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Wundamail Voices: The Future of Work With Rob Estreitinho

September 2, 2020

Team Management, Workplace Culture, Wundamail Voices

In today's Wundamail Voices, we catch up with Senior Strategist for advertising agency, VCCP, Rob Estreitinho, to get his take on what the workplace is going to look like moving forward and how we all need to take a bit more time.
 
What do you think the future of work looks like post-crisis?
 
There's going to be greater flexibility and greater empathy. There's a huge conversation to be had about how culture and a sense of personal and collective productivity are not ruled by one-size-fits-all principles.
 
 
How should managers/leaders prepare for the future?
 
Manager and leaders need to realise that the role may be less about command and control, and more about establishing a sense of calm when working with their teams, and a sense of clarity around the outcome. It's nuts how often I see people doing "a lot of running but not a lot of playing", to use a football quote I love.
 
 
What have you learned from the crisis? How will you be applying these lessons going forward?
 
I'm still learning it, but I think we need to better understand our relationship with our levels of energy, and related to this, our levels of stress. I've been historically bad at taking breaks or dosing my workload, but it doesn't help anyone if I feel I am "doing a lot" but then end up being emotionally unavailable for my peers, or people in my personal life. I am less apologetic about taking breaks and just lying down "doing nothing" (which of course is not doing nothing at all, it's just you're giving your brain space to do different types of things), and hope this sticks around for the next few decades.
 
 
Do you have any tips for kickstarting and managing your team when you return to the office?
 
Make the time. Make the time. Make the time. For yourself, for your people to speak their minds, and for them to do their work properly. Busyness, hard deadlines and "agility" all sound great until someone burns out and quits with a grudge.
 
 
Do you have any other wisdom leaders of teams can benefit from?
 
It helps if you see yourself less as the lead actor of the film, and more like the exec producer making sure crap goes away and people can do their jobs. Also, take 5 minutes at the start of each meeting for some honest small talk. Warming up matters.
 
 
Rob is a strategist and philosophy geek trying to help people think more clearly. You can find Rob via his newsletter at http://robistyping.substack.com/ 
 


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