#05 Nicolas Deville – Taking care of your team
Uploaded: 10.12.2019
Duration: 39:13
In this episode, I talk with Nicolas Deville. He is the founder of OfficeBots.io, a completely remote start-up.
We talk about:
- The art of delegation & being ok with the idea that someone else will do tasks differently
- Putting yourself in the shoes of the team members: how would they like to be led, what drives that person, what’s their goal?
- Walking meetings – just go out of the office in order to have more openness and ease in conversations
- Taking care of your team – ensuring that team members achieve their objectives by getting the best out of a person without getting them over the limit
- Learning & having new experiences as driver for Nicolas such as through reading books, blogs, listening to podcasts
- Doing the right thing – taking right decisions by not putting the business result at all costs above everything else, it will pay off in the long term
- Learnings for working with remote teams – travel there, have walking meetings to get an understanding of new local team members, have breakfasts, lunches, dinners – as long as it’s not a meeting room type meeting! Communicate as often as possible as it’s better to over communicate than under communicate!
- The importance of being able to articulate a clear vision of where the team/company shall be in 12 months/3 years etc. as it empowers people to take decisions on a daily basis
- How to set up remote companies from day 1: hiring people quickly rather than long interview processes can help get your remote company up to speed, first working with freelancers who might become fulltime employees
- How remote companies help with current challenges e.g. long traveling times to the office & how e.g. a third of the budget that would be spent on offices could be invested in quarterly live team bonding activities
- A “book club” in his former team, where employees could buy a business or self-development book on the expenses and share their learning in a team meeting, so others can benefit from it.
More about Nicolas…
Harvard Business Review books on Leadership