Virtual & Hybrid Working

Stop the Steamroll: 4 Tips for Better Virtual Collaboration

March 21, 2022June 28, 2023 by Tiffany Vojnovski

We’re all responsible for what happens in the virtual space we share—and that goes double for managers. Our employees look to us for cues on what to say, how to say it, and whom to invite into the conversation. In short, managers don’t just guide our team’s work—we guide its culture.

And for better or worse, culture is as much a product of what we let happen as what we make happen. Whether our team meetings resemble a thriving ecosystem or a battle of alphas, we send a powerful message about who is heard and valued. As Gregg Kendrick, Director of Tranforming Leaders and Culture service, explains: “If conflict or negativity occur and they’re not addressed, they, too, are a part of your culture.”

Quick caveat: No team is perfect. But when inevitable moments of discomfort and dissent happen, we need to guide our employees through them.

That might sound personal—and sometimes it is. But leading with a service mindset is absolutely part of every manager’s job description. That means learning how employees want to relate, communicate, and work—then honoring their preferences and removing any barriers they face in doing their best work.

Create (Virtual) Space for Sharing

Making space for everyone to share is a vital part of leading with a service mindset. Sharing won’t look the same for everyone, and it won’t always happen synchronously—but it’s very much worth doing.

(Note: Our team has been fully remote for over a decade—since 2009!—so when we talk about collaboration, we picture a virtual space. Whether your team collaborates in the ether like us, in hybrid settings, or face-to-face, these tips still apply!)

You’re allowed to have fun with it, too! Our collaboration ecosystem can help your team members identify their participation style, using a common language to describe how quickly and boldly they share. This exercise is a great reminder that virtual collaboration can literally be a different animal for everyone.

Let’s start with those one or two team peregrine falcons on your team. They love to speak up in meetings. They fill the awkward silences and never fail to unmute themselves. They fly ahead of the rest of the flock, and they have a lot of ideas.

Peregrine falcons are great! But if they’re the only ones you hear from, you’re only getting the peregrine falcon perspective—and there are so many others worth hearing.

Some team members may not say much even when you call on them. Some get self-conscious and lose their train of thought. Some need double or triple the time to brainstorm ideas—and might sign on to a peregrine falcon’s idea when put on the spot. This dynamic makes it difficult to workshop ideas—and reduces the number of ideas on the table.

All of your people have ideas—we promise. Some simply need more time to think or a different way to share. That may be because their brains or bodies work differently or because their personalities show up differently in a group.

Your team members’ virtual collaboration style can even change in different contexts. In an all-hands meeting, your peregrine falcons might turn into slower or more cautious species—like cheetahs, sloths, and seahorses. And some of your sloths may speed up for a topic they’re passionate about.

People are complicated. But building a virtual collaboration ecosystem where every team member can thrive doesn’t have to be. A few easy-to-implement adaptations can shake up old habits and lift new voices.

Ready to give it a try? Pick a card—any card.

Virtual Collaboration Tip #1: Offer notice.

Benefits:

Offers a structured way to contribute and be heard
Respects thinkers who process at different paces and in different settings
Offers less-heard team members the opportunity to be experts

Virtual Collaboration Tip #2: Give everyone a job.

Benefits:

Offers a structured way to contribute and be heard
Provides an area of focus for each team member
Builds dissent into the brainstorming process

Virtual Collaboration Tip #3: Push forward, pull back.

Benefits:

Encourages self-awareness on the part of each team member
Allows thinkers who work more slowly to choose when to share
Models curiosity and interest in all team members’ opinions

Virtual Collaboration Tip #4: Follow up.

Benefits:

Allows thinkers who work more slowly to choose when to share
Models curiosity and interest in all team members’ opinions
Offers less-heard team members the opportunity to be experts

Better Virtual Collaboration → Better Business

We’ve said it before: Your team members want to do well, and you can help them by removing barriers to their success.

We’re not just talking about corporate red tape or glitchy meeting software, either. Norms of communication and behavior that make it hard for team members to hear each other are some of the most frustrating barriers of all.

If you’re not seeing a mix of species in your virtual collaboration ecosystem, keep switching it up! Adapting your meeting styles will help your more cautious sharers find their niches—and teach the bold to stop and listen.

Inviting everyone into the conversation isn’t just the kind thing to do; it’s also the best move for your business. Teams with all kinds of minds, perspectives, and backgrounds are stronger, smarter, and more innovative, though achieving a highly effective state takes time and practice.

Curious about more virtual collaboration and management practices that help your team achieve a highly effective state? Check out our eBook, It’s All About Your People!: Embracing Human-Centered Business, Workplace Culture, and Learning Design. You’ll find plenty of lessons about how to re-create teamwork as a source of resilience and fulfillment—all tested over our two decades as a human-centered organization (and decade-plus as a fully remote team!).

Feedback Mad Libs: Four Scripts for Candid, Caring Conversations with Coworkers and Other Humans

February 28, 2022September 16, 2022 by Tiffany Vojnovski

Lately, our collective conversation around emotional resilience has been incredibly rich—and necessary. And the timing comes as no surprise: We’re all trying to heal from the stress, hardship, and isolation the pandemic continues to bring.

We might notice that our emotions are a bit tender and our well of resilience a bit tapped. We’re not bouncing back from criticism or terse words quite the way we used to.

That’s why it’s more important than ever to treat one another with care. Doing so inspires others to show care in turn and contributes to the psychological safety of our teams. (Try our five-step “Communicate for Resilience” challenge with your team!)

Of course, work goes on—and at some point, we’ll need to give each other sensitive feedback at not-so-great times. How can we balance the need to have tough conversations with the need to show care and preserve our relationships?

Preparing for Human-Centered Conversations

Before we begin, we need to be in a good place ourselves. That means we’re feeling calm and have the bandwidth to consider what’s best for our teammate. (Need some help getting there? Step 1 of our emotional resilience challenge will help.) Then we deliver our feedback in a warm, well-meaning, and constructive fashion.

Sounds great, right?

It is great. But in the moment, it doesn’t always go so smoothly. We bungle, we blurt, and we blank out on the supportive, encouraging things we meant to say.

That’s why we teamed up with our Thrive by SweetRush Cultural Transformation team to save the day…with a script (or four).

Using proven human-centered feedback methods inspired by authors Sheila Heen and Kim Scott, we’ve created a collection of customizable feedback mad libs. (Remember those?) Writing your script for kind, constructive, effective feedback is as easy as filling in the blanks. We’ve included mad libs for communication, performance, and team relationships—plus a wild card you can use anywhere, anytime, with anyone.

Getting difficult, caring conversations right is vital. So why ad lib…when you can mad lib?

Starting Your Script: Five Essentials

Establish right away that you care about the person and that your feedback comes from that care. Remember that your teammate may not be expecting to receive feedback—that’s why we open with care.

Describe the situation clearly and concisely so that your teammate understands the context of your feedback.

Give an example of the behavior you observed—this is what you want your teammate to do differently, do more of, or stop doing.

Explain the consequences—good or bad—of your teammate’s behavior in the situation.

Ask your teammate to commit to a concrete action going forward.

Let’s warm up with an example of how that might look in a friendly conversation with a teammate.

Once you get comfortable with this basic script, you can add some flourishes of your own. Caveat: When we get nervous, we tend to add too many flourishes that can lead us off script.

Ready to rehearse a real-live coworker communication situation?

Mad Libs: Four (Potentially) Fraught Feedback Situations

Coworker Communication

Got a team member who does beautiful work…in secret? This mad lib will help you encourage them to share their milestones with the rest of the team.

Work Quality

The life stressors we’ve all been facing can prevent us from reaching our full potential—and this can affect the quality of our work. Completing this mad lib will help you and your teammate create a plan to protect your projects.

Coworker Relationship Issues

Acute stress makes higher-order thinking physically impossible, which means our teammates might have trouble applying the Golden Rule. We all slip up—but when you see a pattern of misdirected emotions, this mad lib can help you approach your teammate with kindness and understanding.

Wild Card: Human-Centered Feedback for Everyone

If you’re like 99.9999% of people, you might have seen some opportunities to give constructive feedback to folks in your family, neighborhood, and community. Personalize this mad lib to organize your thoughts and approach with care.

From the Page to the Stage: Continuing the (Caring) Conversation

Feedback conversations do get easier, we promise. And the biggest enabler is an organization-wide business practice built upon caring, commitment, and goodness—one with the “care and resilience of human workers” at its center. You’ll find that a human-centered organization treats its people with care and compensates their work with abundance.

Want to learn more about how to communicate, collaborate, and thrive on a human-centered team? Our eBook It’s All About Your People!: Embracing Human-Centered Business, Workplace Culture, and Learning Design will help you find the words, mindsets, and practices to re-create work as a source of resilience.

It’s a curated collection of lessons learned from our two decades together as a human-centered organization—and decade-plus as a fully remote team. Whether you’re a leader, a manager, or an individual contributor, you’ll find plenty of proven steps you can take today (or anytime!) to be happier and healthier at work.

Manage as If You’ve Never Been Burned: Mindsets and Practices for Better Virtual Management

February 21, 2022September 16, 2022 by Tiffany Vojnovski

You might say we’re at a collective Rubicon right now, with thousands of leaders crunching the numbers and seeing the business value of meeting their employees’ fundamental human needs and helping them grow their potential. We call these organizations human-centered organizations.

We love seeing more and more leaders steer their businesses in this direction! To light their way, we’ve been sharing our experiences in building a human-centered organization with compensation, policies, and procedures that provide abundance for our people and help them reach their full potential. (Want in? Check out Chapter 1 of our eBook.)

For organizations and roles that have the option, we firmly believe that virtual work is the human-centered choice. We’ve been 100% remote—and thriving!—since 2009, and our employees savor the time recovered from commuting. (See below for a snapshot of how our team members have reclaimed that time.)

The result: renewed, refreshed employees who log on ready for collaboration, creation, and new challenges.

Not seeing this side of your people? They’re probably going through a stage. And you can help them through it with great virtual management skills that help them grow into their full potential.

Human Potential: We’re All Going Through a Stage

Like much of life, human potential can be measured in stages. We’re social science buffs, so we’ve been inspired by Maslow’s hierarchy of needs; Graves, Beck, and Cowan’s Spiral Dynamics; and Kohlberg’s stages of moral development. All of these models speak to how meeting people’s fundamental needs helps them develop to their full moral, intellectual, and creative potential.

What does that mean for the workplace?

Essentially, when employees are freed from existential concerns—safety and security, for example—they have the energy and bandwidth to immerse themselves in their craft, grow, and innovate. If they’re stuck in survival mode, they can’t engage in this deep work.

We’ve simplified these models into three stages of human potential. Remote work is just one part of what we call Stage 3. Stage 3 is characterized by creativity, connection, and a harmonious relationship with supervisors and peers.

Not sure where your employees fit? Tune in to the tone of your next team call. Are your people guarded and curt or expansive and open? How do they talk about their time away? What hobbies do they have?

If they don’t say much, consider why not. Is their salary enough to support their interests—and basic needs? Are you rigid about where and when your employees work? Do your employees trust you with personal information?

The Virtual Management Opportunity

Your employees’ daily interactions with you and their peers can make or break their quality of life at work and their ability to reach their potential. And—no pressure!—managers have an outsized impact upon how the entire team behaves and interacts.

The sum of those behaviors is what we talk about when we refer to team culture. Gregg Kendrick, Director of Thrive by SweetRush, adds, “Those behaviors include what people choose to say—and how they react in difficult moments. If conflict or negativity occur and they’re not addressed, they, too, are a part of your culture.”

In other words, culture is everything you do—and everything you don’t do.

Where’s a virtual manager to start?

We’re so glad you asked! Here are a few virtual management mindsets and practices that have made our 20-year experiment in remote work a success.

Managing Better: Virtually

Trust

Trust is a key element in remote work, both among colleagues and between managers and their teams. A study by Heidi K. Gardner identified two essential types of trust for effective remote teamwork (cited in Mortensen & Gardner, 2021):

(Gardner, 2021)

Trust is a two-way street; it’s also the path to the other virtual management mindsets and practices. Trust is also a direct route to psychological safety—a fundamental human need.

Assume Positive Intent

We’ve said it before, but it’s important enough to repeat—and to be a foundational step in our Emotional Resilience Challenge!

As you engage your employees, assume the best. Whatever makes the person tick, their modes of interaction are not about you, directed at you, or used with malicious intent.

As Linda, our COO, reminds us, we need to trust that everyone is doing their best. We don’t know what Stage 1 worries the person might have or what else is competing for their attention. In fact, if we knew what they were going through, we might be impressed by how well they’re performing under pressure.

Offer Autonomy

Here’s where you build on that foundation of positive intent. You’ve got great people; now let them figure out when and how to do their jobs.

Autonomy is a huge part of a Stage 3 life. Trust your employees to set their own schedule, deliver projects, and manage client relationships—and you’ll get better results.

Remember that two-way street? Extending this trust to your people means that they’ll reciprocate: You’ll hear from them when there’s an issue—and while there’s still time to repair it.

Clear the Pebbles

Trusting your team frees you up to spend your energy more productively. One of the biggest values you can add is by removing external barriers to your employees’ work. Whether they need access rights, different tools, or a forum to share their work, you can use your influence to get them what they need.

These don’t need to be major, either—ask your people about the “tiny, incremental, irritating, and painful stuff at work that can wear [them] down” over the course of the day. Social psychologist Christina Maslach describes these as “pebbles” that gradually accumulate and contribute to burnout (Harvard Business Review, 2019).

Removing the pebbles (and boulders) that inhibit them helps your employees focus on their biggest value-add: reaching their potential through the practice of their craft.

Find the Root Cause

Fact: People generally want to do a good job.

Fact: They don’t always succeed.

These two facts are not mutually exclusive—and they’re not a cause to withdraw trust. When an employee performs poorly, there’s probably more to the story. If they trust you not to penalize them for mistakes, they’ll come to you first. For example, if an employee can admit to you that they were short with a client after an all-nighter with an ill parent, you can preempt that angry call and de-escalate the situation.

If an employee doesn’t feel safe, they’ll hide any missteps—and appear irresponsible. That’s a vicious cycle: If you view them as irresponsible, you’ll begin to treat them differently. In turn, they’ll feel less safe and hide even more.

The bottom line: Assume that employees mean well even when they don’t perform well. Start the coaching conversation with “How are you?” and follow that up with “How are you really?” Keep in mind that Stage 1 stress takes higher-order thinking off the table—and plan together accordingly. You’ll avoid the need for after-the-fact damage control. (Want to keep your coaching conversations on message? Try these feedback mad libs.)

Managing the Change

If, like so many of us, your management practice began in a face-to-face office setting, the adjustment to virtual management may feel uncomfortable at best. Trusting people you can’t see—and might never have met in person—may feel counterintuitive.

We’d still encourage you to take the risk—and trust your employees more than might feel comfortable. After all, most people want to do well. Protecting yourself from the few who don’t is a waste of energy: It harms your relationships with your team and detracts from the psychological safety that helps us all reach our full human potential. Let Manage as if you’ve never been burned be your guiding principle.

Of course, you need to know that you have the right people for the job. (Check out some tips and resources from our Talent Management team on recruiting the best people—virtually!) Once the right people are in place, extending trust is the best way to elicit trustworthy behavior and high-quality work from your team.

Curious about more virtual management practices that help your people reach their full human potential? Check out our eBook, It’s All About Your People!: Embracing Human-Centered Business, Workplace Culture, and Learning Design. You’ll find plenty of lessons from our two decades as a human-centered organization—and decade-plus as a fully remote team.

Print More Golden Tickets: Virtual Recruiting the Human-Centered Way

February 14, 2022September 16, 2022 by Tiffany Vojnovski

As leaders respond to the changing work—and life—landscape, we’re realizing that meeting employees’ human needs and supporting their long-term growth help advance people and profits. An organization devoted to doing both is known as a human-centered organization, and we’re delighted to see so many leaders finding this path.

After 12 years and counting as a fully virtual company, remote work is an important chapter in our 20-year journey. Remote work—and its close cousin, hybrid work—provides employees with flexibility and autonomy: the hallmarks of a human-centered organization.

Together with compensation, policies, and procedures that prioritize your people, flexibility and autonomy help your employees flourish and reach their full potential. Happy, fulfilled people working at their highest potential deliver great work and build strong relationships with clients and colleagues. They’re also more resilient—a much-needed quality as we weather challenges and crises.

In short, they’re great for business.

If you’ve joined us on the human-centered path, you already know that—and you’re celebrating the great people you have.

And if remote or hybrid recruiting still feels new, you might also be wondering how to find more of them.

Wonder no more! Building a great team is a journey, not a destination—and we’re more than happy to share a few pointers from our perpetually evolving itinerary.

Virtual Recruiting and the Golden “No”

Great culture and remote work—and contract work, through our Talent Solutions service—help us attract the best candidates from around the world. But they also attract thousands of others, which means that we have far more applicants than open positions.

That’s a great problem to have! It means that the people we choose, whether for our own team or a client’s, are the best of the best.

But it also puts us in the tough position of saying “no” more often than we say “yes.” In other words, it means that disappointment will be a part of most candidates’ experience with us—and with our clients when we recruit on their behalf. Empathy—and a healthy dose of the Golden Rule—is vital in delivering the disappointing news.

Rejection stings. It hurts even more when we ghost a candidate after a great interview—or never acknowledge their application at all.

Mistreating candidates not only hurts their feelings, it undermines our mission to do good in the world. Candidates who feel burned are less likely to reapply in the future, recommend our organization to others, or do business with us. However, they’re quite likely to share their experience via Glassdoor, other social media, or word of mouth.

A poor candidate experience also costs us money. Even industry leaders feel the pain: Back in 2014, Virgin Media reported a loss of over 7,500 customers and $6 million in revenue due to poor candidate experience.

Handling every application with care isn’t just the right thing to do; it’s the right way to do business.

Here’s how to deliver the golden “no”:

Acknowledge applications immediately. A one-line automated reply is enough to reassure them that their carefully written cover letter hasn’t disappeared into the void.

Keep them updated on every step of the process. Doing so would make 81% of applicants happy—even when the news is bad.

Follow up with a personal note to candidates you’ve interviewed but have decided not to pursue. Whenever possible, try to provide a reason, e.g., “We loved your enthusiasm, but we’ve decided to go with a more experienced candidate,” or “Your writing sample was strong, but we’re looking for a less academic tone.” If they follow you on social media, they’ll probably see whom you’ve chosen—don’t make them guess what the new hire has that they don’t.

Thank them for their time and interest. Without folks like them, we wouldn’t have such a great pool of talent to choose from. We owe our gratitude to each and every person who jumps in.

Invite every candidate to stay in touch—and reapply for future openings. Today’s “almost” can become tomorrow’s top candidate—don’t burn that bridge!

Prompt, warm communication adds transparency and humanity to a process that too often feels opaque and intimidating. Our ability to apply the Golden Rule at these vulnerable moments speaks volumes about our character—and our culture.

Print More Golden Tickets

Let’s move to a happier topic: the invited guests. And because the virtual recruiting process is so easy to get right when the news is good, we’re going to take a huge leap over it here.

Let’s assume that you’ve whittled your choices down to two strong contenders. Both seem perfect: They have the right skills, the right experience, the right attitude and, darn it, you like them. You’re just about ready to flip the coin when one candidate expresses a need for flexibility. (See below.)

Deal or No Deal?

You’re hiring for a full-time, permanent, salaried role. Which of the following statements are dealbreakers?

I can only work 25 hours per week.
I can only work six months out of the year.
I can work 40 hours over the course of the week, but I need a flexible schedule.
I can only work 20 hours through September, but then I can jump up to full time.
I need to take a leave of absence in three months.

Trick question, right? The role is full-time, permanent, and salaried, so every one of these statements is a dealbreaker. The Golden Ticket goes to the other candidate by default.

Not so fast!

Friends, the position may well be designated in “the system” as a year-round, 40-hour, immediate-start, salaried role. But one of two great candidates has just expressed that this work model won’t work for them. And they’ve been honest with you up front, which speaks volumes about their character.

Sure, we could deliver a Golden No. But what if we thought differently about the way we fill the position? What if we could get beyond the binary thinking of full- versus part-time?

Offer Contract Work

Contract and project-based work is one way to break out of binary thinking and invite more professionals into our community of practice. These options help us meet the needs of professionals who have seasonal or sporadic availability while also filling critical positions on our clients’ teams—and our own. If you’ve attracted a few great candidates who don’t want to give up the freelance life, consider changing the role—not the candidates.

Removing these constraints not only helps you get the best talent pool; it opens opportunities for people who need flexibility due to caretaking, health, and family concerns. And because the bulk—31.65 hours per week on average—of caretaking falls upon women, remote work also helps to keep women in the workplace.

Part of our responsibility as members of a human-centered organization is to remove barriers that prevent our teams from resembling the wider community. The five million female employees who dropped out of the workforce over the past year are a tremendous—and avoidable—loss.

Destroy Binary Thinking

Throughout the pandemic, our major life stressors have been amplified: We’ve been packed tighter, stretched thinner, and held in a perpetual state of limbo. With the collective burnout we’ve experienced, our normal rules for vacation time, recovery time, onboarding time, and an eight-hour workday simply do not apply.

That’s why we need to move beyond the rigid binaries of full- versus part-time and all or nothing. Removing those constraints from our remote recruiting practice helps us invite a larger pool of candidates into our talent pool—and say yes to more of them. And by providing more people with a means of earning money for practicing their craft—and developing it further—we do more good in the world.

Employee Retention: Play the Long Game

One of our managers encountered all three of the following situations over the past year and a half.

How do you think she responded?

How surprised were you by the manager’s reactions to these situations?

A traditional manager might have responded by pointing out the mismatch between the employee and the business need—and cutting ties. But thinking outside the binary, as our manager did, allowed her to retain her employees over the long term. Her team of highly skilled, senior-level knowledge workers is hard to replace—but she knows she can count on their loyalty and commitment.

Virtual Recruiting and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

We’ve saved the best for last on this whirlwind tour of remote recruiting: Meeting our candidates remotely has been a lifeline for us in our journey toward inclusion. It’s freed us from the constraints of a single geographic area and given us teammates who span 12 countries and every time zone. It’s helped us hire extremely talented people whose bodies and brains aren’t well served by a traditional office. And it helps us eliminate a lot of the “noise” that isn’t relevant to the role: details such as a candidate’s fashion sense, posture and gestures, and what their body looks like or can do.

We’re so grateful to have a way to cut through that noise and broaden the definition of that elusive quality we call SweetRush. (Yes, we use it as an adjective!) And it’s not just a nice-to-have: As the biggest drivers of social change, organizations have a significant responsibility to employ a workforce that reflects the larger community.

Beyond a Firm Handshake: The Business Benefits of Virtual Recruiting

If you’re used to evaluating candidates by the firmness of their handshake, virtual recruiting may feel like a challenge. Trusting candidates when you can only see their head and shoulders—and whom you might never meet in person—may feel awkward at first.

But the benefits of virtual recruiting far outweigh the costs. Seeking candidates across regional—even national—boundaries opens your organization to a wider and more diverse talent pool. People who bring entirely new ways of thinking and working to the table make your team smarter and more innovative.

Having the right people for the job, wherever they are in the world, boosts managers’ confidence in their teams—and helps them extend trust to their employees. (Here’s why a great virtual management practice begins with trust.)

Ready to learn more about virtual recruiting and management practices that attract the best people—and keep them happy for the long term? Check out our eBook, It’s All About Your People! Embracing Human-Centered Business, Workplace Culture, and Learning Design. You’ll find plenty of lessons from our two decades as a human-centered organization—and decade-plus as a fully remote team.

Leading Remote Teams Webinar: Answers to Your Questions

May 19, 2020September 16, 2022 by Ashley Munday

As a leader of remote teams, you have important work in front of you—so does your team, who needs leadership and an organizational culture that supports them in being successful. Our panel of virtual leadership veterans and culture experts have answers for important questions, from fostering caring and trust to navigating a fear of failure.

At our recent webinar, Get the Inside Scoop on How to Lead High-Performing Teams When Working Remotely, we discussed challenges that leaders are facing due to COVID-19—leading remote teams for the first time, and leading through uncertainty.

SweetRush Cofounders Andrei Hedstrom and Arturo Schwartzberg brought insights based on 10 years of leading our 100% virtual company. Culture and change experts Gregg Kendrick, Ahmad El Nashar, and Quanita Roberson spoke about how to be present for your team and drive positive cultural change that benefits everyone in this moment. If you missed our session, you can still access the recording at eLearningIndustry.com!

Thank you for your great engagement and questions during the session. As promised, here are our reflections on the questions that we didn’t have time to answer during the session.

LEADING A TEAM

How do you “stop by someone’s office” when you’re a remote manager? I typically did that by walking around. Now when I do it remotely, it seems artificial or forced.
How do you manage team members who already have a sense of distrust with you as a lead/manager?
How do you deal with someone on your team who has shown you that they cannot be trusted?
We talk a lot about fear of failure. How have you been vulnerable and shown your teams it is OK to fail and thus build trust?

MANAGING UP

How do you deal with difficult persons, especially from senior management, when trying to create mutual success? What is the best way to manage my manager?
Can you please share ideas for emphasizing and building an atmosphere of caring and shared respect when it does not have top-down support?

LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY & CONCEPTS

There are various types of leadership in society, such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. Psychology, inherent values, ethics, and moral values also affect leadership quality. Please help me understand what the qualities of a good leader are during coronavirus.
I love systems thinking as long as the systems are open-ended and inclusive with real context. How do you contextualize any systems without excluding the value of other systems?
Can you please explain how to “act with intentionality”?
You use the words “sense of community” and culture. How do you differentiate them in building the levels of trust required when one is an input and the other may be an output?

LEADERSHIP INSPIRATION

How has this inspired your clients in their own cultures? Any favorite stories to share?
Where can I learn more about developing effective leadership skills and stronger, more productive teams?

LEADING A TEAM

How do you “stop by someone’s office” when you’re a remote manager? I typically did that by walking around. Now when I do it remotely, it seems artificial or forced.

Ashley Munday: Real-time chat technologies can be a great way to “stop by someone’s office.” Skype and slack are both good examples of this. You can ping your employees and see if they have time for a brief chat. Create a routine of making the rounds and soon it will feel as natural as a casual drop-in. (Read more about Remote Team Communication and Technology.)

Andrei Hedstrom: The heart of this work is about being curious and having empathy. Find a simple exercise to put your heart and mind on each person. I keep lists and I also try to keep a few minutes before a meeting or connection with a person to think about them and wonder about how they are doing and what they are working on. I keep another assertion fresh when I talk with them.

Research has shown that people can be productive and feel good even in tough moments or settings when they believe they are making progress on something they believe is meaningful or has purpose. Part of my curiosity and service to people is keeping that front and center. I ask questions that help me get clear on whether they are focused on meaning and purpose and if they aren’t I focus my connections with them on that. Sometimes they don’t know what they are doing is meaningful, because they don’t have your context and need you to help them connect the dots to why it is important for the organization or for you or for peers.

When you ask these kinds of questions, you draw them closer to what matters to them, and they feel you focused on them and what is meaningful. Through this, you often discover a way that you can be of service to them, and if you take action, knocking down a barrier, giving them a resource, helping them think through a tricky conversation they need to have, they will see you differently.

The fact that you “walk around” is a good practice. In person, this shows you are available and care about them. Remotely, walking around looks different. I use some of the techniques mentioned above, but there are many ways to virtually walk around or gather that can feel genuine to you and your team. Experiment. If nothing seems to work, tell stories. Have a story that illustrates the values you want the team or the person to pick up. Have it be a story that you want to tell. Everyone loves stories.

How do you manage team members who already have a sense of distrust with you as a lead/manager?

Ashley Munday: Leadership 360-degree assessments that collect anonymous feedback are a key way to understand how you are being perceived. At times, it could be a misperception, because the team members don’t understand your intention. Other times, it may be because they don’t believe that you advocate for their needs. This is important feedback to adjust your behaviors and communications.

On another tack: Stephen M. Covey believes that trust is developed through competence, doing your job well, and character, how you act. Cultivate a culture of feedback and learning, both with one-on-ones with individual team members and together as a team. Frequently communicate about the culture you want to create and the strategic objectives you intend to achieve. It is not up to you to convince anyone to like you, but with clear communications and integrity of behavior, you will soon know who is truly aligned with where you are going.

Gregg Kendrick: I agree wholeheartedly with Ashley’s comments. Additionally, I would encourage authentic conversations, both collectively with your team as a whole and individually. Encourage your team members to express their celebrations as well as their concerns. Listen and ensure they know you are listening—for example, write it down on a flip chart, reflect back what you are hearing, report back survey results, etc. For “whole team” conversations, you will likely find it advantageous to get an outside facilitator so you can focus on connecting with your team rather than holding the process of the conversation.

How do you deal with someone on your team who has shown you that they cannot be trusted?

Ashley Munday: First, believe that they can change and be trustworthy again. Give that person clear feedback, about what did not work for you, and what you would hope for the future. Ask that person what’s going on in their life and work.

Going forward, make clear agreements. Encourage team members to negotiate the terms of what, how, and when it is delivered, so that they accomplish the work but do it in a way that makes sense to them as well. Empower team members to take ownership to renegotiate delivery terms if needed. We live in complex times and our priorities shift.

Lastly, if the person is repeatedly unable to meet agreements or to meet the needs of the role and team, it is fair to put that person on a Performance Improvement Plan to give them an opportunity to change their behaviors or to move on from that position.

We talk a lot about fear of failure. How have you been vulnerable and shown your teams it is OK to fail and thus build trust?

Gregg Kendrick: At the core of a “fear of failure” is the mindset that when I make a mistake, when I get it wrong, I’ll be blamed, I’ll be punished, I’ll be seen as ‘less than.’ To build trust as a leader, the conversation needs to shift to owning the situation and learning from it. I often use coaching questions to support this difference—such as How did your choices and actions contribute to this situation? What would you do differently next time? What support would you need to make that happen? The key here is to shift from a “mistake/blame” mindset to a “ownership/learning” mindset.

Model this behavior by owning your own “mistakes” and being explicit about how you are learning from them. Even better, ask your team members to give you feedback when your own behaviors are not in alignment with core team values or principles. Share with your team members a specific behavior you are working on as a leader, and ask for their feedback around that behavior. Create an environment of mutual accountability.

Andrei Hedstrom: Abolish the idea that people are basically bad or trying to get away with things, if you have any of that in you. People can smell that in a leader, even if you are trying to cover it over with the clichés of the day about failure. “There is no failure, only feedback” is something I keep fresh in my mind. You should also keep in mind that much of society has programmed us with the goal of being somehow perfect at what we do, even going so far as creating situations where people feel they should be perfect at something they are trying for the first time, or doing in unreasonable circumstances. They not only get into treating themselves this way, but end up with unrealistic expectations of perfection from others and expecting it of others. While privately we all know this is not realistic and can create situations for more suffering, blame, and defense, people’s general default setting is this way.

I lean on something I learned in my counseling graduate degree: Carl Rogers talked about “unconditional positive regard.” Extending through your actions and words a sense that you hold the person as basically good and even if their actions created challenges or a “failure,” you recognize it does not impact their basic goodness, and also the confidence they can work toward something better. So, all you give them in terms of direction or feedback will come from the assumption that you are both working from that basic good space and have abilities to improve. In that context, supporting and being vulnerable yourself is much simpler. I like to tell stories about my own moments of “failure” both with happy and not-so-happy endings. The moral of each story is typically pointing at coming to an understanding that being open to feedback inherent in challenging moments is a catalyst for growth, and feeling more satisfied about the outcomes of our work.

There are other angles you can work with this, and I would be happy to hear more specifics about your work and team and perhaps offer something more. I would add, and my guess is if you are holding this question, you might have already seen the research of Brene Brown. It’s compelling and feels easy to pick up (here’s her well-known TED Talk, “The Power of Vulnerability”).

Ashley Munday: I’m a big believer in cultivating the concepts of a Growth Mindset. I highly recommend having your team watch this TED talk and talk about learning and growth regularly in your team meetings. There are some innovative approaches to naming and learning from failure. One organization had a regular Church of Fail to celebrate the lessons learned. A client of mine had a #failfast competition and would reward the best failure and learning stories submitted each quarter.

MANAGING UP

How do you deal with difficult persons, especially from senior management, when trying to create mutual success? What is the best way to manage my manager?

Arturo Schwartzberg: This is a challenge we have all faced. There is a fine art to posture yourself and act in a way that disarms another person, especially someone in senior management. Most people think of managing down, but rarely do people think of managing up, and it’s good to think about how to manage up.

People are people, and they have egos and insecurities and each of us is different. How you might “manage up” to one individual who is difficult will take some thought and artful action on your part. Start by finding ways to let them know you care about them and empathize with some of the difficult challenges they are facing.

There are many techniques to get beyond someone’s surface shields or masks: Maybe you can ask them for their help and advice since people like to feel they are wise and their counsel is being sought. Maybe you can ask them to join you for a virtual coffee or lunch and open up a bit, make yourself a little vulnerable and see if you can get them on your side. These are just ideas, and each person is different; how you can get yourself and them into a mutually advantageous position is an art form you will need to cultivate and practice, and over time this will enable you to manage up and down elegantly.

Arturo Schwartzberg: When my daughter entered the workplace, she kept moving from one company to the next because the cultures were so bad, it was not going to hold onto this good-hearted millennial. Somehow I was surprised (naive) by just how bad these cultures were, in this day and age. Perhaps you find yourself in this sort of environment, and ultimately it may not hold you…but in the meantime, you are there and you have a team to support.

So, do the right thing, show your team you care and, to some extent, you can align with them in a shared desire to be the team bucking the trend—without, of course, bad-rapping management (too much). This, of course, makes your job harder, but on a personal level, you can create magic, bond with your team, and, as a team, set goals for everyone to be awesome—not for the company, but for yourselves. Good luck!

Ashley Munday: Without top team support, it can be difficult to sustain a culture within a team that’s different from the overall organizational culture. That said, with a strong leader, an intact team can create their own norms and agreements about caring and shared respect with intention, practice, and dialogue to learn and grow together.

LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY & CONCEPTS

There are various types of leadership in society, such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. Psychology, inherent values, ethics, and moral values also affect leadership quality. Please help me understand what the qualities of a good leader are during coronavirus.

Andrei Hedstrom: Service and empathy. Care about your people to seek an understanding and a felt sense about what they are going through. Care about them, their family and community, and the work they care about. Once you have any insight about what they need, serve that need.

I sometimes think about leadership in terms of karma. Meaning, when you care about people, those good feelings are an investment in the relationship that you may benefit from later. Make good karma; take every advantage to create karmic credit with all the people you serve. It not only makes for better relationships when they have needs you need to serve, but also can be called upon as a favor when you need something from them. Everyone has needs and everyone wants love and respect. Every leadership style has to deal with that. Some look to suppress or control those. Servant leadership looks to attend those and balance the many needs around them while moving the organization’s needs forward.

Ashley Munday: Empathy first in this time. There’s a great piece that McKinsey recently put out titled “Cultivating Compassionate Leadership in a Crisis.”

I love systems thinking as long as the systems are open-ended and inclusive with real context. How do you contextualize any systems without excluding the value of other systems?

Ahmad El Nashar: First, determine which level the system exists in: team/organization/society/global etc. Then, think about the internal and external components of each system, how they relate to each other, and how they are different. So, if you are in a team, some internal questions to ask as a team include What do our stakeholders expect from us? What is our purpose? What are our values/norms? How will we organize ourselves? Some external questions would include What external factors have an impact on our team? What information do we need from other teams? What information do we provide? How do we communicate with other teams? By answering such questions, you define the boundaries of your own system and its relationship with other systems.

Can you please explain how to “act with intentionality”?

Ahmad El Nashar: Acting with intentionality is about being clear about the purpose of your actions. We are constantly receiving information that we should consider when taking actions to make sure we are taking into account this data we are receiving. Think about how many of us walk into meetings that are in our diaries—just because that has been the norm for years—when there are clear signs that the meeting is no longer serving its purpose. So, if you are in a meeting, what is the purpose of the meeting? What outcomes are you hoping to get out of it? Is the meeting designed to help the team achieve such an outcome?

Similarly, acting with intentionality can manifest itself in many different ways. Another example is prioritization: How does a team prioritize tasks and goals? What influences their prioritization process? If you are creating a presentation, who is it serving and what is it trying to achieve? As an organization, how is our customer behavior changing? Are we still serving the right customer profile? Typically, we receive data that can help answer such questions, but a lot of time we don’t use it or tune into it, and fall victims of deeply entrenched habits. Acting with intentionality is essentially a mindset that helps us tune into the wider system and respond to it more effectively.

You use the words “sense of community”and culture. How do you differentiate them in building the levels of trust required when one is an input and the other may be an output?

Gregg Kendrick: I see these two qualities as distinct, yet potentially highly related.

Belonging is a core human need. A person’s “sense of community” or “sense of belonging” in the workplace is nurtured when their contribution to the larger team or organization is seen and valued. For this to happen, the leader needs to first ensure the person has a clear role that’s defined in terms of the value it brings to the team and organization. Secondly, the person needs feedback from their peers and leaders that their contribution is seen. Not just the extraordinary ways they deliver value, but the tasks they do every day that are a part of their role. Belonging and being heard are two qualities that strengthen a person’s sense of self-worth (that is, that they matter).

In building a culture, leaders state what they value (that is, core values, purpose, principles) and more importantly demonstrate what they value both by their example and by creating a culture of accountability around what they value.

Another aspect of enhancing “sense of community,” then, is recognizing or “seeing” when a person is showing up in alignment with the organization’s core values, purpose, and principles, or having an accountability conversation when their behavior is not in alignment.

Of course, if one of the core values of the organization is “belonging” or “building a sense of community,” then you are amplifying this connection between culture and “sense of community.”

LEADERSHIP INSPIRATION

How has this inspired your clients in their own cultures? Any favorite stories to share?

Arturo Schwartzberg: Thank you for asking this question as it has me thinking about how we—and really all of us—may have affected not only our clients, but people around us in ways we do not realize. We do have a clear philosophy about trying to make a positive contribution to every life we touch or that touches us.

In our Talent Solutions group, we are often looking for talent for our internal team and often for our clients’ teams. Every time we have a job opening, we may get 100 or 500 resumes from applicants, people who want this job, and yet at the end of the day we will only hire one—and so 99 or 499 will be rejected. So we ask, how can we respond to these 499 in a way that is respectful and kind and somehow adds to their lives?

And so we try, and we try as well to act in a way with clients where they experience SweetRush being different. They experience a committed team that is respectful, but also intentional about acting in ways that are all about mutual success and not the success of one party over the other. Clients seem to love us and stick with us, so somehow I have to hope that our way of being rubs off.

Where can I learn more about developing effective leadership skills and stronger, more productive teams?

If you’re in need of skill and competency building, Thrive by SweetRush has two established workshops that we just converted to virtual. These workshops upskill and benefit leaders and teams—both of which include creating customized action plans for moving forward,

Team Building: Creating Psychological Safety

Develop high-performing and collaborative teams that have a commitment to vision, strategy, and desired culture! Psychological safety is found to be the number one differentiator in Google’s highest-performing teams, and we want to help you achieve it.

Your Brain on Change: Decriminalize Resistance and Accelerate Adoption

The greatest leading indicator of a successful change effort is employees’ speed to adoption of new behaviors. This unique, neuroscience-based workshop develops the mindset and skills that improve speed to adoption.

Leading Remote Teams Consulting Package

We are offering real-time consulting and coaching to build cohesion and performance on your team in the remote environment. These sessions are facilitated by world-class consultants and coaches. We determine what your team most needs in terms of development. This is high-quality consulting, facilitation, and coaching on what matters to you in this moment to help your teams build momentum, performance, and morale. This package consists of 20 hours of coaching and consulting.

If you need a specialist to lead your meeting so you can participate in it, we also offer:

Online Meeting Facilitation

Need a skilled facilitator for an online meeting? We have excellent resources available and would be happy to discuss qualifications with you.

Contact Gregg at [email protected] or connect on LinkedIn.

EXPLORE THESE ADDITIONAL RESOURCES

Transforming Culture in Larger Organizations: Key Learnings, Exercises, and Case Studies

Secrets of Effective L&D Leaders: Innovation, Embracing Change, and Cultural Transformation

Infographic: 6 Steps to Building Trust

Leading Remote Teams: Free Learning Resources

New to virtual recruiting? Here’s how you can get started

May 13, 2020September 16, 2022 by Melissa Chacon

I know, it’s hard to imagine an end-to-end recruitment process without in-person interviews and interactions. Trust me, you can still offer an exceptional and authentic candidate experience and meet your hiring objectives. I made this transition myself several years ago, and I found that it just takes some adjustment and a little creativity. You might even surpass your expectations!

Connect with your team to define your virtual recruiting process

Yes, these are trying times. The way you were working has transformed completely, especially if you were used to working at an office, your candidates came in for interviews, and your recruitment efforts were largely office-based. As in any transition, you might feel uncertain and concerned about your ability to perform your work and deliver the same results you used to.

You’re certainly not alone, as this is something that a lot of people have been struggling with during the past several weeks. The truth is, you are still able to go through all the usual stages of the hiring process from home. It’s just a matter of adjusting and taking advantage of all the means that you have on hand for this purpose.

One of the first things you’ll want to examine is your process:

Step back and rethink your company’s process and find new creative ways to maintain hiring momentum, while still relying on well-founded criteria to back up hiring decisions.
Brainstorm and collaborate with your team to create a virtual process that works for all of you.
Define how you’ll move forward from now on.

My essential advice is no matter how you decide to adjust your process, always give it your company’s personal touch.

It’ll just take a couple of weeks for you to realize that face-to-face hiring processes don’t necessarily translate into quality results, and a great virtual hiring process can lead to excellent decisions and great fits.

Look at your virtual recruiting technology

Look for platforms and software that better match your needs and requirements for communication, scheduling, and organization while working remotely. This is also a good moment for you to reach out to your main recruitment software, and ask about what they offer that could help with your current needs.

Virtual recruiting: It’s still all about the candidate experience

Focus on the candidate experience and then focus on the candidate experience again. Your level of engagement and communication with candidates doesn’t have to be any different now that you’re working virtually, and there are ways for you to even improve the overall experience for them.

For example, take the interview scheduling: Candidates no longer need to drive to an office or ask permission of their current employer to take the entire afternoon off. This is a huge advantage. Candidates will likely take the interviews from the comfort of their own home office and quickly go back to their work or daily tasks once they’re done.

Virtual recruiting offers greater flexibility, which translates to a smoother journey for those applying for a job. If you want to go the extra mile, consider using self-scheduling apps, for candidates to grab a time and date that better suits their availability.

Here are some tips for enhancing the candidate experience in virtual recruiting:

Maintain and enhance your best practices in the virtual environment and try to be one step ahead of any inconvenience you may encounter. For example, join your virtual interview a few minutes in advance and have a backup plan in case you bump into any technical difficulties. Dress accordingly and try to reflect the best of your company’s values and culture during your conversation with a kind and respectful attitude.
Consider creating aid “materials” you can share with candidates via email to showcase your company’s culture and to give a sense of what it is like working at your company in the best virtual way possible. I send out SweetRush’s Culture and Values book, which offers a personal and authentic introduction to our company.

Face-to-face in a virtual world: video interviews

The easiest way to translate the face-to-face interaction with candidates to a virtual environment is scheduling video interviews. Seeing reactions and expressions can reveal a lot about someone’s personality, and in this case, about the person on the other side of the computer screen.

My tip: Always communicate in advance that it’s a video interview, so candidates can prepare themselves and find a quiet and appropriate space. This is especially important in these times when many of us have several family members around the house!

Check out my article on how to conduct a video interview with many more tips.

There’s no such thing as too much communication in virtual recruiting

Prompt and candid communication has always been one of the most important distinctions of a successful candidate experience. This is even more relevant in a virtual environment, so aim for overcommunication.

Here are my essential tips on communication:

Make yourself available to candidates using a variety of channels, e.g., email, Skype, and your cell phone number if you don’t have a work phone at home.
Make an effort to reply to every inquiry in less than 24 hours. Let candidates know when they will hear back from you.
Set clear expectations about the stages of the interview process, including the number of interviews and the possibility of having to take a test.
Be transparent when the process changes and be empathetic when it requires patience from candidates. They will appreciate this more than you can imagine.

Bringing your chosen candidate on board in virtual recruiting

For the final stages of the process, when you decide to bring someone on board, make him or her feel welcome and part of your company and team from the very first moment. Here are some of the things we do at SweetRush to embrace new team members who are working remotely:

Send an email or post on your internal social channel introducing them to the team.
Schedule brief video meetings with different team members.
Announce them at your company-wide virtual meeting.
Have all documentation and on-boarding processes available in different virtual platforms so new hires don’t feel lost when joining from home during their first weeks.

On the other hand, make sure to close the loop appropriately when a candidate doesn’t get selected. A brief phone call or an email to candidates who don’t get the job takes only a few minutes.

Virtual recruiters: empathy matters

Finally, try to be as empathetic as possible. Looking for a job when the job market and conditions are “normal” is already stressful for many people. Now think about having to go through interview processes when there’s so much anxiety and uncertainty in the entire world, especially the financial stability of families, companies, communities, and entire countries.

Chances are, you’re not always going to receive the best reactions from applicants, particularly those who don’t get the job. Think about the way you communicate with candidates and put some extra thought into the words you use before sending an email or a text.

Practice compassion and kindness in every stage of your hiring process, and make it your signature way of conducting yourself and connecting with others from now on, whether it’s virtual or face to face.

Need to Create an Online Learning Community Fast? Leverage These Instructional Design Tips

April 22, 2020September 16, 2022 by Luci Napier

The COVID-19 pandemic has created more of a need than ever for instructional designers to share what we do. With schools and organizations closing their physical doors, we can open new doors by helping to build engaging learning communities online.

Whether you are teaching students in a public school or working with adults in a nonprofit, in this article you’ll find great instructional design tips and resources that you can adapt to your online learning community. If you have a need that’s not covered here, add a question in the comments, and I’ll be happy to respond!

First, Consider the Technology Gap

Before jumping into the nuts and bolts of creating a virtual classroom, it’s important to think about how students will access the online learning community once it’s created. The reality is that not every home has adequate internet access or hardware devices to keep up with the sudden demand for online learning and working from home. Many public schools are facing real challenges addressing this issue with their limited supplies of technology that can be loaned out. Some families may only have a single computer in the home with limited internet that needs to be dedicated to the bread-winner working from home or shared between siblings.

This technology gap has always been a reality for many communities and a challenge in designing online solutions for public schools and institutions. The good news is, the number of us carrying around a “mini-computer” in our pockets is on the rise. A 2018 Pew Research Center survey revealed that 77% of US Americans own smartphones. Perhaps more revealing is the growing trend of smartphones as the primary means of online access. The same 2018 Pew Research survey discovered that 20% of American adults only use smartphones to access the internet.

With this in mind, think about how your online learning community can access your virtual classroom and resources you’re providing from a mobile device. You may not need special software or tools for mobile design, just a persistent drive to test out your learning designs on a smartphone or two for yourself. Popular virtual meeting software such as Zoom, WebEx, and Skype have mobile apps that users can download for use on a smartphone in virtual classroom settings. To help you get started, all of the resources we will cover in this article create learning assets that are accessible on smartphones.

Building an Online Learning Community: Where Do I Start?

If you take one thing from this post, I hope it’s this link to the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching Guides. Bookmark it in gold! It really is worth its weight in gold. Whether you suddenly find yourself needing to create learning videos, moving face-to-face classroom curriculum to an online format, or finding new approaches for motivating students, this is your place to start! As you begin moving your classroom curriculum to online learning, check out the guides for Blended and Online Learning, Effective Educational Videos, and Flipping the Classroom.

Instructional Design Tips for the Virtual Face-to-Face Classroom

Great classroom teachers have an extraordinary gift: They can connect with students in ways that bring content to life, engaging even the most resistant students. In my experience with creating online learning communities, sometimes it’s these great teachers who become frustrated by the virtual classroom because they cannot engage with students using methods that have worked in the past.

Here are a few tips to try with your students in a virtual classroom:

Show Your Face!

Remain on camera as much as you can when teaching in a virtual classroom. Make it a priority to work through any challenges you have presenting to your class with your camera on. Having your presence through video (as opposed to just audio) will be reassuring and help your students feel comfortable being on camera themselves.

Monitor Participation and Check In

As with in-person classrooms, there are always going to be students who are reluctant to participate. In an online learning community, it is especially critical to proactively track and call on these students, encouraging them to contribute to the class. Keep a visual chart of your students and track how frequently (or infrequently) they are participating, making sure you are checking in with everyone in the classroom session.

The Magic of Mute Buttons

There are the students reluctant to participate, and there are those who can’t get enough of jumping into the thick of the discussion! The challenges of “talking over” each other in online meetings and classrooms are tough for even the most seasoned video call users. This is where the magic of mute buttons can come in handy! In most video conferencing/classroom platforms, you can mute and unmute audio as the leader to help rein in the more enthusiastic participants in your class.

Step Forward, Step Back

For older students and adults, one technique you might try is “Step Forward, Step Back,” in which you ask participants to self-monitor their level of interaction. If they feel they haven’t said much in class, they should “step forward” and speak up. If they’ve said a lot that day, they should “step back” and allow others to speak. My colleague Clare Dygert has several other tips in her article on virtual collaboration for remote teams.

Play Games

Prominent American educator Malcolm Knowles once said that learning is as natural as rest or play. I’m sure you are all familiar with the overwhelming research that supports the role of game play in building connections in the classroom and imparting learning that sticks.

In online learning communities, though, getting the feeling of natural play as a group can be easier said than done! This is where I recommend turning to the master of learning and training games, Thiagi (Sivasailam Thiagarajan, PhD). Although his area of expertise is focused on adult learners, learners of any age will benefit from the wealth of ideas Thiagi shares on his website. Have fun browsing his site, where you can find hundreds of learning game ideas for free! For online learning games in the live, virtual classroom specifically, check out his Live Online Learning Activities.

Instructional Design Tips for Self-Directed Learning

So many traditional face-to-face classrooms have already blended tools from Google Classroom and other online learning resources with the curriculum. As you take your curriculum from the traditional classroom to a completely online learning environment, finding new and interactive ways to blend self-directed learning with live virtual classroom sessions can be a great way to keep the learning fresh and motivate students.

Leverage existing assets

Before we dig into free tools to create your own self-directed learning solutions, it’s important to point out the wealth of high-quality, free solutions that are already out there. One of my favorites is TED-Ed: Lessons Worth Sharing, which includes not only extremely well produced educational videos, but also interactive quizzes, online communities, projects, resources for further learning, and even books to read inspired by the topic.

Another favorite that’s perfect for kids cooped up inside is Google Expeditions. This immense library of 360-degree, immersive scenes allows the teacher to lead a group of students through everything from the Great Barrier Reef to the Louvre.

Now that I’ve gotten the ball rolling with a couple of my favorite free resources, please share your favorites in the comments below!

Create interactive videos

You may have already created videos for your classrooms and posted them to YouTube or a similar video-hosting platform. If not, take advantage of the great resources and tools at your fingertips on YouTube Studio to learn how!

Imagine assigning your students an interactive video that will stop and ask a question at a key point you really want them to absorb and understand. Check out a free tool called H5P and make it happen!

Create interactive content

Now that you have a taste for using H5P for creating interactive videos, make sure you check out all the different types of interactive content you can create with H5P. From scenario-based learning modules to interactive games and quizzes, H5P is a robust tool to help you get started creating dynamic and engaging self-paced learning to blend with your online curriculum. By creating a free account, you gain access to examples and downloads, guides, and a community forum to help you find what you need to get started.

Teachers have always been a source of inspiration and resilience in our communities. I have no doubt that the challenges that we are facing will be yet another opportunity for our teachers to breathe life into learning in new and innovative ways in their emerging online learning communities. With the right instructional design tips, tools, and practice, I know the resilience of our teachers and students will shine a bright light during these uncertain times.

Have a question? Leave them in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to see what I can do to help!

Luci Napier is a San Francisco Bay Area learning experience designer who is passionate about learning of all kinds. Building on her years as a professional animator, she has been creating learning solutions with just the right mix of emerging technology, strategy, and engaging design for over 14 years. Visit her on LinkedIn.

Live Webinar: How to Lead High-Performing Remote Teams – Insights From a 10-Year Virtual Organization

April 22, 2020October 28, 2021 by Heather York

SweetRush leaders and special guests will go beyond the “nuts and bolts” of remote work and share deep insights on what it takes to lead virtual teams that are unified, connected, and high-performing.

Join us on May 5th for a TED-style talk featuring SweetRush leaders and culture experts on effectively leading virtual teams!

Ten years ago, transitioning to being a 100% remote team was an unusual move. Today that’s become a leadership reality. Leaders are up against tough challenges around morale, productivity, and continued uncertainty.

We’re here to help and ready to share key lessons from growing SweetRush into a global, successful remote team of 200 strong. This is not “Work from Home 101”; it’s a closer look at the culture and mindset of high-performing teams. Topics we’ll cover include trust, mutual success, authenticity, agility, and inclusion.

Join these six dynamic speakers:

SweetRush Leadership

Andrei Hedstrom, SweetRush Cofounder and CEO – Leadership inspiration to help you bring out the best in yourself, your team, and your world
Arturo Schwartzberg, SweetRush Cofounder and Chairman – How focusing on mutual success is the foundation of leadership
Ashley Munday, Former Director of Cultural and Organizational Transformation and SweetRush “culture guru,” will host and share insights from her work throughout the session

SweetRush “Transformation Tribe”: Culture & Change Consultants

Gregg Kendrick – How to grow trust in teams through authenticity and transparency
Ahmad El Nashar – Insights about systemic thinking and agility, and how teams can adapt in this moment of change
Quanita Roberson – The power of leaders who look within, and cultivating an environment of inclusion

Virtual Collaboration: Techniques for Getting the Best from Your Team

April 14, 2020June 28, 2023 by Clare Dygert

How is your team handling remote work and virtual collaboration? In this article, SweetRush’s Director of Instructional Design, Clare Dygert, shares proven techniques for enhancing remote team collaboration from her experience managing SweetRush’s 100% virtual Instructional Design team.

A couple of memes are making the rounds.

“I’m an introvert. I’ve been training for social distancing my entire life.”

‘social distancing’ please i’ve been training for a pandemic my entire life introverts rise up we’re finally valid

— Daniel Howell (@danielhowell) March 11, 2020

“Check on your extroverts. They are NOT OK.”

After a few weeks of getting used to managing a virtual team, your initial worries about knowing if anyone is working or not will begin to subside. You’ll see a return to productivity as folks figure out how to manage the kids being home, master the mysteries of virtual meeting software, and adjust to the mental bandwidth issues that come with this strangely reordered world we find ourselves in.

Now you may begin to notice a new issue. Teams are made up of a variety of personality types on the extrovert/introvert scale. You may notice that the louder voices are dominating in collaboration meetings, and the softer voices aren’t being represented. In person, you could monitor and make a space for someone who is less willing to interrupt or push into the conversation, but you may find this very difficult in a virtual environment.

Here are some practical ideas to help you with virtual collaboration.

Set an agenda.

Many teams have regular meetings with open agendas to discuss whatever needs to be talked about. Use a shared document to solicit agenda items before the meeting. We also use the document to make notes and record decisions as we move through the items at the meeting. By making it open and shared, everyone can have items discussed.

Check in.

Start meetings by going around and asking people to “check in”—in other words, share how they are feeling at that moment. When we do this, we are asking teammates to comment on how they are doing, emotionally and physically, not make a status update on some previously determined action item. This puts a focus on the human side of things and makes us aware of the emotional state of those around us. It also serves as a “warm-up” for talking. This is especially helpful for the quieter among us.

Set ground rules at the beginning of the collaboration meeting.

Ground rules can be anything from agreeing to put questions in the chat area to holding comments until the end of a presentation. Whatever they are, state the ground rules up front and out loud. Verbally agreeing how you are going to operate is kind of a mindfulness thing. It puts everyone on the same page and communicates to your team that how we communicate is as important as what we accomplish. This definitely invites remote team collaboration and participation.

Step up, step back. One of our common ground rules is “step up, step back.” This rule asks people to notice how much they are contributing. If they are talking a lot, then they should step back and be quiet so others can have the floor. If they notice that they have said little, then they are asked to step up and speak when the floor becomes available.

Yes, and… Another technique you can use (which you could set as a ground rule during brainstorming) is to use the phrase “Yes, and…” when you start speaking, essentially adding on to the previous person’s idea. This is a technique often used in improvisation—it helps keep the ideas flowing. For example, if my colleague says, “We could use recyclable materials in the packaging,” I could answer, “Yes, and biodegradable items whenever possible.”

Consider your virtual collaboration ecosystem.

We have found that how quickly people generate ideas and how boldly they share those ideas varies, particularly during remote team collaboration. But it’s important to remember that the quality of ideas doesn’t depend on how fast or slow ideas come, or how boldly or cautiously they are shared. In leading virtual teams, we have to create space for people to share in the way they’re most comfortable.

So how do we help the fast, bold people understand and wait for the quiet, slower people? We find that simply understanding this to be true is the first step, and we use our collaboration ecosystem to illustrate this reality.

The way we do this is to ask individuals to identify and share their collaboration “spirit animal.” The graphic below illustrates our four spirit animals. We ask our remote team to first think about how quickly they generate ideas (that’s the X-axis). Then we ask them to think about how bold they are at sharing ideas (the Y-axis). If they identify as a fast idea-generator and a cautious sharer, their spirit animal is the Cheetah. A slow idea-generator and bold sharer is the Seahorse.

SweetRush’s “collaboration ecosystem” supports virtual collaboration by helping people identify and self-manage their participation according to their idea-sharing speed and boldness!

The spirit animal may change in different situations. If I know people, I might be more bold. If I’m collaborating with a new virtual team, I might be more cautious. I like to think of it as “polite.” 🙂

The collaboration ecosystem helps remote team members self-manage their participation. If you know you are a Sloth in the group, then perhaps you will suggest that collaboration take place over multiple days, so you have time for some “shower thinking.” Or, you start thinking about ideas before you join others in a virtual collaboration session.

We have found that just by acknowledging that not all smart, productive people think the same that we make space for everyone to contribute. Which naturally makes our virtual collaboration better. We also have seen these personas begin to creep into our shared language too—“Whoa there Falcon, let’s give some space for the Sloths among us!” “I’m feeling very Seahorse today!”

Structure feedback.

We also use “rounds” when we are managing virtual teams to structure our feedback and conversation about a proposed idea.

To use rounds:

First an action or solution is proposed and fully explained by its authors.
Then, each person, in turn, may ask a clarifying question, which the proposers answer.
Then, each person may give feedback using the “I like, I like, I wonder” formula. For example, “I like the way you addressed the learners’ concerns about the training time. I like how you’ve structured the learning objectives. I wonder if there could be additional opportunities to practice.”
The proposer doesn’t respond, and no one can add to the feedback until it is in their turn and only by using the “I like, I like, I wonder” formula.

We have found this structure to be almost magical in how it focuses feedback and keeps us from going down rabbit holes of discussion. And the quiet voices have the same opportunity to share feedback as the louder voices.

Using these virtual collaboration techniques may feel awkward and stilted at first. But so does bringing on new communication software, dealing with the sound of kids and pets in the background, and the stress of working at your kitchen table on a slightly unreliable internet connection. You will be surprised at how quickly these things become a natural part of the language of your virtual team. And at some point in the future, you may agree that incorporating new practices that help you work more collaboratively was a silver lining in an otherwise very dark cloud.

Clare Dygert is SweetRush’s Director of Instructional Design. Reach out to her on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/claredygert/.

Read more about leading remote teams and virtual collaboration:

Remote Team Communication and Technology: Tips from Virtual Pros

March 25, 2020June 28, 2023 by Lauren Granahan

SweetRush has been a 100% virtual company since 2009. We’re sharing our best tips and expertise on the topics of remote team communication, leading remote teams, and working from home, to help leaders and individuals facing this transition for the first time.

Question: Are there any particular technology or communication processes you find useful for having a workforce that is working remotely?

Technology and communication processes are important for any organization—and they become absolutely critical when working from home and leading remote teams. While many of you have likely had some flexibility for virtual work before COVID-19, we know that for some of you, this is the first time that you’ve asked your workforce to work remotely.

In this moment, teams are having to make hard choices about shifting priorities and taking on new projects with accelerated timelines. Having the technical capabilities to allow your now-remote workforce to hit the ground running is critical, but putting standards and best practices in place around the use of these technologies will be key to a fully remote transition.

And, as always, but especially in this moment, empathy and compassion are your most important tools. People will need some time to adjust. Buddy up people on your team who might be struggling and those who are making the transition more smoothly. Ask for feedback and make adjustments that help everyone feel connected and productive.

Remote Team Communication: Technology

Think of your technical systems in terms of what they provide to your team. The table below outlines the categories we think about. Depending on the work you’re doing, you may think about other categories that will help you effectively lead your remote team.

Category	What it provides the remote workforce	Tool examples
Synchronous 1:1 and group communication	A place to “pop in” and ask a quick question.	Slack Skype Google Chat
Video Conferencing	A place to hold meetings with video and audio capabilities	Google Meet Zoom Webex GoToMeeting
File sharing	A place to save their work where others can access and, ideally, collaborate in real time	Google Drive Dropbox ownCloud
Collaboration	A place to visually ideate, explore, and collaborate	Lucidchart IdeaBoardz Miro Mural Milanote
Knowledge management	A place to go for answers around company policy, procedures, project details—all of the knowledge contained in an organization	Confluence SharePoint
Social Space	A place to commune to share nonwork-related content and connect with one another.	Workplace Yammer
Asynchronous communication	A way to reach out when coworkers are not available for response at the same time	Marco Polo Yac Voice memos email

Engaging your IT department is obviously vital as it will likely have licensing and security concerns and want to outline processes for how any newly introduced tools are used. In addition to security, you should consider the norms and best practices you want to establish for team communication using these tools. Communicate those clearly to your team.

It’s also a best practice to define your objectives for each technical system and periodically check in to ensure they’re meeting your needs. For example, when we established our solution for the “social space” category, we identified a list of objectives for the tool. A small committee meets quarterly to review analytics and “rate” how we are doing on our objectives. This often leads to ideas for improvement that are quick to implement and make a positive impact.

Remote Team Communication: Processes

Calendar Management

Consider instituting some best practices around calendar management. At SweetRush, we ask people to block their available hours (start and stop times each day). Folks also block time for deep work and leave a portion of time available for meetings.

With our global workforce, consistency in calendar management helps us quickly schedule synchronous time with members of our community. With many employees juggling kids home from school, you may be opening up more flexibility in work hours. Having transparency of everyone’s availability will be important.

Managing Virtual Meetings

Keeping everyone on track during virtual meetings can be a bit more challenging compared to in-person meetings—particularly if people aren’t on camera. In person, we become very reliant on body language and facial expressions to know if someone is engaged or checked out, in agreement or disagreement, or just confused.

Bringing more structure to meetings helps ensure that everyone’s voice is heard and no one person dominates (or derails) the meeting. I like to use the concept of “rounds” in meetings. Here’s how it works at SweetRush:

First, have a set amount of time for someone to present an idea or update.
Next, engage in a round of clarifying questions.
Then start a round for reactions.

Important tip: Use the hand-raising feature in your virtual meeting platform to keep the conversation organized and on track. Assign someone to track the hand-raisers so they can be called on in order.

Leading Your Remote Team and Finding Your Communication Flow

As you make the transition from office life to working from home, a good practice is to do a weekly assessment of how your team is pivoting to working remotely. Think about the meetings you’ve been in and led, conversations you’ve had via chat and live, the amount of emails you’ve seen and how effective they’ve been. Informally survey your team to get their thoughts on how communication has been and what could be improved. We continuously improve our practices, tweak and add to our system, when something we’re doing becomes inadequate, with input from our team.

Making rapid change and designing your remote team communication in real time are going to be—understandably—challenging for you and for your team. We’ve found that people appreciate vulnerability in these moments. Sharing that you will be testing things, seeing what works, and adjusting based on user input is a good way to set the stage for future adjustments and iteration. You’ll likely have some stumbling blocks and people who need extra support. And you’ll also have opportunities for quick fixes and quick wins that demonstrate to your team how much you care.

Join our mailing list to get access to additional resources, including best practices, tips, and techniques on working from home and leading remote teams.

Lauren Granahan is SweetRush’s Director of Organizational Effectiveness. She loves to streamline communication and find new ways of working that make everyone more productive and efficient! Reach out if you have a question about leading remote teams; we’d love to help.

Create (Virtual) Space for Sharing

Virtual Collaboration Tip #1: Offer notice.

Virtual Collaboration Tip #2: Give everyone a job.

Virtual Collaboration Tip #3: Push forward, pull back.

Virtual Collaboration Tip #4: Follow up.

Better Virtual Collaboration → Better Business

Preparing for Human-Centered Conversations

Starting Your Script: Five Essentials

Mad Libs: Four (Potentially) Fraught Feedback Situations

Coworker Communication

Work Quality

Coworker Relationship Issues

Wild Card: Human-Centered Feedback for Everyone

From the Page to the Stage: Continuing the (Caring) Conversation

Human Potential: We’re All Going Through a Stage

The Virtual Management Opportunity

Managing Better: Virtually

Trust

Assume Positive Intent

Offer Autonomy

Clear the Pebbles

Find the Root Cause

Managing the Change

Virtual Recruiting and the Golden “No”

Print More Golden Tickets

Destroy Binary Thinking

Employee Retention: Play the Long Game

Virtual Recruiting and Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

Beyond a Firm Handshake: The Business Benefits of Virtual Recruiting

LEADING A TEAM

How do you “stop by someone’s office” when you’re a remote manager? I typically did that by walking around. Now when I do it remotely, it seems artificial or forced.

How do you manage team members who already have a sense of distrust with you as a lead/manager?

How do you deal with someone on your team who has shown you that they cannot be trusted?

We talk a lot about fear of failure. How have you been vulnerable and shown your teams it is OK to fail and thus build trust?

MANAGING UP

How do you deal with difficult persons, especially from senior management, when trying to create mutual success? What is the best way to manage my manager?

Can you please share ideas for emphasizing and building an atmosphere of caring and shared respect when it does not have top-down support?

LEADERSHIP PHILOSOPHY & CONCEPTS

There are various types of leadership in society, such as autocratic, democratic, and laissez-faire. Psychology, inherent values, ethics, and moral values also affect leadership quality. Please help me understand what the qualities of a good leader are during coronavirus.

I love systems thinking as long as the systems are open-ended and inclusive with real context. How do you contextualize any systems without excluding the value of other systems?

Can you please explain how to “act with intentionality”?

You use the words “sense of community”and culture. How do you differentiate them in building the levels of trust required when one is an input and the other may be an output?

LEADERSHIP INSPIRATION

How has this inspired your clients in their own cultures? Any favorite stories to share?

Where can I learn more about developing effective leadership skills and stronger, more productive teams?

Connect with your team to define your virtual recruiting process

Look at your virtual recruiting technology

Virtual recruiting: It’s still all about the candidate experience

Face-to-face in a virtual world: video interviews

There’s no such thing as too much communication in virtual recruiting

Bringing your chosen candidate on board in virtual recruiting

Virtual recruiters: empathy matters

First, Consider the Technology Gap

Building an Online Learning Community: Where Do I Start?

Instructional Design Tips for the Virtual Face-to-Face Classroom

Show Your Face!

Monitor Participation and Check In

The Magic of Mute Buttons

Step Forward, Step Back

Play Games

Instructional Design Tips for Self-Directed Learning

Leverage existing assets

Create interactive videos

Create interactive content

Set an agenda.

Check in.

Set ground rules at the beginning of the collaboration meeting.

Consider your virtual collaboration ecosystem.

Structure feedback.

Question: Are there any particular technology or communication processes you find useful for having a workforce that is working remotely?

Remote Team Communication: Technology

Remote Team Communication: Processes

Calendar Management

Managing Virtual Meetings

Leading Your Remote Team and Finding Your Communication Flow