It was the first inspirational and motivational book I read this year. Really, it seemed to me I almost lost the art of reading the whole book, from the beginning till the end, not jumping through chapters and picking the essence.

Frankly speaking, I was cheating, even though the book had 124 pages, the amount of text on it was minimalistic, and the format was almost like a primer. The book was super-actual during COVID time, now with moving back to the office or hybrid formats it may be not so needed, but stop, we are in IT, working with remote teams too, and with some of our colleagues we will never meet side-by-side! So, I would like to grab some ideas for a PM or TL of remote teams.

First of all, start from the problem, Christopher Littlefield, the Author, arises at the beginning. He points to the research of Joseph Grenny, published in HBR in 2017 about the low performance of remote work in virtual teams. Let me cite, hope HBR will be happy; please read the original article, it is worth it!

“… you can generally measure the health of a team, relationship, or even an entire organization by measuring the average lag time between identifying problems and discussing them. The longer issues go unaddressed, the higher the price you pay in trust, engagement, decision-making, productivity, quality, safety … bad decisions get made, customers are hurt, bad behavior goes unchecked, and employee cynicism festers… virtual teammates are 2.5 times more likely to perceive mistrust, incompetence, broken commitments, and bad decision making with distant colleagues than those who are co-located. Worse, they report taking five to 10 times longer to address their concerns.”

The solutions Joseph Grenny suggested were easy:

• demonstrate trustworthiness, be generous with spreading the information, and congratulate even smaller successes of your colleagues
• demonstrate your positive intentions and respect by asking for permission to talk on virtual meetings
• be honest, lay on facts if you see something may be misinterpreted, invite others to dialog, and follow up with evidence of your goodwill.

Christopher Littlefield focuses on aspects of remote work further, such as team or one-to-one meetings, and offers a set of rituals, games, and events to carry out, to build team spirit and trust.

The first important point is giving feedback on every activity. Appreciation of meeting participants when they join, thanking them for submitted deliverables, informing senior management of outstanding results of team members, of course, if this was their individual work. Doing a virtual check by messages like “how are your tasks today”, or “I am online, call me if you need any help” every day, if there were no daily meetings, to not leave workers alone.

Another tip is establishing a physical presence even without being physically there. It may be a family member or a teammate in the remote office, to surprise your teammate by dropping off some things. Birthday cake, flowers, a book or a gift for kids, or pizza delivery for keeping extra hours.

Good pieces of advice for virtual meetings include giving people time (1-2 minutes) to get prepared with questions, ideas, or answers if a longer ongoing activity is going to happen, and giving them a model to follow by starting first. A kind of game “bowl of names” can be used to randomly appoint persons to answer or go first in activities. Facilitation is key, a facilitator gives everyone a chance to talk, moreover, the facilitator role may be passed around.

There are plenty of games suggested, to allow remote people to get each other better and boost their trust and performance. A “question of the day” may be asked in a daily meeting to warm up, and at the same time give you and your colleagues background information about the teammate. Or, some may create a couple of slides to explain their culture, landscape, history etc. Questions may be pre-assigned or picked up on the fly randomly.

Christopher also suggests interesting team rituals, such as closing the team’s weekly meeting by sharing “highs and lows”, or moments of accomplishments and frustrations from each team member. An interesting practice also is the self-evaluation of meeting participants at the beginning of the meeting using several psychological scales, e.g. Feeling Valued, from 1 to 10, so other colleagues would support them.

A funny game for team meetings is using a strange word, which is out of context, to check the attention of participants. If someone catches a colleague using the word, he/she yells “word of the day!!” 🙂

Another game, “Home Office Scavenger Hunt”, can bring lots of joy too. Just warn colleagues to be cautious with their electrical devices or glasses. “Moving Troll” and “Tuned Up” can return lost focus and attention back to work.

Other branches of activities are virtual group learning, public speaking training, discussions, virtual clubs of interest, and even virtual marathons.

Finally, appreciation, team gratitude, shout-outs on weekly meetings e.g. “Thank you Pete for helping me with my report”, announcements of small victories or accomplishments, and virtual thank you notes will make your team healthy and live.