21st Century Work Life

The Virtual not Distant episodes will be released daily for a week.

For more information on the course for managers and leaders of virtual teams, check out www.virtualnotdistant.net

For any feedback on these episodes, use the contact form on that website.

I hope you enjoy the series!

Pilar

visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

Pilar talks to Laura Troyani, from TinyPulse, a company that helps to keep the conversation going within organisations to address employee engagement.

"Peers are the #1 motivator for going the extra mile at work."

00:30 Pilar thanks @BernieJMitchell , @DJ_Motorteufel, @gdbeaulieu @tonyjreeves

06: 40 Laura shares the story behind TinyPulse. Asking and pulsing your team every week, to see how happy/frustrated your team is.

12:55 People analytics and data.

14:06 How TinyPulse works in practice.

17:30 Anonymity in employee feedback. How it helps the employee and the manager.

21:10 The different organisations using TinyPulse.

27:10 Laura's role as Director of Marketing. Using TinyPulse in other areas apart from engagement.

30:30 The #1 reason for people going the extra mile at work. www.tinypulse.com/2014-employee-engagement-organizational-culture-report

If you're interested in engagement in teams, especially in virtual teams, check out the episode including a Virtual Coffee with Lisette on Engagement at Work.

Virtual teams: Higher levels of engagement in people working out of the office for 20% of the time. 39:15 Peer-peer recognition. Appreciation at work.

How can organisations foster a culture of honest, open communication.

Check out the TinyPulse blog for a range of articles on employee engagement and company culture.

Laura Troyani twitter handle: twitter.com/lauratroyani

Looking for a course on leading and managing virtual teams? visit www.virtualnotdistant.net

00:30 Pilar is experimenting with a new set up with the microphone and being more spontaneous (Post-podcast: It worked very well!).

10:30 Lisette shares her learning shot experience. 13: 50 Feedback on Twitter. Is it useful? (Pilar and Lisette got a tweet that brought up lots of points and questions.) Pilar learned loads from it. How a group in FB dealt with conflict. Reflections on team identity, check out our previous episode.

24:50 Learning is not just about gathering information, need to get feedback regularly. Kolb's cycle.

Learning through discussing and by being accountable to others.

We introduce the Jurgen alert. (Listen for the special offer.)

33:15 How do we prioritise learning and share information? Individual vs Team learning.

Creating a bank of knowledge and then doing something with that information.

39:20 Conquering fear.

"Learning is uncomfortable."

41.50 Is "learning" work?

The role of personality in wanting to learn.

Learning together helps to build our team - we share common points of reference and language.

48:25 Can different ways of structuring and organisation help learning? Holacracy. www.thefutureorganization.com/holacracy-what-how-and-why/

Learning in the team: retrospectives.

52:35 Lisette has a book (Jurgen Appelo's Workout) to give away! #jalert

55:30 Lisette mentions the Celebration Grid http://noop.nl/2015/06/success-and-failure.html and Are we creating the right conditions for learning? Learning from failure and mistakes. Openly.

01:02:30 Wrapping up and some specifics for those people ready to be conscious of learning together. Creating learning guilds.

Lisette mentions the book Borrowing Brilliance.

"Learning is about adapting to change and being excellent in my own way."

Pilar speaks to Adam Isle, who shares how he adapted to working from home after many years of working in an office.

00:30 Is it more difficult to make the transition from office-based to home-based work than to start off in a virtual team? (And Pilar talks a bit about Virtual, not Distant...)

07:00 Adam shares his role at the CIPD, working from home, liaising with clients and meeting at head office.

"When you're staring at four walls, you don't get much feedback."

12:25 How you have to consciously make the effort to keep informal communication going and what Adam and his colleagues did to address this.

You need to consciously make the effort to stay in touch.

19:95 Changing your process and managing your time. Freedom and structure. Visibility.

22:55 Face to face adds depth to client relationships. The difficulty of knowing when to be formal or informal if you've never met someone face to face. Cues we take from in person interactions. Making virtual introductions more personal, before meeting them in person.

27:15 Adam and Change.

32:25 Career aspirations and working from home... Getting too comfortable.

37:35 Adam refers to episode 38 when he mentions how Social Media changed recruitment.

Connect with Adam on LinkedIn (he's not on Twitter... yet!).

Visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In this episode, Pilar shares what she has observed a wonderful director she's working with at the moment as he directs an animation series. The team only comes together once every two months, for a couple of days.

Pilar also shares why she's decided to stick with helping virtual teams through Virtual, not Distant.

Get in touch through [email protected]

Tells us your team experience. www.virtualnotdistant.com/identity

00:30 Pilar introduces the topic of team identity, before we move onto how to address it in virtual teams.

16:00 Lisette and Pilar share their professional updates: tutoring, trademarks and "being copied". 24:13 What is team identity?

29:30 Team identification - when we identify ourselves with the team. Different identities.

32:00 What's in a name? Team identity and motivation.

43:58 Symbols and metaphors; the stories we tell in the team.

49:20 How we view the outside world - being careful that teams working together or offices working as one team, don't fall into 'us' vs 'them'. We talk about this interview with Hugo Messer. Being deliberate about growing team identity and creating the one that will be helpful.

55:00 What do we do if our team is turning into a team we don't like? What happens when we don't feel part of our team?

01:00:00 Creating a team history by sharing stories. Team identity allows us to be vulnerable and trust others.

00:30 Pilar talks a bit about how mindset is changing in recruitment. (Script below.)She mentions a past blog post on social media and recruitment.How a young person's cv went viral. and an article about companies that are currently hiring remotely.

09:05 How Matt ended up working in Digital Recruitment

16:00 How social media can help you recruit talent.The importance of paying attention to social media and mobile in recruitment.

19:20 Why recruitment is no longer just the responsibility of HR

20:55 Understand where your audience are.

23:30 Is recruitment through social media working? You need to know your culture – Glass Door

“Dealing at the intersection between technology and people is really interesting.”

28: 25 How are people looking for work and how is work looking for people? The importance of an online presence.

The power of our extended networks.

Has Hr practice changed now that we can access a global talent pool?

32:12 Where are we heading to? Matt talks about platforms where you can hire people on projects – Hugo.

Connect with Matt: Recruiting Future Podcast

www.metashift.co.uk Linkedin, Twitter

Check out www.virtualnotdistant.net

00:30 Pilar has a new email address for you to send your comments and questions: [email protected] you enjoy this episode, check out the ones on Remote Work: Blessing or Curse? and the one on Productivity.

03:10 Lisette shares her new way of writing in online collaboration with her editor and her up coming workshop which she's delivering through a robot! Tele-presence, here she comes!

09:00 Why we’re talking today about When Does Your Day End.

14:10 We get nostalgic about the Crackberry days… The plus and minuses of mobile devices for work.

16:06 Are work and life different things?

We talk about this HBR Survey about late-night email. https://hbr.org/2015/04/survey-how-does-late-night-emailing-affect-you?

21:10 The problem with hierarchy and emails.

Is sending and replying to emails the main way of signaling that we are available to other people?

The importance of making clear that you don’t require an immediate response when you’re in charge.

The team agreement!

40:10 Can we take breaks during the day? Why is it ok to stop in the evening but not during the day?

“Can you craft your day based on your needs?”

We need to set boundaries for ourselves and other people.

Define for yourself what’s important for you. We mention this interview from Lisette's podcast with Alexandre Pellaes.

Is this how I want to lead my life?

“Learn to know thyself.”

How about you? Do you separate your time into work and life? How do you stay focused and unstressed? How do you make sure, especially if you’re in a management position, how do you make sure that you don’t impose your own way of working on everyone else?

Do send your thoughts, and any questions (and any advice for Lisette!) to askingpilar [at] gmail.com.

I’ve created this very short extra episode of the 21st Century Work Life podcast, just to let you know that registration is now open for the course Virtual not Distant and that I have a little discount for listeners of this show.

Virtual not Distant, which is an online course for managers and leaders of virtual teams, and indeed anyone who wants to improve how their virtual team works, will run on 21 September, until 22 November. The course is timebound because I want us to have quality online discussions and quality online events and also, because I firmly believe that you have a greater chance of completing and, more importantly, applying what you’ve learned if you’re timebound and in a small group. So, there are only 12 places available. Plus, if you want to obtain a certificate endorsed by the ILM, you will need to complete a small number of assessments, which have actually been designed for you to help you think about how to apply what you’ve discovered to your own team or your own situation. You will have until February to submit the assessments and, if you don’t think you’re going to have time to take the assessed option, you can opt for a Development Certificate.

Now, I’ve already talked about the course content in the podcast before, so if you want more details, do head over to virtualnotdistant.net,

And if you like what you see there, then, the code PODCAST you can get 10% off both the normal price £450 or around $690 US Dollars, or, if you book before 31 July you can get that same discount off the early bird price which already has a 20% off. If you don’t feel like doing the maths right now, Just head over to www.virtualnotdistant.net and on the registration page, you can enter the code PODCAST and the system will calculate the exact amount for you.

So that’s my little thank you for spending an hour, more or less, with me and my guests every week.

If you are not quite ready to commit to a nine week course, with hangouts, online discussions and coaching, then feel free to try out a mini-course I’ve created which incorporates some of the materials of the module on Visibility. You can just register on that straightaway by going to the same website www.virtualnotdistant.net/free

If you do register on that course, make sure to drop me a line at some point and tell me what you think.

And talking of getting in touch, I’ve decided to set up an email address for you to get in touch about this podcast. I’ve decided to go down the gmail route because I find it incredibly useful in many ways, including the fact that it can then link to Google Drive, a calendar etc So, the new email if you want to get in touch with me, is [email protected]

So you can use that address to ask any questions about anything you hear on the podcast, about anything related to virtual teams etc. I think it’s time for me to open up a bit more the podcast, now that I feel like I kind of know what I’m doing. So, if you want to get in touch, [email protected]

And there’s always twitter, which I love, my handle there is PilarOrti

So, many thanks for listening. If you check out virtualnotdistant.net and have any questions, however small, or however big actually, about the course then do get in touch.

Have a lovely rest of the day.

Pilar speaks to Hugo Messer about leading remote teams and the importance of values in creating a culture that works across nations.

Hugo is the CEO of Ekipa, the global market for software teams and owner and founder of Bridge Global.

00:30 Pilar talks about how she met Hugo through social media. She reflects on how these conversations evolve on the podcast and the importance of devoting our full attention to the person on the other end of the line/skype etc. No distractions (we need a quiet environment for recording) and the focus on connecting with the other person.

Pilar mentions Hugo's article on LinkedIn The World's Best Tool for Remote Leadership.

11:20 Hugo shares how and why he set up Bridge in 2005, when outsourcing was not that common.

16:00 The model/framework that Bridge has developed to match teams and clients. The role of the "process manager" who looks solely after communication.

"Virtual work forces you to create structure and use the right tools.”

22:50 Bridge's core values.

29:50 Moving on from Bridge and setting up Ekipa.

35:50 What are the major problems faced by people running virtual teams? Links to another article by Hugo: Six Experts Reveal Insights on Remote Team Management.

45:50 How can we help people to develop in remote teams? Hugo's own development, why he works with a coach. Are we allowed to be confused as leaders?

52:00 How do we know people are doing the work? Hugo's article about this on LinkedIn.

"The moment I start wondering about somebody’s hours, something is definitely wrong."

Check out Hugo's books on remote team management: ekipa.co/ebooks

If you're leading a virtual team, why not check out the Virtual not Distant online course, starting in Sept 2015? virtualnotdistant.net