Helpshift. Global Head of Marketing. I manage our go to market strategy and oversee our demand generation, product marketing, and partner marketing teams.

How big is it?

‍2 product marketers, 1 digital marketer, 1 partner marketer, plus various vendors including a PR agency, SEO agency, a fraction CRO team, an ABM team, a design agency, etc.‍

Where are your teammates located?‍

All over… SF, LA, Dallas, Nashville, London and additional places if you include the vendors we work with.‍

What does your team do? What are you responsible for?‍

All things marketing. We are responsible for helping the company reach our growth goals.

Constant communication. It’s vital to keep all team members in the loop on as much as possible, even if you don’t initially think it’s relevant to them. One surefire way to keep remote team members feeling isolated is to forget to keep them up to date on projects and company-happenings. I also make sure to check in on my team members’ wellbeing regularly.

At the beginning of every 1:1 meeting, I ask my team members how their productivity has been feeling that week as well as how their overall energy and morale has been feeling. Understanding how they are feeling on all levels helps us to assess together what they might need that week – More structure or clarity? Are they overloaded? Do they need some coaching?

Allowing team members to 1) feel heard and 2) help them get an understanding of what might be roadblocking them in the moment can empower them to get through challenges. It also helps create a sense of connectedness despite being remote from one another.

Not having an in-person connection. There is something special about being in a physical room with people. I believe there is a lot more to how humans read and respond to each other than just visuals and audio. You know that feeling when you walk into a room and can just feel that there is tension? Or when you can almost tangibly feel the excitement in the air during a really great workshop? I’m incredibly grateful for technology and the freedom that remote work brings, however we truly lose a lot of that important sense of “feeling” over virtual meetings.

I am only a month and a half into my position at Helpshift, so I haven’t had a chance to plan any of these fun events yet. When it’s safe to do so, I really look forward to having an in-person offsite with my team. However, Helpshift did conduct a company-wide virtual happy hour and hackathon last month, which was a blast! Earlier in the day, the company split up into teams and was given a hackathon project to come up with a really unique new approach to gaining new prospects. At the happy hour, the teams presented their presentations and everyone voted on their favorite idea. They were all great and everyone had a lot of fun doing it!

Not currently. But at my previous company, I used the “We Are Not Really Strangers” deck to get the team into some deep thought and to really open up with one another. It was wonderful, but you really need your team to be comfortable with one another for that one.

We lean really heavily on Slack. As I said before, great communication is vital.

I have been working with an ontological coach and it has been an invaluable experience. I also have really appreciated some of the leadership courses on mindvalley.com.