It's the end of month two for 2018 and time to take stock of the month that was and take a few minutes to look ahead in setting plans and intentions for the next month. I hope that you will take 10-15 minutes today to do some planning for yourself, reflecting on these questions:

1. As you reflect on February, what have been your successes and accomplishments?
2 What are you most proud of?
3. What successes this month do you want to duplicate? What has been some of your key learnings?
4. What key relationships have helped you? Which ones need more attention?
5  What has helped your successes? What has hindered?
6. What does your team need to be acknowledged for?

As you look to March, consider these questions:
1. What are your key priorities for March?
2. What do you want to make sure you complete by the end of the month? (which may be the end of the quarter)
2. What are the key goals for the month?
3.  What are the major priorities?
4. What will you need to place attention on?
5. What changes do you want to make in March to your habits and routines?
6. What resources do you want to tap into?
7. What relationships and partnerships do you want to leverage?

Enjoy your reflection!

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Teams are often compared to elephant or snails. They are big,  they move slowly and change collectively at a snail’s pace. As you can see in today's picture, both elephants and snails are part of community - herds or colonys.

This past month here at the Teams365 blog I have been focusing on building relationships and the skill of collaboration. These are areas which are essential in today’s workplace. As we step into the month of March, we’ll be moving into one of my favorite topics – Team Development, and on Tuesdays and Wednesdays throughout the month of March, I will be sharing with you a daily team development activity.
​
As you consider your own team development work, consider the following questions:
Get to know you – how well do team members know each other? Do you spend enough time connecting team members and helping them get to know each other?

Face time – What face time do people have (whether it’s planned or informal” As Elfenben (2006) found ““The ability to understand another’s emotional expressions explained 40% of the variance in team performance”. Even in the virtual world, what use can you make of streaming technologies?

Real-time  - What opportunities do team members have to work together real-time? Real-time work where you can collaborate in the moment, problem solve together, is much different than mny typical meetings. Consider what projects would benefit from some work real-time, whether it’s a sprint or working session?
What’s the purpose? – Many teams undertake team development for team development’s sake. Questions to always be asking?
·         What’s needed by the team right now?
·         What do individual team members need?
·         What outcomes are you seeking?
·         What will people prefer? (time, approaches, focus)
Make it an ongoing something – Out of sight equals out of mind for most teams. What regular frequency can you create with your team focus? What could this look like?

I am looking forward to stepping into a new month with you and to turning our attention back to team development again. I may also pick up the threads of this metaphor of the team of elephants or snails. Which one do you see your team as? Let us know through the comments.

There are a number of assumptions which we make when stepping into the virtual realm to lead conversations. In general, assumptions lay beneath the waterline, and while they can’t be seen they can be dangerous and/or influence our results.

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation tip, along with next week’s EVC tip focuses on some of the more commonly held assumptions about virtual conversations including webinars, virtual coaching and/or virtual meetings. Consider if these are any of the assumptions you’ve made and/or what your beliefs are:
·         It’s just like working in person.
·         It’s going to be easy.
·         Everyone is going to have the same needs.
·         Everyone understands what I am saying.
·         They will follow up. 

Let’s take a look at each one of these in turn:

It’s just like working in person: While streaming technology has made the virtual space much more like the in person context, there are still many differences when leading virtual sessions including:
-          Lack of visual cues
-          Things taking more time
-          The threat of multi-tasking on the part of participants
It’s going to be easy – This is a big assumption which can get us into trouble. It’s often said that virtual calls require more planning than in person. “winging it”  is not usually an option. Key items to make the conversation “easy” for all is to:
Co-create the agenda/focus or Create a Shared Agenda. This could involve firming up the focus of the call before you get on the line. As you start off you’ll want to check in by asking each person to input around the questions “what do you want to get out of the conversation today” This works well for smaller sized calls but may be more challenging for larger calls.

Everyone is going to have the same needs: Just as in the in-person context, groups and teams we work with will usually be diverse – with different preferences around communication, engagement and approaches. Whether it’s generational, cultural or due to styles, working first from the  mindset of “everyone is going to be a unique individual” opens the space for more customized learning. One area you will want to make decisions in early on is what is the optimum group size for an engaging virtual conversation. While some platforms do allow for breakouts and other capabilities, it is important to utilize as many engagement strategies as possible (breakout, annotation, small group discussion, breakouts, individual reflection etc).

Everyone understands what I am saying – even if your group all shares the same working language be sure to bust the assumption early on that what you are saying is being interpreted in the way you intend it to be. When we have fewer visual cues, it is impossible to check for understanding by looking at people’s faces. We need to ask questions, invite comments by chat,  have people breakout and speak with each other. Providing support to what’s being said through visual channels (think workbook or slide share) helps to reinforce key messages.  Creating an environment where people can ask questions (big and small) is also important to ensure that messages are being received as intended. Finally consider any  post-session follow-up to reinforce key messages.

They will follow up: Keeping things visible after the training is of critical importance for any facilitated conversation. As discussed in other posts and my writing, the benefit of virtual training can be that people can apply things real-time during the call, or immediately thereafter. Consider how you will create more of a focus on follow-through or accountability.

​Next week, I'll take a look at more of the assumptions we can be making.

Enjoy the start to your week,
​Jennifer

This week's Teams365 Video brings to life a Pulse post I wrote last year over at Linked IN, entitled "Building Relationships in Your Virtual Team". I spend a lot of my time as a coach and trainer working with virtual teams, helping them get clearer on their goals as well as boosting the connection amongst them which is essential for deeper levels of trust and support.

​Take a look at this Linked In post through the eyes of video. What are some things you can do to boost your relationships? Stay tuned here at the Teams365 blog as this coming month's focus (March 2018) is all about team development - for both virtual and intact teams. Enjoy!

Best wishes,
​Jennifer
Jennifer

Today's quote comes from me - "When it's uncertain, complex and changing, collaboration is needed".

One of the themes I work with teams and leaders around is the ability to become more fluid in approaches to help them with the ongoing complexity and change of their work. What once was more isolated to the type of work I did with the UN - ongoing change, ambiguity, ever changing situations, is now becoming much more common-place to everyone in the work force. It requires a different way of working, and a culture shift, for many organizations. This is not easy, nor is it quick. The change may take years to really take hold and be "lived" at all levels of an organization.

For teams and leaders, learning how to collaborate more effectively and efficiently, can be part of the shift to a more fluid working style. It's more likely that you may not have all the information you need, or can access yourself. It's likely you don't have all the relationships needed to get something done. Being able to liaise with, and work through others, is a critical skill set for today's workforce. A leaders' role, particularly one who is supporting a virtual or remote team, often becomes one of liaison - connecting others to resources and people.

What type of collaboration is needed? What is the level of skill around collaboration in your leadership? Team? I hope that you will take some time looking at the posts I've written on collaboration this month and in my earlier years of the blog. Check out past posts on collaboration here.

In our FlashbackFriday this week I am taking us back to the 20 Activities for your Virtual and Remote Team. Next month, in March, we’ll be focusing on team development activities throughout the month. You can never have too many.
If you didn’t catch the 20 Activities for Your Virtual and Remote Teams series late last year, I covered 20 different activities – from:
·         Time Management and Prioritizing
·         Matrix Management. Check out Teams365 #1421 around Matrix Management.
·         Work-life
·         Intercultural skills and knowledge
·         Project Management
·         Emotional Intelligence
 
Given that this past month at the Teams365 blog and in the Teams365 Leadership Lab we have been looking at Emotional Intelligence I thought it would be appropriate to zero into the Emotional Intelligence as core skill:

Here's what I wrote in Teams365 #1435:
In the virtual space, helping team members become more proficient at Emotional Intelligence (EI) skills, which not only help with getting things done, but it helps people in self-management (managing triggers, and enablers), and in building effective working relationships.

Under the umbrella of EI we can have more than a dozen skill sets – from optimism, to conflict management, to developing others. It can be useful to have the team take stock of where they are at in each of the four domains of Emotional Intelligence. You may want to dedicate time throughout the year to this topic – perhaps addressing each one of the four areas every quarter.

 “The research shows that for jobs of all kinds, emotional intelligence is twice as important an ingredient of outstanding performance as ability and technical skill combined. The higher you go in the organization, the more important these qualities are for success. When it comes to leadership, they are almost everything.”
 - Daniel Goleman


The four components of Emotional Intelligence are critical for virtual teams. Today we are going to explore the first two – Self Awareness and Social Awareness:

Self-awareness: Knowing ourselves:
Under self-awareness, skills such as self-confidence, and accurate self-awareness exist. You may want to read Primal Leadership by Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee for more on this.
How do we develop these skills in our teams, and ourselves as leaders? As a quarterly activity you may want to undertake an assessment so that the team learns more about themselves and their natural style. Some of us are big picture thinkers while others small picture thinkers. In learning more about ourselves we can understand:
Our enablers – what helps us do our work
Our derailers – things that may get in the way of our work
Our triggers – things that may hit our buttons to either super-charge us to set us back
Our natural styles – where we go to in times of stress or pressure.
 
Social Awareness
The second I wanted to touch on in this posts is that of social awareness. It’s about being aware of, and knowing the emotions of those around you. Three skills exist in this area and as outlined in Primal Leadership are:

• Empathy: understanding the other person’s emotions, needs and concerns.
• Organizational Awareness: the ability to understand the politics within an organization and how these affect the people working in them.
• Service: the ability to understand and meet the needs of clients and customers.  (page225, Primal Leadership)

There are many places we can explore here. Facilitating discussion around understanding our impact on others, or what your team member,  clients and customers need is one way to help team members to build more capacity in this area.

Questions to consider:
What's important about Emotional Intelligence for you and your team?
What learning would you like to do in this area?
What opportunities do you  have to build more capacity in your team in these areas?

​Which I followed up with Teams365 #1436:
Area 3 is about Self-Management.
Our ability to manage our emotions and motivate ourselves is critical for virtual teams. Helping team members understand why we get triggered or other is important
Self-management is about building onto what we know about ourselves and being able to manage accordingly based on our awareness.

Our ability to follow through, motivate ourselves and adapt to change is part of this skill set.

Skills which reside in this area, according to Goleman, Boyatzis and McKee, are :
Self-control
Transparency
Adaptability
Achievement
Initiative
and Optimism

Activities to help teams with self-management usually involve helping team members identify what are their triggers, and what are their habits. It usually involves enhancing their self-awareness as well.

Here's a quick activity to build self-management:
Get team members to reflect on the following questions, and potentially write them down:
1. What are the top 3 activities that provide you with the opportunity to achieve? What are the habits (or things you do consistently) that help you be successful in this area?
2. Think of a time recently when you had to adapt tin order to be successful? What was the situation? What did you do to adapt? What did you learn from this experience?
3. Think of a time recently when you had to self-manage? What triggered you? What did you do to react? how did this reaction influence the situation? What can you do in the future to aim for a successful outcome next time you are triggered?
4. What are two or three areas you can demonstrate more initiative in, in the new year? What would it look like? What impact would that have?

The arena of optimism is another area you might want to explore with team members. There is a continuously growing body of knowledge and practice around optimism.  To explore these question you may want to look at:
What is your mindset around optimism? Are you a glass half full, or half empty individual?
What impact does your mindset have on results?

The fourth area of Emotional Intelligence is that of Relationship Management – Being able to navigate relationships and work effectively with others.
Building relationships virtually is a key priority for virtual team members, perhaps to an even greater extent. In the in person realm, people are very close in proximity and spending time with peers and other co-workers is an every day occurrence. In the virtual space we need to be more intentional in building relationships. Business still occurs through relationships, whether you are virtual, work remote or work beside someone else.

 
You can check out the post which highlights all 20 of them here at Teams365 # 1443.

​This month we've been exploring Emotional Intelligence for Leaders at the Teams365 Leadership Lab. Later this week my second call of the month will focus on building Emotional Intelligence in your Teams. If you are a team leader, or aspiring team leader, I hope you will consider joining us for this annual learning and coaching group which meets twice a month throughout the year. Each month has a different focus.

With best wishes,
​Jennifer

What systems are supportive for you as a team? Systems allow us to automate, and cut down on the repetitive tasks that can become all consuming. Think about the last week and how much time you had to spend on automating tasks.
​
There are a number of areas we may develop team systems around including team including:

Goals and results – Planning systems and tracking systems can abound. How do you help the team keep focused, and measure progress around key goals? How can you share key results and successes accros the team?

Communication – Communication in virtual teams should be ongoing. Think meeting areas (Zoom, WebEx, Skype), Chat (Slack etc), Instant Messaging

Project tools – i.e. status updates, project requirements. Other project tools like Asana, MindMapping, or Basecamp can help with project sharing

Communication systems – While it might seem old school having a team directory, it’s often only when new team members join us do we realize how invisible our networks have become. Who are the people team members will need to reach out to regularly?

Administrative systems – Whether it is key letters or reports which need to be submitted, or financial and budget systems, consider what are the administrative systems which will work best for you.

As you think about systems on your team, what works and what doesn’t? What new systems are needed?

Today’s post gets you thinking about how to boost collaboration in virtual teams. There are many barriers to collaboration in today’s virtual and remote workspace including:
#1 - The technology itself
When working within a global team it may be likely that some people may have different accessibility options to different platforms, for example, meeting streaming services or file sharing. While we need to work within technological constraints it is important to regularly revisit what the lowest common denominator may be. While a person may not be able to access something on a laptop or desk top, can they access it through the wifi on their phone?
Consider what applications and platforms are needed for the team to excel and what platforms and/or technologies should be revisited.
 #2 - Knowing each other.
An essential foundation to effective collaboration and team work is knowing each other. If we don’t know what each others roles, styles and priorities are, it is hard o collaborate. Spending time in team meetings and through information sharing about roles, priorities and styles helps team members understand how they may overlap.
Help the team visualize their connections. You may choose to create a team map where on a white board, team members identify the different touchpoints, roles and priorities they have around major projects, goals and/or deliverables.
# 3 - Building in time for the team to connect
Structure focused time for the team to connect to get to know each other. This might include special projects which are done in smaller work teams, peer mentoring or coaching pairs or some job shadowing. There is much that can be learned between team members at different locations.
What else is going to boost collaboration for your virtual team? You may want to check out other Teams365 posts which address issues related to collaboration here.
 

One of the key topics of teams today is building trust. Without trust, it’s impossible to raise the issues which need to be raised. Without trust, it  is unlikely that a team will ever move beyond being a collection of individuals and form into a team.
What can we do to build trust in virtual teams? Here are a few ideas:
Trust doesn’t just form. Be intentional in creating opportunities for team members to meet and get to know each other. This may include creating both formal and informal opportunities. On the formal stage, team members may be paired with others on a quarterly basis, or in an informal sense, virtual teams  may make a point of coming together for a monthly meeting
Share what you are working on – Unlike the opportunity to rub shoulders every day, out of sight means out of sight. Being more focused and proactive in sharing your work is an important part of the process. What can you do to share what you are working on with others? Do you dedicate part of your monthly planning to this? Do you each take photos of key projects and share these internally to give a visual? Consider what mechanisms you have to share what you are working on.
Talk about your working preferences – in an intact face to face team it is possible to learn more about each other every day, through the conversations we have, and how people show up at work. In a virtual team, getting to know more about each other’s preferences and styles can be more difficult, especially as we may not see each other. Our styles and preferences influence how we communicate, make decisions, innovate, approach conflict and provide feedback. As a team member what do you know about each other? What are the questions you’d like to ask? What notes would you like to compare about your preferences? One area we do a lot of work in is around this area. From offering the Everything DisC to working with partners to offer the Hermann-Brain Development Index, contact us to explore how we could support your team.
Map out resources (see team tool post) – One of the team tools I shared last week was the Relationship mapping tool. You can apply the same principles to resources, helping people locate and identify resources available in the network. Spend some time this month mapping out the resources (which might include human resources, financial, material, technical etc).
Provide opportunities for issues to be raised and discussed. In today’s business context most team members are running hard daily. Unless time is created for a pause we usually won’t take one. How are you as a team creating that pause to raise and discuss issues. Doing this before issues get magnified is essential. It’s also important to note that not every one on the team may be comfortable with raising issues, so one-on-ones will continue to be important. If conflicts do emerge be proactive, and ensure people have the space and time and tools to work through disagreements.

Be sure to check out this past weekend's Teams365 video which highlighted different ways team members can build, and destroy, trust. You'll find that video here.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation tip #32 comes from page 169 of Effective Virtual Conversations where I write:

“Less truly is more in virtual facilitation. First, everything you do, especially the first time, is likely to take more than when you expect…Since it is a natural impulse for most of us to try to put as much into a program as we can, this can lead to overwhelm”

In the virtual space, less is more, simpler is better. This goes from how many topics or ideas you want to cover in the call, to the approaches you might want to incorporate to the transitions you want to make. It usually takes more ime than you expect.

Over the past two decades I have worked with thousands of professionals – from leaders, to trainers, and coaches – who are designing their own group programs. Whether it is a one hour webinar or a full-day virtual retreat less is more in all aspects of design. Clarity is critical in the work that we do.

As you go to consider your design , ask yourself these questions,

• What does less is more mean in my work and programming?
  
• What is the primary focus?
• How does everything I am including relate to that?
• What are the elements which could be simplified?
• What are the instructions which could be simplified?
• How am I making, or how am I supporting connections back to that core?
  

Enjoy the start to your week,
Jennifer