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Be honest: how often do you find the time to give and receive feedback in your team? In remote teams, it's very easy to avoid these kind of conversations, when they are some of the most valuable input we can receive from our team members. This article recommends a few ways in which you can embed feedback systems into your team's communications. 

In this article, we cover a simple way of learning together as a remote team, through informal sessions where individuals share their learning. 

The communication-tool landscape is evolving every day. If you understand how each tool contributes to your team's work, it will be easier to replace it when you need an upgrade or when you decide to swap it a new one in the market. 

Some people don't like to brag about their achievements. Some managers don't want to disturb their team members and so, they rarely check in. This results in missed opportunities for recognition and development. 

It's not uncommon for managers to worry about results suffering when people work from home. However, the answer doesn't lie in insisting that people work in the office, but on understanding how we measure results. 

Taking advantage of the range of options in "Office Optional". How employees can redefine the way in which they work and companies can unlock new opportunities. 

One of Virtual Team Talk's most active members asked today for some advice on using audio-only meetings. I dug out a bit of script from a previous podcast episode (episode 64) and added some notes from a session we ran on audio-only during VTT's Internal Affair.

One of the largest shifts in team practice when people start to work remotely is how and where you hold your meetings. If you're introducing virtual meetings in your team, how you talk about them will matter. 

When deciding where, when and how your team needs to work, it helps to break down the type of work you need to do and plan accordingly. Here’s a suggestion to get you started, whether you’re collocated or remote – or most likely, somewhere in between. 

In this blog post, Pilar suggests that introducing remote work in organisations can actually help to reduce inequality in some sectors of society. 

The secret to successful remote collaboration? Adjust your notifications so that they work for you. Don't let tech get in the way of having a healthy relationship with tech. 

Back in February, I managed to miss the news that IBM was making more of its employees sit “shoulder to shoulder” with their colleagues. The corporation is limiting where employees work for the US Marketing Department to six of its offices. No more working from home; no more working in any of the other offices.

After reading the long-form article in Quartz, ‘IBM, remote-work pioneer, is calling thousands of employees back to the office’,  I’ve found myself pondering about what widely-reported news like this one might mean for the future of work and our attitudes to work.

If we continue talking about "the office" when we look at working in a virtual environment, aren't we in danger of not letting go of our previous mindset? 

Transitioning to “remote” does not just involve learning how to use new technology to help us stay connected. It involves re-designing how we communicate as a team - and this includes how we ask for help. In this article, Pilar makes the case for sharing your questions and requests for help with your whole virtual team, instead of defaulting to the one-one conversation.

Picture the scene. You are a manager who loves collaboration. But it’s difficult to nurture it, because you often find yourself coming up with many ideas. You feel that, while other people’s ideas often get picked apart and explored, yours tend to remain unchallenged.

“Happiness at work” does not mean the same to everyone. In today’s post, Pilar reflects on the dangers of holding a narrow version of “happiness” in our heads and she lays down a number of ways in which people differ when they think of “happiness”.

In the first episode of Management Café, Ishare some research on the communication patterns of high performance teams.

(You can download this handy PDF with the questions to guide you through your transition to a more flexible or virtual team by clicking here.)

Companies and teams that are “born virtual”,  just get on with the work.