Recorded on 03/2020 in Frankfurt, Germany at Design Offices Frankfurt. Remoter met up with Nadine Soyez, founder of Virtual Team Heroes, who’s also a remote work consultant veteran. Virtual Team Heroes helps organizations manage their distributed teams, finding solutions to make digital collaborations successful. Simply being a remote work expert herself, she walks the talk and advises based on years of experience - listen to this episode to soak in some of that knowledge too.
Recorded on 03/2020 in Frankfurt, Germany at Design Offices Frankfurt. Remoter met up with Nadine Soyez, founder of Virtual Team Heroes, who’s also a remote work consultant veteran. Virtual Team Heroes helps organizations manage their distributed teams, finding solutions to make digital collaborations successful. Simply being a remote work expert herself, she walks the talk and advises based on years of experience - listen to this episode to soak in some of that knowledge too.
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Josephine Tse 0:00
It's time for season two of the Remoter Podcast. I'm your host Josephine.
Josephine Tse 0:05
As a continuation from season one with Alex and Andres, I had the opportunity to interview some remote work leaders, ranging from companies, consultants, advocates and more to add to Remoter's stash of free resources and human-centred stories, enriching our educational platform about remote work. This podcast is sponsored by Torre, a new kind of professional network that automatically connects talent with opportunity. Founded by Alexander Torrenegra, our goal is to make work fulfilling for everyone find the job of your dreams by visiting torre.co. That's T O R R E dot C O.
Josephine Tse 0:50
I remember waking up and watching the sunrise over Frankfurt. This is the last episode that I did in person on my journey for the Remoter Project. But of course, anyone can record anything these days and upload it to the internet, do your podcasts remotely. There's just something so valuable about the in person face to face conversations. But I recognise that not everyone gets that opportunity. So I'm just very grateful for the work I've been able to do. The stories that I've been able to tell and without further ado, here's Nadine's story. This is the story of a self starting remote work consultant whose mission is to improve collaboration and processes within distributed teams. She's equipping teams with the right knowledge, tools and mindset so they can do their best work.
Josephine Tse 1:37
Welcome, listeners. Welcome everybody. Welcome to another episode of the Remoter Podcast. Today is my last day in Europe for the time being. If you want a timely sentence, it is because of the the Coronavirus pandemic that has been announced. So I am flying home for a while. So before I get hauled back to Toronto, I am here with Nadine Soyez from Virtual Team Heroes in the Design Offices Frankfurt. And right now we're in this really well outfitted meeting room. And so we're here with our pretzels and our coffee. But Nadine, thank you so much for being here with me today and amidst all the chaos in the world. How are you doing today?
Nadine Soyez 2:20
Thank you for having me. I'm fine. I'm still healthy. I should say that today. Um, I was born and raised south of Frankfurt. And then I started business administration at university in in Mannheim, and I did studies also in Brazil in Sao Paolo. Oh, and then between University and the business school I did one year backpacking Oh yes. around the world. And I had my first freelance jobs being remote.
Josephine Tse 2:49
Completely around the world?
Nadine Soyez 2:51
Yes. Not... it's more focused Southeast Asia. Okay. Yeah, I my plan was going around the world but I stuck in Southeast Asia because...
Josephine Tse 3:00
That happens to people.
Nadine Soyez 3:03
Travelling alone as a woman, it's very easy in Southeast Asia.
Josephine Tse 3:07
Where did you go?
Nadine Soyez 3:07
I was in Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Malaysia.
Josephine Tse 3:13
Okay, okay. Did you have a favourite?
Nadine Soyez 3:15
Yes, Laos.
Josephine Tse 3:16
Oh, yeah, yeah, from that list. That's the only place I didn't get to go. But I really like I really wanted to go.
Nadine Soyez 3:23
Even though there's no, no ocean or beaches because yeah, but the people are so nice and friendly. And I'm part French, there's a lot of French culture I feel very home.
Josephine Tse 3:37
Okay, okay, cuz I was gonna say like in Vietnam too. What did you feel the same because of their French influences as well? That's pretty cool.
Nadine Soyez 3:44
And then after business school I started to work as a consultant in big consultancies, management consultants. And I introduce by starting the digital transformation and change management in bigger companies. And there was no term digital information in 2007. It was like, Oh, we have a lot of paper in the workplace, how to digitise our workflows and I started to introduce collaboration tools.
Josephine Tse 4:12
Okay.
Nadine Soyez 4:12
And was in very, very early stages, you know, maybe you know, very old SharePoint.
Josephine Tse 4:18
I've heard of that.
Nadine Soyez 4:19
Well, you heard of that, okay. You open up a SharePoint and you're very frustrated because it doesn't work and it's look awful.
Nadine Soyez 4:26
So I started out to introduce collaboration tools. I always map the processes. So I've been working in the field of digital Corporation since 2007. Now 13 years, 13 years.
Josephine Tse 4:39
So when did the lightbulb to start Virtual Team Heroes come about?
Nadine Soyez 4:43
Yeah, yes, this was 2015. Okay, I've worked for a big management consultants and there was a change in the management and everything went bad.
Josephine Tse 4:55
To put it lightly.
Nadine Soyez 4:58
To sum it up. So I decided, Okay, change job or fulfill my passion because as I started always had in my mind to have my own company was always my goal. So, so five years ago, I quit my job as a senior consultant overnight.
Josephine Tse 5:16
Mm hmm.
Nadine Soyez 5:17
And then I started, okay, I would like to help companies and teams with digital collaborations and in adapting tools, and also focusing on the leadership style, and you have digital collaboration in place, you get more flexible. So what you can do to enable this transition. At the moment, I've got the little team but they are only freelancers, and I've got some salesperson, back office and I've got a business partner, she is living in. She lives in Dubai. Okay, okay. Yeah. So we totally remote in our small team. And yeah, that's what we do. And I love working in the networks, I love working with freelancers, that's because I've got a strong belief to have a win win situation for all partners. So I think it's the best thing to work in the network to enable this win win situation for all.
Josephine Tse 6:13
For people that want to hear about what what else Virtual Team Heroes does, maybe the types of things that you focus on?
Nadine Soyez 6:20
Yes, we strictly focused on remote operations and disputed operations. Coming mainly from virtual project management. And yeah, we help organizations to manage and organize their distributed teams and to make digital collaborations successful. And that means that all employees can, as closely together as they were in the same environment, that's the goal.
Josephine Tse 6:43
So before you even get to the remote operations, what are your beginning stages with client management before you even get to what you do best?
Nadine Soyez 6:51
Yes, I've got two focuses when I think of distributed operations and remote teams. One focus is the digital collaboration. And then the second focus is the leadership style, what team leaders need to ensure productivity and to get a high performance remote team. And I can say from Germany, it's more they reach out to me, they have issues with digital collaboration. So they are getting more flexible. They have digital transformations. And now they would like to introduce collaboration tools, and the main mistakes company makes is that they only introduce tools without mapping the needs and the processes.
Josephine Tse 7:37
Got it.
Nadine Soyez 7:38
And hopefully, many companies realise that because of their own failure and mistakes in the past, and so they reach out, Oh, we would like to have these collaboration tools in our teams, but we know from failures from the past people won't accept them or won't use them, so. But the most clients come over my website or from my stuff over social media. And when I write about digital collaborations, and say, Oh, you wrote that, you should have to map the processes first and to find out the triggers of our teams, then they can accept the tools. So mainly in Germany, I come in with a with a topic digital collaboration, but then I speak with them and then just realise, oh, we have to change leadership style.
Josephine Tse 8:27
Do you have any specific stories that you can think of off the top of your head of I guess one of your clients who took your advice really well, and was able to do that switch and understand what it meant to change leadership style and all that?
Nadine Soyez 8:41
Yeah, just it's from from the corona aspect, this week my last workshop, everything got cancelled.
Josephine Tse 8:49
Last in person workshop?
Nadine Soyez 8:50
Yeah, yeah, they, they have a project and they would like to do the projects with a more visual project team, okay. So they were on site, they noticed in the workshop that when they use digital collaboration tools and say, oh, with corona, now we get can get remote. And I said yes, you can get remote. They had many tools. And this was a great workshop because the whole team understood how to work differently with the tools, how to communicate differently, how to reduce emails, how to be more productive... and that was great. And the whole management was in the workshop and now they decided to go remote.
Josephine Tse 9:33
Got it. Okay.
Nadine Soyez 9:35
And the best thing was, I was I was travelling to the northern Germany to and to do the workshop on site. Yeah. And after the workshop, the CEO said, oh Nadine, we should have done the workshop remote.
Josephine Tse 9:48
I want to hear in terms of the operations and in terms of the digital collaborations, what are some things that you tell your clients off the top of your head like I guess the more general advice because I don't want to get into you know, everybody's different first of all.
Nadine Soyez 10:07
Yeah, yeah.
Josephine Tse 10:08
So what what are some of the general points that you always make sure to tell your clients?
Nadine Soyez 10:14
First I need to find out the right trigger, okay cause you you have to trigger the emotions. You need to have to find out the need and the trigger. And everybody on every every team in every company has a different starting point when you go remote. I told you about digital collaboration, I told you now Coronavirus, and we have other issues and other needs and other triggers. But I don't tell my client but I've got strong belief, not only remote, but everything I do myself is it's 95% mindset and only 5% strategy.
Josephine Tse 10:54
Do you have any stories of clients you've worked with where you've noticed that like their mindset was really on the point or, or their mindset was really not on the point. And you saw that happen in practice.
Nadine Soyez 11:05
Mindset shift is the hardest thing. I think and yeah most companies think, okay, when I when I talk with them about remote work, they answer, now we have the right tools, everything is in place and everything's working. We have no IT, IT mistakes or IT issues. When you focus on IT issues. I think you have a bad mindset.
Josephine Tse 11:30
Okay, okay.
Nadine Soyez 11:31
So because it's your IT strategy to introduce and adapt, the right collaboration tools with a team leader that says, oh, I would like to have more flexibility. I would like to have more motivation in my team and to try out new things, then I know there's a mindset thing, and then it can work.
Josephine Tse 11:50
For the, for the companies that come to you and they express their wishes to you. What are some things throughout your experience that you would advise to them as like a cautionary you know, these are things to be aware of. Once you want to start the journey like you, you're like the gatekeeper, you're like, Okay, you're ready to start this journey. I'm gonna open the door for you but be aware.
Nadine Soyez 12:12
I think you should start with a good roadmap to guide them. And to set up the framework, you have to make the shift from the face to face environment to virtual environment and therefore you have to ask some, I have some special questions with me I ask. What do we need to fulfill our task? And then what are you goals and your purpose? Maybe you as a CEO you have the goals in mind but your team needs more strict understanding about your company goals that you can align them to the goals. And I also say what limitations have been working together. Okay, we go remote, what will work at the beginning and what what we are limited to and to map it. And to all, have the employees all resources they need to go remote. It's just set up the virtual environment. And then you have to coordinate some things. You have to coordinate content, relationships and different schedules. Because when you go on a virtual team, everybody has his own context, working, I'm working in this co working space. I've got different contexts than my colleague working in India, different contexts. But to be successful, and to get a high performance team, I believe the team, from my experience need a shared context, a shared understanding. So you need to ensure that everybody understands the company goals and the purpose, what's my own role? What's my responsibility? I have to understand what I contribute to what I have to what the expectations are, for me as a as an employee. And I think virtual teamwork and remote work is very ambiguous. On your one side, you have more flexibility. On the other side, you need strict processes and frameworks and guidelines. So to get more flexibilities, you need both structure. Yes. And that's very ambiguous for me. And that's what most companies don't understand. It's just, oh, you get your laptop just work. And they don't think of have the right framework in place. And that's what we help with, to say, okay, no, you do need some guidelines and these frameworks.
Josephine Tse 14:33
Yeah, yeah. No, that you bring up a very good point. It is quite ironic. It's just like, yes, I remember my time in not working remotely and working at my old jobs and everything. And I felt like I had way less self discipline, but now I'm like, oh, I need so much more self discipline to keep up with all the things that I need to keep up with myself. Because there's nobody, you know, I can just go tap on the shoulder and be like, what am I doing this like things that, you know, I personally didn't need to really think about before going remote too.
Nadine Soyez 15:08
Yeah. And I've got a tip for my experience, I can say for my experience, I mean, I've been done this since 2007. And different set ups and being removed for myself and German things don't delegate tasks, you switch to controlling people. Deliverables is a set of expectations and responsibility of a set of tasks. So when I delegate tasks as a teammate, so do this do this do this, then it's controlling. And at the beginning, it's my experience, leaders are more focused on control and delegate tasks and when they have the trust, they delegate more deliverables, but they notice, very fast. But for that, delegating tasks is one thing. It's not, it's not the thing you do first. It's not the thing I start with, but it was just one one tip of one experience, but I notice when you go remote delegating set of tasks, you also have to know to have to map the interdependencies in the teams. Is the right word?
Josephine Tse 15:14
Is interdependence... oh so like who does what and how it affects other people on the team.
Nadine Soyez 16:14
Yeah, what's, what you need from from your colleague, what you should deliver, what information?
Josephine Tse 16:20
Like, who's responsible for what.
Nadine Soyez 16:22
Yes, because when I have a synchronous focus time, then I should know these influences on the team, because you need some overlap time to be synchronous.
Josephine Tse 16:32
So, and I mean, given that your team your team, at least is completely remote. Would you say you don't really face those issues because you guys have put in over communication into your foundations?
Nadine Soyez 16:44
Yeah, I think it's it's good to have a fixed formal team meeting. But my my experience as team leader of my company, you have to keep in mind to appreciate people and have informal communication one to one. Okay, it's more structured in a virtual environment, but you need it.
Josephine Tse 17:07
Oh definitely. Yeah.
Nadine Soyez 17:08
And it's like just send out WhatsApp. How are you? Hope you're fine. Yeah, the feeling of togetherness.
Josephine Tse 17:17
My position is a little bit different but like, I definitely do that with my team, like I always you know if I find something funny or whatever I Yeah, WhatsApp them very informal stuff, nothing to do about work. But I mean, it's just me like travelling right now, alone, doing things like this, it is important to keep in touch in some way, shape or form.
Nadine Soyez 17:41
For me with a small team, it's very easy for me to get to know the people. I mean, the larger the team, it's harder but yeah, take some time to to get to know your people. Just ask them question. What are your hobbies? What do you love?
Josephine Tse 17:56
What are your hobbies? What do you love?
Nadine Soyez 17:57
My hobbies?
Josephine Tse 17:58
Yeah.
Nadine Soyez 17:58
I've got a horse.
Josephine Tse 18:01
What?
Nadine Soyez 18:02
Yeah.
Josephine Tse 18:03
Oh my god. Okay.
Nadine Soyez 18:04
Yeah my passion is horse riding.
Josephine Tse 18:07
Okay, what is that word... equi...equi...
Nadine Soyez 18:09
And is the only horse I know the world with an owner who is a remote worker because he knows that I'm not there every day in a stable. We have a strong bonds but he know that I'm not here every day so it's totally fine he's used to. And the other horses like, oh where's my mommy, where's my mommy, my mommy's not coming, he's not coming and my horse has been relaxed - oh, mommy's not coming Okay, it was fine.
Josephine Tse 18:35
Hey, I wasn't expecting that. But that's really cool. That's really cool. But I really I really like the points that you brought up and I hope the listeners of this podcast will also find this really helpful as well. Before we wrap anything up I and you already kind of got into it with our conversation about your hobbies with horse riding. I want to know a little bit about your your day to day.
Nadine Soyez 19:00
I've got a read the book. I can recommend everybody, maybe you know, the Miracle Morning.
Josephine Tse 19:04
I don't.
Nadine Soyez 19:05
Yeah, I recommend it. Okay, um, it's about setting up a strict morning routine to get you more productive or focused on the day. It's what I do every day. Okay, it's my strict morning routine. I get up very early. Then I do some meditation. I have a journal where I write in things that I'm grateful for. Then I have my fitness bike. And then I have my coffee and my shower. Before I go to my office, got an office at home, a working space. It's a room, separated room, or when I go to co working space. For me the morning routine is just to focus on the day, to relax to yeah, to start a day. Then when I go to the office, I just write down the most the three most important things I would like to accomplish today. And I start them. And then it's the day is very different. If you have a workshop at the clients, right then I'm more depends on my client's schedule, or if I'm travelling. So when I'm working from home, and I do most of my tasks in in the morning, and then at noon at 12, I go to my horse. Horse riding- I take a break for for three hours.
Josephine Tse 20:21
Wow, cool. Okay.
Nadine Soyez 20:23
Yes, it's my full flexibility. And I'm back at four in the afternoon at my laptop and working until seven in the evening. That's my, my working style. So yeah, it makes me productive. But remote work gives me the flexibility to do this, yeah, to decide where and when I work. Yep. And I'm most productive in the morning and in the late afternoon, evening, so I take the break in the early afternoon. So I can accomplish more tasks in less time and I also strictly separate asynchronous tasks and synchronous tasks.
Josephine Tse 21:03
Okay, okay.
Nadine Soyez 21:03
Strictly separate them. So I've got my focus time when I have tasks I should concentrate on. They're are asynchronous, there are not calls, no emails, no distraction, right? I've got some overlap time, some synchronous time with my team or community or clients then yeah, they have a fixed time in my calendar to do this.
Josephine Tse 21:24
Yes, that makes sense which I am guilty of that. I'm guilty of switching I know I know. We shouldn't do it everybody tells me not to but I have definitely been guilty of doing that. I have also found out that I am very I don't know if I'm very... I feel a lot more productive when I'm working while travelling, like on the trains and everything.
Nadine Soyez 21:46
Oh, cool.
Josephine Tse 21:46
I know his preference as well but I really really enjoy working on the trains. I don't know if it's like just because the German trains have Wi Fi and it's actually really really good here.
Nadine Soyez 21:55
Really, you know, oh!
Josephine Tse 21:56
What?
Nadine Soyez 21:57
What? It's bad! Okay it depends on where you go.
Josephine Tse 22:02
Oh, okay. Well, the train tracks or trips that I've taken, it's been, er the Wi Fi connection has been very good. And sometimes I don't I mean, I don't even need it. And I like to just focus, do the deep work and turn the Wi Fi off or whatever. But it I don't know, like, maybe I'm just biased, but I really enjoyed working on the trains, and travelling. Out of everything that we talked about today. In terms of all the topics that we've covered. Do you think that Virtual Team Heroes' missions and values will help encourage more listeners of maybe they're also company leaders? Maybe they're also thinking about transitioning to going remote. That was a long winded way to say that.
Nadine Soyez 22:42
Yeah, I mean, remote work will have a huge, huge impact. You need framework, you need processes, and we need somebody to help set up this framework and processes, do roadmap, so many pitfalls there. Pitfalls like getting commitment. You have everything in place like, great virtual team meetings, webcam is on, everybody is not distracted. Everybody's focused in team meeting. But after the meeting there's no commitment. This is a big issue, how to get commitment and it's not order. But it's leadership. And as a team leader, you have to move from a face to face leadership style to a virtual leadership style and therefore you need experiences from other people and from other companies, what they do to adapt this.
Josephine Tse 23:33
So like, you know, as we were talking about, it's the beginning stages that are very, very important. You do it right from the beginning, then it hopefully, you know, it follows and it bleeds into the future processes that you set in place and all that. But it's always that first step in the first stages. And yeah, of course, like everyone, I asked this question to everyone's like, Yes, I hope so. Of course, that's the general answer that people to lean towards, because who would say no, I don't think anyone's gonna. That defeats the purpose of this podcast. But I do also hope that the advice that you shared today with us on this podcast will it'll help somebody realize something will spark something in them as well. So, thank you very much for joining me.
Nadine Soyez 24:19
Thank you Josephine!
Josephine Tse 24:24
Remoter Podcast season two is recorded, produced and edited by Josephine Tse. It is mixed and mastered by Stephen Stepanic and Vanesa Monroy. Graphics and visuals by Valentina Castillo. The music track used is Skip by OBOY from SoundStripe. Follow and subscribe to us on Spotify, Apple podcasts wherever you listen to your podcasts. Don't forget, we've recently made our Founding and Growing Remotely online course completely accessible and listed on our site. Visit us at remoter.com, that's R E M O T E R dot com for more relevant content. Follow us on social media @remoterproject to stay up to date with our latest initiatives and collaborations with other remote first companies around the world. We'd also love to hear your thoughts about each episode, so feel free to tag us on socials anytime. And remember, we're here to make work fulfilling, so what part will you play in shaping the future of work?