Category: Training

“Storytelling is the greatest technology that humans have ever created.” — Jon Westenberg

What is Story telling?

It is an ART!

Yes, storytelling is an art form that uses narrative to communicate something to your audience. It may be factual or facts that are improvised and embellished to make the narrative more appealing and relevant.

When done correctly, research shows the powerful impact storytelling can have on us:

• Stories are 22 times more memorable than facts & figures alone
• Our neural activity increases 5X when listening to a story
• Storytelling lights up the sensory cortex in the brain, allowing the listener to feel, hear, taste, and even smell the story

Storytelling is an incredibly valuable tool in marketing, and sets apart vibrant brands from simple businesses and loyal consumers from one-time, casual shoppers.

https://www.referralcandy.com/blog/ultimate-storytelling-guide-infographic/

Storytelling is an art form that is timeless and has a place in every culture and society. Stories are a universal language that everyone — regardless of dialect, region or heritage — can understand. Stories stimulate imagination and create a sense of community among listeners and tellers alike.

There are two ways to persuade people.*One is to use rhetoric, power point slides, statistics and quotes. This is an intellectual process. The second is putting forth the idea by combining it with emotions. This is done through story telling in which you not only weave lot of information but also appeal to their emotions by arousing the listener’s passion and energy.

A good story has the following aspects:

1. Entertaining
2. Informative
3. Relatable
4. Well organized
5. Appeal to emotion and
6. Memorable

Preparing for the storytelling

Like any other art form, storytelling requires creativity, vision, skill and most important of all practice. To make your storytelling a success you need to keep in mind the following requirements:

1. Know your audience: To tell a compelling story, understand your target audience, who is going to respond and take action.
2. Central idea of your story: this should be clearly stated in six to ten words. Your story will unfold around this core message.
3. What is the outcome you are expecting: Your story will change according to the outcome you expect – expecting some action, creating human values, collaboration or simply educating. Your story and the narrative will change accordingly.
4. Call to Action: this is similar to your objective but your CTA will establish the action you’d like your audience to take after reading.

What exactly do you want your readers to do after reading? Do you want them to donate money, subscribe to a newsletter, take a course, or buy a product? Outline this alongside your objective to make sure they line up.

Often a good story comes from your customers. All you need to do to find your story is to ask your customers to speak for themselves. User generated story telling is creditable and easily relatable. You could use their stories as they are or spin a fictional tale based on the reality. In my experience as a trainer I have mostly got my stories from my audience and built on it. I have also used these experiences of my audience as the base for my stories for narrating elsewhere.

Remember “the best stories are not your own, but of your customers and your fans”

Once you’ve found your story, tell your story in the most memorable and impactful manner possible. Be authentic and stay true to your brand message. To make it authentic you can even use real names, settings, and outcomes if it’s possible. Every story has its heroes and villains. In brand storytelling, villains should be problems and hero should be your brand’s solution to these problems.

Our brains recall information better when we associate it with a sensory experience. Stimulate the senses with beautiful visuals, objects, handouts and whatever else you can, so that the listener engages more than one sensory organ.

Brand Storytelling Example 1: The Land Of Land Rovers Campaign**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YNXU1IR2LR8

Land Rover Showcases Why the Best Stories Come From Others

In celebration of Land Rover’s 70th anniversary, the company brought to life the true story of, “The Land of Land Rovers,” a remote area in the Indian Himalayas. The video tells the story of the local drivers who rely on a fleet of meticulously maintained 1957 Land Rover vehicles to provide transport and supplies along the treacherous mountain roads between two small villages, Maneybhanjang and Sandakphu.

To bring this remarkable story to life, Land Rover’s team made the village of Maneybhanjang their home for ten days in order to get to know these brave drivers and experience their everyday life. The end result delights the viewer with its stunning cinematography, while hearing from the drivers and villagers only further reinforces the incredible off-road capabilities of Land Rover vehicles.

Brand Storytelling Example #2: Ikea’s Improve Your Private Life Campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2dYpJaAmJj0

IKEA Singapore Highlights the Power Of Humor In Storytelling.

IKEA Singapore’s Shelf Help Guru video campaign stars a ‘Shelf Help Guru,’ who wants to take IKEA customers on a journey of ‘shelf discovery’ to improve their private lives in their most private areas: their bedrooms and bathrooms. It uses humour to captivate the audience and illustrates practical storage and furniture solutions from IKEA positioning it as the go-to retail store for improving your home.

Brand Storytelling Example #3: Sanlam Bank’s #OneRandMan Campaign

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLY_tGjm-9Y

Sanlam Bank Showcases How Storytelling Can Spark Change

In South Africa, research shows that most people do not save much of their salary. So much so, that household debt averages about 75% of their after-tax income. To educate South Africans about the importance of saving money, Sanlam Bank launched a 5-part web series called One Rand Man, featuring a young professional who embarks on a social experiment – getting paid only in one rand coins. For context, one rand coin is about seven cents in U.S. currency. The video series documents his trials and tribulations of paying for everyday expenses in coins. Each week, Sanlam Bank also joined forces with respected local personal finance news outlets to share advice and tips based on the issues faced by the One Rand Man.

The Results

Telling the story of One Rand Man, combined with valuable personal finance thought leadership, sparked a chord in South Africans. The video series was watched over 900,000 times, making it the most-watched ad on YouTube in South Africa during the time of the campaign. Furthermore, the effort generated over 74 million media impressions, earning over 41 million rand worth of media exposure for the company (approx $2.8M U.S. dollars). The wild success of One Rand Man spawned One Rand Family and other similar episodic spin-offs, further inspiring and educating South Africans around the importance of personal finance and saving money.

Storytelling is a trial and error process and no one masters it in the first try. However it is worth mastering for building your brand. Today’s consumer doesn’t decide to buy based on what you’re selling, but rather why you’re selling it. Storytelling helps you communicate that “why” in a creative, engaging and fun way.

 

References

* https://hbr.org/2003/06/storytelling-that-moves-people

** https://www.convinceandconvert.com/content-marketing/brand-storytelling-examples/

***https://www.hubspot.com/marketing/storytelling

 

Many of you would have read Harper Lee’s “To kill a mocking bird” or watched the movie starring the very handsome Gregory Peck. This book is a classic on Empathy and I would recommend everyone pick it up to understand the true meaning of Empathy.

What is Empathy?

“Empathy is like a universal solvent. Any problem immersed in empathy becomes soluble” -Simon Baron-Cohen, British clinical psychologist, and professor of developmental psychopathology, University of Cambridge, in his book “Zero degrees of Empathy: A new theory of human cruelty”

In its simplest form, empathy is the ability to recognize emotions in others, and to understand other people’s perspectives on a situation. At its most developed, empathy enables you to use that insight to improve someone else’s mood and to support them through challenging situations.

How is Empathy different from Sympathy?

Empathy is often confused with sympathy, but they are not the same thing. Sympathy is a feeling of concern for someone, and a sense that they could be happier. Unlike empathy, sympathy doesn’t involve shared perspective or emotions.

Empathy and Emotional Intelligence

According to psychologist Daniel Goleman, empathy is one of the five key components of emotional intelligence – a vital leadership skill. The five components are

• Self-awareness.
• Self-regulation.
• Motivation.
• Empathy.
• Social skills.

I’m not going into the details of Emotional Intelligence here. That’s for another time. But suffice is to say that in order to be a successful leader one needs to be empathetic to one’s subordinates and team members.

Empathy is developed through 3 stages.

1. Cognitive Empathy: It is the ability to understand what another person might be thinking or feeling. It need not involve any emotional engagement by the observer. Managers may find cognitive empathy useful in understanding how their team members are feeling, and therefore what style of leadership would get the best from them today. Similarly, sales executives can use it to gauge the mood of a customer, helping them to choose the most effective tone for a conversation.
2. Emotional Empathy: It is the ability to share the feelings of another person, and so to understand that person on a deeper level. It helps to build trust between managers and team members, and to develop honesty and openness.
3. Compassionate Empathy: It is the most active form of empathy. It involves not only having concern for another person, and sharing their emotional pain, but also taking practical steps to reduce it.

Exercising Empathy

According to Stanford Psychologist Jamil Zaki empathy is like a muscle — it can be strengthened with exercise and it can atrophy when idle. So how does one “exercise” Empathy? Prof Zaki writes in Harvard Business Review that the first step towards building empathy is acknowledging that it is something that can be built.

Minter Dial in his book “Heartificial Empathy” lists out the following five activities for flexing empathy muscle.

1. Listen actively Practice active listening by reformulating the message to the person who just said it. Observe the nonverbal cues. The key is to focus on the intended meaning and feelings of the person you are interacting with. Use your ears, eyes and “gut instincts” to understand the entire message that they’re communicating. Start with listening out for the key words and phrases that they use, particularly if they use them repeatedly. Then think about how as well as what they’re saying. What’s their tone or body language telling you? Are they angry, ashamed or scared, for example? Take this a stage further by listening empathetically. Avoid asking direct questions, arguing with what is being said, or disputing facts at this stage. And be flexible – prepare for the conversation to change direction as the other person’s thoughts and feelings also change.
2. Explore differences. Put yourself in environments where people are from different backgrounds. For example, you might want to join a local community outreach group or volunteer for some charity work. It is one of the best ways to learn from the diversity of others’ experiences.
3. Read fiction. According to Prof Zaki, “There’s a fair amount of evidence now that the more fiction that people read, the more empathetic that they become, because fiction is one of the most powerful ways to connect with people who are different from us who we might not have a chance to meet otherwise.” Fiction apparently tricks our minds into thinking we are part of the story, and the empathy we feel for characters wires our brains to have the same sensitivity towards real people. If Obama, Bill Gates and Sheryl Sandberg can make time for reading fiction, why can’t you?
4. Practise mindfulness. Mindfulness and meditation are all about focusing on the here and now. And one certainly needs to be “present” when listening to someone else in order to empathise with them.
5. Remember why. If you know why you need to be more empathetic, you will create the environment, set aside the time and make the effort. So create the necessary awareness within yourself.

In addition to the above, I would like to add the following if you aim to be an empathetic leader.

1. Consider other people’s perspective/be non-judgmental. Keep an open mind. Placing too much emphasis on your own assumptions and beliefs doesn’t leave much space for empathy! Even when the feelings of others are directly opposite to yours, don’t judge. Let go of your biases and be open to new perspectives. Look at it as an opportunity to better understand what they’re experiencing and expressing.
2. Encourage the quiet ones. Make it a point to encourage people to have a say. The simple act of encouraging the quiet ones will empower everyone around you.
3. Take a personal interest. Show genuine curiosity about the lives of those who work with you, show your interest by asking questions about their lives, their challenges, their families, their aspirations. Showing personal interest without sounding intrusive is the strongest way to build relationships. 

Ref: Minter Dial, Heartificial Empathy: Putting Heart into Business and Artificial Intelligence

Hidden Brain. You 2.0: The Empathy Gym.NPR.org

HBR, Emotional Intelligence: Making Empathy Central to your Company Culture by Jamil Zaki, May 30 2019

* For Training,Workshop, Counseling and Coaching please connect with us at 9818105631 or mail us at training@samunnati.org

 

 

 

 

• On 28 January 1986 the Space Shuttle Challenger broke apart 73 seconds after launch. Seven astronauts died and America’s space technology reputation took years to recover.
• On 27 January a virtual team meeting was held. It broke all the rules of effective virtual meetings. It was a major factor in the decision being taken to launch.The details of the virtual meeting was described in detail in the 50 page document of the analysis of the disaster.
• There were loads of lessons learned for all future virtual meeting.

  Virtual Team Tip

• Realistic agenda
• Before-call preparations
• Start-of-call review
• Roll call on key points
• End-of-call protocol
• Workable number of participants
• Seating template
• Reasonable length of time
• Stretch breaks

Email Tip

• Subject title
• Spelling and grammar
• Personalized format–font, color, arrangement of text, and signature
• Length
• To forward or not to forward?
• Only put in the email what you are willing to see in the newspaper
• Direct reply

Net Meeting Demonstration

• Chat
• Sharing programs/documents
• File transfer
• Whiteboarding
• Audio
• Video

What is the benefit of using audio?

• Audio allows ideas to be shared, questions asked, answers given in real time and avoids the problem of “cross-talk” that can occur in the chat mode.
• Keeping the technology simple is important in the beginning

  How do I (we) get started with virtual teams?

• Personal individual level
• Organizational level

 Team Responsibility in Virtual work environment

• Be accountable for your action items
• Follow the team communication plan
• Respond proactively
• Keep you team members in loop
• Forecast problem and initiate situations
• Make technology your friend
• Keep respect and boding

  Virtual team meeting rules

• Share the agenda in advance
• Share the expected
• Engage team members in scheduling meeting, take notes, releasing MOM
• notes of the discussions and actions.
• Use mute button and unmute only when needed to speak.
• Start meeting on a lighter note
• Us team icebreakers in the beginning
• Involve members who re not very communicative
• Taking additional time to prepare for a meeting so that for example all team members have the
• documents they need several days in advance.
• Being adept at using conferencing and social media applications to help the team achieve objectives

This will help you reduce unproductive call times…….

 Reasons for Conflict….

     Miscommunications

• Mismatch expectation
• Lack of clarity in roles
• Unclear process or practice or
• Use of old practice/process in challenging situation
• Lack of clear boundaries among team members

       Misunderstandings

• Disrespectful behaviour
• Blame game
• Power class
• Lack of bonding
• Feeling of devalue

    Be with team

1. Support your people, especially through problem periods
2. Promote your people to the managers that matter within their own countries
3. Explain your decisions with reason in details and
4. If needed multiple times
5. Take time out to discuss process, not just content
6. Close working relationships with the team members
7. Celebrate success openly

    Rules of the team

• Use technology wisely
• Develop ‘process’ rules – how I /we do things, so people know what to expect, and how they should behave
• Check clarity on roles and objectives often – and using understanding
• Discuss the team’s diversity, and how you can use it as a strength

 Essential of Virtual work environment

• Motivating people is a specialized task. Take help of right profiles do it or learn your self
• SOP: for process and behaviour is a must to work remotely/ virtually
• Preparing workforce on the Skill set – process skill and on Mind set – emotional level is essential
• Continues and transparent communication is indispensible for trust building Lack of it creates conflict
• Use all kinds of communication tool @Virtual workplace
• Check your preparedness on handling issues like: mindset change, culture change, handling emotions, process realignment, your limiting behavior & belief system
• Make learning investment…. Need of the hour 

   Engagement plan

• Individual growth plan
• Well being activities : provide emotional support.
• Organise with Group coaching timely to handle their emotion positively.

 Employee Engagement activities

Connecting through Zoom and skype is good however in this case the team members need to be engaged:

1. Continues connection with team members : conversation on their future roles, responsibilities,
2. Brainstorming : new processes and practice
3. Training programs,
4. virtual team bonding session: Coffee break/lunch / hobbies session
5. Virtual Team building session

  Takeaway practice

• Coordination: Examine how you can better allocate your resources and improve team processes. For example, you could consider daily ‘huddles’ to review tasks just completed, current agenda and issues and opportunities to improve team working.
• Communication: virtual shared coffee/ lunch breaks to catch up on non-work issues may help keep the social bonds within the team alive.
• Good communication is instrumental to team cohesion and relationship building, which in turn may improve the way the team coordinates its activities.
• Plan your communication – ‘diarise’, communicate more frequently
• Ensure equal amounts of communication to all team members
• Be sensitive to their local context – ask and understand
• Coordination of tasks has a pivotal role in virtual team performance.
• Effective virtual teams are good at maintaining social bonds while getting the job done   

Summarise

• Define Virtual Team: 90% people + 10% technology
• Top 5 things you can do immediately
• Change mindset
• Create remote culture
• Positive Communication
• Use Technology to build relationship
• Effective Virtual meeting

• Reduce unproductive call time:
• Setting expectation
• Planned virtual meeting

A conflict resolutions tip

Increase Positive and Reduce negative

• Reduce ambiguity in communication : written and verbal
• Keep transparent communication
• Use correct technique: state, attract, understand, request
• Give equal importance to team members

Are we ready to handle your issues ?

• change you mindset ,
• change your culture,
• handle your fear, worry, anger, indecisiveness,
• your limiting behavior & belief system

Make learning investment to come out of these internal challenges to take help of right profiles do it or learn yourself

What is Virtual Team?
• A virtual team is a group of people that relies primarily or exclusively on electronic forms of communication to work together in accomplishing its goals.
• The common factor is the predominant use of technology.

Virtual Team Members
• Team members are those who are working in different departments in your organization
• They could be your direct reports or indirect reports.
• In this extra ordinary situation: also your vendors and clients

Virtual teams use email and social media to communicate
• Your team are in different buildings, time-zones,or cultures, traditional face-to-face management techniques may not work.
• The kinds of problems that make virtual teams difficult to manage, like lack of understanding and dealing with conflict because our communication methods were limited, teams 100 years ago, and even 30 years ago, generally worked together at the same location.

However now with electronic forms of communication, virtual teams work across boundaries. The old rules on the boundaries of space, time, and organization no longer apply. I can be in a different time zone in another country and still work on a project that is based in Delhi. Now I can, and do, have community of practice team members, who live and work in Bangalore, Kolkata, Mumbai and even in a different country.

Communication Plan
• Plan your communication – ‘diarise’, communicate more frequently
• Ensure equal amounts of communication to all team members
• Be sensitive to their local context – ask and understand

Create remote culture
Setting expectation
You need clear expectations about deadlines and daily work, especially if your team is scattered across the globe. Daily team briefing can help with this. It may even be as simple as having each virtual team member answer questions like:
• What did you do yesterday?
• What are you working on today?
• Do you have any roadblocks?

Be Flexible
Part of the benefit of working from home is that your team can enjoy flexibility. This has pluses right now and for people who need unique schedules or accommodations, especially with schools etc. Simple statuses or google calendar availability allows everyone to know who is available when.
The right project management software will help you streamline this, but having a solid work structure is essential for virtual teams. Remote workers need to quickly be able to get in the loop on projects. Whether you’re creating an app, doing software development or programming, it’s vital that everyone’s on the same page. In addition to other things, this includes:
• Naming systems
• Documentation
• Tagging
• Workflow

It should be clear, at a glance, who’s working on what, who had it last, who’s getting it next and when it’s done.

What do you need to manage in a team?

• Team’s performance: Incase of closed business: involvement in the complete process will be a factor of performance.

• Even you analyse you performance on other 2 components

• Team’s practices and processes:
o Redesign the process and practice for future
o Prepare your staff to adopt them
o Make them a part of the process.

• Team’s emotion:
o Understand and reduce their fear, insecurity,
o Answer their question which they have not asked.

Virtual Team Framework
Coordination + Communication = Effectiveness
Coordination:
• Setting team
 Goal
 Individual goal
 expectations
 rules
• Design action plan
• Follow it up

Communication: 6Cs of Communication Plan
1. Clear
2. Complete
3. Concise
4. Concrete
5. Correct
6. Constructive
Effectiveness: Pure Performance which could be mapped

Common mistakes while using with technology

Behavioural problem: Hamper company image and relationship
• Not or late replying emails & whatsapp message
• Seeing whatsapp messages but not replying them
• Incomplete and unclear email communication
• Always using emojis for appreciating team members
• Not using basic etiquette on concall, video call or webinar
Coordination problem : Creates unproductive work environment
• Unplanned communication: email, meeting, presentation
• Communication: Lengthy, boring, unclear, w/o facts and figure, deadline
• One word response

TWO virtual team building games

1. The desert island scenario
Many of us played similar icebreaker games like this in school.

In this virtual team building game, group members are given a scenario where they’re stranded on a deserted island with seven objects – but they can only grab three.

Make these objects as obscure and challenging as possible so that your team members are forced to really use critical thinking and planning.

Examples of items are a bag of fruit and vegetable seeds, a pocket knife, a 100 ft rope, a bedsheet, a bucket, 2 liters of kerosene, pen and paper and so on.

Then split the team into small groups and allow them to collaborate on which items they want to pick. Once all discussions have finished, get onto a team video chat and discuss the results.

Activities and exercises like this force team members see each other as teammates and can lead to healthy competition and excitement within the team.

Such games and exercises also demonstrate how working together helps a team achieve better results, and can help virtual workers learn how to collaborate without being in the same room.

2. Picture sharing
Picture sharing activities help your icebreaker team bond in no time. It can facilitate laughter and surprising responses that will leave employees feeling happy and connected.

Set aside designated time, perhaps at the beginning of each meeting, for a team member to share one personal photo that is unrelated to work. This photo can contain pets, hobbies, gadgets, family members, etc.

Then have the team member explain the photo such as what’s going on there and why they chose it.

Remember, allowing team members to share part of their personal lives makes teamwork more fun and can bring a new element of camaraderie to the workplace.

Our thought makes a simple action more valuable. Additionally it’s our thought pattern which decides which action is easy or difficult. In this extraordinary situation we could display two kinds of mindset which is…….
• Fixed Mindset: A mindset which will tempt me to be in my comfortable zone. The traditional way of working is the best and WFH is usually an unproductive and useless technique. So we still feel that this is a difficult, unproductive change forced on us.

• Growth Mindset: Another mindset is if we think it’s a great technique or a helpful technique in this extraordinary situation. It’s a time to learn new skills and add on to your competencies for future. This mindset makes it comparatively less stressful to handle the situation better. easily
Hence it our choice which mindset we choose to make a smooth transition. Our positive self talk will give us more solutions to the problem.

Transition from office to WFH
Now when whole world is @ home and we are doing work from home, undoubtedly we must display huge amount of self disciple. In this blog we will follow some simple etiquette to make the transition easy for all of us.
A. Time management
To break this complete chunk of activities in small part we must divide it in three major parts:
• My schedule
• My partner’s plan
• Most importantly children’s plan of the day (depends 0-2, 3-8, above 9 years)

So the first and foremost thing is
Communication with spouse:
You must start with a detailed communication with our spouse before.
• Incase both spouse WFH:
o The beauty of working from home is that you can be flexible in setting your working hours.
o Every individual is most productive at different times of the day.
o Depending on your flexibility and your partner’s flexibility, you might consider switching to shift work. Maybe you work for four hours (uninterrupted) in the morning while your partner watches the kids, then you switch. You watch the kids in the afternoon while your partner works. Then, when the kids are in bed, you both get a little more work done.
o This is very useful if we have children (0-8 years).
o Majorly one partner will be available with the child.
o As this age group will need your presence to engage them.

• Incase only one spouse WFH
o If your spouse or partner is at home caring for the kids, it’s essential that you communicate what your day is like so you’re both on the same page with your expectations and needs.
o Both the partner has to recognize that in today’s situation even the spouse at home is also facing challenge due to absence of usual domestic help.
o It’s essential for the partner to complete few daily chores before you start the work.
o For example, if you’re under a pressing deadline and need to focus, let them know so that they can get the kids out of the house for a while. If you have a lighter workday with more flexibility, offer to take the kids for an hour at lunch so your partner can have a break
o All this will the environment positive. Absence of this step could create stress, quarrel in the family.

Note: We must understand that our spouse / children might be doing certain activities either for the first time or even out of compulsion. Hence to keep them motivated avoid……
• Micro managing w/o compromising the schedule/ list of activities
• Scope for mistake and managing the mistake
• Perfectionism

B. Effective way to make a time table
It is great to follow the same schedule of office. For ex: “Try to get up at the same time (usual time), and do all the things you would typically do to get ready for work.
 Set Multiple Alarms
o Even if you don’t have to be up as early to leave for the office, you should still set an alarm to commit to wake up at the same time.
o This will prevent you from sleeping in too late and will keep you on a healthy sleep schedule.
 Set Real Work Hours:
• Create an actual business or working hours.
• Enforce a hard limit at the end of the day.
• Avoid nonstop.
• Communicate your work schedule to co-workers, teams, and your boss.
 Have a Plan
• Making a ‘to-do list every morning is very helpful
• Do not make a very rigid time table for yourself
• While making a schedule kindly have loads of breathing time in between as we always have some miscellaneous task such as :
I. having coffee in between, eating
II. Now essentially : washing hands multiple time
 Keep a planner: It can be challenging to keep track of what you have to do throughout your workday. It’s easy to lose sight of priorities, tasks, and deadlines.
I. Start your day by reviewing priorities for the day.
II. When you make your task list, stick to it.
III. Set goals and time limits for each task.
IV. After you complete each task, cross it off the list. This simple technique is both effective and fulfilling.
V. It’s tempting to just leap into your email, but with a little extra focus,
VI. Do not make a very rigid time table for yourself
VII. Use a Planner: Make a habit of using a calendar or planner. Write down and keep track of deadlines, appointments, and meetings.
Note: However our routine could change weekly if needed. You will need time to figure out how to accommodate these changes.
C. Individual preparation: space, dressing, break time:
1. Allocate a specific space for yourself:
• Setting up first in the small corner of the house is important
• Then moving into space with a dedicated office where you could shut the door.
• Specially at the time of concall / video calls

2. Dress for Work For Home:
• As a beginner it always helps to dress more like your usual office going outfit and gradually moving to comfortable home clothing’s.
• How much it sounds funny but dressing plays a vital role in shaping your mind frame. This is the reason it’s decided.

3. Taking appropriate break even at home:
• Here we will have 2 kinds of problem…either you get too distracted by family or you get absolutely engrossed.
• In both cases its essential to have small planned breaks of 10 – 15 minutes breaks
• IMPORTANT: if you want you could plan them as coffee/ snacks break/ walking break and stretch breaks

4. Eating while you work
• Avoid unhealthy munching while working. It very harmful.
• Instead as informed use the small breaks for the same.
• Also add proper Lunch break besides the small break

5. Start and stop time
• The way evening commute is often a way to end the work day and begin home life.
• Same way it’s important to continue to make the same transition, even if you’re just moving from one spot on the couch to the other.
Tips for Work From Home:
Work from home is more than just finding the right space to help you focus, or downloading the appropriate software to do your job. Instead it also needs some work etiquette which make us more productive.
• Introducing yourself when you join a virtual meeting (telecom/ webinar)
• When asking a question / sharing thoughts, kindly use your name so that every member knows who is the person (applicable for audio conference)
• Use a notepad and pen to listen and also conveying your thoughts in short and crisp manner
• Use a weekly plan of team meeting to communicate
• Using appropriate communication tools saves time
o Email: when just need to inform
o Whatsapp/ official chat: quick discussion
o Phone: serious discussion/ decision making
• If you are addressing a team, keep presentations handy so that you could do an organized way of information sharing in less time. At the end could take a question and answer session to clarify the doubt.

Logistic Requirement
• Use the mute button is your teleconference if you’re not talking, mute.
• If you’re eating, mute. Taking an extra couple of seconds to unmute yourself during a meeting or call is better than everyone else hearing you chew food.
• Any headphones or earbuds with a quality microphone are ideal and can help things go smoothly.
• Have options for conference calls
• Test your headphones before a meeting by calling a co-worker, family member or friend.