Leadership at a Distance: How to Build a High Performing Team While Working Remotely as a NGO Leader
Are you leading a remote team scattered across cities or continents—and struggling to build trust, drive performance, or just keep things flowing?
Remote leadership isn't new for NGO leaders, but the challenges have evolved—and so must your leadership approach. Whether you're dealing with field offices you rarely see or trying to help your team stay focused in a world of distractions, this episode dives deep into the real solutions for leading at a distance.
My guest today Steven Puri of the Sukha Company will share his unique perspective from the film industry on how to build high performing teams while leading remotely.
In this episode you’ll discover:
- How hiring the right people solves 90% of your remote leadership challenges.
- Learn how to protect focus time and encourage deep work for breakthrough thinking.
- Get actionable tips to build trust and create team alignment—even across time zones.
Tune into this episode and walk away with practical strategies to lead a productive, mission-aligned remote team that thrives—no matter where they are in the world.
Resources Mentioned:
- The Sukha Company
- Steven Puri’s email - [email protected]
What Is Your Leadership Style? Free Quiz:
Want to know how to lead better? It starts by understanding your leadership style. To find out yours, take my free quiz “What Is Your Leadership Style” - you’ll immediately find out your default style, how it may be impacting your team and a few practical ways to become an even better leader. Just click on the link fill out your quiz and click submit.
FULL TRANSCRIPT:
As an NGO leader, your team may be scattered across countries and time zones. So how do you keep everyone aligned, motivated, and high performing, while also maintaining your own productivity? Find out in today's episode.
Welcome to the Modern Humanitarian and Development Leader podcast. The podcast helping humanitarian and development supervisors make a greater impact by taking control of your time, leading more inclusively and empowering your team all the while avoiding stress. Burnout and overwhelm. I'm your host, leadership coach and former aid worker, Torrey
Peace. Are you ready? Let's get [00:01:00] started.
Hello, my modern NGO leader. I hope you're having a wonderful week. So as a NGO leader, chances are your team is not sitting right outside your office.
They're probably scattered across field offices, cities, or even continents.
And while remote leadership has always existed in our world, it is now more common than ever and more critical to understand how do we lead in a remote leadership context. So how can you build a high performing motivated team without being in the same room?
That's exactly what we'll uncover today. I pulled alumni leaders on their biggest remote challenges and their answers shaped this episode. And to bring a fresh perspective, I'm joined today by Steven Puri, CEO of the Suka Company, [00:02:00] who has led global remote teams in the high stakes film industry. Together we'll explore what it really means.
If your team depends on your presence, how to make remote work your biggest advantage, and how to build trust and measure success across borders. By the end, you'll understand how to make your remote team thrive even more than if you were together in person. Alright, let's get started, shall we? I'll see you after the interview for a few takeaways.
Steven, welcome to the podcast. It's so good to have someone with your background on to talk about, and especially for our discussion today, remote leadership. Which leads me to the question, what do you feel like and your background allows yourself to be well-versed in remote leadership?
Is a fantastic question, especially for those, playing at [00:03:00] home or in their car that are like, okay, who's this guy? Why is he on the podcast? Let me say this first, which is anyone who's listening, I hope in the next 30 minutes it is both engaging and entertaining as well as helpful in some very prescriptive ways.
And I appreciate your inviting me on to, to talk about stuff. So now to answer your question very directly. I have had a career that I don't know anyone else that's had this kind of career where I am the son of an immigrant from India and a mom from New York who were both engineers at IBM. So I started out as a little CodeMonkey, my engineering stuff with a little bit of creativity.
Got me into film, doing digital film at first, then being a studio executive on a couple studio lots. Then getting back into tech, sort the full circle of engineering to film, to engineering and founding a couple startups. So what is interesting for me is I have raised over $20 million of venture and [00:04:00] had a successful in my twenties.
Which is a very in-person, kinda specific kind of working environment. Worked in film, was a, an executive vice president at Dreamworks for Kurt Northey, was a vice president at Fox. Ran like the diehard Wolverine franchise and stuff like that. And then also did two subsequent startups that were entirely distributed around the world and, asynchronous remote teams, whatever, buzzword you wanna use for that.
And I saw in the contrast of these different experiences, what high performers did, both high performing leaders and high performing individual contributors. And that fascinated me. It's why I founded the company that I founded, which is a flow state, website to help people get into flow. It is how I learned about a lot of these simple mental techniques. And I thought it might be interesting, with the audience that comes to you to say, here's some things that, leaders can do, especially with, distributed remote teams to encourage a certain kind of, productivity that's both healthy and high performing.
And that's why we're here. And you [00:05:00] know what? Anything smart I say, let's just start off. It's probably because I did the research from the smart people who wrote about it, like we have shoulders of giant sort of things going on here. Okay, so don't, I don't take any of this as I personally am smart.
You talked about the high performers, but what do you think makes leading remote teams challenging or different?
I'll tell you one thing that was interesting to frame this, which is a lot was challenged when this shock to the system happened of the, the, we're not under the same fluorescent light bulbs for 10 hours a day, eight days a week, kind of thing.
It was like, oh my God, we have to be remote. Or, you know what, zoom became a verb. In film what a lot of people don't realize is film has thought all that for a hundred years. Every film naturally begins in a process where it is remote. It's writers writing in their living rooms, coffee shops, writing partners, living rooms.
It becomes hybrid at a certain point when you have a little bit of interest in a project. You have a production [00:06:00] office set up, you're in there one or two days a week doing notes, and then everyone, disperses and does their work. Then, you're in person on set for months at a time working day and night, and then it goes back to hybrid and remote.
And that was interesting seeing how those kind of things worked. So what I think is curious is that now that in many verticals you have that same sense of, oh, we, we made it through that. But you definitely have some leaders that are like, I like it the old way. And then it's totally valid.
In my experience, there are some activities that absolutely are better in person. Like I've never had a story conversation when you and I are trying to work out what's wrong with the second act that is as engaging over Zoom or Google Meet or teams as it is in person, even if it's just in a conference room or a coffee shop or by a whiteboard.
Like there is something about that weird chemistry that's something in the air of being around each other, whereas. There are some things, especially with deep work when it's better not to be. And what I think is best is the leaders who saw the [00:07:00] pandemic didn't swing. To be radicals of remote is the only way to do it.
Didn't stay rooted in ye olden times of we have to be back in the office. I'm going to a stare at you. I don't know what you're doing. That it's rather, oh, now I have all these different colors of my palette. I have blues and reds, greens, and yellows, and I can paint. All these different things. Maybe I didn't have blue before the pandemic, but now I do.
Ooh, I can paint skies and lakes. So I think that's the most important thing is that it's not about having a steadfast or resolute opinion. One is the answer. It is rather, oh, now I have the ability to choose what's the appropriate thing for this. If my team needs to get together in person to brainstorm something, even if it's a distributed team, you get together once or twice a year for really important like stuff great.
If there is stuff where you have to be making fast decisions on the ground in a foreign country, maybe you do need to be together, but you don't wanna limit yourself. If you're like, actually the person who's perfect about this, they're living, they're in Norway and [00:08:00] they have kids and they're not gonna move.
But man, they have the knowledge that would guide us. How do we include them? So I think that's what's interesting about the way the world's evolved.
Yeah, those are such great points. And when I think about COVID and I saw some of the changes in terms of the NGO world, what I saw was there was this wanting to clinging on to the old way doing things, especially when it came to in-person trainings.
Or the need to get together. There's this value in getting together, which like you said, there's some validity to that. Yes. But I think sometimes there's, that's a little bit overweighted because especially in what what you just mentioned, there are so many distractions in our modern day world.
And this is something that I myself did as a leader sometimes I took time and I went to a coffee shop, or I went to somewhere where I could do focus productive work. Because the open office [00:09:00] layout especially that is very common nowadays, is so disruptive and so distracting and you really can't get a lot done.
And what I hear from a lot of my friends right now that are going from remote to back in person is oh my gosh. Like people are coming up to me constantly. They're asking me questions, they wanna socialize and they feel like it's just the law. The productivity level has gone way, way down.
What you're saying is so true and I almost think that open office layout was invented by the people making headphones. Because now you have to have headphones as that signal of don't walk up to me and just start telling me about your basketball game tonight. It's just I don't wanna be bothered. Alright. How this, how the sales went up because they're like, we have this idea. What if we popularize an office space where everyone talked to each other all the time unless they had our headphones? Yeah. No, it's so true. It's so true.
It's quite interesting how like this kind of being forced [00:10:00] to lead remotely, which also I have to say in the NGO world was already a thing. There are people who have teams and field offices that they don't see very often. Yeah. And that is leading remotely. But at any rate, yeah. So you had mentioned some of the characteristics, or you had said that there are certain people that you saw, there were high performers as leaders in this type of remote leadership.
What are some of the characteristics of those types of leaders?
I know that you your audience. They're largely leaders or aspiring leaders or people who are working into that. So let me speak from that point of view first. But then I'm gonna throw out some things that are just generally applicable, right?
Yeah. So in terms of leadership, and I've spoken to a ton of I run a company, tons of my friends run companies. And I've noticed with the people that I've spoken to, interviewed, or that are part of, the suka that are the most resistant to remote or hybrid work. Usually it's from fear as most resistance is in life, right?
And. [00:11:00] I find that the problem is not actually remote work when you dig down and you get that honest. I just don't what people are doing. Like how do I know that're not at the grocery store or napping or whatever playing with their dog, right? It's usually the root cause is a hiring problem.
It's not I don't know what you're doing. I need to watch you or can I have some surveillance? Would you run time doctor on your computer so I can watch what you do? It's really, this is if you are a leader, a true leader, not someone in the position, cosplaying your way through it.
There are two things you do upfront. There are other things you'll do later, but the two things you do upfront, here's our mission. We are here to cure cancer. We're here to create cold fusion, solve famine in this area, build wells, create a new company here. State the mission clear as someone goes, yeah, I'm into that.
Second, establish the culture, which is about values. It is how are we going to treat each other? How are we going to treat, our [00:12:00] customers or those we serve and how are we gonna treat our competitors? And if you do those two things well, we are here to cure cancer and this is how we're gonna behave.
You attract the right kind of person, they're in alignment with what you're doing. So if you and I are working together and I'm like. Torrey, I gotta work for your company. Like my dad died of cancer. Like I'm deeply involved in what can we learn in my lifetime that will stop that from happening someone else's dad, you don't need to watch me to know if I'm working.
You are confident in the fact that I'm doing, what can I do today to move the ball downfield, right? To use a sports metaphor, which is rare for me. There's an expression, Cameron Crow, who's a director, he wrote this great book where he interviewed Billy Wilder.
Like some, like it hot in all these great movies. And Billy Wilder had this expression. He said third act problems are really first act problems. And what he was saying, in this is incredibly concise the way he said this thing that is so true, which is when you screen your film for [00:13:00] audiences
and they tell you, oh, in the third act, I really didn't believe that Torrey and Steven would get back together, or, I really didn't think that Torrey could defeat the dragon, or it did by the spaceship da. It's very rarely the third act that's wrong. It's in the first act. You did not set up that ending well, and that is what hiring is.
I love that. So that I think is a really important point because I'm not pro remote. I am pro what works for the thing we need to accomplish.
What I hear is you saying that it starts with looking for the right people, which are the people with the right values that are in line with your mission
or your company. And if you hire those people, then the need to police them essentially and make sure that they're working is, yeah, really invalid because they're very motivated, self-motivated because they feel [00:14:00] passionate about the mission or the vision.
Yes. Hire well solves a lot of problems downstream.
I've talked with leaders about comes down to that thing and I'm like, this solution is, you probably didn't hire well.
So then let's go a little bit deeper, which is. And this is a lot of Cal Newport's great writing, right? About deep work and shallow work. There are things that we do that change the world, that change the trajectory of our company, our team, our own lives. And there's stuff we do that's just, it has to get done.
Yeah. You gotta return those emails. Yeah. You gotta pay that bill. Yeah. And there is the aspiration we all have, like I believe all of us have something great inside us. The question of this lifetime is, are you going to get it out or not? And you as a leader, if you hire the people that are aligned with what the mission is that you believe in, this is how we treat people.
Is your [00:15:00] job to say, let me create the conditions precedent. We're gonna get that out of you. You're going to sing that song that only you can sing in a way that changes our team, or our company, or our mission or the world, right? That's fundamentally what a leader's supposed to do. It's not about you, it's about you saying, I can bring out everyone in this orchestra, the most beautiful notes that when someone in the audience hears these 60 instruments together, they're gonna go, that's amazing.
So that said, shallow work is shallow work. Return the email, don't be rude. Check your slacks, whatever.
And sorry, shallow work for those who don't know is like work that is I would say like mindless work almost.
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. There was no prize for inbox zero, other than maybe a sense of oh I did whatever.
But what we aspire to is that. Thought that idea, the diagram, the whatever that you walk into, like a staff meeting or a team zoom or you go, I was thinking this, and then everyone kind of pauses and goes, [00:16:00] that changes the trajectory of where we're going. Like we should start doing that now, right?
And as a side note, I do think that work should be measured on the effect of our actions and our thoughts. It shouldn't be measured on how long did it take us or where did we do it? If you come into the meeting Torrey and you're like, actually we should do X, Y, Z, and everyone's like that's brilliant.
And you're like, I thought of it walking my dog at the beach yesterday. More power to you. I don't need to know. After 19 hours of slaving and PowerPoint I created. No, I actually don't. And better we don't be a PowerPoint about it. Exactly. So that said. If you as a leader wanna say, Hey, we all have to do some shallow work.
We get it, but it's the deep work that actually moves the world, then how do you create those conditions? I'll tell you, there are some that I've seen successful organizations. Deep work is a great thing to do in a flow state. [00:17:00] Just to set the table, because I know there's a portion of your audience that's like super flow master.
I get it. I'm great at this. And there's some portion that's I've heard the term, I'm aware what it means, but what is it? So let me just give 60 seconds to set the table. So we're all on equal footing, which is this Hungarian American psychologist, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, who died I think actually four years ago next month. He had this thesis. Athletes, inventors, artists, they talk about their concentrated states where they do their great work in very similar ways. What is it?
He did his research. At the end of it, he wrote the book flow, which is the seminal work on this. It is why we call it a flow state. And he said, here's the best metaphor I can come up with after talking to all these people. We are all on the water paddling our little boats forward. But if you align yourself with the river, the current carries you forward, and it magnifies your efforts.
You go further and faster. And it is a [00:18:00] brilliant book. There have been many people who have expounded upon this and written great stuff. There's, Kotler in the research collective and there's so many people on whose shoulders we stand. But the fundamental idea is he said, there is this state where you lose track of time. Distractions don't bother you. You're deep in the work that you're doing. You have skills that relate to it. It's something that's in your sort of metier, if you will. And you produce the work that does, make you famous or move the world forward.
And there are some conditions, precedent that help you get into flow. And this is what I wanna share in terms of like leaders going, Hey, you know what? I wish more people came into the staff meeting saying. Yesterday I had this thought.
First one, flow doesn't happen in between Zooms. When you have nine minutes before the next thing and you just finish the last, it takes research shows 15 to 23 minutes just to drop into that state where you lose track of time.
You're focused on the task, you're doing great work. You're not in TikTok, you're not in WhatsApp. [00:19:00] And if you get interrupted, it takes you another 15 to 23 minutes to get back in. So what does that mean? It means that you have to set aside a block of time. Hey, this hour or this two hours a day, I'm going to treat that as sacred.
That's where I'm going to do the work that really meaningfully affects where we are in between zoom's all return emails or slacks. So you as a leader can say, Hey, you know what? I'd like to experiment with this. I'd like us to have this time and treat time as sacred. You can declare it in your calendar like this hour or two hours.
This is what I'm gonna do that work if you slack me, message me, WhatsApp, me, telegram, signal, whatever, I'm not gonna respond for that hour, two hours if there is a emergency. And Africa's burning to the ground, call me on the phone, not hooking up the phone, but I'm not gonna be staring at my phone, staring at my WhatsApp, staring at my thing.
And in that time, music can be very helpful. It's a lot of research. The middle of the road, the sort of sweet spot for most people is music that's 60 to 90 beats per [00:20:00] minute. It is non-vocal. It's melodic. It's rhythmic. Certain key signatures seem to be better than others. When we developed Suka, our flow state app, we like a thousand hours of music.
It's all in this zone of you can have lo-fi, you can have, upbeat down tempo, but it's all kind of that music. There are outliers, like we all have the friend that listens to classical music or gangster rap or heavy metal or something. That's just how they get in the zone. That's awesome that they know themselves that well.
But for most people, this is a great way of just helping to build an oral environment, that starts to block out the world and let you just drop in. And a lot of people call it the zone. It's a flow state, but by any other name it smells as sweet, right? And there's that Michael Jordan, the basketball players quote where he is like, when I'm in the zone, it's just me and the ball.
Yeah. It's a great way of just saying, like Billy Wilder saying this is exactly what that is. It is. The world reduces down to what is important. It is that I move the ball where I want it to go. And everything else is just distraction. [00:21:00] So as a leader, you can start to, to create these conditions saying, Hey, you know what?
Know what time of day you do the kind of work. That's amazing. Block out your calendar. It's cool. We're not gonna expect you to be slacking or communicating in that hour or two hours, right? And do something that's in your zone. If you are going to design the thing, if you're going to come up with a business plan, if you're gonna make the business case, if you're gonna do it.
Do that, bring it back, get feedback from the team. Another important part of being in flow is that you are doing something where there is feedback often, in the moment or very soon after the moment. I know that was really long speech, but when you ask us a very broad question, which is what can leaders do that help, that helps their team do the thing of which they're capable.
Yeah, my question I can hear some listeners probably asking is, you mentioned in the beginning like it comes down to first of all, hiring the right people. Yes. But what if you already have an existing team what can you [00:22:00] do in that case?
Oh, okay. Let's talk about that. Yes, we all have walked into situations where we have some legacy hires, right? It was not your opportunity to hire them. The best you can do that situation is evaluate them. Figure out what is their song to sing, what is their great sculpture they're gonna create?
If that fits somehow in your plan, put them in that place. If not, help manage them out. Oh, you know what? You actually should be a chef. Let me help you get that, because this is not gonna make you happy. And we need people who are deeply involved with our mission.
Is it like the saying, and I'm trying to remember which business leader said this, but like getting the right people on the right seats on the bus?
Yeah. That, that is a great metaphor for that. Yes it is. So you're gonna sometimes inherit people. You're just gonna have to be super clear. Hey man, I'm the new sheriff in town. This is the mission, these are the values. How well does this, match with you? And hopefully as a leader, you're somewhat intuitive to [00:23:00] interpret them, that you can say, oh, there's absolutely a place for you.
This is where your seat is on the bus. Or this is just the right, not the right bus. I'm sure you'll be great and successful and happy somewhere else. Let's help get you there because I could use your headcount for someone that really deeply does want to cure cancer or make cold fusion or, do whatever.
The second part of your question though, is when we were talking about flow states and remote work, what I think is so interesting is there are very few people who experience deep flow in the in-person environment because as you said. Everyone wants to walk by and be like, oh, it's just so easy to just knock on your office door.
Or at worse, even walk by your open cubicle and be like, Hey, I'm just too lazy to look this up myself. Can you tell me what time it is? And you're like, clock is on the wall, buddy. So those are very hard in in practice, very hard environments to be in flow. And what I was trying to establish is that it's from deep work.
It's from flow states where you do have some of those really [00:24:00] breakthrough kind of movements. It's not from everybody sitting their cubicle returning their email and doing their TPS report. And I filed my TPS report this morning, I'm going home. That is not how you win. How you move the world is those thoughts where you go, I had this thought, what if this.
Yeah. Yeah. And I agree. And that remote working remotely or leading remotely can allow you to take that time to, to create more deep work or mindful work, as you were saying.
So when I ask my, some of the leaders listening to this, some of their, what they would like to know in terms of leading remote teams, one thing that they mentioned was the importance of building trust. Let's say you suddenly take on a new team.
Maybe you're a new leader, or maybe it's an existing team and you've been assigned to that team. And how to create this working [00:25:00] relationship when you are essentially in two different places and you might not see each other, but maybe once a year?
That is challenging because you're right, as humans, there is something about having that in person, like regular cadence of being in person.
I can't tell you there's a magic wand for that. I would love to say I have the answers to everything. That is an absolute challenge and you do need to seek out the ways to have a regular cadence that establishes trust and trust be very reductive is a lot about repetition of. I said I would. I did.
I said I would. I did. So if you can establish that cadence even remotely, it does start to build trust with someone who may be, in person, but they don't build that pattern, to be super blunt.
Why do you need to be in person to build trust?
What is, is it that being in person, you [00:26:00] feel more in your comfort zone and that's why you need that in order to build trust? Maybe you don't see each other every day, but I would I guess I, what I'm saying is like to challenge that thinking that in order to build trust, I need to be able to see you every day or every week.
And yeah like you said, I think it's more about like maybe consistency in your own behavior and setting up a rhythm with how often you meet with that, that, that team. Yeah and like also maybe coming back to values, like you mentioned before. Maybe even referencing trust as one of those values and what would that look like for us and so on.
I don't know. What are your thoughts?
I agree with you that consistency, honoring your commitments, honoring your word, builds trust, period. That is an established principle. The [00:27:00] part about how much do you need to be in person. Psychologists and sociologists have written a bunch about this.
There are some things that you just feel non-verbally being in the same room with someone in the same space. Let's say with someone, it can be out in a park, just walking. I know for example, my old co-founder was in SF and I moved from California to Austin. Be closer to my dad. San F Francisco. San Francisco, yeah.
Okay. California. Sorry. And we would schedule time just to go on walks through the park just to have that experience of being around each other. 'cause are there is that. Intangible thing of vibing with each other. That's just really hard over the phone or over a zoom. But for a lot of the transactional stuff, phone or zoom were perfect, and there, there are people with whom I've worked, it's a great designer in Dubai, I've never met in real life. It's a software engineer in Montreal. Never met in real life, right? They've contributed amazing things to, the Suka companies, what we're building, but we found ways that we're completely suitable for working, that [00:28:00] we're not about flying all over the place on a regular cadence.
You've talked a lot about flow and that ability to have more flow when you are working remotely, but how do you also encourage your team to build flow and give them permission to do the same?
One of the things I encourage those listening to this to do is to help protect their time, but also their team's time. So for example, one way would be establishing hours where maybe all of you are not available at the same time.
Yep. Where it's like this, from this hour to this hour, we're all gonna be working on deep work. Like something that hundred percent requires a hundred percent with you thought. Yes. Yeah. And thinking of ways to help your team. And encourage your team, like you're saying, to create and use this time for deep [00:29:00] thinking because there's so many distractions nowadays.
And in my world, like humanitarian development world, a lot of times I see leaders thinking, oh, I have to always be available because there might be an emergency. But like you were saying earlier. I think it's about like maybe testing in a shorter time period first and seeing that, oh, the world's not gonna collapse. And what I've also found is that a lot of times it's we ourselves as leaders, are training our teams how to engage with us. And as you also mentioned earlier, if you are telling your team everything. Then they're gonna be coming to you for all the answers instead of thinking for themselves.
And part of what it sounds like flow state is thinking for yourself, but on a bigger level.
Thank you for hanging your lantern on a lot of those points. And to repeat this back to you. That concept of saying, Hey, you know what? Maybe we collectively could declare this time, our flow time, our focus time, whatever, and agree upon when that time is.
That's magical. I [00:30:00] do it in my company like from eight to 10:00 AM you can't set a meeting with me. My day is blocked for a meeting with myself every day. And I encourage everyone that works with us, even contractors who come in and out, just say, Hey man, just block this time out. I will not set a meeting with you in that time.
I won't expect you to attend any meetings from vendors or customers. You do the stuff you need to do. And it is it is interesting once you get to know your chronotype, and I know we're at the end of our episode, so I'll make this very succinct, which is chronotype is that concept that there are certain times of day when you're more adept doing certain kinds of things, right?
Chrono time type. And the best example, the first example I saw of this was a screenwriter named Ron Bass who wrote My Best Friend's Wedding and Rain Man, a bunch of stuff. And he's the, he's in the million dollar club. He would not talk to his family in the morning. He was famous for this. He's I'm not the dad who's gonna be like, who wants pancakes and did you do your homework?
He's like, when I start [00:31:00] talking with you, I can't hear my character voices in my head anymore, so I can't write dialogue. So I need to use those quiet early morning hours for writing dialogue. Now this guy wrote dialogue on a level that he gets. A-list actors to say, yeah, I'm gonna, that character, I'm gonna do that.
That is my springtime is saying the words this dude wrote. So his colleague was that good. And it is something to consider when you understand your own chronotype, the chronotypes of your team, where you set that flow time, the day going Hey man, seems like we're morning people. We should block out eight to 10 and there may be multiple time zones involved.
Let's be respectful of that. 'cause people are distributed across time zones. Or maybe an afternoon thing or whatever that is, but just being sensitive to how do my rhythms of the day work? When should I be doing shallow, work? Meaningless work. I'm paying bills and and when should I do that deep work that moves us forward?
Yeah. I just wanna add one more thing to what you just said. And what I see a lot of people do is [00:32:00] meaningfully putting aside the time, like you just talked about. But then what I call like disrespecting their own time in the sense that if someone else they consider more important or something more important, they consider more important comes along. And because sometimes with deep work, we don't have something tangible that always comes out of that, or you might.
But it, it might be more of a long-term impact and because of that, the short, shorter term impact, oh, my supervisor asked for a meeting during this time, I'm going to schedule over it becomes very tempting. And so I really try to encourage leaders as well to when you schedule that time with yourself to really respect it as if you were meeting with a CEO of your organization.
So true. Yep. You have to have group buy-in. It can't be two people who believe this is real and everyone else is whatever. Torrey just sleeps in the [00:33:00] morning. You gotta have everyone buying in and you have to share results. Like you said, it's not every day you're gonna go, oh, I thought of something to
change the world. There has to be meaningful stuff that comes out of that. Or you know what? Your flow practice is actually not that valuable and you should do something else.
Yeah, also a great point. If someone's not performing, how do you know that they're not putting enough hours or whatever, and first of all, do you have any thoughts on that question?
Yeah, a hundred percent totally disagree. I believe that work should be measured by the effect of your action. It should not be measured by hours or by location.
If you come in the staff meeting and you change the world with what you said, I don't care. Like I said, if you did it at the beach with your dog and it occurred to you and you're like, this is whatever, like no one says to Picasso, like to put, how long did it take to paint Guernica? No dude.
It's scare aica. Great. I don't wanna know where or how or what. It's just. It moved the world forward. In that area. Yeah. I [00:34:00] don't think it's about time. I think it's about if you have a flow practice and your team buys into it, you do this. Yeah. At a certain point you have to measure that our results coming outta this or not.
And if not, then look at changing it. Flows not for everyone. Yeah. But it is an amazing tool for the superheroes who strap on the cape. It's amazing.
Okay. Thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time to share all this, and thanks for having me.
Yeah, of course.
And maybe you can share if people wanted to learn a little bit more about what you offer?
How they can get into this flow state using the tools that you offer.
Yeah. Let me share two things. If anyone has a question about something I said who is Cal Newport? What is, what's that Hungarian thing you talked about? My email address is very public. You're welcome to email me with a question.
It doesn't have to be about what I've created. It can simply be could you just gimme a link? I wanna read more about this. Done Steven at the Suka. Suka means happiness in Sanskrit, so it's T-H-E-S-U-K-H a.co for [00:35:00] company. So the Suka company. Email me, I will email you back a link or something to read or something to answer your question.
I will not e email you back 19 paragraphs on the story of my life because I don't have time to write that, nor do you have any interest in reading it, so it'll be short and sweet. I do get back to my emails in 24 hours unless I'm sick or traveling. So that's available to anyone who wants to learn more or they're intrigued, and anyone who does want to experiment with their own flow state.
My website's free for seven days. No credit card. Try it. If it works for you, use it all the time. You can use it 168 hours your first week for free.
And this is the music that you had put on in the background when Yeah. All of it. It's if you pick up your phone, you get a little nudge saying Hey, is your phone productive right now?
Which for me is my biggest distraction when I hit a wall in terms of I'm writing something and I just don't have that great idea, or I'm coding and the build fails. I found my muscle memory was like, lemme just pick up TikTok for a moment. Let me check my [00:36:00] WhatsApp and see, get some dopamine.
And all I needed was that little, when I pick up my phone, there's a little voice from my assistant, my computer says, is your phone helping you be productive? And I just get to choose who do I want to be. It's just that little nudge make me go. Do I wanna be the guy at three o'clock that's I crushed it, or do I wanna be the guy at six o'clock who's oh man I'll have to pick it up after dinner and try and finish today's work.
And I'm sick of being the, I'll pick it up late, or I'll get up early tomorrow and finish today's work. I wanna be done. I wanna go to dinner with my wife and feel like this was a great day. And yeah the platform I built, if there are websites that distract you, there's a free Chrome extension.
It'll just give you that little nudge saying, Hey, is YouTube helping you? And you get to choose who you wanna be. So it's what? It's and it's of course the Suka, T-H-E-S-U-K-H a.co. And anyone who uses drop the group chat and say hi. Say Hey, I heard you Torrey's podcast.
Yeah, thank
you. And I'll definitely put those links in the show notes as well for [00:37:00] people to find them there.
Thanks. Okay. And yeah, no, it's been, it is been great talking with you. And yeah, I can't wait to hear how people use some of these tools in their own remote leadership.
Super cool. Thank you for having me. And for those listening, thank you for hanging around.
So before I give a summary of today's takeaways, please note that if you wanna find out about Steven Purey, his email and his website, the Suka Company will be in the show notes, so you can find it there and you can explore some of the tools that he has for creating flow in a more productive state. So to wrap up, if you're struggling to trust your team, start by looking at who you hire.
Getting the right people in the door solves so many downstream issues. Remember, remote work is also a gift. It allows you and your [00:38:00] team to protect your focus time, create flow, and generate the kind of innovative ideas that our NGO sector needs. Building trust remotely isn't mysterious. It's the same as in person.
Remember, show integrity, follow through, and people will know that they can rely on you. And finally, measure your team by what they achieve, not how many hours they sit at their desk. Outcomes are what matter. Apply these principles and you'll not only lead more effectively from afar, you'll build a stronger, more resilient team no matter where they are.
And if today's conversation sparks some ideas for you. Don't just stop here. Please share this episode with another NGO leader who's navigating remote work. Because the more of us who lead this way, the stronger our sector becomes. Alright, until next week, keep evolving. Bye [00:39:00] for now.
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