Sticky Learning Lunch 29: How to Make Your Virtual Team More Effective

Exclusively to help line managers to discover ways to build a more effective virtual team.

You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:

Nathan Simmonds:

Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Friday Sticky Learning Lunches with me, Nathan Simmons. We are just giving it a moment for the last attendees to arrive. Before we dive in, let's just give it 30 seconds. While we're getting there, hope everybody's Friday is being good to them. So far right now, just as we're waiting for those last people to arrive, what is the best part about your Friday?

Nathan Simmonds:

And please, I will not accept the answer of, it's the last day of the week and it's the weekend. What is the best part about your Friday right now? Let me know in the questions box, what is the best part of your Friday right now? Just as those last people come in, we've got an acceleration on a big project. Nice, great way to finish the week. Good session as it is right now. Colin, thanks very much. Really appreciate that. Love the feedback.

Nathan Simmonds:

Just I'm gonna give you a couple more seconds as we're waiting for those people to arrive. Welcome to New Faces and old faces. Old as in people that have been there before, not age. Welcome, good to see you. Let's just make sure everyone's got their phones on flight mode. So get your phones out, make sure they're switched over to flight mode. Make sure that you've got zero distraction. Make sure you've got full attention on what you are doing right here for yourself right now. So phones on flight mode. Make sure you've got a drink as well. Make sure you've got hydration available. It might be a little bit less sunny. It is still warm here. Please make sure you are hydrated and you are ready for this session.

How to make your virtual team more effective

 

Nathan Simmonds:

And finally, the last part as always with these sessions is make sure you've got a fresh pad and pen available, a blank sheet for you to fill up. At the top of that sheet, you're gonna write keepers and keepers are the things that you want to keep hold of the space to put ideas that you want to come back to and, and be reminded of so you can invoke and recharge some of that thinking to help embed the learning and keep that behavioral change moving forward. It's what we do here at MBM. Good afternoon. Hello Tim. Good to see you again, Fabian. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming back. Great to see you people, Janine and Pearl. Great to see you.

Nathan Simmonds:

Welcome to today's Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter at the home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership skills and soft, sorry, the leadership development and soft skills provider to the manufacturing industry idea of these sessions is to give you some core focus content that's gonna help you be the best version of you right now if you're working from home as well as for the future.

Nathan Simmonds:

And moving forward. Today's session is all about virtual teams and how we are creating more connection, how we we're getting better results from these new brave new world that we're living in right now. I am one for asking questions and we're gonna talk a bit about this later on. What are you doing right now that is enabling you to create a better connection with your virtual teams in your virtual environments? What are you doing right now that's creating stronger connections?

Nathan Simmonds:

Because I want a, I wanna see if there's something that I can learn from you and there's also, I wanna be able to share some things as well, practical, pragmatic approaches that maybe you are doing that other people aren't, and we can share that immediately and do some peer-to-peer coaching with the people that are here right now. What are you doing right now to create stronger connections with your virtual teams? Let me know in the questions box, what have we got?

Nathan Simmonds:

What are you doing right now. Thinking more about them and revising objectives and tasks. Absolutely asking them how lockdown is treating them. Absolutely absolute definite to doing this because it's gonna be different for different people and revising the objectives and tasks for me. And with is something we looked at before is actually the time it's being taken to do those things or the time that we get responses for those things because our ways of working are now different and we have different responsibilities with family and children around, maybe we don't get an email response immediately.

Nathan Simmonds:

Don't, maybe we don't get the email at 10 o'clock in the morning. Maybe it comes at 10 o'clock at night because that's the time that we're now working because the world's changed shape. And as we're leading teams, it's important we understand that how things are working for different people in, in different environments. So part of it is about acknowledging these things and, and how we can make these improvements for our virtual teams. Another suggestion coming in, meet on a regular basis and shared tricks to manage anxiety and keep balance.

Nathan Simmonds:

Absolutely this regularity of contact as well. And we're gonna talk about that in just a moment. And this is, these are some of the variables that we get. And that are then magnified. We get a certain level of intensity and we need to magnify because the, the, the challenges are magnified. We also then need to magnify the way that we bridge those challenges. As I talked about with presentation skills are here, you have to up the game, you have to be more energized to bring people in because they're not physically there. And it's the same when we're looking at these regular contact points.

Nathan Simmonds:

We have to up the way they work, we have have to increase the the intensity on those to make sure that we feel more connected because we are less connected. Another suggestion coming in, giving them the opportunity to share their wins and challenges. Absolutely Fabian, these are absolute fire and I'm really happy that you're sharing them great spaces for people to share. And whether this is, you know, on conference calls or phone calls or whatever it is, is giving them new windows to share that stuff. Brilliant.

Nathan Simmonds:

So today's session is about, what I've got here is three ways to up the team game. Now it is about understanding what the difference is between the, the virtual space and the homeworking and the face-to-face space and what those core differences are and those core challenges are. And then give us some techniques and tips that are gonna help you to succeed with those things and just ramp up and support the ongoing journey because this is the new reality in one way, shape, or form. And it's about really appreciating that.

Nathan Simmonds:

So for you, what do you think the difference is between a virtual team and a face-to-face team for you? What are those differences? What are the biggest differences and challenges that come up? Let me know in the questions box, trust becomes even more important. Absolutely. So trust is one of the key elements that we've got in there. What are some of the other differences and challenges that we have in these spaces? What other suggestions have we got?

Nathan Simmonds:

Steely silence, they might be typing. The three core challenges that we do have three core differences and challenges. One is obviously distance is the space between us is how close we are to people and, and then how far away we are from them. The second one is isolation. And we talked a little bit about this in the homeworking, the initial parts of these trainings we did. But it's the sense of isolation.

Nathan Simmonds:

Loneliness is actually gonna be one of the biggest killers of society over the next probably 5, 10, 15 years. So when we look at mental health, and this is mental health awareness week, anxiety and depression, loneliness and isolation is gonna be one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest indicators or signals that people will be having challenges with their mental health. We need connection. And the last part here is actually the connection

Nathan Simmonds:

Is how we are connecting, how we are interacting with each other. And it's important we understand that these are the three probably biggest differences between the real team and the virtual team and how we learn to manage some of these elements and some of these aspects. Now suggesting a lack of continuous contact, whether you used to be able to see their body language of behave. Absolutely.

Nathan Simmonds:

But what we found though in this world is in this new conditions that we're in is some people are really thriving inside the the homeworking space. And there are certain people working on certain projects at certain points where actually homeworking is better for 'em because they're getting more done and they're feeling more productive. The things that we need to be checking on with especially or checking in with, especially with our teams is are they struggling right now with this situation?

Nathan Simmonds:

And you as a leader or a HR professional, whatever it is up to you to then ask them that question. How are they feeling now? It's been eight weeks, nine weeks, 10 weeks, whatever. How are they feeling in this situation? Are they still struggling or are they struggling in a different way? Were they okay at the start? And has that built up over a course of the time? Because what I've felt over the last couple of weeks, I've had more fluctuations where I've dipped because it feels like, you know, I've had enough and that's gonna be different for different people.

Nathan Simmonds:

And then asking the question, well what do they need? What do they need as an individual? Now some of the people we're working with, they need to be in the office,