CHAPTER 8
Facilitate Their Success with Leadership, Alignment, and a Full Arsenal

What does “leadership and alignment” mean exactly? Lance Walley elaborates on his point as it relates to his company, Chargify.

Long ago, we had a list of software development tasks that needed to get done. The tasks had no priority. The development team members could pick whatever they wanted. We thought this offered freedom and choice, but it did not work. The team wanted a team lead or product manager to decide priorities, so they could focus on doing instead of deciding.

More recently, we started working on alignment throughout the company. It’s harder than it sounds, but it makes a lot of sense: decide who our core customer is and what our company values are, and then make decisions around those ideas. And make sure everyone is aligned around these values and decisions.

A great team, aligned around the same goals, does great work.1

What Lance describes in the above quote basically spells out the road ahead. And, indeed, it’s harder than it sounds. But fortunately we can be thoughtful and systematic in our approach—and then proceed by experimenting with small, reversible steps.

We return to the discussion of how to replicate in the virtual realm the benefits of the on-site realm. As it happens, many of the solutions available to remote teams can address more than one essential aspect of successful teamwork. In the sidebar to follow, those essential aspects are presented as a group of “truisms” first, along with a nutshell of possible solutions. Following that we’ll consider in greater depth the various options for replicating those benefits online.

Efficiency and Accessibility

A successful team benefits from the efficiency of working in the same location, where the answer to a question or a copy of a report is just steps away.

COMMUNICATE ONLINE—REGULARLY

“People think they want to be colocated. What they really want is high-bandwidth communication.”

—AGILEBILL KREBS, coach and founder, Agile Dimensions, LLC2

Every on-site workplace has established protocols regarding what is expected of whom—some of which gets relayed just in how the boss greets a new hire, or whether the finance director welcomes a knock on her office door. To be successful working online, where we lack those in-the-moment cues, we need to be more deliberate in establishing protocols of how we will work together. As CEO Howard B. Esbin points out: “Because we can’t see each other, and because we work from unique locations, there are plenty of opportunities for misunderstandings. When we are clear about what normal behavior is on our team, we communicate more efficiently.”3 And since communication plays such a vital role in the collaborative process, to communicate efficiently is to work more productively.

As noted throughout this book, modern technology for enabling high-bandwidth communication is fast, efficient, and affordable—and getting better and cheaper every day. What’s needed is a team agreement about which tools to use for which types of communication, as well as how those tools should be used—especially concerning expected response times.

As to which tools: to be entirely honest, the lineup changes so often that it’s impossible to offer much here on which apps are currently available for consideration. But we can cover types of communication tools, and point you in a few directions. For example:

Since the “water cooler” talk isn’t possible, we provide a wide variety of channels and tools for staff to communicate: email, HipChat [now Slack], and Google Hangouts [now Google Meet]; we also have a staff forum and a social media style site for informal discussions. We have an internal blog for large announcements and official company business and announcements.

—TOM SEPPER, COO, World Wide Web Hosting 4

The additional solutions that follow describe quite a few of these tools. You’ll also find a concise listing of the various categories to choose from in “Technology & Tools” in the RESOURCES section. More updated information can be found at the Collaboration Superpowers webpage “Tools for Remote Teams” (https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/tools).

As for how the selected tools should be used, we cover team agreements in chapter 9.

Access

Another factor of on-site proximity is having quick and easy access to the tools and information needed to do one’s job efficiently. As for the online version of that on-site benefit, fortunately the digital age renders physical filing cabinets no longer essential—if not obsolete—given the wide availability of tools that enable the centralization of information, from intranet or private wikis to Google Drive or task-management apps. And while restricted access for certain information is standard procedure, note that for some that approach is somewhat backward. Home services company ezhome shares: “The ability to access information regardless of perceived need is crucial. For us, everything (Google Docs, Slack channels, etc.) is accessible to anyone at ezhome by default, and is only made private if it is truly confidential.” This from operations manager Liz Peterson, whose point also speaks to the benefit of trusting the remote workforce.5

Productivity and Collaboration

A successful team gains from the productivity of working in the same location, where all can update each other and plan and brainstorm as a group.

COLLABORATE ONLINE—REGULARLY

This solution is just an extension of the previous one: the modern capacity for efficient communication can facilitate efficient collaboration as well. Remote team members can meet as often as they would on-site—they just meet online instead. And since online meetings are easily recorded, team members unable to attend can still stay in the loop.

Online Communal Task Board /Task-Management Software

On-site coworkers often know all that needs to be done—and who is doing what—simply as a consequence of being colocated. To ensure an equal level of team-wide awareness, successful remote teams employ online task- or project-management software to document exactly what needs to be done and who is doing what. For example, billing software company Chargify uses Trello in their marketing department, while their development team utilizes Sprintly for iteration planning and tracking. Student marketplace StudySoup also uses Trello; they share the following in answering the Remote.co question “What challenges have you encountered building a remote team?”: “At first we tried to have a casual meeting structure. This was extremely stressful and kept different team members in the dark about what others were working on. Since then we’ve implemented Trello and a consistent stand-up/meeting structure to avoid this.” 6 This leads us to the next solution.

Stand-Ups and Retrospectives

Two of the more standard online practices for meetings originated amongst on-site software development teams.

STAND-UPS are regular (often daily) status-report meetings where all share what they did the day before, what they’re doing that day, and if there’s anything they’re struggling with. (The on-site meetings were named “stand-ups” because they were conducted standing up—since they’re meant to be so brief there was no reason to sit down—and/or because team members might also be standing around their physical task board.) Many remote teams conduct stand-ups as well, with or without a virtual task board.

RETROSPECTIVES are also regular meetings, often held every one to two weeks. But while stand-ups are about checking in to see what specific tasks people are working on, Retrospectives are about checking in on how the team is doing as a whole. They are facilitated feedback sessions for sharing progress, raising issues, and discussing solutions—often addressing four questions:

  • What is going well?
  • What could have gone better?
  • What have we learned?
  • What still puzzles us?

The simple, structured efficacy of Retrospectives have made them an essential practice in the virtual sphere as well, with different approaches and lengths for different setups and contexts. Plus, since they’re regularly scheduled sessions designed for giving and receiving feedback, they greatly facilitate both productivity and alignment. (We’ll return to Retrospectives later in the chapter, in the Put Feedback Loops in Place  section.)

Online Brainstorming and Decision-Making Software

“There is always fear that collaboration is based on face-to-face contact, but it turns out it is not. People can work on things together asynchronously and be just as effective.”

—JAMES LAW, HR director, Envato7

Cris Hazzard, partner of “full-service” digital creative agency Sanborn, shares: “We’re fans of the whiteboard; there’s a magic that happens when a few people are in a room together in a brainstorming session. We’ve done reasonably well at achieving that remotely by using video conferencing, screen sharing, and tools like InVision. It works best when the participants do a bit of prep work and have items ready to share—which of course benefits the entire process.”8 Tortuga CEO Fred Perrotta offers: “We use Asana and Instagantt to plan big projects like product development, product launches, and website redesigns. Having one tool ‘of record’ lets us all share the same view and see the same plan, regardless of where we are.”9 Ericsson, the multinational networking and telecommunications company in Stockholm, Sweden, took this concept to new heights when they built their own platform, IdeaBoxes, for collecting and implementing ideas from every level of their organization.10

On Medium.com, software engineer Noelle Daley shares the lessons she learned from researching how her temporarily distributed team could better weather the separation. Of particular concern was the fact that their “largely in-person culture didn’t quite hold up as well for getting context on tasks and catching up on decisions.” After consulting with established distributed engineering teams, she offers the following recommendation.

Document and discuss decisions on Google Docs, or somewhere everyone can easily access and refer back to. Describe the problem and proposed solution and have everyone on the team provide input by adding comments. Keep all of these decisions and project artifacts like diagrams and drawings in a Google Drive folder. This provides a history of decision-making, which is helpful for returning to a project after a while and for onboarding new teammates. Bonus: as one interviewee pointed out, collaborating on decisions asynchronously online makes space for diverse viewpoints. It “allows for multiple personality types to chime in . . . [and] gives people a couple days to think about their ideas and voice them, unlike in meetings where only the loudest voice is heard.”11

As we’ll see in chapter 9, creating space for diverse viewpoints—and personality types—is especially valuable when teams include different cultures.

Trust

A successful team benefits from the sense of personal accountability of working in the same location—of knowing that others will come through with their commitments. The trust that such reliability develops strengthens the team as a whole.

DEMONSTRATE RELIABILITY: WORKING OUT LOUD

“Ultimately, trust comes down to results.”

—TEAGUE SODERMAN, communications lead at NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute12

As noted in chapter 7, working out loud amounts to being transparent in your work habits. That means your fellow team members—and team leader—know when you’re working, what you’re working on, and what you’ve completed. Coworkers can’t help but benefit from knowing you can be relied on to come through for the team.

Some possible means of working out loud include:

  • Sending an email update of what you’re working on
  • Participating in a daily stand-up
  • Posting a daily update in a group app such as Slack (described below)
  • Keeping your IM status updated
  • Updating files and having discussions via the company’s intranet
  • Participating in group chat (such as with Slack), usually regarding specific items
  • Updating code in a central repository (GitHub)
  • Updating the “updates” section of group apps, as applicable (such as with I Done This or the Progress View feature in Asana)
  • Updating a task entry on a communal task manager (Asana, Trello)
  • Participating in a virtual office app (Sococo, Walkabout Workplace)

We discuss many of the tools for these practices lower down, as well as in “Technology & Tools” in the RESOURCES section. Here we’ll elaborate on one tip: POSTING A DAILY UPDATE. In the video “Slack Tips Tuesday: How to Not Look Like a Slacker on Slack,” X-Team’s Ryan Chartrand talks about their company’s practice of “journaling.” All team members maintain individual journals in which they report their day’s accomplishments, even if that’s just progress on a long-term task. Ryan recommends representing that progress with screen shots as much as possible, whether that be a video still or the business cards picked up at a conference. As he puts it: “People respect you more when they know how you contribute, and they question your value when they don’t know how you contribute.” An additional advantage is that team members can respond to the daily post with kudos or suggestions to further the progress. (In yet another plus, such record-keeping boosts your record as well—both in terms of your next performance review and in terms of your own sense of accomplishments. Since it’s easy to forget how much work we put into our work, it can be invaluable to be reminded of the many pains we took along the way.)

Note that though X-Team’s practice is done in Slack, one could use other platforms instead. (We describe Slack in the group chat section of the next solution.) For theirs, each team member’s journal is its own channel, separate from whatever other posts that worker might contribute in other channels. That way other members—especially managers—can track any one worker’s regular progress over time.13

Team members at Automattic, the web development company best known for the popular publishing and blogging platform WordPress.com, use the WordPress P2 theme to help them keep tabs on what everyone is doing. As blogger Tish Briseno describes: “You can make a P2 post about anything (an upcoming change, an idea, an update to your schedule, sharing a bug report, etc.), and then anyone in the company can comment on that P2. . . . By sharing your workflow, your schedule, something new you learned that you couldn’t find documentation for, you’re allowing everyone to learn alongside you.”14

An additional point: it can be challenging for some to learn new company-initiated tools or processes without coaching or training. If team members don’t express their difficulty, others may think they’re slacking. And so it’s important that workers feel free to communicate any concern—which could be done as part of working out loud.15

DEMONSTRATE RELIABILITY: TRACKING PRODUCTIVITY

Another option to consider is actually tracking productivity. Note that many teams don’t do this; most companies focus on results, not time spent. But a lot of companies do use OKRs—a term that stands for Objectives and Key Results. According to an article on Heflo.com: “The goal of an OKR is to precisely define how to achieve objectives through concrete, specific, and measurable actions.” The benefit of this clarity is twofold: workers “focus on the activities and results that they need to achieve,” and “nobody is lost doing something that isn’t needed.”16 (Note too that having all employees clearly understanding how their roles fit into the larger operation contributes to everyone being aligned with the larger mission.) Whether to establish an OKR and, if so, which to use, could be discussed in the course of crafting a team agreement.

BUILD TRUST BY ACKNOWLEDGING GOOD WORK

An interesting flip side to this consideration utilizes another essential element of team building: appreciation. When we take the time to express appreciation for our coworkers’ efforts, we do more than just strengthen our relationships with them; we also solidify our own awareness of their contribution. I’ll elaborate on this point with an example from my own experience.

Trust via Appreciation: Merit Money

At Happy Melly, we use a “peer-to-peer bonus system” called Merit Money. Here’s how this reward scheme works. Every month, each team member is given one hundred points. Over the course of the month, we distribute points amongst the team—including the managers—along with reasons why. The amounts people give and their reasons for giving are transparent to everyone. For example, as CEO Jurgen Appelo wrote in his Forbes article about it: “Last month on my team, Jennifer gave fifteen credits to Lisette ‘for being the backbone of the organization.’” [Thank you, thank you.] “Lisette gave twenty-five points to Sergey ‘for all the feedback and support.’ Sergey gave ten credits to Chad for his ‘terrific illustrations.’ And Chad gave twenty credits to Hannu for his ‘friendliness and clarity of communication.’”17 At the end of each month Tahira, our finance queen, puts together our profit and loss statement; if there is profit, she sets aside a percentage for the monthly bonus—to be distributed amongst the team based on the number of points each individual received during the month.

I confess that at first I wasn’t too keen on the Merit Money system. I didn’t feel comfortable giving feedback to those whose skills I couldn’t properly evaluate, like Sergey’s code or Tahira’s bookkeeping. But then I realized I shouldn’t base my evaluation on those skills; my job was to base my contributions on what it’s like to work with Sergey and Tahira. Are they reliable? Are they responsive? Are they nice to work with? (Yes, yes, and yes.) As former (and much-missed) Happy Melly colleague Louise Brace puts it: “Merit Money is a great way to make sure each of us knows how accountable we are, and what others perceive of our contribution. It assures that we all work on our communication skills, and it ensures that everyone knows what everyone else is doing.”18

What I personally like about Merit Money is that each team member receives regular feedback from everyone else on the team. I find it both motivating and illuminating to learn what my colleagues appreciate about me—and I love that there’s a standard forum where I can express my appreciation for them. This continuous, 360-degree feedback helps our team appreciate and learn from each other.

To return to the subject of trust and reliability: I’ve noticed that if I put off distributing my points until the end of the month, it’s hard for me to remember what things people were doing at the beginning of the month. So while I know that my coworkers were working, I’ve lost a distinct sense of exactly how and how much—as well as how relevant their contributions were to me. But thanks to Merit Money, especially the transparency of it, I am vividly aware of just how vital each team member is to our group effort—which just makes me want to come through for them all the more.

Bonding

A successful team benefits from the social aspects of working together in the same location, since strengthened social ties strengthen the team as a whole.

After a few months of not spending time with your colleagues, you lose the human interaction. Life gets filled with other things. And the problem with remote communication is that you’re usually talking about work. It’s important to have the chitchat to see what’s going on in your life; otherwise you’re just a machine getting work done.

—SHRIKANT VASHISHTHA, cofounder and Agile coach, Malonus Consulting19

It turns out that the “team” part of working on a team is important. Working together on-site presents serendipitous moments where sharing an elevator can turn into grabbing coffee together. Seeing each other on a daily basis builds trust and increases camaraderie. But when we’re remote, we have to work extra hard to feel we’re part of a team. So, though we can digitally connect with people all over the world at the click of a button, we have to find new ways of emotionally connecting as well.

So how do we create closeness even though we’re far apart? How do we reach through the screens? That’s all coming up next.

The challenge for us is not the technology—it’s for the human side to keep up with the technology. Our habits don’t change fast enough.

—AGILEBILL KREBS, coach and founder, Agile Dimensions, LLC20

A lot of tools will help you collaborate, but they won’t necessarily help you get to know each other personally. We’ve gone high-tech, but we also need to go high-touch and develop empathy for each other.

—HOWARD B. ESBIN, CEO, Playprelude.com21

WORK TOGETHER ONLINE

We’ve discussed the concept of working out loud: advertising one’s current activity and reachability. Working together online is a less-structured approach to working out loud. For some teams, it’s as casual and low-effort as simply turning on the webcams just to feel more connected. But there are also tools for simulating a working environment, or even simulating the physical on-site office. To follow are just some of the diverse options to choose from, from the most accessible to the most far out. In the end, it doesn’t really matter which tools you choose; what matters is that everyone on a team is comfortable with the technology, and everyone agrees on how it will be used.

Webcam and Video Conferencing

Just turning on the webcam undeniably adds to the remote-working experience—and not necessarily for a video call, as ShriKant Vashishtha describes:

We installed webcams for our teams so we could see who was coming and going at each of the offices. We got used to greeting each other when someone arrived, went out for lunch, or went home at the end of the day. We even started creating common gestures with each other. Being able to see each other built up a real sense of team.22

A few remote teams at Spotify do much the same—as conveyed by software engineer Thodoris Tsiridis:

While we work we keep a Hangout open where everyone connects via video with their microphones on mute. This is analogous to working in the same room: everyone can see each other, and when people have a question, they simply un-mute themselves and ask the others. This allows the team to talk as if they were physically in the same office together.23

Agile coach Mark Kilby shares a bit more on why video can be so effective:

Sometimes the virtual experience can be more human because we’re seeing so much of somebody’s personal life in the background. That’s important to share in virtual teams, and many of us actually like that blending of work and life. We want to know who’s at the other end of that line. On my team, nobody gets upset if somebody’s kid pops up in the background and says hi, or a family member walks past. In fact, it can help us build camaraderie.24

Communal Task Board/Task Management

In some task-management tools (like Asana or Trello, for example), you can create a “workspace” that offers a bird’s-eye view of an organization’s various departments and projects (or even different locations). There are many such tools to choose from depending on your team’s needs; for more, see “Technology & Tools” ( p. 301) in the RESOURCES section. Of course, for some teams the company IT department has made a company-wide decision—and the tool has been decided for you. Regardless, most tools can serve their purposes admirably as long as the team agrees on how to use them.

Group Chat

Group chat is a platform for keeping tabs on the pulse of the work being done at any point in time, both past and present. This in-the-moment capability is like a virtual way of walking through the office and talking with colleagues, as well as a means of jumping into the conversation. It also enables group discussion, whether about work projects or weekend plans. In addition, it enables sharing files and documents, which are visible to everyone cleared for that project or channel. This rapid, lightweight approach can facilitate better communication than email can, and its company-wide visibility makes it a potent team builder.

As for its after-the-fact capability, each channel offers essentially a script of who did or said what and when, so anyone can review the conversation long after it happened. The collected knowledge of the workspace is also eminently searchable for later access—unlike email messages confined to the in-box. As noted in chapter 4, digital transformation and data analytics adviser Luis Suarez is a big fan of this searchability: “Typically, when you leave a company, the first thing that human resources does is delete your mailbox with the gigs and gigs and gigs of data and connections and knowledge that you’ve accumulated over the years. But with a social network, if you leave, your legacy is still there. People can go to the internal platform and look up your content, find the conversations, and see and interact with the networks you built. From an individual perspective, that’s your legacy living beyond the point of your being there. And from an enterprise perspective, all of that precious knowledge is available to everyone else.”25

Group chat tools can also be great virtual water coolers. For example, some teams have created a “getting to know you” channel to encourage the sort of sharing that builds camaraderie. And River Agency COO Tom Howlett appreciates that group chat helps to level the personality playing field, “enabling more of us to say what we want to say.”26

Ironically, one downside to group chat tools is how easy they are—which can lead to work items getting buried in banter. But that’s a consideration that can be addressed when you collectively determine in a team agreement how the tools are to be used. For example, one protocol could be to reserve less work-related posts for the non-work channels.

Virtual Office

A virtual office is exactly what it sounds like: an office you go to … online. One of the more widely used virtual office platforms is Sococo (SOcial COmmunications COmpany). When you log in, you see a floor plan and avatars that represent your fellow logged-in colleagues. You can move yourself from room to room, but you can only hear and speak to those who are in the same room with you—just like at an office. To follow, Sococo’s Mandy Ross describes their own Sococo setup:

Our virtual office actually looks like an office. Every morning we launch Sococo and see a floor plan, a top-down view of the office. We all have our own offices, and there are also conference rooms. Usually when I log in I see Carrie, so I go and say hi to her. And the CEO, whose office is right next to mine, will come in a little later to talk to me.

So that’s where I go to work every morning.

—MANDY ROSS, director of community and distributed Agile coach, Sococo27

image

A SCREENSHOT OF THE SOCOCO TEAM’S VIRTUAL OFFICE (SOCOCO)

Just being able to see where everyone is in the virtual office makes colleagues feel more accessible and gives the team a surprising sense of togetherness. Sococo’s Carrie Kuempel loves the platform in part because, as she puts it: “You’re a virtual door knock away from giving others the answer they need to go full speed ahead with what they’re doing. You’re not sending an email. You’re not scheduling a meeting. The fact that I can pop in and get an answer and move ahead is great. Accessibility and visibility are important for us because we’re building something together and we need each other. Sococo is the lifeline to my teammates.”28 The platform lends itself to other uses as well: online workshops, conferences, even the virtual equivalent of a coworking space.

Telepresence

With telepresence, you can project your “presence” into an alternate location—much as you do with video—but with the added bonus of mobility. For example, the Revolve Robotics Kubi allows you to “beam in” (like with Skype) to any tablet device and move yourself from side to side and up and down. With this capability you can control what you see. Let’s say you’re using Kubi to participate in an on-site meeting. You’d be able to look at the whiteboard, and then turn to look at your colleagues. In addition, the movement of the Kubi offers you—the remote team member—a more human presence from the perspective of those physically in the room. You are literally more “present” with them than you’d be with just video. And, the technology is easier to use than you’d think.

Other telepresence robots are drivable: the user can beam into what is basically a tablet on wheels and drive through a remote location using just computer keyboard arrow keys. While this might sound futuristic, in fact these devices are widely used today. With telepresence, homebound children can still actively attend classes, bedbound patients can consult specialists in foreign locales, art lovers can explore a museum from afar, and both remote speakers and participants can attend distant conferences. Telepresence is re- markably effective at bringing people together, regardless of the distance between them.

Virtual Reality

Virtual worlds have been in existence for decades, and widely used in small circles: for classes and conferences—like with telepresence—and also with military simulations. Virtual Reality (VR) technology can be difficult for the average person to navigate, but as the technology develops, I believe VR will play an increasing role in how we work together. Why? Because interactive sensory experiences bring us closer to replicating the human experience.

FACILITATE SOCIAL TIME

Since casual, personal time spent together is so effective at bonding, it’s important that team members also interact socially—separate from their work activities. This view is widely shared.

Organizations can have this myopia that just because you’re an expert in your field and I’m an expert in mine, even if we’ve never met, it’s assumed we’ll just get on with the project. But research shows that, unless you have some kind of vehicle for team members to get to know each other, you’re going to get just the opposite.

—HOWARD B. ESBIN, CEO, Playprelude.com29

Proactively engage with your team as much as you possibly can. Make sure that people are connecting. Make sure there are social things happening. It can’t just be about work all the time. In a physical office, people naturally socialize. In a virtual office, they need encouragement to socialize.

—MANDY ROSS, director of community, Sococo30

It’s important that companies create spaces like coffee breaks where people can virtually stop working and just chat with their coworkers. It helps keep everyone motivated and breaks the loneliness. It also gives us a chance to learn about each other’s projects, to learn more about the people we’re working with.

—ANNA DANES, CEO, Ricaris31

Because our remote interactions can be so focused, we often don’t make the time to just hang out together. If we want to create more serendipitous moments on our remote teams we (ironically) have to schedule it. One of the things I discovered was the importance of having both structured and unstructured time.

—JEREMY STANTON, SVP of engineering, Amino Payments32

To follow is an array of suggestions for how to facilitate that unstructured social time, often using video conferencing software.

  • Brie Reynolds’s remote team at FlexJobs has groups on Yammer where they have book clubs, cooking groups, and pet photo shares.
  • Mark Kilby’s team at Sonatype has adopted the practice of building social time into every meeting by inviting people to show up a few minutes early or stay late. This gives everyone a chance to be social without delaying the agenda.
  • The Happy Melly team runs a weekly half-hour social session whose only rule is “no shop talk.” It’s called Kitten Talk—because in the beginning team members lured others online with pictures of kittens.
  • FlexJobs’s Brie Reynolds shares: “Every couple of weeks on a Friday night after work, everybody gets together with a drink and we host virtual trivia. It’s similar to just going to a bar with your friends on trivia night. It’s a fun way to virtually hang out with your coworkers.”33
  • Similarly, Sococo’s Carrie McKeegan offers: “We do something called High-Five Fridays and Get-to-Know-You Wednesdays. They’re silly things that just somehow work.”34

Many teams enjoy playing games together, either video or card games, or more elaborate games:

  • Dr.Clue.com hosts virtual treasure hunts wherein a combination of video conferencing tools and puzzles helps teams solve riddles together.
  • PlayPrelude.com is a trust-building activity for virtual teams.
  • The Management 3.0 team runs a Personal Maps session where the team members “mind map” themselves and then share with each other. It’s surprisingly fun—sort of an internal “show and tell.” (For more, see https://management30.com/practice/personal-maps.)

SPEND TIME TOGETHER IN PERSON

For all these effective means of bonding teams digitally, it must be said that nothing can equal actual face time. And so it’s widely recommended that managers facilitate team members’ getting together in person whenever possible—whether that means scheduling a bus ride, a train trip, or a plane ticket.

We encourage exchanges between offices. So an employee in Barcelona can go to San Diego and then an employee in San Diego can go to Barcelona. It does two great things at once. One, it allows team members to meet face to face. And two, it offers an awesome opportunity to travel to another city. Both of these things help us recruit better employees and make our current employees happier.

—ROBERT ROGGE, cofounder and CEO, Zingword; cofounder and advisor, Managing Virtual Teams35

A webcam can replace a lot, but being able to see each other and have a drink at a local pub helps build the team so much more. That in-person time really pays off in the end.

—RALPH VAN ROOSMALEN, Agile coach and Management 3.0 facilitator36

Taking this concept to the next level, booking software company Timely considers “spending time together in the flesh so crucial” that they’ve “semi- centralized in a few cities.”37

Addressing Conflict

Part of why a successful team benefits from in-person communication is that facial expressions and body language convey tone and intention—which of course are ideally always positive. Without that buffering, interpersonal relationships can erode, and minor annoyances can become extended conflicts.

From simple differences in opinion to larger misunderstandings, conflicts within virtual teams are inevitable. So we’ll always want to have in place means of addressing conflicts once they arise—which we’ll go over lower down. But first, there are also ways to prevent disturbances from occur- ring in the first place. We can:

  • avoid task redundancy by using a communal task board/software to indicate who is working on what;
  • avoid miscommunication and task redundancy by working out loud;
  • communicate often, via video whenever possible;
  • practice positive communication approaches;
  • put feedback loops in place; and
  • collectively document a team agreement that details how the team wants to work together.

To follow we elaborate on a few of these items.

INCREASE POSITIVE COMMUNICATION

“On remote teams we need to find opportunities to talk to each other. Sometimes it’s difficult because of time zones and sometimes we’re busy. That’s very understandable. But if we don’t have those conversations regularly, we start to lose that connection.”

—PILAR ORTI, director, Virtual not Distant38

The predominant advice for preventing interpersonal conflict is to communicate often. But note that the quality of those exchanges is even more important than the quantity. When we’re remote, we need to ensure we’re kind and constructive in how we communicate with each other. This calls for a few ground rules.

For starters, since it’s easy to read negativity into written communication even when none is intended, it’s wise to always be friendly, even overtly friendly. Try to ensure there’s nothing in your phrasing that your recipients could interpret as annoyance or frustration on your part. The flip side of that is to always assume positive intent. In other words, even if your correspondents aren’t overtly friendly, try to assume no ill will is intended, and that no annoyance or frustration should be read into their words. And third, resist the urge to express charged emotion. Expanding on this point: some of us are prone to express exactly what we feel as soon as we feel it. But of course, as much as that might feel good in the moment, such words can cause permanent damage to our relationships. It’s always wiser to keep what we really want to say to ourselves—and instead respond as constructively as possible. (We’ll cover these items again lower down.)

PUT FEEDBACK LOOPS IN PLACE

On a remote team, we need to proactively build and maintain positive connections. For that it’s important to loop back with our teammates on a regular basis: to check how things are progressing, as well as to offer our feedback or support.

Now, for some the term “feedback” doesn’t conjure a sense of “positive connection.” Some people have a fear of receiving feedback. For others the fear is in giving it—especially when it’s peer-to-peer. Feedback can be difficult when there is tension around professional roles and status, especially concerning differences in age and educational background. Those who believe expressing themselves could do more harm than good are likely to just swallow their grievances or try to ignore them. The trouble is, small disturbances often don’t just go away; they can build over time—which can be detrimental to team alignment.

Whatever reluctance team members may have, there’s no avoiding it: to achieve group-wide goals, teams needs to continually strengthen their relationships, which calls for the regular giving and receiving of feedback.

Note that this isn’t about annual or biannual performance reviews, as virtual team consultant Pilar Orti clarifies: “When I think about feedback in an organization, I always picture it as coming from the upper layers in the organizational chart. When I think of feedback on virtual teams, I think of the physiology type of feedback where organs, muscles, neurons, and hormones are constantly talking to each other and affecting what happens next. On virtual teams, we all have to be involved.”39

So how do we go about this? Different organizations have come up with different approaches to providing that full-voiced feedback. One consideration is mode of communication: text, email, phone call, video chat, or team-wide video conversation. Another consideration is format. As for the latter, it helps to establish in advance what formats you’d use regularly and what you’d use for the difficult conversations—which hopefully won’t happen too often.

Standard Project Feedback

Chapter 4 shares how discouraging it can be when a team member comments negatively on a project when it’s too late to act on the suggestions. To prevent the conflict such incidents can produce—and to ensure your projects get well-timed feedback to begin with—it’s recommended that teams have an established protocol for both requesting and giving feedback. One effective approach is to specifically request different levels of feedback at different phases in a project. For more, see “The 30/60/90 Feedback Framework” sidebar ( p. 100 ) in chapter 4.

Regularly Take Your Team’s Temperature

As for the more standard team-wide fare, for many teams the aforementioned Retrospective offers the opportunity to give and receive feedback. Again, Retrospectives are regularly scheduled, facilitated feedback sessions for sharing progress, raising issues, and discussing solutions—often addressing four questions:

  • What is going well?
  • What could have gone better?
  • What have we learned?
  • What still puzzles us?

For example, in the Four L’s Retrospective, team members share what they liked, learned, lacked, and longed for; a variation on this is the Mad, Sad, Glad Retrospective. The Stop, Start, Continue Retrospective is effective for gauging the direction a team wants to head in. In a Sailboat Retrospective, a team discusses what baggage slows them down—as well as what wind propels them forward.40

Retrospectives are most effective when a facilitator is on hand to guide the conversation and ensure that every voice is heard. Entrepreneur David Horowitz elaborates on this point:

The open mic concept for Retrospectives simply doesn’t work, because usually some participants will dominate the conversation. And the other 95 percent just sit quietly, twiddling their thumbs or checking their phones. In a distributed setting, those troubles are just doubled, because it’s easy to hide behind the technology. Retrospectives should be facilitated so as to include the entire team in the conversation.

—DAVID HOROWITZ, cofounder and CEO, Retrium41

As it happens, David cofounded Retrium to develop software for facilitating engaging online Retrospectives. The software replicates online the visual functionality—such as flip charts and sticky notes—of colocated Retrospectives, thus enabling effective collaboration in the virtual sphere. (For more, see the Retrospectives  portion [ p. 316 ] of “Technology & Tools.”)

There are other approaches to regular feedback as well. At the outsourcing company Bridge Global IT Staffing, both clients and employees are asked every week how satisfied they were on a scale of 0 to 10. Some companies use WE THINQ, a tool that allows anyone to give feedback, post a comment, or ask a question. It’s more than just a digital version of the old filled-out-form-stuffed-in-a-box approach—which some consider to be an exercise in futility. With WE THINQ, each submission is visible to everyone else, who can then add thoughts and feedback—allowing for an organization-wide conversation. This is the same concept as the previously mentioned IdeaBoxes. IdeaBoxes is browser-based software, not unlike a social network, where users can follow and submit ideas. Each idea gets categorized into a “box” and tagged so that it’s easily findable. Since users can flag the ideas they like, the system enables like-minded people to continue the conversation.

Another way of getting team feedback is by taking the team’s “temperature” using some sort of survey. There are numerous online tools for doing this, from sophisticated evaluations to simple clicks on smiley or frowny faces. (For more, see the Feedback section [ p. 316 ] of “Technology & Tools.”)

The digital music service Spotify uses what they call a Squad Health Check Model. Every quarter or so they host regular workshops where teams (“squads”) evaluate themselves in eleven categories, such as product quality, teamwork, support, and fun. They then create a visual overview that summarizes all the teams’ data so they can prioritize next steps. (See figure to follow.) Visualizing data helps turn cyphers into stories.

image

A SPOTIFY TRIBE’S HEALTH CHECK OUTPUT. THIS GRAPHIC REPRESENTS THE SELFASSESSMENT OF SEVEN TEAMS (“SQUADS”). THE COLOR OF A CIRCLE SIGNIFIES ONE OF THREE STATES: GOOD, SOME PROBLEMS, OR REALLY BAD. AN ARROW ON THE CIRCLE INDICATES A TREND: UP = “GENERALLY IMPROVING”; DOWN = “GETTING WORSE.” (SPOTIFY)

Regardless of the tools you use, note the following guidelines:

  • Keep it simple. Make the process easy, even fun.
  • Present the data in a visual format to aid comprehension of the results.
  • Take your team’s temperature regularly—more than biannually. Just how regularly—weekly, monthly, or quarterly—depends on the team and the need, which can change over time.
  • Do something with the data. There are two angles to this one. The first is just practical: there’s no point in taking the team’s temperature unless you’re willing to act on the information gleaned from the process. But even more important is team morale: to repeatedly solicit this level of feedback and then to shelve it both wastes employees’ time and tests their patience.

Spotify also recommends:

  • Be clear about your motives for introducing the model. It should be about improvement, not judgment.
  • Make sure there is no incentive to game the model. There should be no reason for a team to want to “look good.”
  • Involve teams in how the model is applied.

An additional detail is Spotify’s recommendation to “gather data primarily through face-to-face communication, not online surveys.” Their process involves one-hour workshops during which the team collectively discusses their votes—which engages the members and thus facilitates later follow-through of whatever action steps result. Of course, that option might not be workable for all teams. Nonetheless, it’s recommended that the process be as engaging as possible.42

ADDRESS CONFLICT CONSTRUCTIVELY

Now for the stickier wickets. Team members can be very instrumental in addressing minor disturbances before they develop into conflict. That practice starts with ensuring we communicate positively and constructively. We can maintain positive communication by:

  • being friendly, even overtly friendly;
  • always assuming positive intent;
  • resisting the urge to express charged emotion; and
  • striving to keep interactions as constructive as possible.

We can help to keep more-heated interactions constructive by:

  • avoiding critical language;
  • keeping phrasing objective and fact-based;
  • acknowledging one’s own contribution to the situation; and
  • addressing only one issue at a time.

Of course, sometimes more substantial intervention is called for. To follow are two structured approaches for resolving conflict and easing tension.

Feedback Wrap

At Happy Melly, where I am the remote team manager, we use Jurgen Appelo’s Feedback Wrap whenever a team member feels even slightly annoyed or disappointed, which tends to happen every week or so. We start by setting context and describing the environment we find ourselves in. Then we list our observations—limiting ourselves to facts only. Then we express how we feel. We end with a suggestion on how to move forward. The entire objective is to be considerate and constructive, keeping the chance for hurt feelings to a minimum.

This approach was designed to be done in writing. However, note that written feedback can be precarious when the content is negative or emotionally charged—even if the phrasing is intentionally kind and constructive. If an issue seems too much for the written word, phone calls are much more effective. And if emotions are running strong, it’s best to have a face-to-face conversation—in person if at all possible. If the conversation is especially hard, consider bringing in a moderator to help facilitate. Having someone moderate can help keep emotions in check, ensure everyone’s voice is heard, and work toward a productive outcome.

Virtual Pillow Fight

We once used the moderator approach on the Happy Melly team in what was essentially a virtual pillow fight. Several members of the team had friction with one of the members but never said anything about it. As time passed and resentments grew, it finally came out—on the messaging platform Slack. Since that route wasn’t productive, we got together on a video call to hash it out; to keep the conversation fair, we assigned a neutral team member to moderate it. In that conversation we clarified misunderstandings and misinterpreted behavior. We didn’t solve everything then and there, but we did decrease the tension significantly. And we each left the meeting with one action item we would personally take to improve working together in the future.

Both the Feedback Wrap and the Virtual Pillow Fight are variations on Susan Scott’s seven-point guide, outlined in the sidebar to follow.

To wrap up this portion, if we want to cultivate a sense of togetherness on our remote teams, we have to be deliberate and proactive about doing it. We need to decide how we can best stay aligned and up to date with what we’re doing. We need to engage with our colleagues personally when we can, and to build some play into our agendas. And, if we have the luxury, we need to spend time together in person.

IN CONCLUSION: FORGE A STRONG, ALIGNED TEAM

“For me the challenge is knowing when to step in and when to let go. In my experience, people work better when they are armed with goals and the tools they need to achieve them, they know you have their back, and they are given the space to do what’s been asked of them.”

—KRISTIN KANGER, VP of talent management, Working Solutions44

The above covers an expanse of terrain. Hopefully along the way you found much that is applicable for your unique situation. Having now explored possible solutions for your personnel, objectives, and circumstances, it’s time to engage your team in collectively deciding what tools, processes, and protocols to use. From there you can document in a team agreement the expectations and etiquette of your work culture.

Remote Reminders

REPLICATING ON-SITE BENEFITS ONLINE

  • It’s entirely possible for remote teams to be as effective as on-site teams; it’s just a matter of finding what tools and practices will best enable that optimal productivity.
  • Ensure quick and easy access to the tools and information needed to do one’s job efficiently.
  • Communicate and collaborate regularly—online. Consider scheduling regular daily and weekly or bimonthly check-in meetings. Record meetings for those who can’t attend.
  • Employ online task or project-management software to document exactly what needs to be done and who is doing what.
  • Demonstrate reliability by working out loud; some teams also track productivity.
  • Build trust by acknowledging good work.

TEAM BUILDING

  • Be intentional about creating an atmosphere of togetherness.
  • Turn on the webcam when possible, since visual connection helps to bond the team.
  • Facilitate team bonding by encouraging team members to interact socially separate from their work activities. This often calls for scheduling unstructured time such as virtual lunches or game nights—even extra time before and after meetings.
  • Arrange for teams to meet in person regularly—ideally quarterly or more often.
  • Though conflicts will always emerge in teams, we can take steps to prevent them. For example, communal task board/software and working out loud help avoid miscommunication and task redundancy; positive communication approaches help keep the atmosphere pleasant and constructive.
  • Have feedback loops in place to facilitate fluid communication.
  • When conflict does occur, address it constructively.

NOTES

  1. 1   Lance Walley, “Hiring & Firing for Small Business Success: 25 Years, 130 People,” Chargify: The Bullring Blog, 12 January 2016, https://www.chargify.com/blog/hiring-firing-success.
  2. 2   AgileBill Krebs, “Collaborating in Virtual Worlds,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 8 December 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/15-collaborating-in-virtual-worlds-agilebill-krebs.
  3. 3   Howard B. Esbin, “Tuning Your Virtual Team,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 22 October 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/episode-2-tuning-virtual-team-howard-esbin.
  4. 4   Tom Sepper, COO, “World Wide Web Hosting Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, September 2015, https://remote.co/company/world-wide-web-hosting.
  5. 5   Liz Peterson, operations manager, “ezhome Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, July 2017, https://remote.co/company/ezhome.
  6. 6   Sieva Kozinsky, CEO, “StudySoup Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, January 2016, https://remote.co/company/studysoup.
  7. 7   James Law, HR director, “Envato Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, May 2016, https://remote.co/team/envato.
  8. 8   Cris Hazzard, partner, “Sanborn Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, April 2016, https://remote.co/company/sanborn-media-factory.
  9. 9   Fred Perrotta, CEO, “Tortuga Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, June 2017, https://remote.co/company/Tortuga.
  10. 10   Magnus Karlsson, “A Management System for Innovation,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, 4 March 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/ideaboxes-a-management-system-for-innovation-magnus-karlsson.
  11. 11   Noelle Daley, “What Colocated Teams Can Learn from Remote Teams,” Medium.com, 9 June 2018, https://medium.com/@elnoelle/what-colocated-teams-can-learn-from-remote-teams-f48bb4a708d1.
  12. 12   Teague Soderman, “Collaboration in Space Exploration NASA/SSERVI,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 22 October 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/episode-3-collaboration-space-exploration-nasa-sservi.
  13. 13   Ryan Chartrand, from video “Slack Tips Tuesday: How to Not Look Like a Slacker on Slack” on “The 5 Most Important Things We Do As a Remote Company,” X-Team, 10 July 2015, https://x-team.com/blog/5-important-things-remote-company.
  14. 14   Tish Briseno, “Celebrating 2 Years at Automattic,” 1 June 2017, https://tish.blog/2017/06/01/2-years-at-automattic; see also https://wordpress.org/themes/p2.
  15. 15   Mario Peshev, founder and WordPress architect, “DevriX Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, July 2016, https://remote.co/company/devrix.
  16. 16   Pierre Veyrat, “Check Out 10 Examples of OKRs and See How This Methodology Works,” Heflo.com, 23 December 2016, https://www.heflo.com/blog/business-management/examples-of-okrs.
  17. 17   Jurgen Appelo, “The Peer-to-Peer Bonus System,” Forbes, 8 July 2015, https://www.forbes.com/sites/jurgenappelo/2015/07/08/the-peer-to-peer-bonus-system/#6e1b96594329.
  18. 18   Louise Brace, email message to the author, 8 February 2015.
  19. 19   ShriKant Vashishtha, “Bridging the Gap on Distributed Agile Teams,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 November 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/11-bridging-the-gap-on-distributed-agile-teams-shrikant-vashishtha.
  20. 20   AgileBill Krebs, “Collaborating in Virtual Worlds,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 8 December 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/15-collaborating-in-virtual-worlds-agilebill-krebs.
  21. 21   Howard B. Esbin, “Tuning Your Virtual Team,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 22 October 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/episode-2-tuning-virtual-team-howard-esbin.
  22. 22   ShriKant Vashishtha, “Bridging the Gap on Distributed Agile Teams,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 November 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/11-bridging-the-gap-on-distributed-agile-teams-shrikant-vashishtha.
  23. 23   Thodoris Tsiridis, “How to Use Hangouts as a Virtual Office with Spotify,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, 28 November 2013, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/how-a-team-at-spotify-uses-hangouts-to-work-remotely.
  24. 24   Mark Kilby, “Facilitating Distributed Agile Teams,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 12 November 2014, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/9-coaching-distributed-agile-teams-mark-kilby.
  25. 25   Luis Suarez, “Engaging Remotely with Social Networks,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 January 2015, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/21-engaging-remotely-with-social-networks-luis-suarez.
  26. 26   Tom Howlett, “Build Trust on Remote Teams Through Pair Collaboration,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 2 March 2015, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/27-build-trust-on-remote-teams-through-pair-collaboration.
  27. 27   Mandy Ross, “Be a High-Functioning Connected Team in a Sococo Virtual Office,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 October 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/60-be-a-high-functioning-connected-team-in-a-sococo-virtual-office.
  28. 28   Carrie Kuempel, “Be a High-Functioning Connected Team in a Sococo Virtual Office,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 October 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/60-be-a-high-functioning-connected-team-in-a-sococo-virtual-office.
  29. 29   Howard B. Esbin, “Tuning Your Virtual Team,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 22 October 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/episode-2-tuning-virtual-team-howard-esbin.
  30. 30   Mandy Ross, “Be a High-Functioning Connected Team in a Sococo Virtual Office,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 19 October 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/60-be-a-high-functioning-connected-team-in-a-sococo-virtual-office.
  31. 31   Anna Danes, “An Interview with Managing Virtual Teams,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 12 June 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/interview-managing-virtual-teams.
  32. 32   Jeremy Stanton, “Being Deliberate with Onboarding and Culture with Jeremy Stanton,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 17 November 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/10-being-deliberate-with-onboarding-and-culture-jeremy-stanton.
  33. 33   Brie Weiler Reynolds, “Communicate Proactively and Build Culture,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 5 August 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/56-communicate-proactively-and-build-culture-with-brie-reynolds.
  34. 34   Carrie McKeegan, “Build a Global, Virtual Business with Greenback Expat Tax Services,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 2 November 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/62-build-a-global-virtual-business-with-carrie-mckeegan-of-greenback-expat-tax-services.
  35. 35   Robert Rogge, “An Interview with Managing Virtual Teams,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 12 June 2014, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/interview-managing-virtual-teams.
  36. 36   Ralph van Roosmalen, “How to Manage Three Remote Offices,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 9 February 2015, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/24-managing-three-remote-offices-with-ralph-van-roosmalen.
  37. 37   Ryan Baker, founder and CEO, “Timely Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, February 2016, https://remote.co/company/timely.
  38. 38   Pilar Orti, “Humanize Remote Work,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, 3 November 2014, https://www.collaborationsuperpowers.com/4-humanizing-remote-work-pilar-orti.
  39. 39   Pilar Orti, “Humanize Remote Work.”
  40. 40   “Retrospective Plans,” http://retrospectivewiki.org/index.php?title=Retrospective_Plans.
  41. 41   David Horowitz, “Make Remote Retrospectives Easy,” interview by Lisette Sutherland, Collaboration Superpowers, podcast audio, video, and transcript, 11 May 2015, https://collaborationsuperpowers.com/37-abolish-the-postmortem-with-david-horowitz.
  42. 42   Henrik Kniberg, “Squad Health Check Model: Visualizing What to Improve,” Spotify Labs, 16 September 2014, https://labs.spotify.com/2014/09/16/squad-health-check-model.
  43. 43   Susan Scott, Fierce Conversations: Achieving Success at Work and in Life One Conversation at a Time (New York: New America Library/Berkley, 2004), 189.
  44. 44   Kristin Kanger, VP of talent management, “Working Solutions Remote Company Q&A,” interview with Remote.co, https://remote.co/team/working-solutions.
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