I got a message today from somebody who clearly was upset that their institute would go back to fully remote teaching starting tomorrow due to the ongoing pandemic. His main concern being that participants seem to be less engaged and less open as a result again. Taking a ton of his own joy out of working with the groups.
Made me think of a few things that I have seen work in working with my fully remote teams. Some of my main takeawys are:
Be very intentional about how you facilitate in the remote team
Having a visual (like a slide deck) to share while the team or group is meeting is often good enough if you sit in one room together. What works better in remote teams is, when you engage in joint creation of materials during the meeting. That could be as simple as a shared meeting notes document, or even better a joint whiteboard (e.g. Mural) in which you brainstorm, collate and summarize discussion points from your session.
Remember the humans on the other side
In a real life interaction in an office or a school, we don’t really have to do much for every human to feel seen. We great each other at the door, we have smalltalk about our weekend at the coffe machine, we comment on somebody’s new haircut, ask about their vacation and congratulate each other for birthdays or similar occasions. It happens on its own, certainly often times in an unreflected automatic fashion and it is that little gel of humanity that lets us then show up to the meeting “ready for business”.
In a fully remote context, we have to intentionally make space for these interactions, too. It is the crucial social glue for teams and must be woven into your remote sessions. It is the opportunity for us to unterstand how the other humans around us are showing up that day.
A very easy way to do this is a two word checkin at the beginning of the meeting. If you are a small group, by all means do it spoken out loud. If your group is larger, you can use the chat function of your video conferencing tool. It allows people to share where they are at. And is a great way to know if there is something important in the room that would stand in the way of the main meeting agenda. It lets people show up as they are, and be seen as the humans we all are.
Investing in trust building and team bonding must be a daily activity
Brene Brown has a beautiful image of trust as a marble jar. It gets filled in these small ongoing interactions, by showing up in a caring fashion every single day. It gets depleted when we feel unseen, when we feel unappreciated, when we feel like we don’t belong.
The research about high performing teams is very clear. They share that magical psychological safety, which is resting on a foundation of trust. Trust does not typically appear by accident. It is a daily effort to invest into trust building and bonding as a team. Intentionally, with lots of little human interactions. It gets built through acts of generosity, acts of collaboration, the appreciation of our differences as strengths, curiosity in the face of situations that see us puzzled, and an ability to have candid constructive feedback conversations.
As a leader in your team, you create those spaces, you role model, you get to praise behaviors conducive for trust building, you praise the colleague who asks for help AND the one who offers to help, you praise the colleague who dares to say they are confused, or they have a question, or they have a doubt. You make it safe to voice these things by making sure there is no ridicule, there is no blaming, there is no judgement on those team members who dare to show up vulnerable or with a contradicting viewpoint.
And finally:
It is absolutely possible to have fun with remote teams
Build it into your schedule! During work hours (not after!), make a nerdy dad joke the end of your weekly staff meeting, organize a round of Code Names Online, take a fun holiday picture with everyone in a goofy hat and send it around with a small gift, do a round-robin of show and tell on a weird object people have on their desk (or their favorite piece of art, or their favorite record, etc…). There are so many ways to have fun together online. We have rarely laughed as hard as when we were playing Broken Picture Telephone with the team. People’s creativity, humor and artistic talent really came out. It creates those little “inside jokes” that make people feel like they belong to the team. It’s also simply really fun to do.
Remote Teams – a joy or a burden?
So after working with hybrid and fully remote teams for many years now (even pre-pandemic), here is where I fall: It takes more work, and more intention to successfully build teams in a remote fashion. It is a lot easier to do it in person. So yes, it asks more of you as a leader.
And at the same time, you can absolutely put a part of your intention into having fun and joy with your teams, and then go about structuring this into your team rituals and the way you run your meetings. Talk to your team about this, brainstorm together how you want to create that joyful and fun, yet focused and ambitious and thriving team environment. Make them your co-creators along the way with this and you will be able to have a ton of joy with your remote teams.
Inclusive Leaders 