We all know the importance of looking after people who have just joined our team, of guiding them through our processes, of showing them where to look for help. But often we overlook the fact that new people need our help beyond the obvious practicalities. One-one time is often lost when we go flexi or virtual.
Read MoreWhile eating at my favourite London Thai restaurant yesterday with a friend from school, my hands clenched into fists a few times. He was telling me how difficult it is for him to work from home. It doesn’t help that he’s completely uninspired by his current work, of course.
Read Moreis one of those words that, like 'communication', is mentioned as a solution to many team problems, but the word is often used in a non-specific way and without really considering what it really means to our way of working.
Read MoreAdvocacy is something that's formally forgotten about when we talk about team leadership. In virtual teams, it might be more difficult to advocate for your team and to have access to a wide network that can help you.
Read MoreWell, it could be. If you want it to. But don’t let anyone tell you it has to be.
I attended a conference last week where one of the speakers talked about how technology is changing the workplace. The presentation at one point moved to virtual teams and the importance of leading by example to make them work. The dreaded word (email) was mentioned:
Read MoreGoing remote, or virtual, or introducing flexible working, however it's being labelled, is a change programme. And often this change will affect our identity.
Read MoreEarlier in the year I shared my concern that, when the hype of new, shiny online collaboration tools starts to fade, we'll take our eye off the ball and start making the same mistakes in the virtual workspace as we've been making in the co-located space. My fears are coming true.
Read MoreGradually and unseemly, more of us are starting to rely on mobile working. We find ourselves working on our two hour train journeys, in airports, in the supermarket queues... We start to work away from the office one day a week. We begin to recruit people who prefer to work from home, so will only take flexible (truly flexible) contracts. We beginto understand where and when we do our best work and want to schedule our days accordingly.
Then one day, we realise that it's not working.
Read MoreVirtual Rhymes - little poems to help your virtual commute
Read MoreNot being happy with guest posting on our blog, Leila Machiavelli has sneaked in front of the camera to tell you how to destroy trust in your virtual team.
Read MoreEvery morning, I go for a walk in the park. The walk is really just an excuse to listen to a podcast without feeling like I should be doing something else more “productive”.
Quite often during these walks, my mind (encouraged by the repetitive exercise and the sound of the podcast voices’ energy) suddenly solves a problem I’ve been tackling or just wanders off and brings me back something unexpected. This morning, it brought me back a memory. And I thought it was perfect to open the post dedicated to the last component of the Virtual not Distant model, Leadership.
Read MoreThis post covers the 'A' in the Virtual, not Distant® model.
Read MoreTo coincide with National Learning at Work Week, I’d like to focus on the U of VIRTUAL: Upgrowth. We also have articles on Visibility, Identity, Results, Trust and Appreciation.
Read MoreThis is a guest post by Leila Machiavelli, who specialises in making sure organisations don’t evolve and that flexible working doesn’t work so that everyone has to be in the office at set hours, regardless of whether they can do their job from somewhere else or not.
Read MoreHave you recently set up as an entrepreneur and finally have people to help you with your venture?
Or maybe you work for a company and your team members are beginning to adopt flexible working.
Or perhaps you’ve just realised that team members are no longer talking to each other while 1000's of emails fly between them every week.
After writing this post, I realised what a great opportunity we have when working in virtual teams of increasing the quality of our communication. Is there anything I have missed out? Could most of this be applied to co-located teams?
Read MoreIn the previous post on Results, I suggested some starting points, as well as the need to have a schedule to update each other and not leave it to chance. In this post, I go over how to set up monitoring systems and different ways in which your team can track results and be kept in the loop of what's going on.
Read MoreThis is the second post addressing the VIRTUAL elements of communication in virtual teams. 'I' stands for Identity. To consume this post in an effective fashion, have a look at the one on Visibility and blend to your taste.
Read MoreThe desire to do things differently, to learn from each other, to find out how other people are doing it to make the workplace, wherever and whatever that is, as best as possible – this was the thread throughout yesterday’s No Pants Festival, held in Antwerp by Dare Devils.
Read MoreOne of the most difficult things about working in a virtual team is that you don’t regularly get to see the other team members. (Although, let’s face it, some people think of it as a blessing!) More importantly, if you can’t see them, it becomes more difficult to know what they’re working on or how they’re progressing. They’re not always “visible” which can lead to a sense of isolation in the team and a loss of trust.
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