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Sticky Learning Lunch 29: How to Make Your Virtual Team More Effective
Exclusively to help line managers to discover ways to build a more effective virtual team.
You Can Read the Full Transcript Below:
Nathan Simmonds:
Good afternoon everyone. Welcome to Friday Sticky Learning Lunches with me, Nathan Simmons. We are just giving it a moment for the last attendees to arrive. Before we dive in, let’s just give it 30 seconds. While we’re getting there, hope everybody’s Friday is being good to them. So far right now, just as we’re waiting for those last people to arrive, what is the best part about your Friday?
Nathan Simmonds:
And please, I will not accept the answer of, it’s the last day of the week and it’s the weekend. What is the best part about your Friday right now? Let me know in the questions box, what is the best part of your Friday right now? Just as those last people come in, we’ve got an acceleration on a big project. Nice, great way to finish the week. Good session as it is right now. Colin, thanks very much. Really appreciate that. Love the feedback.
Nathan Simmonds:
Just I’m gonna give you a couple more seconds as we’re waiting for those people to arrive. Welcome to New Faces and old faces. Old as in people that have been there before, not age. Welcome, good to see you. Let’s just make sure everyone’s got their phones on flight mode. So get your phones out, make sure they’re switched over to flight mode. Make sure that you’ve got zero distraction. Make sure you’ve got full attention on what you are doing right here for yourself right now. So phones on flight mode. Make sure you’ve got a drink as well. Make sure you’ve got hydration available. It might be a little bit less sunny. It is still warm here. Please make sure you are hydrated and you are ready for this session.
Nathan Simmonds:
And finally, the last part as always with these sessions is make sure you’ve got a fresh pad and pen available, a blank sheet for you to fill up. At the top of that sheet, you’re gonna write keepers and keepers are the things that you want to keep hold of the space to put ideas that you want to come back to and, and be reminded of so you can invoke and recharge some of that thinking to help embed the learning and keep that behavioral change moving forward. It’s what we do here at MBM. Good afternoon. Hello Tim. Good to see you again, Fabian. Great to see you again. Thanks for coming back. Great to see you people, Janine and Pearl. Great to see you.
Nathan Simmonds:
Welcome to today’s Sticky Learning Lunch with me, Nathan Simmons, senior leadership coach and trainer for MBM making Business Matter at the home of Sticky Learning. And we are the leadership skills and soft, sorry, the leadership development and soft skills provider to the manufacturing industry idea of these sessions is to give you some core focus content that’s gonna help you be the best version of you right now if you’re working from home as well as for the future.
Nathan Simmonds:
And moving forward. Today’s session is all about virtual teams and how we are creating more connection, how we we’re getting better results from these new brave new world that we’re living in right now. I am one for asking questions and we’re gonna talk a bit about this later on. What are you doing right now that is enabling you to create a better connection with your virtual teams in your virtual environments? What are you doing right now that’s creating stronger connections?
Nathan Simmonds:
Because I want a, I wanna see if there’s something that I can learn from you and there’s also, I wanna be able to share some things as well, practical, pragmatic approaches that maybe you are doing that other people aren’t, and we can share that immediately and do some peer-to-peer coaching with the people that are here right now. What are you doing right now to create stronger connections with your virtual teams? Let me know in the questions box, what have we got?
Nathan Simmonds:
What are you doing right now. Thinking more about them and revising objectives and tasks. Absolutely asking them how lockdown is treating them. Absolutely absolute definite to doing this because it’s gonna be different for different people and revising the objectives and tasks for me. And with is something we looked at before is actually the time it’s being taken to do those things or the time that we get responses for those things because our ways of working are now different and we have different responsibilities with family and children around, maybe we don’t get an email response immediately.
Nathan Simmonds:
Don’t, maybe we don’t get the email at 10 o’clock in the morning. Maybe it comes at 10 o’clock at night because that’s the time that we’re now working because the world’s changed shape. And as we’re leading teams, it’s important we understand that how things are working for different people in, in different environments. So part of it is about acknowledging these things and, and how we can make these improvements for our virtual teams. Another suggestion coming in, meet on a regular basis and shared tricks to manage anxiety and keep balance.
Nathan Simmonds:
Absolutely this regularity of contact as well. And we’re gonna talk about that in just a moment. And this is, these are some of the variables that we get. And that are then magnified. We get a certain level of intensity and we need to magnify because the, the, the challenges are magnified. We also then need to magnify the way that we bridge those challenges. As I talked about with presentation skills are here, you have to up the game, you have to be more energized to bring people in because they’re not physically there. And it’s the same when we’re looking at these regular contact points.
Nathan Simmonds:
We have to up the way they work, we have have to increase the the intensity on those to make sure that we feel more connected because we are less connected. Another suggestion coming in, giving them the opportunity to share their wins and challenges. Absolutely Fabian, these are absolute fire and I’m really happy that you’re sharing them great spaces for people to share. And whether this is, you know, on conference calls or phone calls or whatever it is, is giving them new windows to share that stuff. Brilliant.
Nathan Simmonds:
So today’s session is about, what I’ve got here is three ways to up the team game. Now it is about understanding what the difference is between the, the virtual space and the homeworking and the face-to-face space and what those core differences are and those core challenges are. And then give us some techniques and tips that are gonna help you to succeed with those things and just ramp up and support the ongoing journey because this is the new reality in one way, shape, or form. And it’s about really appreciating that.
Nathan Simmonds:
So for you, what do you think the difference is between a virtual team and a face-to-face team for you? What are those differences? What are the biggest differences and challenges that come up? Let me know in the questions box, trust becomes even more important. Absolutely. So trust is one of the key elements that we’ve got in there. What are some of the other differences and challenges that we have in these spaces? What other suggestions have we got?
Nathan Simmonds:
Steely silence, they might be typing. The three core challenges that we do have three core differences and challenges. One is obviously distance is the space between us is how close we are to people and, and then how far away we are from them. The second one is isolation. And we talked a little bit about this in the homeworking, the initial parts of these trainings we did. But it’s the sense of isolation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Loneliness is actually gonna be one of the biggest killers of society over the next probably 5, 10, 15 years. So when we look at mental health, and this is mental health awareness week, anxiety and depression, loneliness and isolation is gonna be one of the biggest challenges and one of the biggest indicators or signals that people will be having challenges with their mental health. We need connection. And the last part here is actually the connection
Nathan Simmonds:
Is how we are connecting, how we are interacting with each other. And it’s important we understand that these are the three probably biggest differences between the real team and the virtual team and how we learn to manage some of these elements and some of these aspects. Now suggesting a lack of continuous contact, whether you used to be able to see their body language of behave. Absolutely.
Nathan Simmonds:
But what we found though in this world is in this new conditions that we’re in is some people are really thriving inside the the homeworking space. And there are certain people working on certain projects at certain points where actually homeworking is better for ’em because they’re getting more done and they’re feeling more productive. The things that we need to be checking on with especially or checking in with, especially with our teams is are they struggling right now with this situation?
Nathan Simmonds:
And you as a leader or a HR professional, whatever it is up to you to then ask them that question. How are they feeling now? It’s been eight weeks, nine weeks, 10 weeks, whatever. How are they feeling in this situation? Are they still struggling or are they struggling in a different way? Were they okay at the start? And has that built up over a course of the time? Because what I’ve felt over the last couple of weeks, I’ve had more fluctuations where I’ve dipped because it feels like, you know, I’ve had enough and that’s gonna be different for different people.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then asking the question, well what do they need? What do they need as an individual? Now some of the people we’re working with, they need to be in the office, they need that physical contact. Some of them need a few days in the, in the office just to recharge the social batteries, right? And they need the physical contact to do that. Some people need the physical distance to do it, but it is finding the right balance of who needs to be in the office, when they need to be in the office and how you make that work for the organization.
Nathan Simmonds:
Still, as we go through what the world looks like now and as we move into the future, and once you find out what those answers are to those questions is then ask, you know, how do we improve it? What do I do for this individual that makes it better for them?
Nathan Simmonds:
So they are more productive, they are more engaged and they are more, you know, they feel more included. And working with each of those people as an individual to get the answers and solutions that fits them aligned to the business and the organization, the business objectives. And also putting the person first. You know, it’s about people first and helping them to and and getting you that clarity so you can help them be the best version of them in the work that they’re doing.
Nathan Simmonds:
So the three things, you know, are they still struggling or are they struggling? What do they need right now? What do you do to improve it as their leader? And asking these three questions of that individual to help them to connect so that we can sure, you know, increase the connection, reduce that sense of isolation and measure and monitor the distance that we, we’ve got people at during these circumstances.
Nathan Simmonds:
Something that I’ve learned, you know, from doing the interviews and, and since lockdown is this phrase psychological safety. I’ve never heard it before until we did the first interview with Natasha Wallace. So the sticky interview series we started doing a few weeks ago, this phrase come up and I thought, never heard that before. What is it? And I wanted to understand what creates psychological safety. The key thing is, you know, people will be more productive if they feel safe.
Nathan Simmonds:
In short, they will be more engaged if they feel a sense of trust, if they’re feeling certain about what’s going on, they stop worrying and thinking about that thing over there. And I can concentrate on what I’m doing. And we know with the symptoms of cabin fever that some of those symptoms are not wanting to engage in new products projects. Losing concentration, feeling more tired.
Nathan Simmonds:
Why? ’cause Our brain is processing all this stuff at a primordial level, the mammalian brain, so reptilian brain and it’s processing stuff to make sure that you are gonna be alive at the end of the day. All those will be your brain’s working double time, which is using more energy. So if you want better results and, and better productivity, you need to create this psychological safety with the individuals in your team.
Nathan Simmonds:
So they don’t have to worry about whether they’re gonna be eaten by a saber two tiger or not. And then they can focus on the things that they need to be doing or want to be doing and can do those things for the, the best outcome for the team and for the business. Even in a situation where we’re in lockdown and we’re in lockdown in a crisis situation.
Nathan Simmonds:
Just a quick note here before I dive into a couple of elements here. What’s been useful so far from what I’ve just shared? What have you picked up so far from the last kind of 10 minutes or so? That’s been useful. Questions. Good, good, good. Beautiful. Because that’s gonna lead us onto the next one. Thank you Colin. It’s almost like I’ve got sto in the audience. Social safety, if that was the right term. It’s psychological safety. That it isn’t about business, it’s about people.
Nathan Simmonds:
A hundred percent, a hundred percent Adam people first, yes, business has numbers fantastic, but if we chase the numbers no, the people will leave. Numbers are infinite so you can never catch them anyway. It’s the people that create those outcomes and it’s the numbers. Any KPI in any business, a number actually equals a behavior. Any number in your business is driven by a behavior or an emotional way of thinking.
Nathan Simmonds:
And when you understand that we know what the behavior is that drives the number you give the people the, the right inputs, inclusions and securities, et cetera, that generate the behavior that moves that number in the direction, then you’re onto a winner because you’re not chasing the number, you’re supporting the person, be the best version of them. And it’s a slightly longer game often than when we do this in business, but it is well worth it.
Nathan Simmonds:
So look, asking questions, let’s get into this. I’m conscious of time. What is the rule? Anyone here knows the answer. When you are coaching, what is the separation between listening and speaking? What is the difference in percentage terms? Well, how do they normally divide the quantity of speaking to listening when coaching and working with people?
Nathan Simmonds:
Got two to 180, 20 or better? 90 10, absolutely good. So we’ve got two to one normally. So what the difference when we have coaching and mentoring, when we’re mentoring, it tends to be that two to 1 50 50. Why? Because they’re coming to us for advice more often than not. When we move into coaching, we wanna be 80% listening, 20% asking or speaking.
Nathan Simmonds:
And we need to do this as leaders as well. Easiest way to remember this is how many ears you’ve got and how many eyes you’ve got in comparison to the number of mouth you’ve got. That’s not even a right grammatically correct, but it’s one now. It’s 80% paying attention and listening to the individual and 20% speaking and asking questions. So the first thing that we need to do is ask questions.
Nathan Simmonds:
We wanna find out what’s going on for them. It shows that we care. And as I’ve learned recently, you know, people who ask questions are in authority. You are seen as the individual to go to and the example that Jeff Birch gave a few weeks ago. Now, if you get stopped by the police who’s asking the questions, it’s certainly not you. When we start asking questions, people can see that we are interested in them.
Nathan Simmonds:
They feel as if they are the most important person in the conversation, which they have to be. If the conversation’s gonna work and we can ask these questions and find out what they need, what is it they truly need, how are they feeling? What’s working, what’s not working, taking the time to do that. In order to do that, we need to make ourselves available.
Nathan Simmonds:
Let your team know where you are. And this may sound like common sense, but when people can’t see you, they start to ask questions. It’s the way the human brain works. Now imagine you call your customer services up and say, yeah, I’m just gonna put you on hold. They don’t tell you why. They don’t tell you how long for, they just put you on hold and you’ve got this really rubbish music, I dunno, whoever. And you’re left wondering, well, where are they? And then you start to make up stories and then you start to get frustrated and agitated.
Nathan Simmonds:
And then maybe the person doesn’t come back for eight or nine minutes and you feel like you’ve lost eight minutes of your life and then you go to town on this person because they’ve just left you hanging. ’cause They didn’t, didn’t tell you where they, they didn’t tell you what they were doing for you. They didn’t give you a narrative to help you understand where you would be at certain points in time. So there might be a certain level as a leader, just letting them know where you are, what your diary looks like, when you’ll be available for certain kinds of conversation, when that meeting will be, and if you’re speaking to people or delegating points of contact to other people so that they feel they have that connection. Even if it just is cerebrally in the mind.
Nathan Simmonds:
But making yourself available lets them know that you are a point of contact when they need you. A, because yes, we’re in a crisis, but B, because actually when we’re managing virtual teams, there is now there’s that distance and we want to feel connected to people and have that availability. So it gives us that psychological safety. The point that I wrote down here is small things. How many times, who here has heard the phrase don’t sweat the small things? Who’s heard this? Yes or no in the question box? How? Who’s heard this phrase? Yes. Good. Yes. Good. So there’s some more coming through here
Nathan Simmonds:
When you are managing your teams, whatever level they are, and also the devil is in the detail, correct? It is. And it will be hiding there. And if you don’t go looking for it, it will manifest in some way, shape, or form, which will cause you a problem depending on the sort of teams you’re managing and where they are actually. And because we’re getting this crisis situation, the small things become important.
Nathan Simmonds:
If I’m asking questions and I’m spending more time listening and I’ve made myself available to have that conversation, if this person shares some small details with me and I’m not paying attention and I’m not documenting them, what happens to the relationship I have with the individual? When those things don’t get followed through on, what do you think happens to the relationship? I let the answers come through to that one.
Nathan Simmonds:
And if you think for an instance, down the tubes, absolutely disengagement, lack of trust. If you think no, what is a small thing to you may be the biggest thing to them, the ripple effect of that may be huge. If you think no, the small things can’t, don’t be, shouldn’t be sweated for someone else based on how you see the world. Try walking up Everest with a small stone in your foot. By the time you get to the top, if you get to the top, that small stone won’t be small anymore and to someone else that is a mountain.
Nathan Simmonds:
So it’s being really conscious that when you are asking questions, you are available and you’re picking up the small things. Take the action. The important thing out of the, out of all of this is what we’re doing is in incre creating an environment of inclusion. The first part to psychological safety is making sure that that person feels included in your conversation, in your dialogue and in your thinking. As I’ve said before, and I’ll say it again, when you are giving feedback or working with an individual, the most important person in that conversation is the person you are speaking to.
Nathan Simmonds:
And in order to do that, you know it is the first pillar. And in order to make them feel included, ask them questions, make yourself available to them and make sure you are clearing those small things out the way to make their lives easier. So they do feel that inclusion and they do feel like they’re able to contribute, which is later conversation we’ll have on Tuesday after the bank holiday. We’ll look at contribution, we’ll look at learning and we look at how they challenge as well. I had a client of mine and I’ve talked about this before, and she said, ah, yeah, I’m a bit OCD, trust me, anyone who’s experienced OCD doesn’t even put a parallel into normal life when it comes to this.
Nathan Simmonds:
You know, yeah, I’m, I’m, I’m a little bit OCD about these sorts of answers. And you’re not OCD about it. Sorry. Control freak tell like it was control freak. She says, I’m a control freak. I said, you’re not a control freak. You just wanna be included. The moment you feel included, you are able to let certain things go and you’ll stop worrying about ’em because you have that safety in place. As the worry depreciates here and reduces, I can then focus my best work and my best energy over here, which then gets the productivity, the results, and the outcome that as leaders, as businesses we’re looking for. Hope this is useful.
Nathan Simmonds:
Crikey, with time from the core elements that I’ve covered today about how to create stronger virtual teams and create engagement. What’s been useful from what I’ve shared today as part one of this conversation. We’ve got another, we’ve got a second part coming up next week on Tuesday. If you have not registered while those, those points are coming in, if you have not registered for Tuesday session, the link is in the chat box for you to register. It’s just coming up now. What have we got? Pay attention to the small things. Absolutely. Thank you Tim. And we have what I refer to as an intensity of proximity.
Nathan Simmonds:
Now what’s been like a small thing 12 weeks ago is now a big thing. Why? ’cause you’re looking at it all the time. It’s constantly in front of you. You know, it might be the fact that your clock’s one key or you know, there’s a problem with the paint work or, and there’s something about your relationship with a certain person that niggles you, but that intensity is starting to be magnified because you’ve got nothing else to look at except that thing and that small thing suddenly escalates as well.
Nathan Simmonds:
Inclusion, small things don’t chase the numbers. Absolutely. The idea is when we look at this, you know, is you, you know, you, you follow the vision, not chase the numbers, follow the vision and the numbers will follow chase the numbers and the vision gets, you know, the vision gets fuzzy and you don’t get the numbers anyway. Questions? Good? I’m glad some of this is useful. I’m glad we’re picking up some key elements here.
Nathan Simmonds:
What questions have you got for me right now to support the engagement and connection with your teams and improve the results you’re getting with them from a relationship point of view and from a statistical point of view as well. What questions have you got for me? Can I have another circle of tea while we’re waiting for those to come in?
Nathan Simmonds:
Something else I wanna share with you as well is the leadership coaching cards. When we’re looking at leadership, we’re talking about leadership and how, how we’re leading teams right now I have created a phenomenal deck of coaching cards to support leaders really digging in to their own skillset and helping leaders develop leaders. A set of questions that would really, it really gets to the heart of the master and it really puts that, that, that appropriate pressure and create the, the right level of tension on the internal thinking of a leader to take their game to the next level.
Nathan Simmonds:
The link again is in the chat box for the coaching cards. You look for the leadership deck there. Got a unique model that we create in the MBM lab is called evoc. It just takes you through every stage to push your leadership to a whole new game. What question would you ask people to really know if they are happy?
Nathan Simmonds:
And you know what the, probably the one question that I wouldn’t ask them is, are you happy? A, because it’s a closed question and B, you’ll never get to the heart of it. I think it’s gonna be that appreciative inquiry of what’s happening for you right now. And when we get into the mental health pieces, you know, it might be if you see them in a video conference or you are having a conversation or whatever is a piece of work comes in and something doesn’t quite feel right and you’ll know this as their leader and as their friend and associate, you know, this is what I’ve observed, I’ve observed a difference in here.
Nathan Simmonds:
What’s going on right now? What’s important to you? What’s happening? How’s home life? How’s, you know the change in environment working for you? What do you need now? You know, what do you need right now that’s gonna help you to to create even stronger outcome? What have your biggest challenges been over the last three weeks? And even as I’m, as I’m saying this now, is even if you create an inclusive meeting space where you might get people to share their top three challenges.
Nathan Simmonds:
Bob, Jane, Frank, what I want you to do is we’re gonna lead this session and I want you to share your top three challenges because if it’s challenging you, it’s probably challenging other people in the team. And then when you’re starting to have these conversations with ’em on an individual basis, you’ll start to hear these things come up and what are those common things? Okay, so what have you done about this? Okay, well what can I do about it? What can we do together to make that stronger?
Nathan Simmonds:
Really looking into it, but asking lots of curious questions and help and using the coaching questions without and making it obvious. Okay, so what’s happening? What have you tried so far? What are the solutions? Okay, great, who could you share that with and who else could you help with that? And then we start to get into the, the mental health questions. Who else could you help? No, what have you done previously that’s helped? Okay, how could you help somebody else and you start to create that team connection and inclusion. Hope that’s useful.
Nathan Simmonds:
When directors are only interested in numbers, how can I focus on them to support them and at the same time be able to report progress when the two do not match up is be the example. Ask, you know, okay, so what’s happening Phil? What’s important to you now? What challenges have you experienced? What you know what concerns have you got around your own areas of the business that could be shared with other people that we could use? You know, what learnings have you come up with over the last few weeks that could be shared with other people that will support them developing and, and and delivering the right results?
Nathan Simmonds:
So what we can do is we, when we get certain leaders in certain spaces, we can start to tease the information out of them. ’cause What’s happening to them is probably happening to somebody else. And actually if people start to see that vulnerability, which is a word that gets banded around too much in the wrong spaces, in the wrong ways, when people in teams start to see their leaders as vulnerable and honest and authentic, not from a place just to drive numbers from a place you connect and feel included, people will see that and they will start to relate. But when you are looking at kind of direct to a level in these spaces, you know, we’ve learned certain behaviors to move up through the ranks and stay there and, and kind of create a certain level of isolation and, and cutoff.
Nathan Simmonds:
But when people start to understand, well, what’s affecting me is affecting them, we start to connect. We start to feel included, we start to feel human, we start to feel seen and people are craving acknowledgement. So one of the key things in here, you know, is, is asking some of those questions in a way that supports the conversation coming back is being mindful of certain elements of language. You know, and that must be really challenging or okay or that must be really difficult. Being mindful of this sort of language was when we say that to people actually they may feel as if you are trying to undermine them.
Nathan Simmonds:
And well, if you are saying that must be really difficult, you must be saying that I maybe don’t have the skills to deal with that. And all of a sudden we have a conflict now when, when we we lose the emotional connection. And it might have to just shift your language that, you know what, I find that really difficult. I’d love to get some advice from you that I could share with other people to help them do a better job and actually coming from you. That would be really great ’cause it would help build a relationship and help people to see the world in a different way. That we’re all in this together. Hope that’s useful. And an interesting approach that could be stood out.
Nathan Simmonds:
Conscious time. We are on the half hour. On a scale of one to 10, one being not at all, 10 being absolutely, how useful was today for you in the way that we connect into our teams and how we engage? We’ve got a 10.2, nice 9.9, we’ve got a nine. We’ve got a nine. Good. I’m happy with this 10. Got a few coming in there. Thank you very much everyone. The first stages psychological safety is inclusion. When we feel included, we feel safe. When we feel trusted, we feel safe. And the ways that we make this happen is by making sure that we’re checking the distances that we’ve got and that, that they’re the right distances at the right time.
Nathan Simmonds:
We’re monitoring the isolation and how that’s impacting mental health. And we’re also making sure that we’re connecting at the right time in the right way as well. Got a couple of tools to do this. Thank you very much for your time today. Thank you very much for your attention. Thank you very much for your input. Hugely respectful. Have a phenomenal weekend. I look forward to speaking to you on Tuesday because we have the bank holiday here on Monday. You’ve got the links to Tuesday, Tuesday’s session. We will go into some more elements of this on Tuesday. You’ve got the link for the coaching cast to help with the leadership profiling. Everyone have a wonderful weekend. Thank you very much for your time. Speak to you soon.
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