WLP230 What's Going On and Learning and Sharing Learning in Remote Teams
Once again lots to share with you in these strange and fast-moving times, as Pilar and Maya share their homeworking spaces with family members, and the world continues transitioning at break-neck speed to home-based working, in the face of the coronavirus pandemic.
What’s Going On
This topical segment was recorded on April 6th 2020:
Maya experienced a meeting that was ‘Zoom-bombed’ - one of those new words 2020 will add to the lexicon. This phenomenon has attracted a lot of media coverage, and Zoom has taken steps to secure their own networks - so make sure you’re running the most up-to-date version of the app. A good example of why transitioning shouldn’t, in normal circumstances, happen without learning and planning…
And Zoom is not the only meeting app out there! Google has rolled out free access to advanced Hangouts Meet video-conferencing capabilities to all G Suite customers globally, and we found this list of hundreds of other possibilities to choose from as well, with different properties and integrations for different industries.
Among the plethora of remote work content, don’t overlook the fine words by Prof Dr. Emerita Gloria Ramsbottom-Lemieux found here. Surreality meets satire - but we need humour wherever we can find it these days.
In the Writer’s Well podcast, Pilar heard about a new co-working space which gives people black beads you can wear, if you want to signify you don’t want to be disturbed. A way to physically manifest an attention status in a visible way… A Slack emoji come to life? Interesting how these shared signals and vocabulary emerge.
Research from HBR’s Idea Watch suggests that people would rather have their job taken by a robot than another human - maybe because we couldn’t be expected to compete? But we’d rather work alongside a human replacement for any of our co-workers, if they get laid off. (Ref. “Psychological Reactions to Human Versus Robotic Job Replacement,” Armin Granulo, Christoph Fuchs, and Stefano Puntoni HBRMarch/April IdeaWatch.)
An article in The StartUp on Medium caught Maya’s eye, The Five Levels of Remote Work — and why you're probably at Level 2 - an insightful look at how to get beyond the meetings and chat and replication of the office, to an asynchronous nirvana. A good aspiration for many teams who can work in this way and well worth a read.
And finally there are so many curious manifestations of remote practices suddenly be adopted by groups who aren’t used to it. Such as Radio 4’s Today Programme losing live interviews due to dropped calls, and really experienced interviewers clearly find it hard to shut people up when they’re not face to face. Have I Got News For You also proved that the panel show format not only suffers in the absence of a studio audience and their usual rapport.
28.30 Resource curation at RemoteWorkTree.com
Rowena Hennigan and Robert Kropp in Spain have compiled Remote Work Tree:
As Robert explained, they wanted to ease the transition by bringing together the best events and resources to help people new to remote working and leadership. They’ve tried to predict a learning path and what users might need, to step through the rich resources they have curated, put together at top speed - to help you avoid content overload.
A great link to share with your friends who are new to remote working or struggling with any specific challenges.
What’s happening at Virtual Not Distant
Pilar has been interviewed by a listener - hello Alex! - in the Remote Work Life podcast. If you have a podcast and would like to talk to us, get in touch! We are always open to guesting on appropriate complementary shows.
Pilar’s new book Online Meetings That Matter hit the stores at just the right moment, but for those in a hurry we’ve made the ‘kit’ section - with all the key tactical recommendations to get going fast - free for a limited period. So check out our blog post about that to grab your copy
Recently Pilar did her first webinar for a while - but remember that these events can still be facilitative and need not be all unidirectional. Having support in the room really helps, to have someone curating resources and backlinks and managing the chat.
38.00 Learning and sharing
Learning has changed a lot, and nowadays you can learn pretty much anything you need to, online. So in many ways it’s never been easier to access information in remote teams, on a ‘just-in-time’ basis, and from a range of channels. We can learn behaviours and learn to solve problems, rather than learning about a subject.
But in the remote space we can lack the informal learning that we get from observing behaviour in teams, particularly when onboarding, so as ever we need to be more intentional about it - ideas need to be captured and shared and structured, and we can learn from each other and built on each other’s creativity, but only if we make it visible (as Pilar’s husband are doing with an ‘ideas’ Trello board, in their newly remote team, or a busy Slack team can use a bot to surface upvoted ideas).
If we want other people to nurture and build upon our nascent ideas, we need good psychological safety, and effective role modelling from leaders - bringing out the best co-creation together is so important right now.
And this is a good time to remember Jochen Lilich’s DIRECTT formula for communication and sharing - we talked about this in episode 170, and the framework suggests we check in whenever we:
make a Decision
have an Insight
have a Result
experienced and Emotion
made a Contact
had any Troubles
or want to Thank someone
This is a great fit with our Visible Teamwork model too.
Learning how to use tools together often needs to happen at team and organisational level, given the collaboration platforms themselves are so multifunctional, and the ways they are using is becoming specialised in new ways. Smart IT people are building in tool-tips and other just-in-time learning opportunities right into the tools themselves, as no one expects to read a manual any more
Finally don’t forget to ‘latte and learn’ - share what you have learned with colleagues, perhaps over a virtual coffee. It can be really informal, as a way of driving an interesting conversation and cascading value through the team, as well as reinforcing your own learning by the experience of reflecting on it and sharing it with others.
Remember to reflect on what you learned about how you work together as a team as well and what you can improve going forward.
And do keep your feedback coming, we really enjoy it - please contact us, or you can tweet Virtual Not Distant, or Pilar and Maya directly, with any of your thoughts and ideas, or if we can help you with our training, coaching, and facilitation services during these challenging times.
If you like the podcast, you'll love our monthly round-up of inspirational content and ideas: