How Politeness Can Ruin Your Team’s Meetings

Once again Wayne Turmell has gotten right down to the core of a common problem. Sometimes it seems like most meetings are so dreadful because everyone is just smiling and nodding; that moves nothing forward and improves no one’s morale. As you know, these ‘time and energy suck’ issues are often exacerbated when taken virtual. And that can be enough to make you want to go, as Turmell would say, ‘full Captain Bligh on people’… lol.

This is not to say you go full Captain Bligh on people, humiliating them at will and whipping them into shape, but it does mean that both meeting leaders and participants have expectations on them that need to be met.

Read this excellent article at the link below.

How politeness can ruin your team’s meetings.

Flexible Work Ban: Yahoo! the ‘modern stone age family’

You may have heard in the news this past week about Yahoo’s new CEO Marissa Mayer and her no work-at-home policy. She helped usher Yahoo back into the stone age when they made it clear that any Yahoo employee that currently works from home has until June to report to an office to work or look for work elsewhere.

According to an internal memo Yahoo believes:

“To become the absolute best place to work, communication and collaboration will be important, so we need to be working side-by-side. That is why it is critical that we are all present in our offices. Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings. Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home.”

While I agree it’s helpful to work side-by-side with coworkers, this decision reaks of the knee-jerk, backward, “can’t do” thinking I see so many companies suffer from. They’re struggling with virtual teamwork and remote collaboration so they think they should just scrap the whole thing.

As a consultant helping companies make the shift to The Anywhere Office®, I can tell you first hand that virtual teams can be MORE effective and productive than co-located teams when instituted  properly, and that “speed and quality” can be unsurpassed. But it doesn’t happen by accident; it requires a strategy and training.

When I consult with companies I walk them through a process to take a step back and define team and communication guideline. We also take a look at what kind of tools they have in place already, to determine if they are the right tools, and if they are being thoughtfully applied. Even these simple exercises have helped teams transform into lean, mean collaborating machines.

The punchline of the Yahoo situation is that Ms. Mayer talks about wanting the company to be the “best place to work,”  but in the same breathe she announces they are taking away the ability to have a flexible work agreement. Workplace flexibility is highly valued by today’s smart young professionals; closing the door on it at Yahoo will ensure the best and brightest will look for work elsewhere. And don’t even get me started on the litany of other benefits virtual work provides:  increased productivity, cost savings, environmental benefits,  disaster preparedness….

I should be thanking Yahoo’s new CEO

In an interesting article I read in Fast Company they explained why Marissa Mayer and Yahoo actually did us a big favor:

“Over the years, I’ve seen many leaders and organizations follow the same path even though employees value the ability to work remotely, and there’s a solid argument that telework actually benefits the business.The difference is that those leaders don’t have a high profile and aren’t under the same public scrutiny as Mayer; therefore, their decisions go unnoticed and unchallenged. Rather than singling out and criticizing Mayer, we should thank her for raising the veil. Yahoo’s decision gives us the opportunity to expose and challenge the misguided, faulty reasoning many leaders follow when they decide to revoke their support for flexible work.”

That’s a very valid point and I’m delighted that the decision has generated so much discussion about telework, remote collaboration, and virtual leadership. The thing that really strikes me is Mayer’s claim they need to have everyone in the same physical location to communicate and collaborate effectively – this coming from a technology leader that produces a number of tools (such as mail, calendar,Yahoo Messenger, Yahoo Groups, etc.) that are designed to help people work together regardless of time or distance! Read more

5 Tips for Virtual Collaboration – Forbes

In this excellent Forbes article powerhouse body language expert and leadership communication coach Carol Kinsey Goman shares some expert advice about virtual collaboration.

Virtual collaboration holds amazing promise. When successful, it enables talented peers to work together regardless of location and organizations to mine the collective wisdom of a widely dispersed employee population. In order to tap into this potential, enterprises are increasingly using geographically distributed teams as a key part of their business strategy.

But virtual collaboration comes with its own unique challenges — especially for leaders whose previous experience has been mainly with collocated teams. Various studies have shown that it is more difficult to get virtual teams to bond, harder for informal leaders to emerge, tougher to create genuine dialogue, and easier for misunderstandings to escalate.

As an Institute for Management Studies faculty member, I present a seminar on “The Power of Collaborative Leadership.” From that program, here are five tips for virtual collaboration:

5 Tips for Virtual Collaboration – Forbes.

7 Tools for Virtual Team Collaboration

In this informative article technology expert Midori Connolly shares her top picks for tools to improve virtual team productivity. Connolly specializes in providing end-to-end hybrid meeting design, strategic planning, and technological execution. Here she shares some key collaboration and scheduling tools useful for working with distributed teams.

Digital Dish: 7 Tools for Virtual Team Collaboration

3 Tips For Managing A Virtual Work Force | Fast Company

Here is some good, pragmatic advice from Carrie Sommers about how to address some of the unique challenges of virtual team management.

Managing a virtual workforce has its own set of challenges. It can be hard to keep track of what everyone’s working on. Similarly, without the ability to stop by someone’s office, it can be hard to keep a constant finger on the pulse of employee morale. Here are a few ways to manage these issues and get the most out of working with a virtual team:

3 Tips For Managing A Virtual Work Force | Fast Company.

What Makes a Great Remote Team?

Wayne Turmell breaks down one of the key ideas in Darlene Derosa’s Book ‘Virtual Team Success’ in this article from Management Issues.

In her very good book, “Virtual Team Success”, Darleen Derosa has a lot to say, but one of the most helpful is her “5 Differentiators for Top Virtual Teams”. It’s based on lots of research but has the added value of being true on a gut level as well.

Here are the five ways great remote teams are probably operating at a higher level than yours and mine:

5 Tips for Motivating Virtual Teams

This article gives some real world advice specifically about how to motivate employees and recognize accomplishments in virtual teams

“As more companies expand globally, telecommuting is becoming a common work arrangement for many employees,” said Dr. Paul Eccher, author and co-founder of The Vaya Group. “However, just because these workers are out of sight does not mean they should be kept out of the loop. Leaders must learn how to effectively manage virtual teams in order to improve the bottom line and sustain talent over time.”

“Through our research and work within Fortune 500 companies, we’ve discovered that only 21 percent of leaders excel at motivating their teams,” Eccher’s partner Dave Ross said, “With these simple tips, leaders can build camaraderie, create a more positive work environment and encourage stronger business performance, regardless of distance.”

The Vaya Group recommends the following tips for motivating virtual teams:

Virtual Team Building: 5 Tips for Motivating Virtual Teams – pymnts.com.

Next Page »