Meetings vs Collaboration
There’s a difference between meetings and collaboration. In a meeting, you can sit back and listen, without participating. You can passively take in the conversation or presentation and you’re still in the meeting. In a collaboration, you need to lean in and be an active participant. You can lean back and not participate, but you’re then not really in the collaboration. In our modern world, more and more frequently one or both of the participants are remote or at home. You can’t step into a boardroom and whiteboard and sketch your ideas out, you need to work with the barrier of screens and distance between you. If you’re working together with an individual or a group of people and you’re trying to complete a task or a goal, you need excellent tools. Bria by CounterPath provides a tremendous toolset for collaboration.
Bria Teams virtual collaboration features
Some of the key features of Bria include:
- Talk and Chat
- Unlimited HD team voice, video, and messaging included. You can use voice or video chat to connect with your team. Instant messages give you a unified conversation thread across devices.
- Multiple apps
- Conversations flow across desktop and mobile devices. Use the device you love or the one you have on hand to connect and collaborate.
- Meet and Share
- Video conference with up to 200 participants in HD video. The powerful tools of Bria allow you to collaborate large or small with your team, or a huge audience. You can present your screen, either as an interactive session, or a classroom or webinar one-way view.
- Easy admin
- Manage your team solution from one central console. Your team will love the easy setup, just download, log in, and go. Your admin will love the easy administration with powerful features to debug, audit, and roll out new users quickly and easily.
Virtual team collaboration essentials
To work well with your team, you not only need excellent technology, but you also need great tactics to use with your toolset.
Organize and plan
Ensure you have a well-formed agenda, with all the required details. You can start with a simple format: Purpose, Process, Payoff. In purpose – identify the reason for the meeting and focus on thinking through why someone would come and what they should expect to bring. In Process, you can talk through the activities of the meeting, who will lead what section, and if any additional items (sticky notes, background research) will be required. In Payoff, you can identify what everyone should expect to leave the meeting with. You can identify that the group should have a better understanding of alignment, a clear plan of action, or a decision about the strategy for the next quarter. Ensure you also include all the connection details for the session, as well as the date time, and a list of attendees. Then you’ll be primed to have an excellent collaboration session.
Give feedback, in the right way
At the outset of the session, it can be very useful to identify some ground rules. Are phones okay or should they be avoided? Will you give time for breaks and coffee refills? How should feedback be provided? You can identify if feedback is welcome at any time, should be held to the end, or provided in chat as the conversation evolves. Ensure that if you’re addressing a touchy subject or a new concept you’re very clear about how you’d like to receive feedback. It can help to identify at what stage of maturity you’re at with an idea or concept. If you’re early in the process, you may be open to all feedback. If you’ve spent months working up an idea to present, and all you’re ready to hear is strategies on execution, not the core idea itself it’s very helpful to identify this early on. If someone from your team does want to ask questions about your core idea they can approach it from a very different perspective.
Listen well
Taking time to hear someone has a few advantages in a remote collaboration session. While the HD video and crisp audio of Bria will ensure you hear every word a few key activities will help everyone on the call focus on what was said. Asking clarifying questions, either in response to the first person talking or through chat is a great way to ensure you’re hearing what the person is saying. If a speaker is talking, you can type up a clarifying question that they can either address after they’ve made their point or as they’re talking they may read the comment and follow up with an idea to round out their statement. You can also keep shared notes that are visible on the screen. If you’re collaborating on a big idea, assign a note taker, have that person share their screen, and ensure you track a name beside key ideas. If you’d like to follow up with an idea afterward or give credit for a particularly clever point it’s much easier with good notes. You may also want to identify some ground rules about order and turn-taking. If you’re presenting an idea you can work around the virtual room, giving each person some time to respond or reflect on the idea. This can be particularly useful if an idea is new, or you’re looking to strengthen a decision by having your team provide feedback and questions to ensure you’re making a wise choice.
Raise and address challenging subjects
It’s hard to tackle difficult subjects, especially in a distributed team. But if you don’t address a challenging subject it will become more painful and challenging as it festered. Everyone in the virtual room will be aware of it, and the less you address it the more of a blocker it will become. If there’s one person who constantly interrupts, has a loud background noise, or is aggressive in speech or actions it will be taking up the attention and energy of the whole team. Take a moment, pause, and reset expectations. Or take a break and when you reconvene focus on ground rules for a successful meeting. This can be useful if you’re not sure how to address a challenging behavior. Call for a 10-minute break, do a quick bit of research on key strategies, and then come back prepared for a more successful restart of the meeting.
How to set your virtual team up for collaboration
Have regular checking with your team and direct reports
- Weekly one-on-ones
- It’s hard to schedule time for little issues, so unless you already have time booked, small friction points can get in the way
Share key documents and ensure everyone on your team has access
- When you prepare your agenda, ensure everyone has access to documents well in advance
- Ask at the outset of the meeting if everyone has relevant documents
- Share them out through the file-sharing mechanism, or identify a team member who has that responsibility if you’re leading
Run meetings well
- Clear agenda
- Start and end on time
- Ensure you wrap up with action items and clear next steps
- Look for people not speaking and encourage them to speak up
- Identify a few key roles: keeper, note-taker, facilitator.
Host brainstorming and idea-generation sessions
- Plan meetings that are open in format, or varied from what you usually do.
- Grab a beverage of choice, have someone present a problem or challenge, and see if you can generate 100 ideas on how to approach it. No negative feedback, just lots of good ideas. It’s a fun way to get your team out of a typical meeting rut and increase energy.
- Ask everyone to take 10 minutes and write up 10 ideas on their own and then present their ideas to the team. You’ll get a wider range of responses if you give everyone individual time to work.
Qualities of great virtual collaboration
This HBR article calls out 4 great tips for effective Virtual Collaboration: https://hbr.org/2020/10/4-tips-for-effective-virtual-collaboration
- Use Regular meetings
- Share documents
- Work ”Side by side”
- Message away
Having a consistent toolset with high-quality features enables your team to dive into the suggested activities quickly and easily. Instead of fussing with technology, mute, speakers, and audio settings, you can dive right into collaboration if you use the same tools consistently with your team.
How to collaborate virtually with clients
Sometimes you’re collaborating with people outside your company. All the core rules of being prepared, setting a good agenda, and respecting time all apply, but you may want to consider some additional points.
- Send a note ahead of time with a clear agenda and instructions
- If it’s the first time, allow some time to connect in
- Work around the virtual room and ensure everyone can hear, has the agenda, and knows the goal of the meeting.
- Give everyone a chance to introduce themselves, identify their role, and perhaps outline what they’re hoping to get from the meeting or a question they’d like answered during the session.
- Finish with a 1-word close. Ask each person to say 1 word that reflects their experience in the meeting. It’s a quick exercise to collect some insightful feedback. Your clients can type or speak their word.
Collaboration is a powerful force to solve problems, generate ideas, define strategy, and bring your team closer together. Bria has an excellent toolset that allows your team consistency and quality with a fantastic user experience. If you’re curious about how Bria can impact your business, give Bria Teams a try.