Virtual teams have become a fact of business life, so how do you make them work effectively? And in
this video, I'm actually going to share with you, six principles on how to make
virtual teams work. If you have virtual teams, I promise you, you probably have virtual projects,
so stay tuned to the end because I have something really cool to share with you,
that's going to help both of those groups. Hi, if you're new here, welcome. Subscribe to the
channel for the best career and project management advice, coming to you every Wednesday. So if
you're excited about knowing how to make virtual teams work, then let's get to it. Communication.
All right, this is probably one of the biggest challenges all remote teams have,
is the communication. How do we get that same benefit when we were in the office,
outside of the office? It's really difficult because in the office,
we had the hallway conversations, we could drop by someone's office,
just ask them a question, even those pre and post meeting conversations were extremely valuable.
Now, what can you do? Well, my biggest recommendation for virtual teams, is over
communicate. So how do you do this? Well, you want to keep everyone in the loop, that becomes
really important. So you want to use things like electronic newsletters, electronic announcements,
you may want to have some private groups that you can post stuff to. Again, maybe even if you have
social media channels where you're sharing company news, you want to do that too. Get everyone,
let them know that there's multiple places they can get information from,
but that's going to become really important. Another thing you also want to consider too,
when it comes to communication, is to provide a central location for information. And this is
where there's some great programs out there, like Teams that you can have for specific projects, so
its one-stop shop, SharePoint sites, even Google project sites. Another program that I really like
to do when it comes to communicating, is my OneNote, great place to create my agendas, any
meeting minutes and the nice thing is, everyone has access to it, so they can go to it as well.
You also want to consider perhaps, maybe having a little more one-on-one meetings.
As I said earlier, you don't have the luxury of just dropping by someone's office. So
schedule that in too, with specific people, to ensure that you are communicating.
And let's say, we can even start using our text a little bit more. We can look at Slack,
things of those nature, just to help with the instant communication, the instant messaging,
that a lot of organizations do have within their software programs.
Technology. This becomes really important with virtual teams. Your teams have to have the right
technology at their fingertips. That means that they need to have really good devices that should
be fast and have good cameras and I'll get into why that's so important on the next tip. You also
need to ensure that your teams have the proper programs that you need for them, to be sharing
that information. Now, another thing I always recommend too, is two monitors for really, whether
you're virtual or at the office. I don't know how you cannot live without two monitors, but with
virtual teams, it becomes even more important. You're now in virtual meetings and you are
seeing everybody on the screen, you have that virtual call up, but you may need to, as either
a presenter or even as a participant, pull up some additional information. And having two screens is
helpful because you can use a secondary screen to pull up any type of information you need as you're
in that meeting. And you have the visibility of everybody else on one and your information
on the other. Something else to consider too, is when we're working remotely, we tend to be
working from home. And we're going to ensure that your team has better IT access support,
particularly when everybody is working remotely. And something too, that people don't consider is,
in the remote work home reality that a lot of us are in right now, you got to think about
personal Wifi connectivity, at work, it may be awesome, but at home it may not be. So this is
where we may have to do the old fashioned route and actually get an ethernet cable and plug into
your home router. This can actually save all a lot of technical issues. So something that for sure,
remote teams should be talking about and ensuring that they have all those proper tools.
Keep the face-to-face communication. This can be a challenge and the reason why it can be a challenge
is, virtually, when people are meeting and I see this all the time, people don't have their video
on. And when you think about it, do you ever go into a live meeting, everyone gathers and then all
of a sudden someone turns off all the lights so you can't see people's face or their expression?
Of course not, it's the most silliest thing if you were to do that live. Yet, we do the exact same
thing when it comes to our virtual meetings. So I have a golden rule, video must be on.
There's a couple of reasons for that. We are social creatures, so being able to see the other
people in your meeting has a huge, positive impact, there's just a connectivity to it.
Not only that, the person who's presenting information or even the facilitator of the
meeting, when you don't see people's faces, you don't see people's expressions. So as you're
talking, you feel like you're talking into a void and that in itself, psychologically has a very
weird feeling to it and can throw you off kilter on what you're trying to do conversation-wise.
So face-to-face communication is important, make sure that everyone has good solid cameras.
And as I said before, with technology plugging into your router with an ethernet cable to your
computer, can solve a lot of those technical issues that I'm told, "Sorry, I can't have my
video on, my Internet's not good." You know what? Let's throw those excuses out the door. Even if
you were to have the video on when the person's talking, has a positive impact too. Look, it is
just part of our communication, is body language, and we can see it. Now the cool thing too, it also
keeps people accountable because you now can see whether or not they're doing other work during
that meeting, which again, is a big no-no. But face-to-face communication, video on is important.
Now, when you are in your video, here's a little hint and side note to help with remote teams.
And that is, you want to make sure you aren't interrupted. So you can put these on your door
knob at home, teach your family members or whoever is there, not to interrupt you and it makes a huge
difference when you're face-to-face because you're not having that distraction around you either.
Appreciation matters. Everyone feels so good when they are acknowledged for
the great work that they do and this is even more important in a virtual team.
Just because you can't see people working, doesn't mean they're not doing a good job. So really,
take the extra mile and acknowledge the great work people are doing. Do a shout out at a meeting.
You can even send an email, a text, or at the end of the meeting, you can even do an appreciation
exercise. Check out my appreciation exercise that I do virtually. It is a beautiful way,
just to keep connected to everyone. Again, you don't have that option of being in the office
and be able to see people do work. So ensure that you make appreciation a top priority.
A shared vision. Aligning people on a common goal can be difficult on any given day, but even
more so with virtual teams. You have everyone who's working siloed in their own little world,
which is usually their home office and it becomes even more critical to make virtual teams work by
ensuring everyone is very clear, what the bigger picture is. That shared vision, the goals that
they're doing, what they're doing, even though they're all doing it separately and really alone
in their home office. So really incorporate a lot more often, than you probably normally would have
if you were in a live setting at the office, what the company vision statement is. Bring that up
over and over, it's going to inspire your team and really connect them to why they do what they do.
And if you're working on projects, that same aspect is transferrable if you use
the project scope statement. "Hey team, let's just remind ourselves once again,
why are we together on this project? We have this scope, this vision, it's not just about
your tasks and what you're doing and your little bucket of this world that you're living in,
there's this greater picture." So sharing a shared vision and the goals, becomes
really important so that remote teams don't feel so isolated. Now the cool thing is,
I help companies all the time create really great, inspiring visual vision statements. So
if you want more information on that, check it out underneath the link of this video.
Team building, informal and formal ideas, I actually have for you. So why is team
building so important when it comes to virtual teams? Well, it strengthens relationships,
it provides a connectivity that we just normally wouldn't have naturally, in an office setting.
So what are some formal team building tips that I can give you? Well, I'm going to give you my
favorite exercise that I do all the time, it's super simple, three truths, and one lie. In fact,
if you check out this video, it gives you all the detailed instructions on how to execute it.
But it's a really cool way, just to throw in a workshop setting,
perhaps you have some new team members, maybe you have a large group of people. It's just a really
nice way to loosen everybody up and make it fun, because we do want to have fun when we're working
and particularly, in a virtual setting. Now let's take a look at the informal side, because there
are times when we have very well-developed teams who are going to say to you, "Adriana."
Well, they're not going to say to you Adriana, you know what I'm talking about.
They say, "Adriana, you know what? We don't want to do team building activities. We already know
each other, what's the point?" And I get it and I get this a lot from senior executives like, "No,
do not do team building." So I'm like, "That's fine. That's cool." They don't want, what they
think are the standard stuff, but there's still something really powerful of doing some sort of
team building, just really connecting individuals together. So I do an informal team building
activity, which is really asking a question. So how do you do this? First, you have to see
what's going on around you. So depending, there could be a scenario of situations happening
and you want to just, as everyone's coming on the call, wait till everyone arrives and say, "Hey."
For example, let's say right now, we're in the holiday season. Let's just say,
it's cold outside, maybe we're on the East Coast and it's freezing and everyone's coming
on the call. And you're like, "You know what everyone? My goodness, did you check out the
temperature today? If you could be anywhere right now in a snap, where would you be?"
And all of a sudden people are like, "Oh my goodness, I'd be in the Caribbean or I'd be doing
this or I'd be doing that." It's just a really nice way to build up the team really, for people
particularly, who do not want the efficient team building activities. Thank you for staying to the
end and as I said to you at the beginning of my video, I have something really important for you
because if you have virtual teams, you probably have virtual projects. Please download this from
the link below. It's going to give you all the hints and tips on how to ensure your projects
don't fail, which is going to be really important for your virtual teams, so please check it out.
Don't forget to subscribe to this channel, like this video, and please share it with all
your virtual teams. Now, if you have any other additional tips that you'd like to add,
please put them in the comments below. Until the next video, see you.