As a manager, your team's success directly impacts your success.

In today's world, remote work has become the norm, making it challenging to bring together the best talent for effective collaboration in an effective way. However, this also provides an opportunity to think globally and assemble a team of exceptional individuals from all corners of the world.

So, how can we become exceptional modern leaders and get the best out of a virtual team?

Bridging the Gap in Virtual Teamwork

Research conducted by Harvard Business Review and Forbes identified several potential roadblocks to successful virtual teamwork.

1. The Peril of 'Secret Multitasking': The lure of checking emails, replying to team chats, or internet shopping during team calls may seem harmless, but it means talking to someone who's not fully present. If this behaviour becomes 'normative', it can significantly dilute the quality of engagement and team collaboration.
2. The Absence of Attention: Irrespective of distractions, staying focused and attentive during virtual meetings is a challenge that needs addressing. Lack of attention can hinder effective dialogue and decision-making.
3. Emotional Disconnection: Emotional investment in discussions is crucial for engagement. Team members need it to remain active, impacting overall team effectiveness.
4. Struggling with Diversity: Embracing diverse perspectives and thinking styles within a virtual team can be challenging but critical to maintaining an engaging and inclusive environment.
5. A Gap in Action and Follow-up: Virtual teams will likely need more action and follow-ups. They need clear action plans and diligent follow-ups to ensure the execution of decisions and the attainment of goals.

Addressing these challenges can enhance virtual team effectiveness and yield better results. 

How we can bridge the gap

1. Build Trust: Start with face-to-face interactions if you can to establish trust. Then consistently demonstrate trustworthiness over time. You can also create trust between the team by encouraging members to describe their backgrounds, the value they hope to add to the group, and how they prefer to work. 
2. The clarity in Communication: Being more directive than usual helps team members understand specifics and expectations better, particularly since they cannot infer this from physical cues on a virtual call.
3. Vision Alignment: Ensure every team member understands how their work ties into the company vision to help maintain direction and motivation. 
4. Establish a common purpose: Explain to everyone why you are coming together and what benefits result, and then reinforce the message through repeated reminders and clarifications. 
5. Encourage open and candid dialogue. It can be harder to ensure direct feedback in remote teams, so leaders of virtual groups, in particular, must encourage members to be frank with one another. (read more about lean feedback here)
6. Recognise people for things that help to improve communication and collaboration. Recognising people this way will reinforce the behaviour you want from the individual and the team.
7. Make it clear that multitasking on calls isn't ok. Make a rule and gently enforce it. According to a recent study, 82% of people admit to doing other things, from surfing the web to using the bathroom during team calls. But virtual collaboration requires that everyone is mentally present and engaged. Explain your policy and regularly call on people to share their thoughts when the group has a virtual meeting. Better yet, switch to video, which can help eliminate multitasking. 
8. Milestones: get people together to celebrate the achievement of short-term goals or to crack more challenging problems
9. Keep virtual teams small. To be optimal, virtual teams should be no bigger than ten people. With larger units, breaking out into smaller working groups for decision-making and task execution can be more productive.

Team charter

One of the tools that can aid effective virtual teamwork is a team charter, a collaborative document that encapsulates the team's purpose, responsibilities, behavioural norms, and performance expectations.

Create and document a team charter (read more about lean documentation here). Involve everyone in the team when creating it. A charter is like a contract between team members and a leader (someone that is above). The leader should give the team some direction, and then the team should create the charter. Once formalised, the leader can provide feedback and sign it off. 

A charter should include the following:

• Statement of purpose - what is your primary function as a team?
• Process responsibilities - are you a problem-solving team or a team that owns processes?
• Team principles - how are we going to behave in our meeting? e.g.
  
  • Arrive, start and finish on time (arrive 10 mins on time so you have tested your camera and mic works)
  • Leave cameras on.
  • Listen well to each other.
  • No multitasking.
  • Be honest and provide clear feedback.
  • Prepare and distribute agendas in advance of the meeting.
  • All participants assist in the effectiveness of meetings.
  • No blaming (let's solve problems rather than working out who is to blame)
  • Be prepared and participate
    
    An exercise to help you work this out could be to brainstorm two charts;
    • How did the best team I ever worked with behave in virtual team meetings?
    • How did the worst team I ever worked with behave in virtual team meetings?
    Look at the two lists to help you understand what should be on the charter. 
    
    
• Communication responsibilities (When will the agenda be sent out, when will the note taker send out the notes?)
• Performance responsibilities (what are our key performance indicators?)
• Membership (Who are the members of the team? Who is the leader? Are there other people that may dip in and out of the group, or just the team interface regularly?

Team Roles & Responsibilities.

Here are some suggestions roles and responsibilities of a virtual team:

1. The formal leader/manager

Whether stated or not, most of the time in the meeting, people will be asking themselves:

• • • • • "what's the subject?"
        • "Where are we trying to get to?"
        • "What are we talking about?"
        • "Did we already decide this, or did we not?" 

The Facilitator's job is to clarify: "This is where we are in the process; let's talk about this component, decide this in the next X minutes, and then we can move on." 

2. The Facilitator

Ideally, this should be someone other than the formal leader, as this can stifle candid communication. Try and rotate the people who take the role of Facilitator when you can. Working in this manner helps people learn from this role and improve. 

3. The note keeper

Someone should be note-taking (ideally on screen). This person should be someone other than the Facilitator or the formal leader. 

Do not write down everything that everyone says as if people think that you will write down everything they say, this can cause people to feel inhibited and discourage more wild ideas; people will only want to say what's right that might get written down on paper. 

Instead, write down topics, decisions, action plans, and any 'parked' ideas to which you should loop back.

4. Time Keeper

The timekeeper should keep everyone clear on the time agreed, and then the group, led by the Facilitator, can decide how to proceed. 

5. Subject Matter Experts

Subject Matter Experts with expertise on a particular subject can come to the meeting to provide insight, advice and answer questions. 

6. Other.

You can define other roles for your team.

Let's look at each of these roles in more detail. 

The Leader

Determine how the team makes decisions.

How does your team make decisions, and if I'm on your team, what role am I playing? 

• • Am I here to listen?
  • Am I supporting you in making a decision?
  • Am I contributing to a decision?
  • Or are we making decisions together as a team?

It's imperative to understand upfront what kind of decision-making we are using because setting the expectations for team members will result in people getting behind decisions better. 

There are three types of decision-making;

Command

• • • Command decisions are those made by an individual. This individual isn't necessarily the leader but someone that will decide without input from others. This decision-making style is old-fashioned but is still appropriate in limited situations. When we face an emergency, and someone is fully equipped to solve the problem, we want to spend our time on action rather than consulting the team. Speed and expert knowledge are two reasons the command decision style may be appropriate. A danger with this decision-making style is giving someone the authority to make a command decision but then overriding them after they make it. This behaviour signals a need for more trust from the leader to both the individual and is likely to cause team members to defer to the leader in future decisions, which can cause unnecessary decision-making bottlenecks. 

Consultative

• • • Consultative or Shared decisions involve selective involvement by those who know, care or need to act. I will decide if I'm the leader, but I will need help; I want the team to consult and advise me. The majority of decisions are consultative decisions. 

Consensus

• • • Consensus decisions are proper team decisions where you turn the decisions to the group. The problem with these decisions is that they take more time. However, the benefit is that everyone feels heard, making them more likely to go along with the group and more willing to sacrifice their opinions. Your job as the Facilitator is to bring people to the decision. 

Remember, setting expectations is essential; team members will typically be happy with command decision-making as long as this is clear to them from the start. People become frustrated if they think they are trying to make a group decision and the leader decides independently. Remember that satisfaction is the relationship between reality and expectations. 

The Facilitator

The Facilitator is a crucial role - the person who looks out over the meeting and thinks about what needs to happen to ensure the meeting can work well. They may not be the person speaking or the formal leader, but they are thinking about the team;

• What are we trying to accomplish?
• Who is speaking/who is not speaking?
• Who still needs to contribute but could do so?

They are sensing what's going on and enabling others. They need to make it easy for other team members. 

• They should state the agenda of the topic and help the team members stay on topic.
• They should help ensure the group hears the person speaking and the meaning of what they say comes across.
• They should make sure people feel emotionally comfortable (use empathy, recognise others' emotions)
• They should make sure they understand diversity (personality types, needs, cultural differences, ages, etc.) and how this impacts the functioning of the meeting.
• They help others contribute. Remember that some people may be less assertive or quieter than others in jumping in and sharing thoughts. A good facilitator should understand this and allow people to share their views. 

The Agenda

Before any meeting, the Facilitator should create an agenda and distribute it to the team members. Most calendar software, such as Outlook or Google Calendar, allows you to add an agenda to a calendar invite.

An agenda could look something similar to this;

Team: ____________

Date: _____________

Start time: ___________

End Time: ____________

Facilitator: ___________

Note taker _________

timekeeper: ________

You would then include your meeting topics of discussion and end like this

It can be a good idea to start every meeting by putting the agenda on the screen so everyone can see and agree. And also to show it again midway through the meeting, as this helps people understand where we are and what's coming up next. 

Skills of Facilitation.

These skills are necessary skills not just for business but also for your relationships in life. 

• Organising 
  • The agenda
  • where are we going?
  • Where are we?
  • When are we going to get there? (if the meeting is an hour, remind people every 15 minutes where we are in the agenda and where we are going)
• Clarifying
  • Make the topic visible on the screen
  • Clarify where we are on the agenda
  • Clarify decisions and action plans 
  • Share expectations
    
    Use phrases that encourage consensus, it sounds like we need more data, 'It sounds like we have the facts, but we now need to decide the course of action', 'i feel like we've got a consensus that we haven't stated.. tell me if I'm right?'. this helps the group conclude. 
• Reflecting to clarify:
  • Reflecting to clarify is about reflecting back the meaning of what someone says. for example
    • "I hear you saying that you need more time for this topic. Is that right?"
    • "I am hearing two possible directions that we can take..."
    • "It sounds like..."
      
      Reflecting to clarify = helps the other person to feel you are listening to them because you understand the meaning. The other advantage is that you might be wrong and be misunderstanding it -by reflecting to clarify, they can correct you so that you can better understand them. 
  • Motivating 
    • Be attentive to the person speaking, nodding your head in approval and other non-verbal cues. 
    • Statements like "That's a very good point" and "I'm really glad you voiced that view, as it hasn't been said before."
      
      Doing this doesn't only motivate the individual but also motivates the team. This is particularly important for people that don't speak up often since it encourages them and provides motivation. 
  • Comforting
    
    Humans are emotional and intellectual, and there is no difference at work, so facilitators must be sensitive about that. If the facilitator doesn't care about how someone feels, they feel turned off and unengaged. But if the facilitator understands the person's feelings and words, it validates them, making them feel understood emotionally and intellectually. 
    
    • Expressing Empathy: 
      • "I understand that..." (the reason for their concern) "may cause you to feel."
      • "It must be..." "when"...
    • Ask for temperature checks. "How are you feeling about this?" "Jane, are you ok with this discussion?" 
  • Controlling
    
    You need to allow each person to have their say. Some people take a lot, and some people less so. Your job as a facilitator is to hold some people back and encourage others. 
    • Allow the team members to share the stage
    • Calling "time out" when it's needed
  • Concluding and bringing to a consensus
    
    People generally enjoy talking, so if you let them, they can talk twice as long as they need to, past the point a decision is made. Your job as a facilitator is to move to the 'conclusion' when the time is right. 
    
    "I think we've had all the opinions on the table. Are we able to decide on that?"
    
    Then you can reflect back
    
    "I think we heard two options, option A and option B - have I missed anything?"
    
    "And the benefits of option A is X and option B is X."
    
    Then see if we can reach a consensus. You can state, "I think we've reached a consensus around doing X. Is that right?"
    
    "Great, let's decide and move to action planning." 
• Resolving conflicts
  
  Even if you carry out all the above options, you will still have conflicts. And it's not bad that there are conflicts in general - different opinions coming out and conflicting helps to generate better ideas. 
  
  However, there are two very distinct types of conflict;
  
  • Conflict around what to do
  • Conflict around personality or tribe we are part of
    
    Conflicts around personality/tribe are not good. 
    
    
    Steps to resolving conflicts:
    
    • Separate Personality from Positions
      "It sounds like the issues we are concerned about are..."
    • Clarify the points on which the parties agree before discussing the disagreement..
      "It seems that we are both saying..."
    • Clarify the disagreement and the reasons for that disagreement. 
      • "I think the difference in our points of view is that ..."
      • There's normally an assumption that If A is right, then B is false - however in reality, there's truth in both, and sometimes both ideas can be enacted. Remember that everyone is right from their experience from what they know.
      • Don't say 'John's idea' or 'Mary's idea' - depersonalise the ideas.

• • • Express empathy or understanding for both of their views so that they feel "heard."
      "I can understand that you feel we should". 
      
      This helps everyone feel heard and find it easier to let go of their position if necessary.
    • Once the positions have been heard, brainstorm alternatives with the whole team. The other ideas could combine the reasons for the initial ideas. There could be another idea that unites them, and that helps to eliminate the false dichotomy. 
    • Ask the group for the important criteria (what should we base our decision on?)
    • Brainstorm as a ground the pros and cons of the different solutions
    • Ask the group if there is a consensus or point of view, or ask the group to vote on a solution. 

The Note Keeper - Compiling an Action Plan.

Much time is wasted in meetings where people have long discussions, no clarity around decisions, and no/unclear action plans. Then you get what is known in lean as 'waste'. 

The note keeper can use the following plan to keep track of the action items.

Team ___________
Problem __________

This should be shown on the screen at the end of the meeting to re-enforce team members; 'this is what I committed to doing/by when.'

After the meeting, this should be sent out to all participants and followed up at the next meeting to help ensure accountability. 

Visual Display for data

As humans, we're primed to respond to visuals. In meetings, when discussing data, rather than displaying a list or table of numbers, show graphs demonstrating how we perform against a baseline. This is far more emotionally engaging and easier for people to understand

Ask people what they think about it, and ask them to react.

• Do they think it's going well?
• Do they think it's going poorly?
• What would we do about it?

You can also use the 5 whys method to uncover the root cause. 

Team assessment

Take this self-assessment as an opportunity to enhance your team's functioning and performance. Each team member should evaluate the following questions. Once done, calculate the average scores. This will serve as a foundation for fruitful discussions on improvement strategies.

• Which areas have scored particularly low?
• Which areas have scored particularly well?
• How can we improve these areas?

Link to team self assessment: https://docs.google.com/document/d/e/2PACX-1vRUkmAoViHQCnt7_VN729-gD-bBQ5_I_x6OCArrKsC9hTaIei-sAVxY0Ldw4YHvkPoXE6YDv4xjGyf5/pub 

It's Up To You

Further reading:

https://hbr.org/2014/12/getting-virtual-teams-right?referral=03758&cm_vc=rr_item_page.top_right