This 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.
Read MoreMost of us now have registered with many tools, with many websites and to ask someone to add yet another login to their list... So I created a little video for them, to show them what the tool can do and why I prefer to use it instead of using any of the other tools and methods available.
Read MoreIn this interview, I talk to Alan Inman-Ward, the Tenant Insight Manager for Charter Housing. Amongst other things, he describes how he introduced the enterprise social networking tool Yammer into his organisation and he has some very valuable advice for those of you thinking of introducing an online collaboration tool into your team's communication process.
Read MoreWant to know more? Join us for a free webinar on Leadership and Motivation in Virtual Teams. April 2016
Read MoreYou have a virtual team: does that mean that you have to go mad signing up to all kinds of project managemenent tools, creating complicated areas where your team members can “hang out” and use the latest video conferencing technology to meet virtually?
Read MoreIn my previous post, Bringing Your Team Members Closer Together, I looked at how you can help your team members to have a greater sense of proximity, even if they're not co-located or haven't even met each other face to face. Here, and following the recommendations in the article ‘Who Moved my Cube?’ (HBR July/Aug 2011) by Anne-Laure Fayard and John Weeks, I talk about how to make sure team members still maintain their sense of privacy.
Read MoreWorking in teams has become the norm. With the recent need for companies to be “agile” and foster innovation, there is now doubt that informal communication can play a key part in a team’s and organisation’s growth.
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