Every Monday I'll be sharing a tip from Effective Virtual Conversations with the hope that it will be useful in your work.
Today's tip is "Setting Everyone Up for Success". Pre-planning in the virtual space can shift a call from being a time-waster to an expedited conversation.
Some things you might want to consider doing in setting your team or group up for success with your virtual call includes:
1. Thinking through any pre-work or pre-reading people should do before they join the call. This can be shared on your intranet, Slack drive or other file sharing service.
2. Having a clear agenda to follow that everyone has fed into. One of the traps of virtual meetings is that people are often bouncing from one meeting to the next. Being proactive with who needs to be on the call (think decision maker or information required) is important as it's often hard to pull a virtual colleague into a meeting last minute.
3. Keeping accountabilities visible. One of the challenges with today's digital world is that we don't always have the same immediate visual cues in front of us, as we may have had with team work which was co-located. What are the things you can do to keep accountabilities visible for everyone in different locations? Is there a weekly dashboard you send out? A photo which can be put on as a screen saver? Something else to keep things visible.
4. Being vigilant with follow-up. Follow-up and circling back is even more important in the virtual space. What will help with follow-up for your team? What one on one conversations (voice and email) are important to have? What feedback and update mechanisms are in place so peers can also keep each other in the loop
As you consider "setting everyone up for success" what comes to mind for you?
Have a great start to your week,
Jennifer
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Potentials Realized | Coaching Team Leaders
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Pick up a copy of EVC at Amazon - Effective Virtual Conversations. Setting your team up for success is one of dozens of topics covered throughout the book. Eight questions you want to ask your team before every meeting is also covered.