Virtual Work Insider

The most effective and connected teams don't just happen. They are built with intention. Leading, training, and coaching geographically distributed and hybrid teams while I worked remotely for the past 14 years has taught me valuable lessons. Swipe below to see 5 things I would never do. What can you add to this list of what you wouldn't do? Share your thoughts and experiences! 👇 #virtualleadership #hybridleadership

You won't want to miss this... ↳ Ready to build your virtual influence? ↳ Ready to tame the meetings monster? ↳ Ready to retain Gen Z talent, and more? Join us in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for a free event hosted by Tulsa Remote on Oct 16-17. Here are just a few of the thought-provoking sessions that will be held on Oct 16-17. ✅ Stay Visible While Virtual: How to build your exposure and influence when working remotely. I'll provide this skills workshop to walk you through a 5-step exercise to build your Personal Virtual Exposure and Influence Plan. ✅ Building Async Muscles: How to improve Collaboration and connection and tame the meetings monster Brian Elliott will share how to be in the flow without being in the room, how to get control over meetings running wild on calendars, and how to get more document-driven one step at a time. ✅ The Future of Work and Community - Insights from Tulsa Remote Prithwiraj Choudhury will share how remote work can drive both individual and community growth, and what cities, businesses, and workers can learn from Tulsa's unique experience. ✅ The Four 4s Framework for Maximizing the Business Benefits of Flexible Working Laurel Farrer will share Distribute Consulting's 4 principles, 4 resources, 4 behaviors, and 4 success metrics that are unique to virtual-first collaboration and are key to preventing common risks like miscommunication and discrimination. ✅ How to Retain and Maximize Gen Z Talent in a Remote World Danielle Farage will share insights into what motivates Gen Z, how to foster a culture of accountability and growth, and practical strategies to keep them connected and productive. Register with the link in the comments. A big thanks to Justin Harlan, Betsy Slagle, Darcy Marie Mayfield and the full Tulsa Remote team for pulling this event together. #virtualleadership #hybridwork #remotework

Are you in the greater Washington D.C. area? On Oct 3rd I'll be speaking at a networking and learning event at the Army & Navy Club. This event is a best fit for leaders who have responsibility for talent & leadership development in the public or private sector. During dinner our panel discussion will be hosted by Alan Todd, VP of Udemy Leadership Development. I will be joined on the panel by David Livingston, Ed.D., Managing Partner of the McChrystal Group Academy. We'll discuss industry trends and best practices for developing the future leaders of the workforce. If this free event sounds like a good fit, DM me. There are only a few seats left. Thanks to Udemy Business, Chris Wilson, Alan Todd Ariana Freeman, Jeff Atkins for organizing.

Do your virtual team interactions often feel purely transactional? 🤔 Boost your team's effectiveness by intentionally building trust and psychological safety. Here's why it matters... Think about how daunting it can be to speak up in a hybrid or virtual meeting. Unlike in-person meetings, there’s an extra hurdle to unmute yourself, disrupt the flow, and share your perspective. Now imagine trying to voice a dissenting opinion in such a setting without established trust. Challenging, right? For actionable tips on building psychological safety in hybrid, distributed and remote teams to improve your team effectiveness check out our CEO, Sacha Connor's, full conversation with Jeff Frick for his Work 20XX podcast. Apple podcast: https://lnkd.in/e8vuPxRe Youtube: https://lnkd.in/eqv3pEQa #virtualleadership #hybridleadership

Are you a remote summer intern? Do you have an intern in another location reporting into you? Even this Dunkin' ad is showing more location-inclusive imagery with this hybrid meeting of the "interns". Coming into a company as an intern (or a new hire) can be difficult, especially if you are not with the location majority. 💫 If you are a remote summer intern, or if you are managing an intern in another location, consider these tips. Share what you would add to this list in the comments. 1️⃣ Set communication norms to never miss important info while not having to feel like you are always "on-call". ✅ Tools: Which communication tool should you be using for which type of communication? ✅ Availability: What hours in your local time zone are you expected to be available for live, synchronous meetings? ✅ Speed: What is the expected speed of response to different types of communication – urgent, FYI, update, feedback requested? ✅ Verification: How should you verify confirmation of the receipt of communication? (examples: thumbs up 👍 emoji, email reply with "I'm on it") 2️⃣ Use an Assignment Brief to literally get on the same page for any project. ✅ Clarify objectives and executional mandatories. ✅ Outline who is the decision maker and who needs to input to the project. ✅ Agree to milestones to check in on progress. These are just some of the techniques that we teach to develop the skills to connect, coach, and create inclusivity when working in distributed, hybrid, and remote teams. Learn More: https://lnkd.in/egWWFPQC

Yes! More industry data to reinforce what we've seen in our client program data. 25 billion hours lost to ineffective collaboration each year (within just the Fortune 500). With providing more place and time flexibility comes more complexity, which requires intentional coordination. For years we've been working with teams to enable them to set their norms and rituals to combat the issues that Atlassian is reporting on. Atlassian Research shows: 🤝 70% agree that it would be easier to make progress if they had fewer, more specific goals 🤦♀️ 65% say it’s more important to quickly respond to messages than it is to make progress on top priorities ⏳ 50% more time is spent in unnecessary meetings than making progress on high-priority work in orgs with poor meeting cultures ℹ️ 55% find it hard to track down information despite knowing a lot of people at their job Atlassian shares that Top Teams answer these questions: 1️⃣ Are we working on the right things? 2️⃣ Do we have time to make real progress? 3️⃣ Is knowledge easy to find and understand? Big thanks to Team Anywhere at Atlassian for sharing these findings. #virtualleadership #hybridleadership #distributedteams

📺 Did you miss "The Great Workplace Debate: From Office-Centric to Virtual-First and Everything In-Between"? Here's your chance to watch the panel debate our CEO, Sacha Connor, facilitated at Running Remote. The expert panelist lineup included: ➡️ Allison Vendt, Global Head of Virtual-First at Dropbox ➡️ Ryan Anderson, VP of Global Research at MillerKnoll ➡️ Dave Cairns, Future of Work Strategist at Kadence They knew that there is not one answer that fits all. But little did Sacha know that she actually had a panelist that was a high school debater & debate coach, a panelist that was a former professional poker player, and a panelist that grew up in Saudi Arabia. Watch the replay to hear perspectives from Radical Ryan, Async Allison, and Distributed Dave as they debate how to choose the best strategy based on your company’s mission, the work you do, and the people you hire. The panel also shared tested tactics for how to best support your team members through the transformation with the behaviors, skills, processes, and tools to navigate social isolation and burn-out, to communicate effectively, and to innovate. 👀 Watch here: https://lnkd.in/gp7AUMFN #virtualleadership #hybridleadership #distributedteams #runningremote

In our poll, 73% of you said that having 1-2 hours of meetings per day is what would be productive for you. That's a max of 10 hours per 5-day workweek. BUT, on average employees have 18 hours of meetings per week (per research from UNC Charlotte and Otter.AI) How do we fix this disconnect? Managers have a big role in improving this situation by providing proactive permission to decline meetings. According to the research: ✅ 88% of employees agreed that they could decline a meeting if their manager explicitly told them it is OK. ❌ However, 78% of employees said that their managers have NOT talked to them about declining meetings. Take Action: 👇 Meet with your manager and/or direct reports to review next week's calendar. Decide which meetings should be declined based on these considerations... 1) what meetings are you both invited to and only one of you should attend? 2) what meetings are you invited to as just an FYI and not a topic you think you can add value to? Tell the meeting host that you don't think your participation is needed and see if/why they disagree. 3) what meetings are you planning to attend just in case of FOMO? Ask the meeting host to send out meeting notes after the meeting. 4) which meetings don't include an agenda? Request one to determine if you should attend, or perhaps the topic can be handled async. What advice would you add to this list of actions? hashtag#virtualleadership hashtag#hybridleadership hashtag#meetings

🗺️ Time zones matter, so think of the world in stripes. That's just one of our CEO, Sacha Connor's top takeaways from Annie Dean’s Keynote at Running Remote. Atlassian continues to lead with their experimentation with distributed work. And we all get to benefit from their willingness to publicly share their learnings. 1. Time Zones Matter: Consider the world as if it’s divided into 6 time zones stripes. The most successful teams have a 4 hour workday overlap. If you are early in your career, Atlassian tries to match you with a manager in the same stripe. If more senior, you might oversee people across 3 stripes. Innovation teams should be staffed within 2 stripes or less. 2. Team Design: Organize teams based on the skills you need for the problem you are trying to solve (not based on the building they work from). If you operate digital-first then this allows you to create the best team with the right skills (within the right time zone stripes). 3. Loyalty vs Connection: Going into an office helps improve company loyalty and belonging, but NOT team connection (which is linked to team effectiveness). Team connection is better built via intentional gatherings. 4. Async Audience: The audience for your writing it's not just your readers, it's also LLM models (to help AI with searching for and summarizing content later). 5. Free Time: Ideally keep 50% of your calendar free for focus work and adhoc collaboration. 6. "Page-Led" Meetings: Each meeting should start with a one-pager that is read silently at the beginning to ground everyone on the outcome needed and includes prompts that create a robust discussion/debate. #virtualleadership #distributedteams #hybridwork #runningremote

What's off in this photo? There are way more location-inclusive stock photos of office life now than back in 2010 when our CEO, Sacha Connor, went remote. Back then, it was hard to find pics of teams spread across different places, or what we now call hybrid & distributed teams. We're glad to see there are now images showing hybrid meetings since they are a reality of how some work gets done. But, it’s interesting to critique these photos and spot what isn't quite right about how #hybridmeetings should actually be facilitated. What do you see in the photo that you would adjust? Share in the comments below. #virtualleadership #hybridleadership #hybridteams