Author: Dr. Stephanie Eubank (AKA Dr. Bear)

Hi there! My name is Stephanie Diana Eubank and I am a doctoral student at Concordia University Chicago in their online program for Doctorate of Business Administration. My Masters' degree was completed also online at Southern New Hampshire University in Operations Management with an emphasis in Project Management. Prior to my dissertation completion, I will be getting married and once completing my DBA program I will become Dr. Mrs. Stephanie Diana Eubank (Dr. Bear). All the while working full time as one of the country’s experts in Condo Mortgage Underwriting Compliance. The focus broad topic of my dissertation is remote employment which has never been timelier with the recent lockdowns of quarantine during the COVID-19 crisis.

Why Do The Amount of Remote Work Meetings Feel Like an Oprah Giveaway?

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By Stephanie Diana Eubank

So, it is common in both remote and in-person modalities that there are a lot of meetings that are just unnecessary.  We have all dealt with this issue at one point or another.  You may be dealing with this now.  However, this need for constant needless meetings is a carry-on from in in-person-only-only modality. 

Constant meetings that could or should be meetings are bygone concepts often used within in-person work to help people who have no quantifiable way to justify their employment to be seen.  However, in the age of remote and hybrid work, there are easier ways to quantify your necessity in an organization. Such as:

  • Organizing Zoom meetings with leadership on quick status updates on your projects.
  • Make time with your manager to discuss contributions and where you can develop skills or find additional challenges to help you stand out.
  • Make time with team members to have a group Zoom lunch to socialize and see where there are opportunities for collaboration.
  • Keep logs of your work and projects and share them regularly with leadership to show your work, as some software systems that track work only track how many files you open per day instead of how many times you must open them per day.  In project management, this sort of quantified tracking is important for CYOB (COVER YOUR OWN BUM) but can help show your skills.

This brings us back to the constant meetings that, in all honesty, could just be a well-detailed email.  Or shorter meetings were broken up into multiple days just to show support on projects. The old-school methods of morning stand-up meetings can be broken down a bit more, so people have more room to get actual work done. That way, employees don’t feel like it’s Oprah giving away.  These tips are as follows:

  • Make a clear agenda and allow people who are not pivotal to miss the meeting if they must.
  • Limit how many are held in a month and how long for all-hands meetings.  These boundaries give more room to get actual work done.
  • Make pre-recorded videos of detailed emails to help those who learn auditorily and not visually.  But be sure to make room for questions.
  • Give meetings with leadership so that if a company is keeping a ladder method of leadership instead of a flat one, this helps give leaders room to lead. If you are doing flat leadership or shared leadership meetings with each team, it is better so items that don’t apply to one group are not slowing down another.

These are great ways leaders and followers can address communication and meetings to keep flowing productively without stressing from meetings.  If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, the remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Remote Leadership Needs To Learn To Stop Only Looking For The Faults In Their Teams.

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By Stephanie Diana Eubank

So, one of the questions that came up in my dissertation focus groups and comes up a lot in consulting on leadership is the home life distractions.  A lot of Bossware and leaders in remote work spend a lot of time trying to catch employees who have already completed their work trying to take their government 20-minute break and do a load of laundry or put food into a crock pot or air fryer, read a book, do some yoga, etc., during business hours. Now I understand when leadership is upset about poor performance, that is a cause for concern when a team member is seeming distracted with other household things.  But in most cases, it is more common to see team members and leaders take a couple minutes to rotate the laundry, order some groceries, and throw some food together.  These little home chores are a form of self-care and have been studied to lower stress levels in the workplace and declutter the mind. This tactic for stress relief is especially good for employees who work in a high emotional labor capacity and those who work in leadership.  Especially those in leadership.  We have all had a manager who was mad in front of us and not at us.  This can become toxic in a remote workplace as remote workers deal with a totally different atmosphere and can become turned off to leadership if they must manage their managers’ emotions. This concept becomes a toxic leadership trait when leaders are in “I am gonna get ya” mode.  This is where a leader is more concerned with catching employees doing something they shouldn’t instead of being more concerned about the productivity and quality of the work being done. When, as leaders, we seek faults in our team members, we ignore the achievements of our team.  This neglect can bring morale down and ruin the organizational culture in remote work. When we learn to nurture and help our teams grow as staff members, we grow as leaders.  If all we look for is weeds in the garden, we ignore the flowers.  This is a typical concept when studying x and y theory leadership. So, the lesson today is for leaders and followers to take breaks. Remember self-care and break up the monotony with quick tasks in your home while remote to help decrease stress. If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, remote is here to stay. YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/ Twitter: @SDEubank Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

 

Interruptions: The Rage Inducing Distraction

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By Stephanie Diana Eubank

With the influx of women being diagnosed later in life due to advancements in research on ADHD, we are now seeing new management methods. And not just for the management of symptoms but how, as managers, we can use these concepts to better help a diverse community of organizational teams.  The Neurodivergent topic I want to tackle today is called ADHD RAGE. 

ADHD rage can stem from untreated ADHD and what is called emotional dysregulation.  This symptom needs to be addressed with a medical professional.  However, ADHD rage is one aspect that every business professional has had to deal with, regardless of whether it is neurodivergent or not.  And that’s when people interrupt or break one’s focus.  We have all experienced it.  In the office, this looks like being in a zone working on a consuming project, and someone comes up to you and starts talking to you.  Or you are talking to a group or leading a meeting, and someone jumps in while you are speaking.  It feels like Luna Lovegood from “Harry Potter” describes an idea fading behind our eyes. And this can trigger anger that would inspire William Shakespeare to write, “Hell Hath No Fury Like a Woman Scorn”. 

In remote work, I have found it easier to put boundaries up and stay in my hyper focused to keep my productivity high.  However, the interruptions come in the form of phone calls.  Which can be rage-inducing, but there are ways to set boundaries to make sure that distractions are kept to a minimum and keep productivity high.  However, these methods only really work well in remote work.  For a lack of a better way to explain why these methods don’t work in person and hybrid methodologies is because well… the workplace is too peoplely. 

  • Using Microsoft Teams to establish regular quiet time is helpful to create space to control the interruptions.
  • Setting your phone on silent after letting teams and those who may need you know you need space to get the work done.
  • Turing off notifications during quiet times.

This comes with the caveat of business communications of needing to know how your team prefers to be communicated with. An example of this can be found in the Forbes article, (Baskin, 2023); where it was studied that in remote workplaces there are clear statistical differences in preference of communication depending on generation. Which is part of why the old concepts in business to hire teams to revolve around managers instead of managers to revolve and evolve with their teams is a change in leadership we need.  Toxic leadership concepts of managers needing to be in control and making teams bend to their communication tactics is not acceptable. It makes for high turnover in person and in remote modality.  We can’t design workplace structures that mirror the 49ers and make a team revolve around the quarterback’s skills instead of a flexible quarterback that revolves around the talents of the whole team.

Using these methods can help create calm and more focus in the workplace remotely.  Remote work has shown an increase in productivity and mental health benefits for those who know how to manage it.  Once we learn better skills as leaders and followers, we can have a more inclusive work culture.

If you enjoyed this content like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services please reach out through my social media.  Remember remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Work Cited

Villines, Z. (2021, June 16). ADHD and anger in adults: Management, tips, and more. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/adhd-and-anger-in-adults

Baskin, E. (2023, March 14). Council post: Generational preferences in the employee digital experience. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbescommunicationscouncil/2023/03/13/generational-preferences-in-the-employee-digital-experience/?sh=30ed0c376778

ADHD Leadership Tips: Spoon Theory, AKA F’s I Have To Give

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By Stephanie Diana Eubank

There is a concept called “Spoon theory,” and there is an excellent TED talk by Larner (2019) that discusses what spoon theory is (you can find the link in the work cited).  As a layman and Wicked B, I refer to my spoon management as F’s I have to give on any topic. Spoon Theory or F Theory is where one has a select number of spoons or F’s to give to a person or subject.  Those like me who are neurodivergent have fewer spoons or F’s to give per day than neurotypical people. So, it is easier to mismanage our F’s.

The concept is a good rule of thumb as a business leadership and followership principle related to burn-out prevention and stress reduction in the workplace.  Administration operating with fewer spoons, like neurodivergent ones, will allow more delegation of issues and better long-term time management planning.  This also helps to support the better mental health of the workforce.

I refer to my spoons as F’s because there are items that, in life and work, I just have no emotional bandwidth for.  Like office gossip and office politics, that doesn’t directly affect me.  That just makes the vibe for me. I have no F’s to give about the topic.  Also, sweating small details that are not compliance concepts or incredibly detrimental to a project is not worth my Fs.   It’s kind of like when you are planning a fancy Thanksgiving dinner and forget the napkin rings.  You just fold the napkins instead.  If people talk about it negatively, I have no F’s to give to that or into being upset with myself about forgetting napkin rings.  It won’t make or break my event, and I have no control over other’s thoughts.  This frees up my emotional energy to focus on bigger things like the hard work I put into my turkey and doing the turkey injections or Turkey Botox, as I call it.  I care more that my friends and family are happy and healthy after eating my cooking during events like Thanksgiving/ Indigenous People’s Day to play to the metaphor.

Decreasing stress in leadership and the followership members of your workforce is key to keeping productivity high.  Better-managed workplace stress reduces turnover and lowers workplace PTSD and workplace violence probability. 

If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Work Cited

Larner, O. (2019, February). Confronting the invisible. Olivia Larner: Confronting the Invisible | TED Talk. https://www.ted.com/talks/olivia_larner_confronting_the_invisible?autoplay=true&muted=true

ADHD Motivation Tricks To Help Enhance Inclusivity & Productivity In Remote Work: Body Doubling

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By Stephaie Diana Eubank

After working for eleven years in a remote modality (which means I have been remote before; remote was cool), I get a lot of questions from friends, colleagues, faculty members, students, and online followers asking how do I stay productive?  These questions grow when people learn of my Dyslexia and ADHD diagnosis.  To be fair, it has been a long journey to get a diagnosis of ADHD, like many women in our 30’s, as we do not present the same way as men or boys.  (Women and girls must emotionally mask symptoms to fit in as a natural defense mechanism).   There are also helpful tools that I have gained from my work within the disabled community, nonprofit sectors, and the college educational sector.  One of those tricks to helping to increase my motivation and productivity remotely is body doubling. 

Body doubling, in a nutshell, is being able to double where you choose to work with one or more people in the room.  This is further explained as a motivation tool (Washington, 2023) and how it helps workers and students function more effectively.  For many ADHD people, it is the feeling of accountability as there are others in the room to give that vibe of people counting on you or people watching you. 

For me, I do what is called audio processing (Gomez & Condon, 1999); in essence, I talk it out even when there is only me listening.  I find it funny when working from home, and my husband hears me talking and goes, “Huh?” thinking I am talking to him.  Although he is used to my symptoms and my imaginative responses of, “staff meeting, sorry.”  Thinking out loud is a normal part of ADHD and Dyslexic adaptations to address complex information I am working with, especially in data analysis and qualitative results.

However, when working from home and it’s just me and the fur babies, especially post-COVID, I use the same method we use for the fur babies when no humans are home.  I turn on the TV or leave an Amazon music station on.  I am a wicked B of the West. I own that I need background sounds, so I trick myself into not being alone so that I have a faux body doubling.

Although it is a warning to people wanting to implement this trick for themselves.  Please be sure to be in meetings to mute yourself.  Sometimes, your musical stylings are not welcome.  One of my mentors who recently passed had forgotten to mute himself using this skill and was singing Snoop Dog’s “Gin and Juice” and only realized everyone heard him because they all sang together the song’s hook.  I have been caught belting Lin Manuel Miranda’s masterpiece “Hamilton” songs.  Or, when singing with my kids while working, we sing Eminem and Dr Dre’s song, “Forgot About Dre,” as it has been a good tool with my son’s speech delay to help with the E sounds they used to get stuck on.  The moral of the story if body doubling in whatever method works for you. Be sure your audience is suitable to your plans of audio processing and your ability to carry a tune.

I have had participants in my dissertation research detail getting into joint Microsoft Teams Meetings to help give a remote feeling of being back in the office to help spark more creative problem-solving.  When they feel like they need to body double, they all get into a Teams meeting and chat together while they work.  I find it a creative method for addressing social isolation that often affects remote workers.

These ADHD tools can be helpful for business leadership managing a remote and hybrid workforce but require more understanding and an evolution in organizational culture that welcomes new ways of thinking, along with a culture of inclusivity.  We can’t afford as business leaders to not grow and change, which means tossing to the side old methods that don’t serve us anymore and embracing new ways to enhance the work experience.

If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Work Cited

Washington, N. (2023, August 24). Body doubling for ADHD: Definition, how it works, and more. Medical News Today. https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/body-doubling-adhd

Gomez, R., & Condon, M. (1999). Central auditory processing ability in children with ADHD with and without learning disabilities. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 32(2), 150–158. https://doi.org/10.1177/002221949903200205

Toxic Leadership is making #workplaceptsd & #workculture strained in-person & in #remotework

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It is not a secret that toxic leadership has been linked to workplace PTSD and has been shown to inflame other mental health issues.  This is evident when a workplace culture has over-explained employees who feel every decision they make must be presented to the Supreme Court.

These feelings of needing to document to the point of malicious compliance can increase symptoms of workplace PTSD & can have additional emotional health effects.  Not to mention how this can affect your organizational culture in the long term.  Organizational culture and the workforce sociologically have been studied and found to be like an evolving organism prone to grow and change as the outside world grows and changes.  As the culture changes, we forget in a company to train our leadership so that they grow and evolve with the changing culture.

We see this in both remote work and in-person work. Leaders do not work to develop trust with their teams and thus refuse to give autonomy, which is part of what seasoned professionals enjoy about remote work.  In my dissertation research, remote leaders who were only remote during COVID either enjoyed and embraced remote work or could not wait for in-person or hybrid to happen as they missed being able to use in-person management skills that, in truth, are displaying serious control issues as the root reason. 

Letting go and developing trust with one’s team can transform leadership.  This transformation can also have the added benefit of remote work, allowing more room for leadership to develop a work-life balance and lower stress that can inflame mental health concerns for leadership and followership. In the end, it really is about trust and communication.

If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Halloween Is A Great Time To Talk About How Companies Are Violating the Warn Act

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By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

Many of us know companies pushing Return to Office or #RTO, forcing #remoteworkers to quit and find new remote opportunities. However, this tactic is not yet illegal in the strictest of guidelines. Still, it is a way that major companies are trying to skirt their responsibilities and requirements to follow the WARN Act. 

The WARN Act stands for the Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act, which was installed into US Federal Labor Law in 1988.  This law requires employers with 100 or more employees to report if they plan a layoff within the next 60 days.  You can find out more information at https://www.dol.gov/agencies/eta/layoffs/warn.

So, companies are taking a page out of the 2013 Yahoo CEO’s book to force remote workers back to the office to, in theory, improve communication, creativity, and synergy.  However, that theory was wrong, and the data now shows that in-person workers have fewer hours of productivity than their remote counterparts, as detailed by the Bureau of Labor and Statistics (BLS).  Also, remote work leaves room for neurodivergent workers like me who are comfortable in remote work to have more space to not emotionally mask and be more creative problem solvers.

With Halloween being the first holiday of the layoff season, we need to be mindful of how companies are using this #RTO method to skirt the law so as not to pay unemployment, not disclose to the WARN Act or investors about the need for layoffs, and change the narrative of the future of work. The law hasn’t caught up to this trend yet, but it could be interesting to see how companies adjust when it does. But this is additionally making it so companies are having a hard time attracting talent because so many want remote work and are not willing to #RTO or do #hybrid.

If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, that remote work is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Representation Matters Especially in Remote Work

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By: Stephanie Diana Eubank

As many may be aware, Sheryl Sandberg’s book “Lean In” detailed a lot of statistical data on how the lack of representation of women in leadership hurts the workforce.  This is also true in the case of if you are a minority in your field. Being mixed race, I have not always seen a leadership representation of my Latin American heritage.  Often, I was one of the few minorities in the workplace and often the only woman.  This made the trail of my career hard to blaze because it’s hard to visualize yourself moving up when you don’t see examples in your workplace that resemble you. 

Representation is essential in onsite and remote work, and encouraging diversity and inclusion increases productivity and morale.  It also has been shown to help develop mentorship in the workplace.

Which are key to having a thriving workplace culture, especially in the remote workplace. Where remote work has had a lot of research and practical literature regarding the effects of remote work on culture, the peer-reviewed research shows that work culture, like any organizational culture, is meant to evolve and change. As such, remote work is here to stay, so the culture in the workplace has to change with it.  Let’s make the changes to enhance diversity and inclusion this Hispanic/ Latin American Heritage Month.

If you enjoyed this content, like and subscribe.  Also, if you are interested in consulting services, please reach out through my social media.  Remember, the remote is here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/

Why I Teach

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By Stephanie Diana Eubank

For those of you who are regular readers and social media followers of my content, you know that I teach at Stan State, AKA California State University Stanislaus. I teach Operations Management there as a part-time lecturer while finishing my dissertation research on remote work. I never thought I would enjoy teaching as much as I do.  My students teach me as much as I do them.  I also go out of my way to help and engage with them so that they work on the networking with faculty part that is so important for students at a state college. I also pride myself on being an example for my disabled community members of color to keep working hard because we all belong in academia if that’s where we want to be.

Since there is so much bad news in the world, I thought I would share some good news. I had a student who went back to school due to health issues that made it so that they could not work in their career field anymore.  This student has a wedded partner, and they informed me that while applying for jobs, they wanted to know if I would write a letter of recommendation.  This email also included that his health has significantly improved and that their partner expects a little bundle of joy this spring.  Which is great because this student graduates at the end of the term.

I am so happy and proud of this student.  As teachers, we don’t always get to keep in touch with our past students.  So, getting an email like this to hear that things are coming together for a past student is amazing and one of many reasons that I work so hard to teach.

So, I am posing a challenge to other teachers worldwide.  Like and comment here or on my social media and share a moment or a student encounter that made you glad you are a teacher.   Happy memories.  Teaching is tough, and we have all had to adapt a lot as teachers, so let’s all reflect on the happy memories of our students that make it all worth it.

Like and subscribe.  Remember, Remote, it’s here to stay.

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@Wickedbofthewest

Website: wickedbofthewestremoteconsulting.com

Company Email: stephanie.Eubank@wickedbofthewestconsulting.com

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/WickedBoftheWestBusinessConsulting

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/wickedbofthewestconsulting/

Twitter: @SDEubank

Blog: drstephaniebeardbaremoteresearch.org

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephanie-diana-eubank-dba/