As we move into the 73rd Effective Virtual Conversations tip, we’re looking at another success factor for high performing teams. This week brings us to number two of six in the ingredients which make up high performance – Shared Performance Goals.
In a virtual team it is really important to be clear on what the performance goals are, so everyone knows what they are aiming for, how things fit together, and what success looks like.
The danger in a virtual team when these things are not clear are:

• Lack of alignment
• Lack of understanding of how one goal fits with another
• Competing Priorities
• Differences in terms of quality of output, if end results are not clear
• Spending time clarifying goals, and what success measures are, are critical when team members do not see each other, and may be reporting to multiple matrix teams at any given time.

Goals are the heart of any team, and it is important to spend time with the team in discussion around this. You may want to dedicate an upcoming team meeting to this and have discussion around:

• What are your key goals?
• How do goals fit together?
• What does success look like around each one?
• What are the standards for work on this team?
• What are the minimums in terms of response time?
• What needs to be communicated, when?
• What are the best channels/appropriate ways to keep everyone updated with respect to their goals?

Enjoy your conversations!
Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip takes us to Factor #6 of High Performing Teams. We know that teams which excel are committed. They are committed to:

• Each other
• The values they are grounded in
• Demonstrating behaviors that are consistent with their behaviors
• The agreements they create about how they operate and what’s important in their work.
• That work outputs are similar in terms of quality and measurement.
• The mission and people they serve/support

 
Commitment takes on a whole new lens when we move to the virtual and remote space. Given that we can’t see each other, spending time building trust and connection, as well as sharing commitments and expectations are critical.  It’s important to spend time in discussion and focus around this, particularly for teams who don’t see each other regularly. Having a consistent experience with team member in location A is just as important as having the same experience with team member in location B.
At the team level, it can be useful to facilitate discussion around:
What is the state of commitment in your team right now?
How is that mirrored in the organization?
How is commitment working for you?
If there isn’t a lot of commitment, what are you seeing?
(Britton, 2017, page 353)
​
Read more in Chapter 10 – In Focus: Virtual Team Development of Effective Virtual Conversations 
 
Enjoy the start to your week!
Jennifer

As a writer and author I never know where my work is going to find it's feet. Recently I was awarded the title of Project Management Influencer by Fit Small Business. They award to those who have “shown excellence in their field”. You can read their press release here.
My writing in the areas of Group and Team Coaching has rippled out the world since late 2009. Last year with the publication of Effective Virtual Conversations, an increasing number of professionals, organizations and teams are finding themselves working remote and virtually. If you join me for any of my speaking engagements you’ll hear me usually pull in a focus around the virtual and remote space, given my own background in remote and virtual leadership as a program manager and entrepreneur for two and a half decades now (how time flies!).
My own involvement in the project management sector started with my first office job in the early 1990s. Whether it was engaging in project development and planning, or writing proposals, supporting implementation, to undertaking Monitoring and Evaluation, projects are the backbone of so many industries.
It’s a privilege to reach so many professionals today through my written word. What are the books which have influenced you this year? What social media sites have supported you through useful content and insights?

Enjoy the rest of your weekend,
Jennifer

As we step into November the wave of year-end activities, celebrations and push may be rearing it’s head. Today’s post is a reminder of five key things to get in your team calendar for 2019 right now. As we’ve explored here at the Teams365 blog over the last 5 years, certain skills are critical for success – teamwork skills, coaching, difficult conversations, team development and reflection time.
Five different things you may want to get into your calendars right now for the next year are:
 
Team meetings – Whether the entire team, or some of the team, attends, spending time on a regular basis to plan, and update, is key for alignment, communication and noticing what’s working and what’s not. Even if the team is remote, team meetings do need to happen on a regular basis.
For further ideas on team meetings, check out the post on 8 Questions to be asking before any team meeting.
 
Team development – Regular team development meetings are critical – not just for
 
Feedback conversations – Once a year performance reviews are being replaced in many organizations with ongoing feedback conversations. With this shift, it’s common for organizations to be experiencing:

1. A sense on the part of the leader that coaching and feedback conversations are happening more frequently than they really are. Block in time to your schedule for these key 1-1s, being clear on whether you are coaching or providing feedback.

2. Feedback and coaching are often getting blended together under the same umbrella. These are actually two separate activities and the danger of them being lumped together is that the staff member may not know what type of conversation they are part of.  Regardless off whether performance is good or not, it’s key to indicate when a performance conversation is a performance conversation. If changes are needed, this should be clear and non-negotiable.

On the other hand, coaching is voluntary initiative. The person being coached is the one “at choice” in terms of what they want to do. Coaching is about encouraging change. If a leader wants to prescribe change for the employee, coaching is not the right modality. That’s telling!

​Like other activities, it is important to get key 1-1 time and conversations into your calendar. What have you noticed about what’s worked in terms of time, availability and openness to these types of activities? Block out some time right now.

3. Mentoring – Mentoring is beneficial to us at all stages of our development. Having a variety of formal and informal mentoring relationships is key to ongoing career progression. Whether we are mentoring or being mentored, it’s common for both parties to benefit from a balanced mentoring relationship. Have you scheduled mentoring into your calendar for 2019?

4. Team development – Beyond team meetings, we all benefit from formal and informal team development opportunities. Some research, including the 2016 Culture Wizard Survey, found that only 22% of virtual and remote teams benefited from team development. What are the activities you have scheduled for 2019?  

5. Skill Development and ongoing learning – Whether we are a leader, or a team member, ongoing learning and skill development opportunities are key to keeping us equipped for the ongoing landscape of work. As I explored in Effective Virtual Conversations, the Virtual Learning Ecosystem today is vast. From attending MOOCS (Massive Online Open Courses) at Universities for Credit, to micro-learning modules, from webinars, to virtual team development, skills development and ongoing learning can take many forms.  
​
As a team have you discussed what skill development and ongoing learning each team member wants to undertake in the next year?
What doesn’t get scheduled, doesn’t get done. Be sure to block dedicated time in your calendar for these five activities during 2019.
​
Best wishes,
Jennifer

This week’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip focuses on a key factor which helps teams excel. In both the virtual  and in-person team space helping teams understanding their ROLES on the team, is a key activity. This becomes even more important when teams are remote and people may not have a sense of how their work fits together. This can lead to duplication, or impact when things are not done to time or scope, and have a domino effect.
Facilitating the conversation with your team about roles could be part of an upcoming team meeting.
Today’s post includes a short excerpt from Effective Virtual Conversations on page 353, As I write in the book, you might consider exploring questions such as:

• What are our roles?
• Where is there overlap?
• How do our roles leverage people’s strengths?
• In our work, what do we need to do?
• How are our roles supporting the performance goals, supporting our practices and supporting our WHY?
• What else is important for us to notice around our roles?
• What else is important for you to notice about roles?

Enjoy the start to your week,
Jennifer

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

Getting Things Done Across Borders: 3 Ways Technology Boosts Remote Team Productivity
 
By 2020, more than 50% of employees will work remotely.
 
The mantra “work is something you do, not a place you go to” rings truer today and even more in the coming years. A physical office is no longer a prerequisite to running a successful business, which is especially beneficial for startups and small businesses unable to afford an office lease.
 
However, there are issues about working remotely that are characteristic of going this route. One of the biggest challenges distributed teams need to address is productivity. Many companies have retracted their telecommuting benefit due to this reason.
 
One of the most infamous — Marissa Mayer, former CEO of Yahoo!, recalled it’s work from home benefit. A memo sent to employees stated: “To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices.” It added: “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home. We need to be one Yahoo!, and that starts with physically being together.”
 
The reality is this: Productivity is a challenge faced by all businesses, whether its employees are co-located in a single office or scattered worldwide. It is not necessarily a function of being physically together. If it is, how can you explain the success of 100% remote companies such as WordPress, Zapier, and Buffer?
 
The common denominator among productive remote companies is their strategic and well thought out use of technology. It bridges the physical distance between remote team members. Apps and tools make it possible for remote companies to achieve a high level of productivity notwithstanding location differences and time zone.
 
If you have a remote team and they are experiencing a productivity slump, here’s how you can use technology to improve it:
 
1. Create a Virtual HQ
 
Even though you’re not co-located, distributed teams need a place to come together, a virtual headquarters of sorts. “Virtual corridors” and “virtual water coolers” can be created in order for employees to brainstorm ideas and even have non-work-related discussions.
 
These avenues are important in fostering camaraderie, strengthening employee engagement, and building a remote team culture — intangible things that significantly contribute to productivity.
 
Technology provides an easy way to do this via group chat platforms. There are several options to choose from — from free to premium — depending on the size of your team and unique communication needs.
 
2. Improve Project Management and Collaboration
 
When working with a remote team, it is difficult to trust they will remember all their tasks. Likewise, as a remote team manager, you should not assume that you will remember all the tasks and projects that you assign to virtual employees.
 
All successful remote teams use project management tools to maintain productivity, if not improve it. It is also useful to track project status, and collaborate. Many remote teams take these project management tools seriously. If a project is not on their project management board, it’s not getting done.
 
Additionally, establish a strict policy that no file should be saved in the local storage of your employees’ devices. Provide cloud file storage that you own and control. This provides better collaboration for your team, as well as safeguarding your files.
 
3. Understand How Team Members Are Spending Their Time
 
Remote work experts often say that working remotely is all about productivity, not availability. With team members working in different time zones, being available all the time and at the same time should not be the focus. Rather, it’s having an agreed time every day to get together and being able to meet deadlines.
 
That said, remote team leaders should know how their team members are spending their time. This is especially important for businesses in the client servicing industry. You should be able to assess the number of hours your employees are putting into meeting your clients’ requirements and properly factor this into your service charges.
 
Time tracking also allows you to provide coaching to remote employees. If they are spending too much time on non-core tasks, you can coach them on how to better spend their time. Additionally, if they are spending too much time on a specific core task, review your processes and look for ways to do things more efficiently.
 
Technology Brings Remote Workers Together
 
The advantages of building a remote business are well documented, from reduced operating costs to happier employees. 100% remote companies that are successful and profitable are living proof that running a successful business powered by a remote workforce is possible.
 
That said, using technology and implementing the right tools to increase productivity should be a core pillar in your company. This ensures your team is on the same page, even though you’re not in the same place.
 
Looking at successful remote companies, each one has its own processes and systems, but the strategic and appropriate use of technology is a common denominator. Technology determines the quality of communication and collaboration, and the level of productivity that your team will achieve.
 
To some extent, your remote team is only as good as the tools that you use.
 
Author Bio
 
Dean Mathews is the founder and CEO of OnTheClock, an online employee time tracking app that helps over 8,000 companies all around the world track time.
 
Dean has over 20 years of experience designing and developing business apps. He views software development as a form of art. If the artist creates a masterpiece, many peoples lives are touched and changed for the better.
 
When he is not perfecting time tracking, Dean enjoys expanding his faith, spending time with family, friends and finding ways to make the world just a little better. You can find Dean on LinkedIn.
 

Best wishes,
​Jennifer

An increasing number of leaders are now supporting virtual and remote teams. While many organizations feel that a step into remote leadership is just like managing people in the bull pen or down the hall, virtual team leadership requires super-strong skills in relationship management, influence and working across differences.
Creating alignment across a virtual team can be a big challenge. Goals often create the anchors for team members who may be assigned to different projects, be managed in matrix fashion, as well as have a different context in which they operate.
 
Today’s Effective Virtual Conversations tip comes from page 350 of the book, which poses several questions for virtual team leaders to consider when working with teams virtually. These are all questions a leader can pose in individual one-on-one conversations with a team member, or during an entire team meeting.
​
Consider these question to help create clarity, alignment and accountability around goals:

1. How do our team’s and department goals fit into this? This question helps team members understand the bigger picture and connection amongst goals.

2. Do people understand how their individual effort impacts the organizational goals? This question also helps people connect their individual contribution to the bigger picture. It helps to reduce a sense of operating in a vacuum, and lower motivation when virtual team members do not see where they efforts make an impact.

3. Do individuals on the team understand how their work interfaces and supports others, leading into other goals focused on by other team members?Even is a team does not connect physically, helping team members understand how their work connects with others, helps not only with motivation but also in getting things done. If I know that Sujit’s work is contingent on a specific piece of work I need to complete, I may prioritize things more and/or be sure to get things done on time, or in a certain fashion.

4. How do we measure goals and is there clarity around it? Understanding what success looks like it critical for success, and this needs to be shared across a team. Is there clarity around what success looks like and how it is measured? This may include indicators of success, timelines and other factors.
 
As you think about your team and their goals for the rest of the year, what’s important to explore?
​
More on this in the last few chapters of Effective Virtual Conversations where I take a deeper dive into virtual team leadership and virtual teamwork. 
 
Best wishes,
Jennifer

​This week’s FlashbackFriday post takes us to the territory of two past posts which explored the teamwork skills of Listening and Working Across Differences. If I had to categorize the different areas teams prioritize as wanting to get better in, or develop, it’s often in these two areas.
​
Let us take a look back at two posts I’ve written – one on Listening, and one on Working Across Differences.
 
First, here’s what I wrote in Teams365 #1103  on Listening. Read it here or below.

“Exceptional teams don't usually emerge as exceptional. They develop over time skills in different areas.

​The first area we are going to look at is Listening. In a team context listening is of utmost importance - it's listening on multiple levels. Listening to what the other team member is saying, and also listening for how it connects with your work. Listening is also hearing the emotional and requests behind the words. When teams are in conflict, there is usually a request behind each complaint that exists.

​In listening we want to listen on multiple levels:

​1. To the words that are being shared. This in fact only comprises about 8% of the message.
​2. To the tone, pace and pitch of the statement - what do you notice about the energy and impact of how the words are being spoken? This comprises more than 30% of the message.
​3. To the body language. What do you notice about the person's gestures? How they are standing? What does their body language say about how open or closed they are? Body language comprises about 55% of the message when we are in face to face settings.

​One of the challenges with team communication today is that so much is done by instant messaging or text in which we have no tone or body language to help make sense of what the words really mean. The impact of this means that words and the way they are interpreted are heavily influenced by the levels of trust and connection that exist within the team. You may be interested in checking out these two posts for boosting trust and connection in your virtual teams:

​Teams365 #258: Create Connection within Your Virtual Team. Read it here.

​Teams365 #610: Four Ways to Build trust in your team.

​There are some past posts I've written on listening, which is also a paramount skill in coaching. Take a look at these past posts related to listening:

​Teams365 #914: The Foundations of TeamWork - Listening - Read it here

​Teams365 #192: Listening And Coaching as A Leader. Read it here”
 
Working across differences is another challenging area for many teams today. The differences which exist on a team are often the greatest strength. However, how do we become more effective at working across differences? Consider what I wrote in this post – Teams365 #1110 – Working Across Differences.
 
“Today's teamwork skill in focus is the ability to work across differences. In today's world of ongoing collaboration and teamwork, this skill set is essential.

​Some tips for working across differences include:
​
​* Knowing each member's unique strengths and what they bring to the table. StrengthsFinder 2.0 is a wonderful tool to help people understand more about their unique strengths. Click here to read what I have written in the past about the benefits of leading from strengths, and supporting the team in understanding their strengths.

* Creating an environment where differences are celebrated and encouraged

​* Understanding the different styles which exist on a team. I usually use the Everything DiSC with the clients I work with. This helps to provide insights around people's natural working style, to support individuals in learning more about their "go to" approaches, especially when under stress. Understanding this also helps to adapt their style for working with others.

​What other ways do you want to support individuals on the team in working across differences?”

As you step into the weekend, what’s one concrete thing you can do to support your team in enhancing their skills in either listening or working across differences this month?

Best,
​Jennifer

​This week’s Effective Virtual Conversation’s tip #66 brings us to tip #3 in the series of Virtual Team Success. This week’s tip gets you thinking about how you want to keep in touch. In today’s virtual space there are several vehicles teams can leverage for keeping in touch, as well as facilitating meetings and planning.
Let’s take a look at three of them:

Zoom – Great for streaming and meetings on the go, zoom provides multiple benefits – from the  ability to screen share to the ability to activate breakouts in meeting space. With the teams that I work with, many professionals like the flexibility of being able to call in via phone, connect via their desk top or lap top, as well as use the mobile app to connect via phone.

Skype – Skype for business is being leveraged by many organizations today. With the benefits of streaming and visuals, it provides a great option for meetings and presentations.

The final platform I wanted to mention today was that of Slack. Slack is a common go-to platform for real-time communication. 

When working with smaller teams around planning and projects you may also want to check out platforms including Trello and Asana.

What are some of your favorite virtual platforms? What do you use for meetings? Presentations? Project Management? Communication?

​Let us know by sharing in the comments.

Thanks!
Jennifer