VP of People Shares Framework on How to Lead Remote Teams
One of the new unique challenges we face in this era of remote work is how to communicate effectively and remain visible with our co-workers. So what strategies can we as individuals and companies use to ensure we remain connected and visible?
“Aligning expectations and intentional transparency are key in establishing a framework of trust where people can genuinely build connections,” Karina Bernacki shares.
Karina currently serves as VP of People and Spaces at VSCO, a mobile app that provides tools to empower creators to fall in love with their own creativity. Prior to her time at VSCO, Karina held leadership roles at consumer, B2B, and management consulting firms such as JP Morgan Chase & Co., McKinsey & Company, Twitter, and Aritzia, among others.
Read below to learn more about Karina’s own career growth as well as her take on Maintaining Visibility in a Remote Work Environment.
Career
Can you describe a few pivotal moments that led you to your career choice and role as Vice President of People at VSCO?
In 2018, I decided to start my coaching practice - Unraveled. It was scary, and a pretty big risk at that stage in my career, and so worth it. At Unraveled, I primarily focused on helping startups with everything from founder coaching and leadership team development to playing key roles and building out functions before helping to hire and transfer ownership to new leaders. This experience was so rewarding. It was one of my clients that led me to VSCO and this amazing journey I’m now on. Big risk, and worth it in every way.
“True connection in remote and hybrid environments is not about virtual happy hours and better video tools. It’s about getting really good at explicit expectations and intentional transparency.”
You refer to yourself as a “Talent Multiplier” - What does that mean and how can other leaders follow this leadership principle?
Let’s start with deep listening. I believe every human has tremendous potential, often far more than they realize. Helping people unlock this potential and see what might be possible requires deep listening. Listening between the words spoken and seeing the person, the whole person, to truly understand what drives them, what motivates them, what they value, how they see themselves, and what is blocking them. Everything I do starts with humans, and helping them believe in the impossible. Everything I do starts with people. I succeed with others, relationships are the bedrock for all that I do, and they are who I build and design systems for, multiplying their talent and capabilities to achieve.
Visibility In The Workplace
How do you establish a framework of trust for people to genuinely connect and engage with one another in a remote environment?
Make and meet commitments, consistently, and openly. Culture follows structure. True connection in remote and hybrid environments is not about virtual happy hours and better video tools. It’s about getting really good at explicit expectations and intentional transparency. Let’s first look at aligning expectations, as this is key in building trust and creating the kind of environment where people can do their best work.
Recognition and expectations are deeply connected, and so your company’s ‘operating system’ needs to be designed with this as a first principle. When employees don’t understand what to expect, they don’t know how to excel, or even what excelling means within that system. They may be asking themselves, “Can I trust the leaders at this company?”, “If I take a risk and fail, is that really ok or will I be fired?”, “Does this company have my back?”. When there is a lack of clarity, inconsistency, secrecy, etc., employees spend energy in these thought cycles crafting stories and perceptions that break trust and simply slow everything down. What people believe to be true influences how they feel, which influences how they think, and ultimately determines how they behave.
“We make all our work transparent and visible, and we come together monthly to recognize our accomplishments, failures, and learnings as a community that is pursuing a shared mission. Ultimately, we are better together and I live by that sentiment every single day. ”
With this in mind, evaluate all the structures and systems in your company as though they are agreements, or contracts that we are all entering into together. Get curious, seek out the gaps that are creating the most friction and ask yourself, “Can we better define this expectation?”, “Is there a way to measure or validate alignment?”, “How will we hold one another accountable?”. Now, this may all sound obvious, but in practice, this is hard work and will never reach perfection. Do it anyway, care about it deeply, and test out tools and techniques that reinforce being explicit and highlight the value of creating shared understanding in all things. Making and meeting commitments is fundamental to creating trust, and you should not shortcut this effort. It’s the difference that makes a difference.
What collaboration tools do you think work best for employees to remain visible to one another, especially with leadership?
Honestly, keep it simple and start with async approaches first. Be wary of making a ‘meeting’ for everything. Wikis, workflow tools, and communication tools like Slack are all awesome, but how you use them should be clear and understood to truly see the benefits. Remember that whole expectation alignment thing, yeah it matters when it comes to tools too.
Also, don’t over-index on video, find the beauty in audio-only experiences to explore new definitions of what it means to be ‘engaged’. Eye contact doesn't have the same meaning over video as it does in person so just remove some of the physical and visual elements of communication and try some deep listening.
As a leader, make yourself accessible and try a variety of channels, tools, and methods so that proximity no longer needs to be a barrier to connection. Go on listening tours, create open office hours, and do 1:1s over the phone while going on walks. Get creative with the options but seriously make yourself available or be at risk of developing significant blind spots.
Our President, for example, hosts an open “watercooler’ event that anyone can join to hang with him in an informal setting. They get his time and ear, and he learns much about what is top of mind for employees. We host our company's All Hands event weekly to keep a regular cadence and flow of all the comings and goings in our company. The bottom line, a tool won’t solve your problems alone so let the needs of the business and your employees drive how you work, not the tools. Use them to enable behaviors and outcomes, not as bandaids.
Leadership In A Remote Environment
As Vice President of People, what key principles do you focus on when leading remote teams to solidify productivity while encouraging visible interactions and relations among employees?
Humble curiosity, patience, and a sense of humor. Staying curious and having the humility to know I don’t know all the things, helps me avoid assumptions or jumping to unnecessary conclusions. So stay curious and seek to understand first.
Patience, for myself and others, as we are all just trying to figure things out and put one foot in front of the other. And, don’t take yourself too seriously, keep your sense of humor and sense of joy. We spend a lot of time at work in our lifetime, find the moments of levity and honestly, some of the silliness in the day-to-day.
I find that these three principles support and multiply one another, and in practice allow us to model our humanity, flaws and all. In the people org at VSCO, our operating system is designed to encourage and reinforce these principles. We make all our work transparent and visible, and we come together monthly to recognize our accomplishments, failures, and learnings as a community that is pursuing a shared mission. Ultimately, we are better together and I live by that sentiment every single day.
“The bottom line, a [collaboration] tool won’t solve your problems alone so let the needs of the business and your employees drive how you work, not the tools. Use them to enable behaviors and outcomes, not as bandaids. ”
What has been your most challenging leadership moment in this new environment and what did you learn from it?
Last year at VSCO, I was the interim VP of Engineering for a year before taking the role of VP of People. The challenge of playing a key leadership role for the largest part of the company, while also transforming VSCO into a healthy, virtual-first company was intense. I had to build trust fast, in a time of change and transition, and all virtually because there were no options for in-person connections at this point in the pandemic. It tested me and all my existing tools and skills in ways I could not have imagined. I learned a lot that year about my limits and hidden strengths. I learned that no matter how much experience you have, there is always so much more to learn and too much for any one person to ever hold alone. But the best thing about last year was that I wasn’t alone. In being vulnerable and honest about the challenges we were facing, trust was built – a level of trust that allowed us all to be better together and create connections and bonds that I will hold dear for life. It was special and hard in every way, and I’m grateful.
Karina joined us for ModelExpand’s Women in Leadership Breakfast Series: Maintaining Visibility in a Remote Work Environment. Click below to watch the recording and key takeaways.
ModelExpand is a diversity, equity and inclusion consulting firm focused on radically accelerating the presence of historically underrepresented people in the workforce. ModelExpand’s work has been featured in Harvard Business Review, Forbes and CultureAmp.
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