another way to approach a more recalcitrant manager is to test ideas on your own. During a 1:1 meeting, share the results and what you did to correct the glitches. As a boss, I’m always excited when one of my team tested out an idea, didn’t achieve the desired outcome, then incorporated a correction or change to accomplish the results they wanted. This shows me I have a team member who is constantly looking to improve the status quo and is willing to take calculated risks to do so. Do I want to hear about their processes and ideas? You bet! Most managers know that useful, even great, ideas can come from anywhere at any time. Smart managers know that their ideas may be the first ones but not necessarily the best ones. The old adage, “two heads are better than one,” will help your boss more than you might realize. Your status will migrate from being just an employee to a performance partner—and over time, to a thought partner. Keep in mind: Don't take it personally if your boss takes credit for your idea. Sometimes, bosses truly can't remember where an idea came from. Do, however, keep track of your achievements and implemented ideas so you can remind your boss at performance appraisal time. Tip #3: Treat Your Boss Like a Person Bosses are human too. Your manager has a life beyond work, just as you do. The days of “leave work at work and home at home” no longer exists—if they ever really did. Many organizations promote work-life balance in their policies and practices, knowing that it reduces stress and increases happiness and productivity at work. Dr. Karen Ernest Kossek's research indicates that this balance reaps rewards of greater job satisfaction and enhanced quality of life and work performance from employees across the organization. Still, humans are not robots. Worries over challenges with children, spouses, friends or aging parents can upset even the most stoic and dedicated boss. Work deadlines, unreasonable client expectations, and that group of 23 percent actively disengaged employees also cause undue stress and emotionally strained days. Each of us responds to the current work environment differently. Some of us retreat inwardly, wanting to engage in only the most necessary or highly important communications. Some of us become less tolerant of peer and team members’ idiosyncrasies. Some of us loose a degree or two of emotional intelligence. However, your boss manifests this stress, as long as she is not abusive in any way, give them a break. As you would a team member or friend, even though your boss out ranks you in the organizational hierarchy, they are just a person and deserve a bit of leeway as much as anyone else..Tip #4: Thank Your Boss Like any person, bosses enjoy being appreciated. Middle managers are often caught between the demands of the organization, demands of executives, demands of customers and demands of employees. Many have told me that it often feels like a thankless job. Executives have the weight of the organization’s future success on their backs. Many of them work an exorbitant number of hours to match their title and compensation. Still, as they too are human, an honest "thank you" for a bit of coaching, support for meeting your goals, or giving you a stretch assignment that is especially appealing goes a long way. Although they often receive welcomed financial bonuses, a genuine statement of thanks acknowledges your boss for his/her efforts on your behalf. Something as simple as, "Thanks boss for letting me present our status report at the senior staff meeting today," goes a long way. Moving Forward Are you in that group of 70 percent disengaged employees? Practice a bit of introspection and determine what you need to engage more at work. Then, ask your boss for help. If you are part of the 23 percent of actively disengaged employees who gossip or undermine the work of others, go through the same introspection exercise. Also determine if your boss is capable of assisting you—or is he a major part of the problem? Then, ask your boss or someone in a higher position to assist you. If you help your boss deliver results and see your value, treat your boss like a person and thank your boss on occasion, your boss will appreciate you and be more likely to provide the resources you need to stay engaged doing your best work. You’ll also be front-of-mind as a key contributor in her area of influence. Learning to manage the relationship with your boss is part of managing your career. Enjoy building a partnership with your manager, and stay in touch when you no longer work together.

4 Tips for Managing Your Boss

Are you making the transition from trainer to performance consultant conducting human performance improvement (HPI) projects? Here’s a secret to your success: Focus the biggest percentage of your analysis time on key performers to identify what’s influencing performance, so you can devise the best solutions to help the organization achieve goals and close performance gaps.Key performers are the people who consistently produce desired results, sometimes even under difficult circumstances. They are the “heroes” we know we can count on to get the job done. They are the ones customers consistently ask for, or the people everyone wants leading their project team. Think about the people who produce the best results day after day. Their peers know who they are, and so do their managers. Statistically speaking, key performers are in the top 1–3 percent of the workforce population in a particular job role. Now, think about the gap between the results these key performers produce versus average performers. In many organizations, the difference is often surprising, sometimes ranging from 25–50 percent.Here’s why key performers are essential to a successful HPI analysis:1. They produce the outcomes that drive business results.Outcomes are the measureable, valued accomplishments that are produced by a particular job. Outcomes are different from activities; someone may look very busy, and are always doing something, but not produce outcomes efficiently or effectively.Key performers produce the outcomes for their jobs better, faster, and more efficiently than others. They may produce the same number of outcomes in less time than an average performer, or with less cost or waste (effort, resources, etc.). They may simply produce more outcomes in the same amount of time, or they may produce outcomes that are of a higher quality. For example, a key performer for a call center might have a lower call handle time, a higher percentage of satisfied customers, and fewer call transfers or call-backs. It’s easy to see how outcomes like these could help your organization meet business goals faster.2. They have best practices and tips they can share.We’ve analyzed human performance to help many different types of organizations improve overall organizational performance. Regardless of the industry or size of an organization, key performers have figured out the best ways to do things, or little shortcuts that get them there faster. Sometimes these best practices and tips are simple—keyboard shortcuts written on sticky notes around their computer, or a homemade job aid with the steps they need to complete an infrequent task.Key performers usually are proud of their ability to find the best way to do things. In most cases, they would be happy to share them if someone asked. Organizations often don’t take the time to ask. HPI consultants should do so because we want to figure out how these individuals are achieving above-standard work.3. They know how to work around barriers and across boundaries.One of the main differences between key performers and average performers is what a key performer does when he or she encounters a barrier or organizational boundary. The key performer is more likely to have a bigger picture of the organization and how it works. They often have an extensive network, are highly connected across the organization, and are more collaborative than the average performer. They know who to call and where to look for answers.Many performance problems occur at the hand-off points of a cross-organizational process. The average performer understands how their team or business unit operates, but may not have a good understanding of what happens outside of their business unit. This makes it very difficult for the average performer to know what to do or who to call when a problem that affects their work occurs outside of their business unit. Key performers often make it a point to understand how other areas of the organization affect the work they do. Ask your key performers about the barriers they encounter and how they get around them. You’ll be surprised at the opportunity for process improvement that you will find!Closing ThoughtsSo, you’ve been assigned to an HPI project to help your organization meet business goals and close performance gaps. Ask questions to understand the job role most closely associated with the results the organization desires. Then, interview and observe the key performers in that job role. Tools like the Performance DNA Desktop (www.outcome-sys.com) methodology and the software ASTD makes available in the Analyzing Human Performance program can help you do so. Your analysis, the data you gather, the conclusions you reach, and the solutions you recommend will be better for it!

Top 3 Reasons Key Performers are Essential to an HPI Analysis

(From The Wall Street Journal) -- GoogleEDU is formalizing learning at the company in an entirely new way, relying on data analytics and other measures to ensure it is teaching employees what they need to know to keep profits humming.Last year, Google offered more classes to more employees than it ever has before, with about a third of its 33,100-strong global workforce going through the in-house program. It cut classes that didn't work and retooled others. "What's important is that it aligns with our overall business strategy," says Karen May, Google's vice president of leadership and talent, who has led the revamping of GoogleEDU. Companies have long sought to boost their employees' performance through training and leadership programs. U.S. businesses spent $171.5 billion on learning and development in 2010, the most recent year for which data is available, according to the American Society for Training and Development. General Electric Co., for example, spends $1 billion annually on training and education programs for its employees, according to its website.Getting these programs to work, though, is tricky. Management experts say it is all well and good to send employees to classes, but to get the lessons to stick, employees need to apply them to their daily work lives. Employees often take a class and "say, 'Gee, this is great,' and go back to their jobs and do the same old thing," says Professor David Bradford, director of the executive program in leadership at Stanford University. Google thinks it has found a way to make its learning stick. It has become more exacting about when it offers classes and to whom. It uses employee reviews of managers—similar to the instructor reviews that college students fill out at the end of a semester—to suggest courses to managers. Ever data-obsessed, Google uses statistics gathered from current and former employees to recommend certain courses to managers at different points in their career, say after a move to a new city or joining a new team.Read more.

School Is in Session at Google

In this first of two posts on enhancing your relationship with the boss, I interviewed the author of the new book, Overcoming an Imperfect Boss, Karin Hurt, CEO of Let's Grow Leaders. Karin is an experienced executive, speaker and writer with a diverse background in sales, marketing, customer service, merger integration, human resources, training and leadership development. She has put her 20 years of leadership experience at Verizon to very good use. Over the past year, she’s launched a consulting business and award-winning blog. And she’s written her first book, Overcoming an Imperfect Boss, an interactive working guide for navigating today’s business landscape and getting what you need from a (perfect or imperfect) boss.I recently had the chance to explore with Karin some of the concepts from her book.I really appreciated your comment in the book that “beginning in the space of imperfection offers much freedom and power.” What exactly do you mean by this?When you realize your boss is just a human being doing the best she can, just like you, it inspires you to take more ownership for your career. It’s not your boss’ job to motivate you, develop you, or direct your career. That’s your job. Recognizing imperfection empowers you to stop waiting for her to change or to help you, and to find the support you need. It’s also important to recognize that your boss needs your support. Seeing her as human inspires deeper empathy to create more meaningful and supportive connection. Stronger relationships lead to better business results and growth for both of you.Have you learned more from good or bad bosses? Which do you think are more powerful teachers for most people?Bad, hands down. If we can get past the frustration and allow the learning to seep in, bad boss behavior teaches us what not to do at a deep emotional level. We are more empathetic to the impact we’re having on others.  Also, paying attention to your reaction teaches you to manage your own emotions and stress. Despite the title, your book hits on nearly every relationship employees have: the boss, executives, peers. Which do employees struggle with most and why?My experience is that peer relationships can be the toughest for many folks, particularly early in their career. There’s often a sense of competition where there should be collaboration. Traditional stack-ranked systems can aggravate this behavior.   Throughout the book, you outline scenarios and followed them up with solutions; but you took a different tack with your discussion of the disengaged boss. Rather than offering tips to improve the situation, you explore the benefits of it. Why?Before you can take action, you’ve got to get your head in the right place. It’s tempting to think, “Well, if my boss doesn’t care than neither do I,” or “Poor me…. I wish I had a great boss like Joe.” Instead seize the benefits of this great opportunity: freedom to experiment, strategic thinking, teambuilding, a broadened network. What are the special challenges of engaging with a boss – perfect or imperfect – in today’s increasingly virtual environment?  And what advise do you have to employees of bosses who are both imperfect and remote?I have been working in long distance leadership situations for almost two decades. I have led many highly dispersed teams.  For most of my career I have not worked in the same state as my boss. And in my last role I led a team dispersed over 20 states across three time zones.My advice: Understand that every interaction counts. Stay well organized and prepare good updates, followed-up by email summaries. Explore ways to connect “eye to eye” through technology. Keep track of your accomplishments—it’s not bragging it’s helpful, particularly in a remote environment. Take time to get to know one another as people. It’s a bit harder in a virtual environment, but worth the effort.

A Q&A with Karin Hurt: Overcoming an Imperfect Boss

Karin Hurt helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. She’s the founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, a global leadership development and training firm known for practical tools and leadership development programs that stick.She’s the award-winning author of five books including Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates and Powerful Phrases for Dealing With Workplace Conflict and a hosts the popular Asking for a Friend Vlog on LinkedIn. A former Verizon Wireless executive, Karin was named to Inc. Magazine’s list of great leadership speakers.Karin and her husband and business partner, David Dye, are committed to their philanthropic initiative, Winning Wells – building clean water wells for the people of Cambodia.

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