The post Remote Team Culture: How to Improve Collaboration appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Learn precisely how to do what virtual workers implore you to do; how to get more done in less time; how to enable the sorts of relationship-building they need to carry them through tough times; how to enable authenticity, inclusion, agency, and equity; how to maximize their talents and wisdom so you and they become more successful.

Making Virtual Work

07:14
The most significant measure of whether you’re a mediocre leader or a great leader is not how smart you are. It’s not how driven you are. It’s not even how innovative you are.

07:33
The greatest measure of your worth as a leader

15:58
Listening for the emotion that’s in someone’s complaint.

18:24
Reflect, connect, and then action; do what they need to make things better.

31:42
Lack of inclusion wears people out.

32:30
How surface acting is a form of emotional labor and highly correlated with emotional exhaustion.

35:57
Every minute spent feeling useless, instead of feeling useful in terms of getting their job done, building relationships, growing their career, is wearing.

Connect with Betty Johnson, Ph.D.

LinkedIn

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The best hybrid and virtual teams don’t leave connection and communication to chance. They’re consistently asking “How can we do this better?” They spend time communicating about how they communicate AND make an extra effort to build psychological safety, trust and connection.

And, they focus on the fundamentals.

It’s interesting how often people will come to us to ask us to help train their leaders on leading virtual teams, when mostly what they need is help leading teams who just happen to be working remotely.

So if your virtual or hybrid team is struggling, be sure you are clearly defining what success looks like, creating a cadence of accountability, and building deep trust and leading with compassion.

6 Habits of Highly Effective Hybrid and Virtual Teams

In this week’s Asking for a Friend, David and I share six habits of highly effective hybrid and virtual teams. If you haven’t seen our FREE virtual and hybrid team assessment you can download that for FREE here.

If you’ve missed these articles, they’re also a good way to infuse some fresh energy on your virtual team.

3 Leadership Values to Nurture in Every Member of Your Team

VIrtual One on One Meetings: How to Build Better Connection 

How to Take Charge of your Virtual Meetings

The post What Do Highly Successful Virtual Teams Do Differently? (Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

If you’re serious about becoming a better remote leader, you’re going to want to become a master in the art of remote team communication.

Key initiatives, motivation, strategic priorities, updates, celebrations–there is so much to communicate with your team.

But here’s the big question.

How do you know your messages aren’t getting lost in the background noise of competing priorities, digital distraction, and hazy sameness of emails and instant messages?

Communicating What Matters Most

It’s no exaggeration to say that every time you or your team form a memory, your brain changes. You literally build new connections (or strengthen existing connections) between neurons.

We also know quite a bit about how people build memories and retain information. As a leader focused on remote team communication, four of the most important principles are recency, repetition, recall, and emotion.

Recency

One way to spark memory is through recent experience. You probably remember what you had for breakfast today … but lunch three weeks ago is likely fuzzier.

Repetition

It’s easier to remember what you encounter more often. Hear a song once and you might say “that’s a nice song.” Hear that song ten times and it might not leave your mind for a week–whether or not you want it to.

Recall

One way we strengthen memories and retain information is by accessing it. When you have to recall the information to answer a question or do your work, you are more likely to retain it.

Emotion

Emotion has a powerful effect on memory. If you reflect back on a time you experienced a strong emotion, you probably remember more about your surroundings. For example, I’ve been in many high school auditoriums, but I still remember details of the auditorium where I learned I’d won my first multi-state high school debate tournament.

Bringing it All Together: The Power of 5×5 Remote Team Communication

Effective leaders don’t leave these memory enhancers to chance. You can build processes and plan your remote team communication strategies to leverage these characteristics of memory.

One technique to help you do this is our 5 x 5 Communication Planner.

5 x 5 refers to communicating key messages five times, five different ways. “Five times” achieve repetition and recency. Five different ways can help with recall and emotion–particularly when you engage your team and get creative.

The first two or three elements of your 5 x 5 communication plan will be the standard ways you use consistently and people come to rely on. These might include team meetings, emails, project management software, and message threads.

When you extend beyond these and do something differently, that creates positive emotion: “Oh, wow, this is different and fun. This is important.”

It can feel challenging to get creative and mix up your communication strategies when you’re busy and tired. So, we made it easier.

Mixing it Up: 101 Remote Team Communication Techniques

We’ve been working with remote leaders around the globe to help them communicate clearly and ensure they and their teams align around what matters most. We’ve also asked them what’s working and how they vary remote team communication to help keep everyone on the same page. Here’s what they said:

Visual Reinforcement

1. Scrolling banners
2. Virtual backgrounds for MS Teams, Zoom, etc.
3. Items on shelf/credenza in the virtual background
4. Login messages on laptops
5. Splash screens when logging onto the company website
6. Physical whiteboard, chalkboard, or poster placed next to, or behind, you in a video call
7. Screen savers
8. Pop-ups on internal websites
9. Email signatures
10. A second monitor in your background scrolling the message or with a related image
11. Banner or ad on an internal website
12. Polls
13. Virtual desk drops
14. Quick recorded video message

Creating memories with a bit of fun

15. Client or customer presents to the team
16. Internal wikis
17. Music video
18. Riddles at the end of emails or agendas related to the topic
19. Have another leader recognize one of your team members or team for performance related to the topic
20. Temporary tattoos
21. Dress up in costumes to emphasize the message
22. #Hashtags
23. Video text messages
24. Gamification
25. Memes or fun graphics
26. An inspiration speaker related to the message
27. Animated GIFs
28. Songs
29. Write a poem
30. Cameo app (where a celebrity delivers the message)
31. Play a game related to the message
32. A humorous presentation or sketch
33. Telephone game–pass the message in a loop through the team
34. Text-based Games that Reveal the Message (eg Wheel of Fortune)
35. Games that reinforce the message (eg Jeopardy or Trivia-style with related content)
36. Theme music
37. Named group-chats or text threads
38. eCards
39. Internal competitions
40. Cross-team presentations related to the message or theme

Messages on (or with) Stuff

41. Send flowers or plants with the message.
42. Sending food (many leaders were very specific about the kind of foods including: pizza, pastries, cupcakes, frosted cookies, muffins, healthy snacks, goodie bags, meal-delivery services, coffee, and tea). Messages are either printed on or included with the food.
43. Send a book that emphasizes the message or has it written on the front cover
44. Bookmarks
45. Swag gifts (Tchotchkes with key messages)
46. Personalized/inscribed beverage bottles with a message
47. Send a balloon with a deliverable or key message inside the balloon
48. Clothing with message printed on it (eg: hats, tee shirts, sweaters, jackets)
49. Print it on mugs or cups that are used in virtual meetings
50. Message in a bottle
51. Yard signs

Meetings

52. Rotate team members sharing the message in a meeting
53. Team members presenting to one another on key message / topic
54. Have a respected peer, colleague, or another leader share the message
55. Virtual coffee chats (supply the coffee/tea and invite to change camera view to something more casual.)
56. Virtual lunches
57. Meeting notes / summaries
58. Meeting agendas
59. Calendar invitations with key messages
60. Meeting pre-reading materials
61. One-on-one meetings 
62. Skip level meetings
63. All-hands meetings
64. Virtual walk and talks
65. Demonstrations

Old School Tried and True

66. A positive, encouraging start-the-day message from leader (recorded or written)
67. Email
68. MS Teams & Zoom Meetings & Messaging
69. Project management software (eg: Asana, Trello, Basecamp, Slack)
70. Phone calls
71. Text messages
72. Cell phone notifications
73. Voice message
74. Powerpoint
75. Physical mail–letters, greeting cards, postcards
76. Newsletters
77. Surveys
78. Thank-you notes (handwritten)
79. Recognition and celebration
80. Check for understanding
81. Press release
82. Vary the timing and context of routine messages
83. Acronyms related to the message (if you’ve read any of our books, you know this is one of our go-to favorites)
84. Tag lines to make it memorable

Social Media

85. LinkedIn (articles, posts, features, video)
86. TikTok videos (and ultimately, all social media channels were mentioned)
87. Online paid ads
88. Write and/or share articles related to the subject
89. Internal blog
90. Internal podcast
91. Social media spotlights celebrating related behaviors and accomplishments

Project Tracking

92. Action trackers
93. Project plans
94. Open issues lists
95. Storyboards
96. Calendar invitations
97. Micro-learning software
98. Shared documents
99. Status settings in collaboration software
100. Annual or project kickoffs
101. Post-project celebrations

Your Turn

There’s a starting list of remote team communication techniques. To improve your remote team communication, work on one or two items from the list that add variety and break up preoccupation.

We’d love to hear from you–what would you add to help leaders master this critical skill?

The post 101 Remote Team Communication Approaches for Stronger Teams appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

As we shared in 6 habits of highly effective hybrid and virtual teams, the best hybrid and virtual teams have this in common— they work at it. They don’t take their virtual team communication for granted. It’s an ongoing, proactive conversation about expectations, what’s working well, and what’s not.

And, they talk through any frustrations before they’ve had too much time to simmer. 

Because even well-intentioned, high-urgency, human-centered teammates can have widely varied opinions about what successful team communication looks like.

Perhaps you can identify with a disconnect like this:

• “If they knew this was important, why didn’t they send me an email with IMMEDIATE ACTION REQUIRED in the header?”
• “Why would they let this sit in an email, and not just Slack message me? I always respond immediately on Slack.”
• “I turn off my Slack notifications when I’m doing deep work. They should know that if something is really important, they should send me a text.”
• “Ugh. This was important. Why didn’t they just pick up the phone? How hard is that?”
• “This is ridiculous. This was an in-office day. And, I’m IN THE OFFICE. If this was that important, why wouldn’t they just come by my cube?”
• “I get that this is important, but I’m working from halfway around the world. I was asleep when the email came and by the time I could contribute my input, the decision had already been made.”

Everyone AGREES this was a highly urgent conversation. And yet, there’s a whole lot of frustration going on about why THEY communicated it THAT WAY.

Establishing Norms and Expectations Around Virtual Team Communication

The idea is to use this tool to support a conversation about how you agree to communicate during different circumstances. And then, translate that into agreed team communication norms.

Let’s Grow Leaders Communication Matrix

click the virtual team communication matrix image to download a PDF of the matrix to use with your team

HOW to use the tool

An easy way to start the conversation is to provide the tool to each member of your team and give them time to reflect on what kinds of communication work best for various kinds of topics, discussions, or information, with a focus on whether you’re in a synchronous or asynchronous environment.

For example, your team may decide that if we’re working at the same time in the same location and there’s an important decision to be made quickly, we’re going to pull up for a quick team huddle.

You may agree, in that scenario, you’re not going to spend a lot of time on email threads or Slack channels. You’re going to get together, make the decision, and follow up with an email summary.

Or, you may agree that even if you are all in the office, you’re not going to interrupt one another with less urgent matters. Those will be handled via your Slack channel.

This conversation is particularly critical for virtual team communication across time zones.

If your team is in different locations at different times, and you have an important decision to make, you may agree that all the information will be communicated in a Slack thread so that everyone can weigh in and share their views during a 24 hour period, before making the final decision (for more about “who owns the decision” see our Manager’s Guide to Better Decision Making.)

This tool is just the start to get the conversation going about communication preferences, what’s working, and opportunities for streamlining communication and making it more accessible. From there, you can create norms for your hybrid and virtual team communication as you continue your growth as a high-performing hybrid or virtual team.

See Also: 5 Communication Mistakes Screwing Up Teamwork

The post How to Improve Your Hybrid or Virtual Team Communication appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

Your finance team did a bit of quick math to calculate ROI for making the transition to remote teams permanent based on real-estate savings and reduced commute times. But, you know it’s more complicated than that.

So how do you take a more comprehensive approach to measure the ROI?

Beyond the Past Pivot

If you’re like so many of our clients, the pandemic caused you to pivot fast to remote work and virtual teams.

You’ve got a long list of pros and cons and anecdotal ROI calculations.

Some employees love it.

Some hate it.

Managers and employees are telling you they’re way more productive. And others can’t wait to get back in the office for a more focused work environment.

So where do you start? How do you truly measure the ROI of remote vs. in-person work?

In this episode of Asking For a Friend,  I talk with Jack Phillips, author of High-Impact Human Capital Strategy and Chairman of ROI Institute about how to calculate ROI for remote work vs. in-person work.

Karin Hurt Talks with Jack Phillips About a Strategic Approach to Calculate ROI

1:30  More details about Jack Phillip’s approach to calculating ROI.

2:55  A case study published by SHRM of an insurance company that allowed claims processors and claims examiners to work from home (before the pandemic.)

3:40  Companies are asking how to know what is better for the company and the employees now that there is a choice in the work location. (Office, home, hybrid)

4:16 What are key areas to look at to calculate ROI of remote work?

• 4:20  Reaction: How do people (employees and managers) see this situation?
• 5:08  Learning: the rules for working at home and how to work remotely, measuring by self-assessments, quizzing, or observation.
• 6:27  Application: is it working? Are we following processes? Are we able to manage well?
• 7:20  Impact: What are tangible measures (to covert to money, i.e. savings in office expense), retention levels, and productivity levels.  Are there fewer distractions, less stress, and more effort expended to help guarantee the remote option continues?  Other items to consider are a reduction in absenteeism and sick days.

9:20 What are intangible measures such as lower stress, convenience, money savings for employees?

10:15  Karin: Have all of your studies shown that remote work results in higher ROI?  Jack: so far, yes.

11:40  Karin: Are there any downsides? 

12:00  Jack: Yes. Teamwork, collaboration, and engagement can go down.  Mental health issues because of isolation can increase.  Career issues may occur.  Knowing these in advance helps you manage these possibilities.

13:58  There are distractions from home as well (i.e. pets, kids, etc) that a company will need to address (particularly if schools go remote, etc.)  Policies during the pandemic may not be how they need to run their remote work all the time.

16:20  A discussion of the case study occurring prior to the pandemic.

17:20  The manager makes a key difference.

17:48  There is the possibility of resistance from managers because some are under the impression they have to see workers. There is also an insecurity that their jobs may not be needed.

19:29  For your organization: get a study of the ROI of remote work that includes 1) ROI for executives (make it a credible analysis)  2) ROI from employees through intangibles/viewpoints and 3) help to the environment as that is often a value that companies want to embrace.  Profits, people, planet.

23:06  More about the case study. Even with expenses that the company incurred to set people up at home (buildout, technology), the company saw a positive ROI.

26:04  Karin: How do you calculate ROI when it comes to innovation? 

26:24  Jack:  Work from home can get in the way of engagement.  The more engaged, the more innovation.  Companies need a foundation that encourages innovation to begin with, whether or not they have remote workers.

27:54  Last bit of advice:  it takes effort but it doesn’t too take long to collect the right type of data to help you determine the ROI of remote work for your company. Review the case study. Be proactive and do something.

Your turn. What would you add? How are you calculating ROI for your move to virtual and hybrid teams?

The post How to Calculate ROI of Remote vs. In-Person Work? (How to Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

In this week’s Asking For a Friend, I share best practices I see continually being performed by high-performing virtual teams.

Highlights from the Building High-Performing Virtual Teams Conversation

0:54 High-performing teams invest in the people they are working with as genuine human beings. They’re deliberate about making a human connection and learning about one another.

1:20 They have a clear definition of what success looks like. Team members work hard to align their most important strategic priorities and discuss when these priorities conflict. They have clearly defined strategic initiatives that support these priorities, as well as know the daily behaviors necessary to achieve them.

1:47 They spend time communicating about how they communicate—and have a cadence of great one-on-one meetings.

Also, they don’t wait on the manager to initiate the communication. Team members reach out and collaborate with one another without waiting for an invitation to do so.

2:30 These teams design team meetings to be truly inclusive—and check-in with one another to talk about how the meetings are working.

3:23  Most importantly, they are constantly looking for ways to improve.

Your turn.

What are some of the consistent habits that you see from high-performing virtual teams?

Looking For More Team Building Resources?

Don’t miss our more detailed article on leading hybrid and virtual teams or our virtual teams’ assessment. 

And you can learn more about our live-online leadership training here. 

The post Best Practices of High Performing Virtual Teams (Video) appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

If you want to take your virtual or hybrid team to the next level, use this virtual team-building tool to get your team talking about what’s working and identify areas for continued improvement.

What makes a highly successful virtual or hybrid team?

Highly successful hybrid and virtual teams have one thing in common. They work at it.

Each team member commits to working on the team while working on the work.

Everything is deliberate.

They’re strategic in how they communicate, how they connect, and how they ask for help. They dedicate time to think about “How we do things around here” and talk about what’s working and what’s not. They understand the importance of psychological safety and are deliberate in helping others feel included.

And, when it’s not working, they slow down and fix it.

We’ve both worked in highly successful hybrid and virtual teams for decades. And, we now lead a company of hybrid and virtual teams. In our experience, and in our work with clients during and emerging out of the pandemic, there are six habits we consistently see lead to high performance in hybrid and virtual teams.

They …

1. Regularly invest in getting to know one another as human beings.
2. Have a clear definition of what success looks like.
3. Dedicate time to discuss how they communicate.
4. Collaborate with one another informally.
5. Carefully design virtual meetings so they are the best use of everyone’s time.
6. Consistently look for ways to improve.

(Read more in our 6 Habits Of Highly Successful Hybrid and Virtual Teams.)

How’s your team doing in this regard? Why not ask the team with this easy virtual team-building tool?

Virtual Team Building Tool: An Easy Way to Get Your Team Talking

You can download this virtual team-building assessment tool for free here.

click image to download PDF of the team builder assessment

1: Download the virtual team-building assessment and distribute it to your team.

2: Ask each member to rate how they candidly feel the team is doing in each of the areas.

3: For each of the categories invite your team members to share how they rated the team and why.

4: Celebrate strengths and what’s working, then identify opportunities for improvement.

5: Pick one area to work on, invite I.D.E.A.s to improve, and make a plan.

6: Schedule the finish (determine who will do what, by when, and how will you know it’s finished) AND pick a time to talk about how things are going.

The post Virtual Team Building Tool: An Easy Conversation Starter appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.

The September Frontline Festival will be about building competence and confidence.

Do you have a best practice to share? Have you written a blog post, recorded a podcast or video on the topic?

We would love to have you join us.

Send us your submissions here!

Leading Virtual Teams: Strategy

Rachel Blakely-Gray of Patriot Software, LLC gives us Leading Virtual Teams with a Traditional Approach.  Do your employees have the option to work from home? If so, your leadership chops may be put to the test. These tweaked traditional tips can help you successfully lead your virtual team.  Follow Rachel.

John Stoker of DialogueWORKS gives us 10 Tips for Managing Remote Employees. More than ever, leaders have team members in various locations. Managing remote employees can be a challenge unless leaders make a deliberate attempt to do specific things that will aid them to lead and connect with their team members. Follow Jon.

Wally Bock of Three Star Leadership shares about Making Virtual Teams Productive.  In many ways, leading a virtual team is like leading one where everyone is in the same place, except when it comes to social support. Follow Wally.

However beautiful the strategy, you should occasionally look at the results. – Unknown

Leveraging Technology for Virtual Teams

Robyn McLeod of Thoughtful Leaders Blog gives us Four Steps to Reducing the Harmful Effects of Email.  Explore the effective options for communicating with remote teams – options which enable you to engage in real-time dialogue, provide information, and clear up any miscommunication that may occur.  Follow Robyn.

Julie Winkle Giulioni of DesignArounds offers Log on to Listen. While the technology and apps to support virtual communication will continue to evolve, what won’t change is the need to extract meaning and connection from whatever form it takes. The question leaders must grapple with is: What does this mean for “listening?” As we’ve adapted our expression to leverage the range of electronic methods at our disposal, we must also adapt our reception. The act previously known as reading must evolve to a new competency: online listening.  Follow Julie.

Technology is, of course, a double edged sword. Fire can cook our food but also burn us.  – Jason Silva

Communication in Virtual Teams

Sean Glaze of Great Results Teambuilding whose favorite tool for communicating with his team is email gives us How to Solve a Common Problem on Virtual Teams. Virtual teams are a terrific solution for organizations to consider in many cases, but they also offer a common problem and challenge to solve. Follow Sean.

John Hunter of Curious Cat Management Improvement, who finds Trello to be a great tool to give everyone on the team a view of what the team is working on, provides Effective Communication is Explicit. Making communication explicit creates a process that is less likely to result in problems that stem from communication failures. Follow John.

David Grossman of The Grossman Group gives 8 Successful Tips for Connecting with Remote Workers. Even though many of us are connected 24/7 through technology, there are still many employees who – believe it or not – are hard to reach. Like any communication challenge, connecting with hard-to-reach employees starts with knowing your audience, then understanding how they want to get information. Here are 8 tips to helping remote workers feel included and valued.  Follow David.

Michelle Cubas, CPCC, ACC, of Coach Cubas who uses Evernote and Mendeley software to communicate with her team, provides Effective Tips to Lead Remote or Non-Traditional Teams.  These are effective ways to reach out to the community and build business through social marketing™. This approach encourages real engagement, not self-serving opportunities like trade shows.  Follow Michelle.

Shelley Row of Shelley Row Associates gives us Who’s Here? What Do You Really Know about Someone Else? One of the challenges of primarily virtual teams is that it’s harder to recognize the nuances in people. Asking yourself “Who’s here?’ in regard to your virtual team can help you go a little deeper and form more meaningful connections. Follow Shelley.

Beth Beutler of H.O.P.E. Unlimited gives us How to Communicate with Non-Responsive People.  Since our world relies so much on virtual communication now which has increased the load of what we have to process, you may find yourself dealing with non-responsive people on a regular basis. Beth gives us some tips to make that easier. Follow Beth.

Communication and communication strategy is not just part of the game – it is the game. – Oscar Munoz

Your turn.

Do you lead a virtual team or non-traditional work-group?  We would love to hear your best practices.

The post Leading Virtual Teams and Non-Traditional Workgroups: A Frontline Festival appeared first on Let's Grow Leaders.