How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely

by McKenna Sweazey

Harness Your Digital Empathy and Learn Skills to Be a Better Boss, Employee, and Colleague in a Virtual or Hybrid Office
  
How do you manage a poor performer over Zoom? How do you casually deliver positive feedback via Slack? What’s the most professional use of a gif?

Two things are certain with the shift in office First, we will never go back to “the way things were.” Second, we all must learn to live in a virtual workplace. If we are managers, that means we also need to know how to communicate with, motivate, and coach virtual teams. In the words of Dale Carnegie, how do you “win friends and influence people” in a virtual office?

In face-to-face interactions, humans have thousands of indicators to tell them what the other party is thinking and how they are reacting. Resorting to purely digital communication obliterates these clues, stopping us from reading the subtle body language we’ve evolved to use in all interactions to become better leaders, kinder managers, and more effective cogs in the corporate machine.

How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely shares real-life examples, scientifically proven ideas, and distillations of tried-and-true business tenets, including why expressing empathy is the most important factor in managing and working with others—all mapped to a new virtual-first office.

This book is a handbook—a step-by-step guide to common interactions in the workplace using eight classic management from digitizing your onboarding journey to helping new recruits and delivering useful feedback over video conference. Combining academic research and personal experiences across various companies, roles, and countries, author McKenna Sweazey presents a road map to get us through the WFH (work from home) quagmire and help us all be more aware of others’ perspectives in this brave new world.
 

Genres: Audiobook

224 pages, Paperback

Published September 1, 2022

Reviews

[McKenzie Tozan · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think it’s fair to say that since the pandemic began, most of us suddenly had to find a new rhythm and figure out what being professionally efficient would look like from an at-home environment. While most of us may have achieved a certain level of comfort in our home offices, there have been new potential obstacles in recent months, as some workplaces have moved back to working together full-time or embracing hybrid home-office models.

But in the wake of new conversations regarding quiet quitting, quiet firing and burnout quickly gaining traction on social media in recent weeks, it’s important that employees and their managers discuss harder-hitting subjects than the color of their background on their Zoom calls. They need to discuss issues that impact employees on a very human level: their feelings of working too many hours and of being overworked.

McKenna Sweazey addresses these important issues in How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely (Career Press), which is meant to be read as a professional resource text and how-to guide for managers and employees who are navigating a virtual workplace and attempting to show empathy to their fellow humans.

IT’S ALL ABOUT EMPATHY

While Sweazey addresses a wide range of important subjects that arise in the traditional workplace, including conducting interviews and participating constructively in meetings, the book’s core focus is on the reader’s development and embrace of their sense of empathy.

Sweazey explains that while we used to have access to hundreds of social cues at a time when we were working together in the same office space, we have to further expand our use of empathy. This can be done by understanding what our coworkers are feeling and anticipating why they may be feeling that way (Cognitive Empathy), attempting to “walk in their shoes” and understand their situation and feelings (Emotional Empathy), and sometimes helping them solve the problems that are making them feel a certain way (Compassionate Empathy).

Displays of empathy in upper management and staff have demonstrated long-time positive correlations for employee performance and satisfaction in the workplace. Not to mention, with this new predominantly virtual movement, increased empathy gives us a chance to sidestep feelings of loneliness, poor relationships among colleagues and dehumanization of workers.

Throughout the book, Sweazey returns to this concept of empathy and emphasizes its importance, no matter the context in the workplace: working from home, collaborating, giving feedback, conducting an interview and more. This book functions as an easy and reliable step-by-step guide to succeeding in the online workplace, with examples of how an employee or manager could apply their empathy and improve the situation at hand for everyone involved.

A FAMILIAR CONNECTION

Sweazey’s title is also a play on one of the bestselling books of all time: Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People (Simon & Schuster). The book embraces the same easy-to-read flow, step-by-step actionable steps and engaging examples of how to apply the content.

The title also could have been some combination of “Managing Remotely” and “Influencing People” because of the importance Sweazey places on the concept of empathy and how she argues that improved empathetic environments will lead to greater managerial returns when more employees feel their needs are also being met, which surely must be a form of influence.

A THING OF THE PAST

The era of glorifying busyness and being overworked is a thing of the past with the pandemic, especially when it comes to remote work. How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely immensely values a thoughtful work-life balance, whether it’s taking place in a traditional office space, 100% at home or in a hybrid-style workplace.

That includes not only creating a workspace that feels comfortable, a to-do list that feels attainable, and a work-life schedule that feels good to the individual — but also creating a culture of reasonable expectations and an understanding that each person is a human who lives beyond clocking out.

That all begins … with empathy.

*** This review first appeared on BookTrib: https://booktrib.com/2022/08/30/succe... ***

[Jo Malling · Rating 1 out of 5]

Let's dive into "How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely" by Mckenna Sweazey. This book promises to be your go-to guide for mastering remote management in today's work-from-home era. But does it deliver? No it does not!

First things first: originality. Sweazey's book feels like a mishmash of recycled management advice, mixed with some common-sense tips that might sound appealing to those who've found themselves working remotely due to the pandemic. It's like déjà vu – you've heard it all before, just in a slightly different package.

But the real issue? Contradictions. Sweazey can't seem to stick to one point for long. It's like they're trying to juggle too many ideas at once, and it just ends up confusing the reader. One minute they're preaching one thing, the next it's the opposite. It's hard to take anything they say seriously when they can't even make up their own mind.

And let's not forget about the writing style. It's nothing to write home about. Sweazey's prose feels forced and artificial, like they're trying too hard to sound profound. Instead of being insightful or engaging, it's more like reading a laundry list of random thoughts thrown together with no real purpose.

But perhaps the biggest letdown? Sweazey's ego. They strut around like they're the next big management guru, but in reality, this book feels more like a vanity project than anything else. It's all about promoting their own career rather than actually helping readers navigate the challenges of remote management.

So, in conclusion, "How to Win Friends and Manage Remotely" falls short of its promises. If you're looking for real, practical advice on remote management, you're better off looking elsewhere. Don't waste your time or money on this one.

[Amy K · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having worked remotely for several years (and prior to COVID), the first half of this book was all very familiar and would be good for a new leader or someone new to leading remotely.

I appreciated the last few chapters as they addressed holding people accountable and remembering your role as a leader is to cultivate a safe and successful team, which my entail managing out those who underperform and are not motivated to improve. It is a responsibility as a manager to do so.

The recommended readings at the very end piqued my interest as well.

[Mollie McDonnell · Rating 2 out of 5]

I had to push to get through this book. I felt like it started off with some relatable situations and a few helpful ideas that I took notes on, but I didn't find the last third of the book to be very helpful or interesting.

[Tenison Stone · Rating 3 out of 5]

good ideas for people who work remote or manager people who work remotely. A little boring to read, so sections at a time is recommended.