This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip focuses at Shared Behavioral Norms. Research continues to show that teams with shared behavioral norms have greater clarity around agreements, helping with alignment, behavior and results.
If you are working in a virtual or remote team context you will want to explore the following questions as a team:

• What is acceptable in terms of our behavior and how we operate?
• What is important?
• What does it look like for us in practice?

For example, if a team indicates that one of the important things is respect, it’s important for the team to define what that looks like. Does that mean a certain way of communicating? Does it mean that team members respond to clients in a certain way? If you were to bring a camera into the workplace, what are the behaviors associated with that activity?
​
Activity:
As a team spend time making a list of the behavioral practices you want to employ. Consider how you will “enshrine” them to make them visible as a reminder. Different practices teams have used on this include plaques, statutes, photos etc.

Best, 
​Jennifer

It’s the start of a new month and this month we’ll be lasering into more team development processes. Whether you are a virtual and remote team, or an intact team rubbing shoulder to shoulder, teams excel when they are able to focus on both enhancing their RESULTS and boosting their RELATIONSHIPS. If this is your first time to the Teams365 blog, welcome! Do check out past posts I’ve written over the years on Team Development.
 
Today’s post zooms into the area of a pulse check for virtual and remote teams. While this can apply to all teams, there are some specifics for virtual and remote teams here.
 
Questions to consider as a virtual team:
As we look across the team:

• What have been our major successes this year?
• What’s been working well?
• What systems have helped us do our best work?
• What has helped us keep aligned?
• What information have team members benefited from?
• What communication strategies are keeping us updated?
• What ways are we supporting each other – through skills, sharing of information etc?
• Who else needs to be looped in?

 
On a scale of 1-10, how would we rate our focus on results?

​What’s working?
What’s not?
 
On a scale of 1-10, how would we rate our focus on relationships?
What’s working?
What’s not?
 
What is needed to do your best work going forwards?
 
Have a great week!
Jennifer

Jennifer Britton
Potentials Realized | Effective Virtual Conversations |  Coaching Team Leaders  
We provide team and leadership development support through coaching, consulting and training services
Author of Effective Virtual Conversations (2017) 
Email: info@potentialsrealized.com
(416)996-8326

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.
 

Back on September 20th I started a series of posts that took us through the fall - 20 Focus Areas for Virtual and Remote Teams, and activities you might consider using with your teams.

From vision work, to developing a team charter, building relationships and EI, to making matrix management work, I shared different activities you might bring into your next team meeting, as well as questions which might frame your next team conversation.

Over the last three months I've covered activities in these areas:

• ​Who are we as a team? Check out Teams #1359: Who are we as a team?
  
• Getting to know each other - team individuals
• What's our vision?
• Creating a team charter or team agreements
  
• Team Roles
  
• Goals - immediate work planning for the next month/quarter. Check out Teams365 #1380 on Goals.
  
• Identifying Strategic Goals. Check out Teams365 #1386 around working with strategic goals.
  
• Knowing our strengths (i.e. StrengthsFinder)
• Knowing our styles (DiSC ) - this can impact communication, decision making
• Difficult Conversations. Check out Teams365 #1394:
  
• Conflict Management
• Providing Feedback to Each Other
  
• Other performance management issues
  
• Time Management and Prioritizing
• Matrix Management. Check out Teams365 #1421 around Matrix Management.
  
• Work-life
• Intercultural skills and knowledge
• Project Management
• Emotional Intelligence
  
• Relationship Building
  

Check out all of the 20 Virtual and Remote Team Activities here.

As a former team leader myself I know that many times we are left with the task of developing our team members, and the 2016 Culture Wizard Survey found, only 22% of virtual teams receive any development support. Read their survey here. Are you one of those 22%?

Mid-summer my new book, Effective Virtual Conversations, was released and it's started making its way into the hands of team leaders all over the world. Chapter 7 is dedicated to different activities you can use with teams. Please check those out.

During November I was able to draft the manuscript of another new book, this one which will be for virtual and remote team leaders, addressing the topic of skills, competencies and practices. It will also include 20 different tools for team leaders and their teams. Keep your eyes open for this new book from me in mid to late 2018!

I've highlighted a number of the activity posts here and hope that you will check out the posts, to build your baseline. Enjoy and let us know which ones you have tried.

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Even though virtual and remote teams may not be meeting regularly, taking time to undertake work planning for strategic and immediate time windows are critical. In the immediate term, it’s important for teams to understand key priorities and what success will look like around those priorities. It’s also important for virtual and remote team members to know how their work may overlap as it is likely that they may need to collaborate. Collaboration in the virtual realm on virtual teams can benefit from more planned, and proactive approaches.

What is unique is that many virtual teams may be part of matrix structures, often when involved in project work. They may be supported by a Manager or Director at Head office, and also report to a local level supervisor. When this is the case it’s important that remote staff are also proactive in terms of meting regularly with both leaders and thinking about what needs to be communicated.

It is likely that virtual teams will already have a number of key goals for the year or quarter already indicated from higher levels. If this is the case, a virtual goal setting meeting may involve going around the team and having team members either input or identify how their own work with impact or influence these areas.  If team size is larger it  may be a case where team members are only impacting or influencing certain goals. As such it can be useful to have team members join different virtual breakout rooms so that they can influence each other.

In next Tuesday’s post we’ll look at strategic planning for virtual teams. If strategic planning is being undertaken consider using tools such as the SWOT or Strategic Issues Mapping exercises, using annotation and virtual white boards to capture ideas.

Take a look at other Goal Setting activities I have written about, as well as other team development initiatives here.

What can goal setting for your virtual/remote team look like in this next iteration?

Creating a Team Charter
Copyright 2017 - Jennifer Britton

For decades we have known the power of a team charter or a team  having a set of shared agreements about what is acceptable, or unacceptable on the team. These are behavioral agreements around “how things are done around here”. Having an explicitly created set of team agreements can serve to avoid some of the more negative, and toxic behaviors which can emerge.

Increasingly research is pointing to the importance of team agreements  - take a look at Charles Duhigg’s article on Google’s high performing team experience, or refer to what Amy Edmonston refers to as psychological safety.

Time Required: 15 – 60 minutes

Materials needed – White board, breakouts and/or annotation

Who For? Newly forming teams, teams which are wanting to be even more exceptional, project teams, teams that are struggling

Instructions:
Teams which excel have a set of shared agreements around how they want to operate as a team. This is also seen as “What is acceptable and what is not acceptable in our team”. “It’s how we do things around here”. It’s “our values in action”

Get team members to first consider the question : What are the behaviors and agreements you want to have in place so that you can do your best work?”

Creating a team charter can be done in several ways –

As a large group where everyone suggests one item at a time, which is captured on a white board and then agreed upon OR

First team members meet in smaller breakouts to discuss what they see as agreements, which they then bring back and share with the larger team as individuals or breakout groups

Depending on the number of agreements generated, you may wan t to capture them first and then vote on which are the top ones for the team OR to create the most amount of buy-in, have team members share their proposed agreements and then individually agree upon them, and what they mean for everyday behaviors.

What is important in this dialogue is the discussion and agreement across the team. It is also important for the team to have discussion around what does each agreement look like “in action” or behaviorally. For example, if we agree to “start work on time” what does that look like? Does that mean you are in the office? Does it mean you are in the lunch room, in the office starting the day, or does it mean that you are on your computer ready to work when the work day starts.
With teams it is important to get “granular” and very detailed around what is, and what is not, acceptable on the team.
 

Time: 10 – 60 minutes

Materials Needed: Pens, Paper, Markers

Instructions:
Having a shared vision is one of the six ingredients teams need to excel. Check out past posts on the Six Factors here. Depending on the pace of your business context, you may have team members consider their immediate vision, or a vision of a medium or long term process. Vision work takes teams into the realm of possibility, and research has shown that it activates the PEA – Positive Emotional Attractor network, literally “opening up the brain”. Read more about Boyatzis research in Neuroscience and Leadership here.

Ask team members to think about what their vision is for the next year/3 years/five years etc. This activity can be facilitated many ways. Some teams like prompting questions, whereas other teams like to jump right into the activity with no prompts or questions to think about.
You might have:

1. Teams sketch out a vision of what they think their future will look like
2. Provide teams with scrap book materials and have them work on

 
Prompting questions around vision. It can be useful to provide teams with a number of questions around vision. Check out other posts here at the Teams365 blog for more on this. 8 the prompting questions you may provide to teams are:
___ years from now we are…..
Our greatest successes have been…
We are known for …
The impact our work has had is….
Key stakeholders we work with are….
Other teams come to us for….
Every day we really enjoy…..
_____ has helped us be successful
 
It is always very interesting to see where teams take this activity. Spend time after the actual vision is created (in drawing, on paper) by getting  the team to notice:
Key themes which have emerged
Key metaphors which have emerged
Next steps which are obvious
What they notice about roles
Invite the team to place their newly created vision somewhere visible where they can refer to it on a regular basis.
 You may follow up on this activity with a later date in having them further refine their vision or add to it in another way. So if you had people sketch in the first iteration, the next round might be having them identify some key photos which represent different milestones in the vision.

I have written quite a bit around vision in past posts – be sure to check out other Teams365 posts on this topic here.
 

Best wishes,
Jennifer

Area #2 – Getting to Know Each Other – The team As Individuals
The second of twenty areas we are looking at this fall as an activity to support team development, is getting to know the team as individuals.
In a virtual team, members are sometimes more autonomous than in person teams. Given that team members may need to spend a bulk of their time working alone, or working through other matrix relationships, one area you may want to focus in on  is getting to know each other as individuals.

One of my favorite activities which I used to use with my remote teams is “what’s unique about you?”. I would ask the team to share one thing that they uniquely bring to the team. Over the years with my own teams we would explore this question in different ways. From sharing a logo which the team member creates of themselves and shares with each other, to bringing an item which they could share at our annual work sessions, providing team members with an opportunity to share more about themselves is key to creating a cohesive team.

Increasingly in my work over the last decade I have used photographs as a way to get people to introduce themselves as individuals. Whether they bring their own photos or I share a selection of photos such as our Conversation Sparker card deck (http://www.conversationsparker.com).

Time needed: 15-30 minutes
Materials needed: Pen (think marker) and Paper
Instructions: Have team members create a logo which represents that they uniquely bring to the team. Give people 90 seconds to do this. Have team members share their logo with each other (while streaming, or verbally if you are on the phone only). If time, get other group members to share an example of when they have seen their colleague bring that talent to the team.
 
Check out these other websites for more information about potential activities:
Wilderdom.com (click on over to the Index of Group Activities and Games)
BusinessBalls.com

Warm regards,\Jennifer