Best practices for virtual communication and collaboration

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How do you simulate the same productive environment of creative collaboration when your team is suddenly working remotely? The challenges feel more complex because your team also can’t communicate in the way they’re familiar with. With the transition to more and more virtual teams, we wanted to share our best practices to collaborate better when working from home.

Best Practices for Virtual Communication and Collaboration

When faced with complex and unstructured challenges at work, getting into a boardroom with whiteboards, notepads, sticky notes, and a team of smart people is a great way to build a plan. But how do you simulate that same environment of creative collaboration when everyone is at home? The challenges feel more complex because you can’t collaborate in the way you’re familiar with. 

There are a lot of great ways to collaborate and a few essential guidelines that will help your team tackle complex problems and build creative plans.  

Best Practice for Virtual Team Collaboration #1: Schedule Regular Check-Ins

Having regular check-ins is our first best practice. Use a pattern for check-ins and stick to the same tools each time. If you have a weekly meeting to kick off the week ensure you have a strong agenda and pattern, and ensure you use the same tools and method of connecting each time. Also, make sure you’re using the right meetings for the right conversation. If you have a daily check-in to touch base and discuss the focus for the day, keep it focused and brief. If two people start going into detail on a subject, even if it’s important, direct them to carry their conversation on together after the meeting rather than derailing the whole group. If you see that certain conversations keep coming up during your focused meetings ask the group if a new meeting with that specific focus would be helpful as an outlet.

There may be valuable conversations that need to happen but that shouldn’t interrupt the focus and intent of the conversation you’re having. Having structured times to connect allows your team to arrive prepared and focused for the conversation you’re going to have.  

Best Practice #2: Build Trust for Virtual Communication and Collaboration

Effective collaboration is stronger when there is trust among the team. Taking some time to have a social gathering (virtually) allows your team to reconnect and will build empathy. This connection will make your working sessions more effective. Your team will know they have a social time to connect and catch up, so your conversation can stay focused on work, and you can direct distractions to that time. Your team will build stronger bonds. Seeing someone’s face builds empathy and connection. The strength of that connection will make your focused collaboration times more productive and successful.  

Some of the magic of meeting in person comes from the few moments when everyone is gathering. You shake hands with someone and realize something about them you didn’t know before. How they take their coffee or that they’re a tea person or how delightful their shoes are. Those moments are harder to find when connecting virtually so you need to create space for those moments to occur.  

Best Practice #3: Implement the Principles of Collaboration

Once you’re ready to set up your first session there are a few elements you’ll want to discuss and implement for successful virtual communication and collaboration:

  • Shared purpose
  • Clear Why
  • Goals
  • Concise and well-structured agenda
  • Roles identified

Shared Purpose

One of the key elements of collaboration is ensuring you’re focused on the same goal. Through an agenda, a clear why statement, and some careful introduction at the beginning of a session you can help your group build a shared sense of purpose.

The amount of energy and attention this gets in your session will depend on the group. Is this a group that meets regularly or a diverse group that doesn’t know each other well and needs to understand more about members of the team? Is this an initiative you’ve worked on for months and you’re trying to build a plan for the next phase or is this an entirely new idea, direction, or challenge, and the team needs time to absorb and understand? Ensure as you’re approaching a collaboration session you take the time to think through the group coming together as well as your topic to ensure you spend the time to set the table for success.

Clear Why

Getting your group engaged and focused on the topic you need to address starts with understanding why you’re there. Ideally, every person who shows up to the session understands a clear why through a calendar invitation that explains the purpose of the meeting as well as a clear agenda that sets out the essential elements. The facilitator should also spend some time getting a read from the group about their level of understanding of the big why for the collaboration. Taking some time at the outset of a gathering to ensure you state the larger purpose, direction, and intention of the group will give everyone a way to engage with your topic and ensure you keep on track through your meeting.

If you’ve set a clear why for your group you can bring any side conversations back to the core focus. You can also encourage those not speaking up to voice their opinion to contribute. You may also want to periodically check in and ensure your efforts are still on track to address the big Why question you stated at the outset.

Set Goals

It’s challenging to lead a group that is moving in different directions. And no one likes it when a meeting drags on endlessly with no sense of a finishing point. If you don’t know why you’re coming together and what you want to accomplish you’re not ready to collaborate. You need to set your goals and your purpose before you invite your team to collaborate. Any time you gather as a group you should ensure you have a clear goal to accomplish. It may be just a brainstorming session where the goal is to get as many ideas as possible. Pick a clear target – no one leaves the room until we have 100 ideas out. Or you may need to decide by the end of a collaboration session. You can identify the first half of the meeting will be brainstorming then pivot to refining ideas and then the final goal is to decide. Do you need to create an action plan based on new information? Identify why you’re there and ensure everyone in the group knows what your target is at the outset of the meeting. It will allow you to keep on track and give everyone a sense of pacing and progress in the meeting.

Concise and Well-structured Agenda

Even if you’re tackling an unstructured problem or emerging challenge where there is not much information to share a clear agenda is very important to collaboration. You should always identify who will be in the virtual room, what information someone should read to prepare and the topics covered during the session. Ideally, you should write a name beside each topic and a suggested length of time for each topic. If there is only one easy topic but if there are multiple topics a well-structured agenda allows the facilitator to manage the time and focus of the group and prep the next person presenting that they’re on deck to present. Writing out an agenda also allows you to schedule breaks and identify what the end point of the conversation is. You can add the why, the goals, and any background material someone should come to the meeting with. If it’s a large group with a lot of topics make sure the agenda is complete and sent out well in advance. If it’s a small group and an informal agenda it can still be useful to define the PURPOSE, PROCESS, and PAYOFF with a short sentence or a couple of bullet points. The more alignment and focus you can generate ahead of time the better your collaboration session will be.

Roles Identified

There are a few key roles that are essential. If you have a large group you may have a unique person for each role but if there are just 2 or 3 of you collaborating you may be wearing multiple hats. Either way identifying the roles in the agenda or at the outset of the meeting will allow you to make the most of your time. You’ll want to ensure you have someone to facilitate or lead the meeting. This person should be responsible for keeping to the agenda, understanding the shared purpose, and the Clear Why, and making sure the meeting stays on track. Great collaboration also relies on the diversity of the group coming forward so the facilitator should also ensure you get to hear from everyone and manage individuals trying to dominate the conversation or the focus of the meeting. You’ll also want to have someone to record notes or record the meeting. As you collaborate you may have ideas come forward and ensuring those are captured is an essential part of the session. You’ll also want to have someone watching the time to ensure you’re making the most of your time and continuing to move toward your goals. These may all be the same person or you may have multiple people fulfilling the role of facilitator or recorder depending on the size of your group. Ensuring you have key roles identified and assigned at the outset of the session will allow you to make the best use of your time.

Assess Your Team

You may want to invest some time in the culture of collaboration specific to your team. Do you know the most effective methods for your team? What engages them and what shuts them down? Are you all using tools and technology in the same way? It may be useful to survey your team to develop an understanding of what works best for your group. You may identify some new approaches you want to adopt into your collaboration practice. A survey may reveal some areas you need to strengthen in your team through conversation, training, or workshops. Depending on the size and culture of your particular group, you may want to share a document, ask a question in chat, or start a meeting by asking an open question to conduct the survey. As your team starts to build strengths and common practices for collaboration you may want to close a meeting by asking “What went well” and “What was tricky” so you continually collect ways to improve and identify what was most effective. You can use these learnings to plan and shape your next session.  

Use Technology Well

There are many tools and methods to connect but ensuring you use a set of tools that allow you to communicate is essential for great online collaboration. There are a few basics to remember. If you’re on a video call everyone should have their camera turned on and their microphone off (muted) unless they’re speaking. With all the unpredictability of working from home (kids, pets, garbage trucks, construction) muting the noise in our background allows everyone to hear the speaker and keep focus. Sharing a document that everyone can read as well as collaborate on allows the group to maintain focus and see the progress the group is making. If you have a facilitator make sure that person is watching a chat feed so someone can interject, ask a question, or ask to speak next through chat and not interrupt the person speaking. If you have a shared document you can keep a list of who is speaking and the person who would like to respond next. If your group is large you may want to develop some hand signals or chat conventions such as 1 finger up to indicate you’d like to follow up on a point, 2 fingers up if you’d like to take the conversation in a new direction, a closed hand if you think too much time on this topic and thumbs up if you agree. Using the diversity of tools available video chat, shared documents, and chat allows your group to remain effective and efficient even while you’re not in the same physical space. 

Best Practice for Virtual Communication and Collaboration #4: Leave Some Space for Life and Home

It is more challenging to collaborate when you’re in separate locations. It’s also distracting to be at home. There are a diversity of challenges pulling at our attention. You need to bring a heightened level of focus and preparation to foster strong collaboration so make sure you also spend some time injecting some fun into your sessions. And be sure to leave room for breaks and beverage refills. Your team has lots of demands on their time and attention. Pets, kids, sunny skies out their window, that sourdough loaf they’re baking in the background, all these things are important. Not as important as the work collaboration they should be focused on but if you take regular, short breaks to tend to kids, pets, etc. they can bring their focus back to the task at hand – excellent collaboration with your team.