WLP217 and WLP218 BONUS: Conversations with Marcus Wermuth and Laila von Alvensleben
Here are two bonus episodes, where we share with you some longer excerpts from guest conversations in 2019 - as we look forward to 2020. Some of Marcus and Laila’s thoughts were featured in episode WLP209 The Journey of the Remote Leader last year, but they had so many more great insights about remote team leadership that we really wanted to bring you the interviews in full, to enjoy as we prepare for our new season.
Marcus Wermuth from Buffer: Being a manager in a distributed company
Marcus Wermuth
Marcus is an engineering manager for the mobile team, building the iOS and Android apps that Buffer’s customers use every day. He is also a 21st Century Work Life podcast veteran, having featured in episodes 188 , 195, 209... And he’ll be back soon!
Marcus also represents the mobile team within the organisation more generally - ensuring visibility and recognition for the work they are engaged in.
The leadership roundtables and hack weeks he organises bring together managers across the enterprise, and help to ensure his global team are fully integrated into the vision of the company as a whole. He enjoys the synergies these interactions create, and it’s a great fit within the transparent entrepreneurial culture of Buffer, where they’re ‘all here to move the company forward’. They communicate continually, and the leadership team role models the kind of visibility and openness needed for effective connection across disciplines, cultures, and continents.
He really enjoys connecting with his team members, and helping them shape meaningful and fulfilling careers. From remote team calls to 1-on-1s, to sentiment ‘pulse’ measurement, to company retreats, they evolve points of contact to suit the changing needs of the team and the work - and cross-team communications are presently mostly asynchronous due to timezone issues. This has led him to develop his own writing and reflection practice, which helps to amplify and cascade learning, very much in the open-source tradition.
Marcus’ history with remote work and startup environments made him a great fit for this role, and he says when you build a career in tech engineering, nothing can surprise you! Although at first he found it harder to feel as productive as a manager, where it’s more difficult to observe the effects of your work directly and immediately, compared with coding. But he believes in focusing on one role at a time, and not trying to code while managing a team. Learning patience is the key, with the help of a good coach, and your own ‘virtual tribe’ outside of the organisation for different kinds of support.
Connect with Marcus on LinkedIn, Twitter, and via his website.
Laila von AlVensleben from Mural: Managing people operations in a distributed hybrid team
Laila started out in the Customer Success team at Mural, and then transitioned to head of People Operations - the team responsible for the employee experience instead, a role steeped in HR, operations, and cultural themes. She joined us previously in episode 209.
Laila von Albensleben
This is her first leadership role, and she has drawn on learning and example (as well as common sense) to develop the People Operations team from scratch. She co-ordinates a team across 9 hours timezone spread, and manages this through weekly meetings, also written reflections against OKRs. She connects with others in similar roles for professional development input, and brings in check-in habits and tools from previous positions to improve connections within the team (interestingly, finding that when a tool or bot asks how you’re doing in a team conversation, you can end up with deeper disclosure than when a colleague asks the same question!)
Because of the unique role of the People Ops team, she needs to have connection and visibility with the entire organisation, which is also growing rapidly. This is managed with a range of touchpoints and meetings, from recruitment through onboarding to regular check-ins.
Laila balances the informality of 1-to-1 meetings with some structure to the conversation on her own side, and sees it as very important to maintain individual direct connections in the fast-moving startup environment. Feedback is essential, and she has adapted a unique model for this using Zoom and Mural, making time to reflect and appreciate and express where there is room for improvements to be made - creating a template for use across the organisation.
Above all her aim with her own team is to facilitate self-management, because this is essential for distributed working - supporting and enabling, rather than micromanaging and fixing everything.
You can learn about Laila’s work at Mural, and connect with her on Linkedin, Twitter, and her own website.
Look out for lots of exciting new episodes coming soon as we move into 2020, including a new collaboration we’re very excited about.
And do keep your feedback coming, we really enjoy it - please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas.
If you like the podcast, you'll love our monthly round-up of inspirational content: