Dear Madeleine,

I manage a business unit for a medium-size business. I have a group of six regional managers who report to me. We have been working remotely since long before Covid and have been using video conference for our team meetings forever.

I have a direct report who has begun to refuse to be on camera for our weekly team meetings. About a year ago, we did a team charter where we all agreed that having everyone on camera improved the meetings. We are pretty informal, and we all get tired of sitting at our desks, so some people stand and do yoga poses, some people pace, etc. Certainly if anyone needs a quick bio break, they go off camera for a few minutes. Everyone has kids and dogs they must deal with when they work from home and coworker interruptions when they are in the office. That is just normal.

I have spoken to this team member about the issue a couple of times, and she doesn’t seem to have a good explanation for her choice. She just says she is sick of being on camera all day. I do sympathize; I also think it is tiring. She runs an office, though, and many of her people come in, so she has plenty of in-person time with people. She doesn’t seem to have a problem being on camera for our regular 1×1’s. I am flummoxed.

This situation is affecting the team, and I don’t know what to do next.

Thoughts?

Shut Out

______________________________________________________________________

Dear Shut Out,

It is funny when, with no explanation, someone just decides to not comply with a rule they had agreed to follow. We could speculate all day long about what is going on, but it wouldn’t help us much. Try once more to discuss it with her. This time, be candid about the importance of her being on camera for the team meeting. Make it clear that if there is no real reason, it is not acceptable for her to be off camera.

Perhaps you could prepare some details about how you see this affecting the team. Ask some questions to get your camera-shy person to gain some insight into how her choice impacts the team. Some ideas:

• Is there something I need to know about what is going on with you?
• Is there something happening within the team that is making you feel unsafe or uncomfortable?
• What impact do you think it might have that you are choosing to go against what the team agreed to?
• Is there something we could all do together that might reduce your on-camera fatigue?

You haven’t said anything about this person’s performance, so I assume all is well in that area. If, in fact, there is a significant performance issue, that might be part of the problem. If she is feeling bad about her performance, that is something you can address head on.

If you press the issue, she might choose to share her reason(s), which could help you understand. If she says something that helps you make sense of her decision, you can make a call, and then share it with the team. That seems like a long shot, though. My personal experience is that people who consistently choose to be off camera in regular meetings do themselves a disservice, since it makes it easy to forget that they are even present.

In the end, as the boss, you will probably have to insist on compliance with the group’s decision. Of course, she may refuse, and then you have that to deal with. You may have to decide if this issue is worth losing an employee. That will be up to you. The most important thing to know is that whatever happens will set a precedent—and it will send a message to the whole team about what is important to you and what isn’t. Your leg to stand on here is that being on camera was the team’s decision, not some arbitrary rule that you are enforcing to assert your power.

You might think about bringing up the whole matter with the team and revisiting the on-camera rule together. Maybe the whole team is sick of it.

Everyone is finding their way in this new era of hybrid teams. You will want to tread lightly and be sensitive to individual needs, while also keeping the best interests of the team at heart. It is always a bit of a balancing act.

Love, Madeleine

About Madeleine

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response soon. Please be advised that although she will do her best, Madeleine cannot respond to each letter personally. Letters will be edited for clarity and length.

Dear Madeleine,

I am so frustrated with what I am calling the “in-person addiction” in my new company.

I started here two months before COVID sent everyone home. It was very much a traditional “everyone comes to the office” place before that. I am surrounded by people who are still struggling with the virtual aspect of our work. Everyone is complaining about working from home and all the web conferencing. Many are juggling home-schooling their children along with their work commitments.

My boss is convinced that everyone is less productive working from home—and that may be so with other groups. There is a bit of an attitude that we are going to wait this thing out but, frankly, I have doubts that anything is going to change soon. If we could just shift the mindset we could really get some very cool things done.

I came from an organization that was much more geographically spread out. In fact, my entire team was virtual and in different time zones. It worked great! I just don’t get it. I am far more productive when I don’t have to deal with a commute and the time it takes to get dressed and do hair/makeup. I do have kids at home, but they have always known Mommy has a job. We have created a daily routine that works well for all of us. I am not saying it is perfect—and I will be grateful when they go back to school—but geez. I think people let their children get away with bratty behavior.

My problem: how do I get my colleagues out of their constant moaning about our new way of working? I mean, it’s been six months now, with no end in sight. How do I prove that my new team is crushing it (because they are) despite the WFH thing? Most importantly, how do I develop the relationships I need to influence the way I need to move forward on my very ambitious goals? Many of my colleagues act like they aren’t going to trust me until we can spend time in person together. How do I get everyone to get on board with reality?

Way Ahead

Dear Way Ahead,

I understand your frustration. I led a completely virtual team in our very “headquarters-and-in-person-centric” company for years! We all worked from home for two decades before virtual was the norm, and it was a constant battle to remind people we were out in the field making things happen. Now at least the playing field has been flattened for virtual teams—but it sounds like for you, things have just gone flat.

Here are your concerns, in order. You want to:

1. Get your colleagues to stop complaining.
2. Prove that your new team is highly productive virtually, and that others can be, too.
3. Influence your new colleagues in this virtual environment.

Let’s unpack all of this and look at what you can control, what you might be able to control with some help, and what is probably out of your hands.

You can’t make your colleagues change but you can change your own attitude. I wonder if your colleagues feel your judgment and if that might be getting in the way of building strong working relationships. I am not doubting your superiority at working virtually, but nobody likes to feel inferior. If senior leadership seems willing to suffer the consequences of waiting it out, you may be asking a lot to expect the extra effort required to shift the collective mindset. I suggest you focus less on how to fix your colleagues and more on how you can add value and—without blame or judgment—be a role model for how to operate in this new environment.

Regarding the kid thing: If you are betraying your opinion that your colleague’s children are bratty, that is not going to win you any friends. You can think whatever you want, but I suggest you keep your opinions to yourself. Nothing causes people to get defensive faster than someone criticizing their kids. You got a serious head start creating a culture of “Mommy works” in your own home—and it may be a little unfair to expect your colleagues with kids who are suddenly at home to crack the whip and get everyone to behave. One thought on that topic is for you to create something you could share with colleagues about how you managed it—something like “Tips for Getting Your Kids to Respect Your Work Time.” I Googled around and, I have to say, there isn’t much out there. You must have some good ideas based on your experience! My memory is dim—my children are grown—but I am pretty sure I resorted to threats of bodily harm, which is probably not recommended.

The first stop is a conversation with your boss re: your concerns about the disdain for the virtual WFH office. There are two issues here: the fact that your boss seems resigned and unenthusiastic about how to help people people be successful virtually, and the fact that you are not able to get acknowledgement for how well your team is doing. I think the approach for both is curiosity. You might ask questions like:

• Is it your experience that people are not being productive working from home? What are you seeing that leads you to that view?
• May I show you how my team and I are handling things? Might that be helpful?
• Do you worry that our lack of productivity could hurt us long term? What are your thoughts about how might we counteract that?

With any luck, you can shift your boss’s perspective with open-hearted inquiry. Your confidence could be catching if people don’t feel belittled by it.

Now let’s talk about your need to make friends and influence people. The #1 key is to get curious and interested in each and every person—and show it. Make the time and put some real effort into it. You might check out Keith Ferrazzi’s new book, Leading Without Authority.

Some ideas:

• Set up individual time with each person and do a “Getting to Know You” questionnaire. Provide the questionnaire in advance and be ready with your own answers. You can be creative and ask whatever you want, but make sure the person knows they can choose not to answer what they don’t want to answer! Favorite book or movie, pets and their personalities, favorite job you’ve ever had, fantasy travel spot, what would you do if you won the lottery? Favorite holiday and why? What is something I would never know about you if you didn’t tell me? What is your superpower? Hobby? What is your least favorite work task? Are we all sick of Zoom calls? Yes, but this would be a fun one!
• Suggest social distancing picnic lunches or coffee or happy hour (BYOTreats) at a nearby outdoor spot.
• Create an opportunity for your team to do a group Pecha Kucha over Zoom (20 slides, 20 seconds each) and everyone gets the same assignment—again, you can make it up. A Day in The Life is a fun one, or My Life Story. The idea is to use images and photos to create a super efficient story. Stories are powerful and people remember them.
• Our company has some amazing on-demand free webinars for increasing productivity when working from home and leading virtually. You could share these with select folks who are open.
• If you think you might have already done some damage, do ask for feedback and clear the air. If people do give you feedback, do not defend your position, simply say “thank you.”

You can’t change people, but you can be a role model for the behavior you think is appropriate in the situation. And you can extend an invitation: anyone who is interested in how you are sailing through what seems like a big challenge can ask for your help.

Compassion, humility, patience, and generosity will go a long way for you right now.

Love, Madeleine

About the Author

Madeleine Homan Blanchard is a master certified coach, author, speaker, and cofounder of Blanchard Coaching Services. Madeleine’s Advice for the Well Intentioned Manager is a regular Saturday feature for a very select group: well intentioned managers. Leadership is hard—and the more you care, the harder it gets. Join us here each week for insight, resources, and conversation.

Got a question for Madeleine? Email Madeleine and look for your response here next week!

One such game that is wildly popular is Overwatch, a game that is highly role based and teamwork dependent. A group of six players face off against another group of six, escorting a payload to its destination on some maps or capturing a designated space in others.

Overwatch reportedly has 15 million players worldwide. Its popularity is partly due to the fact that in upper-tier play, massive amounts of teamwork, skill, and strategic thinking are required to be successful. This is a game that’s easy to learn but hard to master—where working together as a cohesive team takes precedence over your individual numbers.

I play Overwatch regularly—not just in casual mode but also in competitive mode. In competitive mode, every match will affect not only your ranking but also the rankings of the other players on your team. This can, of course, be frustrating if you lose games and your rank is decreased simply because you are paired up with other players who do not work well in a team.

One night I was playing with a mix of friends and random individuals. Normally, we would call out if we saw an enemy player attempting to flank or if we wanted to focus fire on one enemy player, but the communication wasn’t happening during that particular game for some reason. Perhaps it was because we were tired from having played a few games already and it was later in the night. We ended up losing that game and one of my friends became upset. He singled out one of the random players, questioning why he had not communicated with the rest of the team. The called team member became flustered and didn’t know how to respond. I tried to compliment his performance in-game, despite the lack of communication, but my friend persisted. Then another friend said she needed to call it a night and signed off, so we all did the same.

Reflecting on this incident, I realized some of the lessons learned could be applied to virtual teams:

1. Communicate. Be sure to communicate frequently with other members of the team. The more information the team has, the better decisions your team members will make. Take the initiative—make it part of the team culture to share your progress on tasks. Effective communication is key for any team to function at a high level.
2. Ask the right questions. When things don’t go your way, it’s natural to want to ask why it happened—but this typically puts others on the defensive. Instead, ask “What could we have done better?” Ask for ideas, use the word we to reinforce your commitment to being a team, and be descriptive, not judgmental.
3. Be positive. Focusing on the negative brings the rest of the team down. Don’t be that person. Be the person other team members want to communicate with and be around. Focus on the small wins, the learning opportunities, and the things that went well. Sharing your dedication to learning and growth will encourage others to do the same.

If you’d like to learn more about Overwatch, this video provides more details.

Fast forward a few years to the early-2000’s and I’m supervising team members who worked remotely full-time. The exodus continued for a few years and by the mid-2000’s nearly half my team worked virtually. Nearly 20 years after I submitted my telecommuting proposal the world has become a smaller place. My organization has offices in Canada, the U.K., Singapore, and scores of colleagues work out of home offices around the globe.

My experience mirrors the reality of many leaders today. Managing teams with virtual workers is commonplace and will likely increase as technology becomes ever more ubiquitous in our lives. Here are three specific strategies I’ve adopted over the years in leading a virtual team:

Establish the profile of a successful virtual worker – Not everyone is cut out to be a successful virtual worker. It takes discipline, maturity, good time management skills, technical proficiency (you’re often your own tech support), and a successful track record of performance in the particular role. I’ve always considered working remotely a privilege, not a right, and the privilege has to be earned. You have to have a high level of trust in your virtual workers and they should be reliable and dependable performers who honor their commitments and do good quality work.

Have explicit expectations – There needs to be a clear understanding about the expectations of working virtually. For example, my team has norms around the use of Instant Messenger, forwarding office phone extensions to home/cell lines, using webcams for meetings, frequency of updating voicemail greetings, email response time, and out-of-office protocols just to name a few. Virtual team members generally enjoy greater freedom and autonomy than their office-bound counterparts, and for anyone who has worked remotely can attest, are often more productive and work longer hours in exchange. A downside is virtual workers can suffer from “out of sight, out of mind” so it’s important they work extra hard to be visible and active within the team.

Understand and manage the unique dynamics of a virtual team – Virtual teams add a few wrinkles to your job as a leader and a specific one is communication. It’s important to ramp up the frequency of communication and leverage all the tools at your disposal: email, phone, webcam, instant messenger, and others. It’s helpful to set, and keep, regular meeting times with virtual team members.

One of the biggest challenges in managing a virtual team is fostering a sense of connection. They aren’t privy to the hallway conversations where valuable information about the organization is often shared, and they miss out on those random encounters with other team members where personal relationships are built.

Team building activities also look a little different with a virtual team. Potluck lunches work great for the office staff, but can feel exclusionary to remote workers. Don’t stop doing events for the office staff for fear of leaving out virtual team members, but look for other ways to foster team unity with remote workers. For example, when we’ve had office holiday dinners and a Christmas gift exchange, remote team members will participate in the gift exchange and we’ll send them a gift card to a restaurant of their choice.

For many jobs, work is no longer a place we go to but something we do; from any place at any time. Virtual teams aren’t necessarily better or worse than on-site teams, but they do have different dynamics that need to be accounted for and managed, expectations need to be clear, and you need to make sure the virtual worker is set up for success.

Randy Conley is the Vice President of Client Services and Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies. His LeaderChat posts appear the fourth or last Thursday of every month. For more insights on trust and leadership, visit Randy at his Leading with Trust blog or follow him on Twitter @RandyConley.

Unless your laptop camera is very high quality resolution, people meeting with you virtually probably won’t notice the bags under your eyes from staying up the previous night with a sick child or that you didn’t have time to take a shower after your morning run.

The key to leveraging the world of virtual work is to be well known as a productive and personable team member. These 12 practices will ensure you consistently show up as positive, focused, and energetic. How many of these best practices are true for you?

1. Before calling or emailing, I plan what I want to communicate and consider the best approach considering the personality and the perspectives of the recipient.
2. When I answer the phone, I look away from my computer so that email and instant messages don’t distract me.
3. When I speak up on a conference call or virtual meeting, I deliberately smile so I sound more pleasant and approachable. (Yes, people can see and hear the difference!)
4. I use IM status codes deliberately to communicate when I need to focus and don’t want to be disturbed and when I am open for conversation.
5. I show genuine interest in my colleagues’ lives outside of our immediate project work by asking questions about their interests and sharing a bit about myself to build trust.
6. When I work on a project or task with someone, I take time to collaboratively share expectations and agree on deliverables to prevent misunderstanding and conflict. I do not promise what I may not be able to deliver.
7. I have a way (phone app, computer screen, etc.) of quickly recognizing the current time zone of a colleague and I modify my communication appropriately. (For example, you could start an email request with I know you are probably ready to leave for the day, so when would be a good time to chat about xx?)
8. I demonstrate respect for others by adapting my behavior based on their availability and workload, and I show appreciation for their efforts.
9. My shared team calendar is always up to date so that my team knows when I am available for meetings.
10. If I write an email when am annoyed, angry, or frustrated, I save it as a draft and review/edit it later before sending it.
11. I never multitask on one-on-one meeting calls and limit my multitasking when on large conference calls or meetings. (Exception: forwarding someone a document to facilitate discussion is acceptable since it supports the conversation.)
12. I only use the Reply All email feature when I am confident everyone on the list wants or needs to know the information I am sending.

In addition to reducing commuting time and saving money on a wardrobe, working virtually also allows you to choose how you show up to others. Use these behaviors to be the person everyone wants on their virtual team!

About the author

Carmela Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

How do you as a virtual team leader balance the need for team member involvement with the need to accomplish results in a timely manner? You create the right team structure to efficiently leverage diversity of thought. Instead of inviting everyone to every meeting, organize your team for the right level of involvement at the right time.

How to Tell if Your Core Team is Too Big

Wondering if your current team is too big? Here are a few telltale signs:

• if you have trouble scheduling meetings;
• if getting everyone’s input is too time consuming; or
• if only a few members of your virtual team are speaking up in meetings;

… your virtual team is too big!

Generally speaking, the most effective virtual teams are not the largest. Because the dynamics of virtual teams are more complex than those of face-to-face teams, efficiency actually requires fewer team members and different support structures. 

Use a 3-Tier Model

An ideal structure leverages large-group diversity while a using a small group to speed decision making and action. Individuals participate in levels of teamwork (Core—Extended—Advisory) based on the criticality of the subject, the responsibility level of the individual for the results, and the authority to make progress.

Core Team: The ideal virtual team consists of three to five people—the right amount to accomplish results efficiently. These individuals compose the Core Team, where decisions are made and each person has a high level of involvement and accountability.

Extended Teams: Individuals in Extended Teams offer expertise as needed, provide valuable input to decisions, and help on task-specific sub-teams. Instead of spending hours in team meetings, Extended Team members stay aware and connected to the work of the team, doing their work on sub-teams and staying in touch as needed depending on the relevance of the task at hand.

Advisory Team members are still important, but less involved. They may be asked to share expertise, to assist with a sub-team project in a short term way, or to be used as sponsors and sounding boards to test ideas.

If your team is not accomplishing the results you need, consider whether your team size or structure are barriers to your success. A 3-tier virtual team structure leverages diversity while accomplishing results faster and more efficiently. And nothing keeps energy and enthusiasm higher than being on a team that accomplishes results.

When it comes to virtual teams, small is beautiful!

About the author

Carmela Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

There is a wide variety in the definition of what comprises “working virtually.” It can include those who work full-time from home, part-time telecommuting, and everything in between. Regardless of the amount of time you or co-workers spend working off-site, virtual teams have unique needs that need to be addressed if they are to reach their maximum potential and effectiveness.

All successful virtual teams have three common characteristics: trust, attentiveness, and communication.

Trust – Trust is the foundation of any successful relationship and it’s even more important when building relationships virtually. Without the benefit of regular face to face contact (or any face to face contact), virtual teams have to be much more intentional about focusing on building trust. There are four core elements of trust: competence, integrity, care, and dependability. Virtual team members can build trust by demonstrating competence in their responsibilities, integrity in their actions, care by developing personal relationships with colleagues, and dependability by following through on commitments.

Attentiveness – It’s easy to “check out” or fly under the radar when working on a virtual team. Without the benefit of face to face communication, virtual team members have to work extra hard at being attentive through their verbal and electronic interactions. Leaders of virtual teams have to be diligent about encouraging participation, dealing with conflict, and appropriately rewarding and recognizing team members.

Communication – Body language adds tremendous context to communication with some studies suggesting it comprises more than 55% of the message transmitted…and virtual teams miss out on that (unless you regularly use webcams which I highly recommend). Virtual team members have to work diligently on their tone of communications (written and verbal) and learn to be more perceptive of the emotional content of the message being communicated.

Trust, attentiveness, and communication are essential characteristics of virtual teams and there are a number of strategies leaders can employ to develop these attributes in their teams. To learn more, I encourage you to download our free white paper, Achieving Excellence, Virtually.

Feel free to share your comments, tips, and suggestions on how you foster success in your virtual teams.

Randy Conley is the V.P. of Client Services and Trust Practice Leader at The Ken Blanchard Companies and his LeaderChat posts normally appear the fourth or last Thursday of every month. For more insights on trust and leadership, visit Randy at his Leading with Trust blog or follow him on Twitter @RandyConley.

Here’s why:

1. If you create the agenda, you have a vested interest in pushing it through and will probably miss meaningful clues about others’ agendas and goals—which may be as important as yours.

2. If you are working to summarize key points and check understanding so the team can move on, it’s tough to listen openly to ideas and perspectives that don’t fit nicely into your plan.

3. When you facilitate every meeting, it may communicate to attendees that they can be passive and participate only on occasion, when needed.

4. If you do most of the talking, it’s easy to miss subtle clues like vocal tone, hesitation when speaking, or careful choice of words. This deeper listening takes great inner silence and focus.

Instead of running your own meetings, focus on being a great process observer.

This helps you anticipate problems and concerns in the team, react early and thoughtfully to conflicts and challenges, as well as take advantage of opportunities to build team spirit.

Certainly you have agenda items to add, but try delegating this responsibility to your team members. Let them set the agenda and facilitate the meeting. This way:

• You learn what is important to your team. Although their agenda may not align with yours, theirs probably includes items you hadn’t considered.
• When team members create and manage your team meeting, you are more likely to get new ideas and perspectives.
• When team members alternate meeting leadership, it develops their skills and increases their commitment to the team and its work.

Most importantly, when you allow others to facilitate your team meetings, you can lean back to observe what is really going on instead of having to constantly lean forward to push the agenda.

Delegate the facilitation of your next team meeting. You’ll be surprised at what you see and hear when you focus your attention on the dynamics of building a healthy team. 

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

The room was impressive. The huge wall screens provided a full view of participants at tables in other locations. The ceiling-mounted microphones and speakers and the large, locked cabinet of sophisticated controls showed the effort and expense invested in this facility.

The only problem was that this room—like most expensive videoconference facilities I’ve toured—was rarely used, required an IT person to assist with the complex setup, and was so precious that executive approval was required for use.

Sometimes, the same attitude prevails when shopping for virtual team technology. But what I’ve found is that the best technology for virtual work isn’t the most elaborate—it’s the most easily used. This prioritized list is based on the belief that for effective virtual teamwork and collaboration, accessibility and simplicity are most essential.

1.     Phone headset. When we don’t have visual cues, we need to listen more carefully for tone, hesitation, word choice, and what isn’t being said.  A speaker phone simply doesn’t have the microphone and speaker quality needed for deep listening.  If you can add only one piece of technology, this provides the greatest return on investment.

2.     Shared calendar. Working across time zones to coordinate meetings is often cited as one of the most challenging issues virtual teams face. A shared calendar that displays availability and automatically places the meeting in the time zone of each participant saves hours of coordination time. 

3.     Phone rollover. Rolling your office phone to a home line or a cell phone means that your customers and colleagues only place one call to find you. Make sure that a voice mail feature is automatic if you aren’t available. 

4.     Instant conference lines. These services provide global toll-free numbers and access codes and don’t require a reservation. This is the best resource for an instant or planned conversation within a team. 

5.     Webcam. Most modern laptops have a built-in webcam and many types of communication software allow its use. If you want people to truly collaborate, handle conflict, and build relationships, encourage your team members to see each other while chatting. Seeing facial expressions increases trust and personal connection. 

6.     Two screens or large computer display screen. The ability to have your calendar, document, and video connection up at the same time makes it easy to collaborate, share thoughts, and coordinate work. 

7.     Shared document site. This is the most complex of the technology tools listed here. Shared sites require team agreements around maintenance and use (such as document-naming conventions). Whether your team uses a public or private platform for sharing is an important decision. But when used well, these sites can reduce email, provide a way to instantly update project plans, and allow around-the-clock collaboration with a single focus and product. 

There are many other innovations that are also useful. Technological platforms that allow screen sharing and polling, project tracking software, and, yes, even video conferencing can be useful and worth the investment if used and readily accessible.

Well, that’s my list—what’s on yours? Any other tools you would add as accessible and cost-effective?

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

Let the direct report choose the best time. As humans whose energy varies during the day, there are times best suited for problem solving, routine reports, crunching data, or reflecting and envisioning the future. As a leader, let your team member choose the best time for your one-on-one call. Have them choose a time when they aren’t rushing for a deadline or needing to be alone to focus. Although you are responsible for making sure one-on-one meetings happen, virtual employees work independently and are typically very careful about how they spend their time. You want your call to be welcomed as a time for connection, reflection, and investment in future success—not seen as a distraction or interruption to real work.

Use technology to reveal more. Use the best one-on-one technology you have available. Video is best—even a cheap laptop camera with Skype or Office Communicator will provide you with visual information about the person’s commitment and mood. If you can’t get a video feed, invest in high quality—not necessarily expensive—headsets for your conversation. These make it easier for you to focus and listen for indicators of mood such as frustration or enthusiasm. In audio-only one-on-one meetings you will need to listen for the said, the unsaid, and the underlying tone beneath the spoken words.

Ask questions to develop independence. Individuals who work virtually are required to function more independently than those who have someone in the next cubicle for support. Use the skill of facilitating problem solving to develop competence and commitment. Examples of good questions to foster independence are:

• What other factors could be influencing this situation?
• What is getting in the way?
• What else should be considered?
• What are the pros and cons of this idea?
• How will you know the plan is working?

Build personal connection at their speed. Developing a personal relationship with your direct reports builds trust and commitment and can help you know, early on, if something is impacting motivation or performance. At the same time, people’s personalities differ in how much and how quickly they are willing to share their personal selves with you. Model sharing by being transparent about yourself, but don’t force intimacy. Ask questions that provide opportunity, such as:

• Which part of your job is the most enjoyable?
• How could your job be better?
• What could I do to make your job easier?
• What’s the most interesting thing happening for you right now?
• How will you be celebrating the upcoming holiday?
• How is your family?

In each phone call ask one or two open-ended questions to provide opportunity to build the relationship, but let your team member control the level of sharing.

Don’t let distance keep you apart! With these tips in place, both you and your team member will leave the call feeling in control, supported, and motivated to move forward together.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

When people work together face to face, celebrating can be spontaneous. Without prompting, someone brings in snacks or puts up decorations to celebrate a holiday, group achievement, or personal triumph.

It may sting a little, though, when remote team members get copied on an email about a party they can’t attend or when they see photos of others celebrating.

For people who work virtually, times like these can cause underlying feelings of isolation and disengagement to resurface.

Just like in-person workgroups, virtual teams need the shared identity, community, and enthusiasm that come through celebrating together. Because virtual festivities tend to happen less frequently, virtual team members are often particularly appreciative of celebrations—no matter how simple. Each team has its own culture and humor, of course, so encourage your team members to discuss these ideas and choose how they would like to celebrate virtually. 

Create cards together to mail or email.

• As a team, create a card for your customers by using a standard clip art background together with cutouts of team member photos and holiday greetings.
• For the team itself, paste a holiday image on a shared whiteboard and ask each team member to sign it online. Include small photos of each team member in the image to make it personal.
• Seek out one of the fun online ecard sites like jibjab.com and create a customized card with photos of your team members as dancing elves. 

Send gift cards.

Virtual teams are often more diverse in their membership than face-to-face teams, so selecting one gift that will suit everyone may be a challenge. Instead, consider these options:

• Give people gift cards to a coffee shop or restaurant that you know has a location near each team member (web searching makes this easy). Make the amount large enough for two people to enjoy, and ask team members to share photos. Set the stage by being the first to share your photo as you wear your Santa hat and drink your peppermint latte with your daughter, for example.
• Give people gift cards to a chain store or online retailer and ask team members to share a photo or description of what they purchased. This is a fun way for everyone to gain insight into each other’s personalities, hobbies, and interests, and it promotes familiarity among team members.

Have a party.

• For a special treat, use a web platform that allows streaming from multiple webcams. Individuals calling from home can walk their camera around to show holiday decorations or introduce family members or pets.
• Ask individuals to come to the party prepared to share their favorite holiday recipe (with a photo) or to discuss holiday traditions that are meaningful for them.
• Have team members dress for the occasion! Consider holding a holiday sweater or funny hat contest with the team voting for the winner.
• During the party, ask team members to reflect on a team accomplishment or event that was particularly significant or to express appreciation for a fellow team member who provided great support during the year.
• Consider adding some simple team activities to help members get to know each other. Individuals could share their most unusual job, guess the hobbies of other team members, or look at photos of desks and identify what the desk reveals about its owner.

If your team is daring.

• Sign up the group for an online multi-player game to discover treasure or solve a problem together.
• Consider using one of the online karaoke sites to have the group sing together for group bonding. 

The research is clear: teams that demonstrate good humor and friendly relationships are more productive. Although it takes collaboration, creativity, and effort, your team members will appreciate the enthusiasm and community that comes with celebrating together.

Happy Holidays!

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

This is a simple form of teamwork that is well suited for routine projects. But this team structure will not create innovation, the sharing of best practices, or the competitive advantage that can occur when you bring people together to work toward a common goal.

The best teams don’t quilt, they weave. Each individual’s contribution is woven together with the contributions of others, strand by strand. The end result doesn’t resemble any one individual but instead creates a new pattern—a tapestry of innovation.

Quilting and weaving are both valuable ways to create results—but if you want to innovate or implement best practices, weaving is what you need.  Here are five tips to move your team in that direction.

1. Be clear about the group’s vision. Clarify which aspects of project work are independent and which require the collaboration and innovation unleashed through teamwork. Set clear expectations so individuals know how to be successful.
2. Stop rewarding solo acts. Individuals naturally align to the measures of performance they are held accountable for. If you want people to innovate or implement process improvements, measure and reward collaboration and innovation.
3. Build a safe place to share incomplete ideas. Build team time for brainstorming, the sharing of ideas, and “what if” thinking, safe from criticism or sarcasm. If you push for quantity of initial ideas, quality usually improves as well. Implement team practices to encourage healthy conflict.
4. Partner team members based on diversity. Ask individuals with diverse backgrounds, expertise, and cultures to work together to pressure-test ideas or work on small tasks together. This reinforces respect for diversity and pushes everyone to think differently. Diversity raises the collective intelligence of teams.
5. Help team members get to know each other. Innovative teams usually know and like each other. Use team directories to facilitate the sharing of personal photos and ideas for hobbies and holiday practices to foster trusting relationships built on personal knowledge and shared experiences.

Make the move from quilting to weaving

For routine, low-impact projects, quilting can be a good enough structure for getting the job done. Just don’t fall into the habit of using a quilting technique when you need something more. If you want innovation, process improvement, or new creative solutions, you must move beyond the limitations inherent in a quilting approach to virtual teamwork. Instead, weave ideas, skills, and talents together with a truly collaborative and co-designed approach. Quilts are nice and comfortable, but for truly innovative solutions, weave a collaborative tapestry instead!

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies who specializes in increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world.

Even organizations with the most successful work from home programs confirm that some individuals work better in an office environment than they do from a home office.

What about you?  Here are some of the traits I’ve seen that might suggest working from home might not be the best fit for your personality or work style. Strongly reconsider working from home if:

1. Your favorite part of work is the friendships and social nature of the workplace.  Working from home can be isolating and lonely.
2. You don’t have basic computer maintenance and troubleshooting skills.  At some point, you will probably be required to identify whether your technical problem is related to software, hardware or internet connectivity without support from your IT help desk.  Do you routinely clean up and back up your system?  Unless these tasks are as natural to you as brushing your teeth, you might want to reconsider the home option.
3. You need external validation for your good work.  From time to time, we all want and need to hear from others that we are doing a good job.  At the same time if you find yourself regularly reporting on your work so others will recognize your accomplishments, you may miss these rewards.
4. You do not have excellent time management, organizational skills and self-discipline. One of the advantages of working from home is that you are less likely to be distracted by others.  At the same time, many of us are our own worst enemy around staying focused.  Home can have as many distractions as an office if we are not careful.  And in reverse, without self restraint you could also end up regularly working 10 – 12 hour days leading to resentment and burnout.
5. You do not have an office space that can remain organized and quiet.  Working on the kitchen table when the kids come home from school and want a snack may inaccurately communicate to those on your conference call that you are not prepared for serious work.
6. You have been told (or suspect) that your email communication is not clear or makes others uncomfortable or angry.  Since more of our communication is via email and messaging, we need to be highly sensitive to the impact of our communication on others. Without the ability to fully communicate face to face, and to pick up on the subtle clues around misunderstanding, frustration or anger, we can negatively impact others’ desire to work with us, and not be aware of the impact our communication has on teamwork until significant damage has occurred.

For many people, working from home provides an environment that can eliminate a long commute and provide a quieter, more productive atmosphere with fewer distractions.  For others, working from home can seem isolating, poorly directed, and unsupported.  And while some of these items are skills that can be developed, others may be fundamental aspects of your personality.  If you, or others you know, are considering working from home, keep this checklist in mind to ensure you are both happy and successful in this new environment.

What are your thoughts and experiences?   Share them in the comments section.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

Here are ten blunders organizations typically make when implementing telework.

1. Let everyone telework. Employees who are effective teleworkers have strong organizational skills, self-discipline, and comfort with a lack of frequent social interaction. Select good or great performers with the right skills and attitudes to ensure success
2. Provide no orientation to life in a virtual office—assume they’ll figure it out. Working virtually requires clear agreements on how and when communication happens and how to keep aligned to goals and motivated by the “esprit de corps” necessary for true teamwork.
3. Provide inadequate technology support. Make sure teleworkers can conduct basic troubleshooting of their own system, and ensure quality IT support is available when needed. Continually monitor issues such as bandwidth and ease of access to systems.
4. Assume your managers know how to lead virtually. Many leadership practices we have learned work only in a face-to-face setting. Leading people you don’t see requires a more sophisticated level of leadership—new skills are needed.
5. Have no structure to ensure collaboration and team spirit. One day every week or two should be set aside when everyone needs to be on site to enable collaboration, the sharing of best practices, and good old-fashioned face time. Though we often are not aware of its importance, the informal team building that happens naturally when people work together needs to become a priority now.
6. Insist on frequent conference calls to share information. Conference calls are for collaboration, decision making and involvement. One-way communication in conference calls interrupts real work and leads to multi-tasking and disengagement.
7. Hold meetings where some are in the room and some are calling in. These types of meetings increase disengagement and feelings of isolation. If you must have these meetings, use our tips from previous blogs: 3 Ways to Put Life Into Deadly Virtual Team Meetings, 4 Tips to Make Your Next Virtual Meeting More Compelling, to maximize their effectiveness.
8. Have no plan for monitoring performance or recognizing effort. Rewrite your performance measures so you monitor results instead of activity. Although this can be a challenge, everyone benefits when accomplishments are clear and recognized.
9. Promote people based on visibility. This is a secret, and often valid, fear of many who agree to telework. Individuals who are seen in the hallway often are selected for special projects, recognition, and promotion. Make sure visibility happens for work results, not just for showing up on site.
10. Implement it and forget it. Telework, whether routine or in response to a crisis, is a change for leaders, workers, IT departments, and customers. Continuously monitor how well it is working for all stakeholders, and build in strategies to both recognize success and improve processes.

Work is what we do, not where we sit. If implemented effectively, telework can empower employees, increase innovation, improve customer service, and save money and time for everyone. Use this list to ensure your effort succeeds in every way.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

The more that virtual teams become our normal way of working, the more we realize how difficult it is to build the positive relationships so critical for team success.   A face-to-face meeting for team building is best, yet most teams can’t afford that luxury.

So how do you build team spirit when you can’t have a retreat or even just meet for coffee at the end of the day?   The key is tapping into the creativity and lighthearted nature buried within our business minds.   Here are three enjoyable activities to build relationships and team spirit.

How do you celebrate?

• If you search world holidays on the web you’ll find that almost every day is a holiday somewhere in the world. Holidays are culturally important, and how we celebrate reveals a lot about us as individuals.
• Ask one or two team members to share a few photographs and chat for five minutes in your next team meeting about how they celebrated their latest holiday.  What foods did they eat, what were the activities, what was being celebrated?

Guess the desk. 

• Ask team members to send in a photograph of their office (or home office) desk.  Show the photo and discuss what the desk reveals about its owner.
  • Does a bowl of fruit mean the person is health conscious?
  • Are there family photos?
  • How many technological gadgets are on the desk?
• After the discussion, ask team members to guess the desk owner’s name.   The owner then gets an opportunity to reveal him/herself and to clarify or explain anything noticed by the team.   

The most unusual thing …

• Use this as a conversation starter for the team.  When you send out the meeting agenda ask them to be prepared to answer a question. For example:
  • The most unusual thing I ever ate …
  • The most unusual place I ever visited …
  • The most unusual event I witnessed …

When building a virtual team, encourage that fun-loving side of you to emerge. Relaxed creativity can provide just the lift needed to build the positive relationships and esprit de corps that are the keys to successful virtual teams.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

That’s a missed opportunity.

Reports can be emailed, updates can be left on voice mail, but conference calls are our opportunity to pool knowledge, build enthusiasm and move forward. Great conference calls are productive, interesting, and highly participative.

Want to make sure that your next virtual meeting is more than just a chance for people to catch up on their work?  Begin with a compelling agenda.  Here are four ways to get started.

1. State your agenda items as questions.   Change “Project Implementation Update” to What have we learned so far from the project implementation? or What is—and what is not—working in our implementation?  A question stimulates thinking and prepares your participants to reflect and anticipate.
2. Clearly state who is leading each agenda item. For example, “Fred facilitates brainstorming on the challenges we might face with this implementation. (10 minutes)  Bring your ideas.”  Be sure to include how long that item is expected to take and how meeting participants will be involved.
3. Ensure your agenda addresses important issues that sound interesting and engaging.  Instead of “Regional Updates” try, What are we doing that’s new? What new barriers are we discovering?  Email the spreadsheet monthly reports later if necessary.
4. Build continuous improvement into your meetings.  End your meetings with a very quick poll.  Go around the room (if using a seating chart) or call roll and ask each person for a few words of specific feedback on what went well or what the group could do better next time. Hold people accountable for providing specific feedback.  Instead of “good meeting,” push for a specific comments like, “It was helpful to hear the perspectives from finance on our plan.”  Letting people know they will be asked for feedback at the end encourages participants to pay attention, which improves interaction and ownership in the success of the meeting.

Conference calls and virtual meetings are how we build teams and accomplish work in the virtual world. Compelling agendas make the times that we work together more interesting and enjoyable.  Use these four tips to get the most out of your next meeting. There will always be more emails to answer.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

Here’s the reality.  If you need super-vision, you are not leading, you are babysitting.

How to really lead remote employees?  Start by shifting your mindset.

• Know your role. You are not an Olympic judge holding up signs to rate a performance. Your job is to help employees contribute to your organization’s success today and develop them to contribute more tomorrow.
• Recognize that over monitoring leads to malicious compliance, not enthusiasm and extra effort.

Second, look for ways to improve the measurement and tracking of contributions.

• Make sure you are monitoring outcomes and results instead of activities.
• Consider setting targeted, shorter goals.  Explore work planning concepts like Agile Strategy. Use two to four week goal sprints to provide prompt recognition and spur innovation to increase productivity and results.
• Seek out data sources where employees can monitor their own results.   Try to model the automated school zone boards that report your speed as 34 in a 25 mph zone. Build in systems so both you and your employees receive automatic feedback for recognition and improvement. Don’t make them wait for their quarterly review to get feedback.
• Develop your measures collaboratively.  Even if you previously performed an employee’s job, some aspects of the role have probably changed.  Work together to identify what real success looks like.  It builds commitment and increases the accuracy of performance measures.

Work—particularly virtual work—requires us to re-think our notion of leadership and re-imagine our performance management systems. None of the recommendations provided here are easy to implement.  The alternative, though, is for our leaders to struggle and our employees to be hampered by that struggling.  In the long run, relying on super-vision gets us nowhere.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

For those of us who work at home or remotely, or even in an office, it’s a great time to refocus on what we do—consciously or subconsciously—that looks like work but often isn’t.

Here are three ways that people pretend to work.

Attend meetings

Our egos tell us that it is critical to stay fully informed on any project that has the potential to even slightly impact us. Even though meetings are largely ineffective, attending lots of them keeps you very busy. When you attend lots of meetings your calendar stays full—and yet you accomplish very little. This is perhaps the best way to pretend to work without really working.

Be hyper-responsive on emails and phone calls

Don’t read or think too much about each email, just respond quickly. In fact, responding to emails while passively attending a meeting can ensure that neither activity is truly productive. When you keep your email up all day and respond immediately, you can feel a great sense of “pretend” accomplishment. Since sending emails results in receiving more emails, you can honestly say, “I got 150+ emails today. I am exhausted!” This is probably very true.

Focus on speed and quantity, not quality, of communication

The accepted best practice around emails is this: If the third email hasn’t clarified the issue—pick up the phone. Ignoring this rule means you can have long strings of emails that show activity without really accomplishing work. Make sure you have an email trail that recaps every action taken. This ensures that you can always justify your lack of productivity by pointing to a flaw in someone else’s email.

Have you been caught by any of these strategies? Although I don’t know anyone who deliberately uses these strategies to avoid work, I suspect we have all had extremely busy days when we questioned our productivity and accomplishments.

Just in case you want to be very productive (which you do), here are some tips:

• Carefully choose which meetings, and how much of each meeting, you will attend.
• Focus on the quality of your communication, including reflecting or researching before you respond.
• Let others know your priority to set aside times for focused concentration, professional development, process improvement, and idea generation. Let people know when you will and won’t be available to respond quickly.

Using these strategies will require less energy, less activity, and fewer emails, and therefore will result in higher productivity.

Well, okay … you can still pretend to be tired, even if you‘re not!

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

What many don’t realize is fewer opportunities means more control over perceptions.

When you work in the office, people see you every day.  They see you when you didn’t get much sleep, when you got stuck in traffic, and when you have a seasonal cold.  They see you when sick, crabby, tired and anxious.

Wise virtual workers ensure that everyone who interacts with them stays positive about them and their work by controlling how they present themselves.

When you work virtually, you can show up in every interaction, positive and professional.   

• On the phone: Before you answer the phone, take a minute to breathe, smile and choose a positive vocal tone.
• If you must have uncomfortable conversations over the phone, (better than via email!) you can prepare notes in advance scripting exactly how you want to communicate the message.  And you can read those rehearsal notes while on the call.
• You can also listen and make notes while others are venting.  Good notes mean you can reflect and show empathy toward their feelings and thoughts without eye contact or having your facial expressions and physical reactions give you away.
• Via email: Consider using the “delay delivery” setting rule on your emails for 10 minutes.  This way, after you hit send you have one last chance to review or reword so you don’t regret later the tone your email communicated.  (I am sure you didn’t mean it that way!)
• Video-conferences:  This is my favorite.  Go ahead and wear those pajama pants when telecommuting, just make sure you computer camera only shows how nice you look from the waist up.

It’s a rare gift to be able to show up with our best selves all the time.  Consider telecommuting or virtual work a gift for your career and life.

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.

As a virtual team member, unequal access to information and a feeling of being left out can erode your trust and lower your emotional commitment—two critical factors for overall team success.

Yet when you are a dial-in participant, pushing for inclusion without sounding like a whiner usually isn’t worth the effort. As a result, unless they are called on to participate, many virtual team members give up and simply listen to the meeting while they read and answer their email.

Don’t let this happen to the virtual members of your team. Here are three ways to keep your virtual teammates engaged:

1. Go completely virtual. Meetings where everyone is virtual will force better habits such as “around the room” input and sending reports in advance so everyone has access. Make sure each meeting agenda deliberately includes time for everyone to participate in the lively chat necessary for this social team approach.
2. Use a buddy system. If you must have some in the room and some out, assign every virtual team member a “buddy” in the room. Set up additional communication modes such as instant messaging or chatting between buddies. This way, the virtual team member can ask questions without disturbing the whole group and each person calling in has an advocate who can send last-minute documents, describe what is happening, or intervene when necessary for clarification.
3. Consider creating a cardboard Carl/Caroline. One creative team leader I worked with created large, cardboard-backed photos of each virtual team member. The visibility of a cardboard Carl or Caroline in each meeting provided great humor and increased engagement. “Caroline looks like she has a question.” “Let’s ask Carl what he thinks!” These are fun and natural ways to ensure all team members stay visibly engaged and emotionally committed to the team. Other teams use an empty chair with a name, or a name tent—but there is something about a photo that adds life to the meeting. Be aware, though, that your virtual team member may ask for a cardboard photo of you and the rest of the team—that’s a good thing!

We all have attended deadly team meetings, and most of us probably have neglected a virtual team member, inadvertently, at least once. Keep your virtual team members engaged. Try one or more of these strategies and bring life and energy to your next virtual engagement!

About the author

Carmela Sperlazza Southers is a senior consulting partner with The Ken Blanchard Companies. Her posts on increasing organizational, team, and leader effectiveness in the virtual work world appear on the fourth Monday of every month.