Latest C-Suite Intelligence podcast episode from The Miles Group’s Stephen Miles and Taylor Griffin explains how returning to the office can jumpstart your team’s performance

“We left in a herd and we’re going back single file,” says Stephen Miles, CEO and Founder of The Miles Group, in the latest “C-Suite Intelligence” podcast episode, Office Next.

“To the credit of CEOs around the world, they wired for virtual and did impossible things. And somehow it all worked out pretty well. But we got lulled into a sense of complacency. Trust eroded, we became more vertical, more in our swim lanes, less thinking about each other,” says Miles. “Our manifest stress went up because there was no transition between work and life. It was just us.”

The return to the office is proving to be more challenging – needing to focus on facilitating meaningful interactions between colleagues, even if it isn’t about work. “I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve heard from who have recently held leadership off-sites or team off-sites, and they’re saying, ‘That was the best few days that we’ve spent together. It was so invigorating,'” recounts Taylor Griffin, COO at The Miles Group. “Flexibility is key and we need to make sure that we’ve got that built into how we work now. But people still have to get together, and it’s refreshing for them. We have to remember that.”

Miles, who coaches CEOs and COOs around the world, adds that “onboarding new people, doing really hard things, doing innovative things, coming together in a milestone event to problem-solve” are times when an in-person experience typically wins out over virtual. “We don’t have to be in the office all the time, but let’s agree as a team, when we want to get together to meet about specific projects or activities, and then disperse to execute.”

“On the talent side of things, we’ve lost a lot of feedback, mentoring, and coaching. That’s not happening in the world of Zoom,” says Griffin. It turns out virtual work is not immune to overloaded calendars and “meeting fatigue,” which somehow hit even harder when compounded with “screen fatigue.” In “Office Next,” Miles and Griffin argue that although the transactional nature of remote work can make us more efficient, we may not be as effective.

“We’re not lobbying for one or the other,” Miles explains, “but it does seem that a truly optimized workplace will comprise some fusion of both.”

To hear the full conversation, tune into today’s new episode of “C-Suite Intelligence” podcast, “Office Next,” available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

For more information, please contact Davia Temin or Trang Mar of Temin and Company at 212.588.8788 or news@teminandco.com.

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