Remote work, hybrid workplace, working from home, virtual meetings. Although not net new ideas, these themes became much more common within the last year. Even as more and more people plan to return to work in person, the concept of a distributed workforce will be the new “normal” for many, and companies and employees will need to learn to adjust accordingly. Distributed workforce best practices will need to be applied to be successful in this new landscape. There are new ways of working across the board – this includes a combination of remote employees, physical offices, and working with colleagues and team members in other locations and time zones (even if they are in another physical office). 

The Voltage Control team has always been remote (outside of our in-person workshops and events) so this shift to virtual work and the distributed workforce wasn’t new to us – we’ve documented best practices for remote teams, and even assembled a toolkit that allows our remote team to facilitate virtual meetings that are as, if not more, effective than traditional face-to-face interactions.

Many large corporations are making the decision to offer permanent remote work options for their employees, including Twitter, JP Morgan, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. A distributed workforce, when directed by effective systems and processes, can and will be successful with adjustments and best practices.

Employees have demonstrated the ability to work productively in a distributed and/or remote fashion, in large part due to available tools and technology. However, it will take more than simply downloading Zoom and a good Wifi connection (though they are both very important) for a successful distributed workforce. We outline 5 distributed workforce best practices below.

Distributed Work Best Practices

1) Implement recurring check-ins and meetings 

Communication is key. Ensure communication flows between all team members, regardless of physical location. This is increasingly important as workers become more spread across different time zones and locations. Consider daily standup updates on Slack, end of day status emails, all hands/town halls, check-ins with direct reports, and virtual meetings–with video when possible–to include everyone on the team. This isn’t to say you should have a million meetings just to have them by any means. There should always be a clear purpose to avoid wasting time (among other Meeting Mantras). Keeping an open line of communication through all levels and team members will help align and push forward projects and initiatives in a distributed workforce setting.

2) Utilize the best tools and tech

These tools played an obvious role when the majority of office workers were forced to be remote. They will continue to be critical to keeping everyone aligned and organized as the virtual, remote + in-person worlds merge into a distributed workforce. Some of our favorite tools for a distributed workforce include: 

• Asana – Project management tool to help teams organize, track and manage their work.
• Basecamp – Real-time communication tool to keep track of everything you’re working on in a shared space. 
• Doodle – Calendar scheduling system for time management and to easily coordinate one-on-one and team meetings. 
• Focus To-Do – Pomodoro time and task management app that helps you perform tasks efficiently. 
• Google Docs – Smart editing and styling tools support joint teamwork to flow smoothly and easily and keep ideas in one place. Teams can work on different pages or in different docs accordingly. 
• Google Slides – Interactive work templates with multiple pages to allow individual and collective work.
• Google Sheets – Collaborative spreadsheets to organize and update tasks and information. 
• Google Drive or other cloud storage – Drop all assets and work content into a shared space for easy access for all team members. Use different folders to organize information. 
• Harvest – Time tracking software with multiple integrations and extensions.
• Loom – Screen recorder that allows you to capture video screen messages instead of sending long emails. It’s also helpful for sending team members visual directions if you cannot screen share in real-time.
• Process Street – Make checklists for your team to help you remember and keep track of all of your to-do’s. 
• SessionLab – Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content.
• Slack – Team messaging platform that is a smart alternative to email. It allows the team to have a shared view of work progress and purpose
• Trello –  A place for assigning work and tracking work progress using a Kanban-style list-making application.
• World Time Buddy – World clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.
• Zoom – Videoconferencing platform with breakout room capabilities.

3) Establish and define clear goals for everyone

The success of a distributed workforce depends on meaningful goal-setting. A distributed workforce provides flexibility, in the sense that employees aren’t held to the same confines of a traditional workplace. However, this also means goals and tasks need to be defined even more clearly since the full team won’t be together in person and important details can get lost in translation. Set reasonable goals then make sure that all team members are on the same page so you can accomplish them as a team. Many companies and employees use SMART goal setting:

• Specific: Make your goals specific and narrow for more effective planning.
• Measurable: Define what evidence will provide you’re making progress.
• Attainable: Make sure you can reasonably accomplish your goal within a certain timeframe.
• Relevant: Goals should align with values and long-term objectives.
• Time-based: Set a realistic, ambitious end date for task prioritization.

4) Track projects and productivity

With any team, but especially a distributed one, tracking projects, and productivity is important. You are unable to stop by a team member’s desk to check in like in-person offices so you need a way of making sure that everyone is on task. There are many ways of doing this even if you are not together in person, such as Asana or Trello for project management, and Harvest for time tracking. Team members are able to see what everyone else is doing, what stage a project is in, and coordinate with one another in real-time. Monitoring responsibility online leads to more productivity and collaboration. It also saves time being able to view the status of all projects across all team members, in one platform.

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5) Promote team bonding 

Host offsite/virtual social events so remote workers can get together in person or via video conference for team-building and socializing. The specific events will depend and differ based on location and circumstance. Virtual happy hours or game nights are a fun way to bond. Connection is often more elusive online, so setting aside time for your team to relax or have fun together when distributed is more important than ever. These sorts of social events can have a big impact on your distributed team’s morale.

Numerous experiments have shown how employees are much more productive and engaged when they’re given flexibility on where, when, and how they’ll get their work done. A distributed workforce can boost not only productivity but also retention. Turnover is 25% lower at companies that support remote work environments. The evidence is clear: Remote and distributed employees have great potential to be highly productive and extremely engaged, as long as you know how to engage them. Testing the distributed workforce best practices outlined above is a great place to start.

At Voltage Control we are exercising and sharing the best tools and techniques needed for teams to thrive in the hybrid and distributed workplace, through productive meetings (in-person and virtual), remote work team collaboration, considerations for return to work, facilitation skills, virtual events, meeting culture, Magical Meetings and design sprints.

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Have you ever asked for input in a meeting and only gotten the sound of crickets as a response? We’ve all been there, and 1-2-4-All can quickly turn this silence into rapid insights.

Engage everyone without putting anyone on the spot

1-2-4-All is one of 34 Liberating Structures developed to add structure and meaning to everyday conversations. It’s a great way to sift and sort ideas to allow the best — and most novel  — concept to bubble up to the surface. It triggers spontaneous conversations at a time when many meeting attendees typically zip their lips and avoid eye contact. 

The activity is great for groups that are “stuck” having endless conversations without making discernible headway or decisions. It’s also really handy to combat the phenomenon of “follow the leader,” where everyone just nods and goes along with what the leader is saying and writing down. 1-2-4-All prevents a vocal minority from dictating how an organization operates. It seeks to solicit input from everyone involved, no matter how contrary or left-field their ideas are because it’s those ideas that contribute to the diversity of thought so many companies lack.

So how does 1-2-4-All work? It’s pretty simple, actually. Ask each participant to quietly reflect on the opportunity or challenge the group is seeking to explore. For example, “What ideas or actions would you recommend to move forward?” Give them one minute to think about the ideas or actions they’d recommend.

Next, pair two individuals together and allocate a couple of minutes to review their individual ideas. Where are they aligned? Are there a few ideas that both people feel strongly about? 

After the groups of two have had enough time to discuss and align on ideas or solutions, typically about two or so minutes, merge the pairs of two into foursomes and task them to spend four minutes noticing the similarities and differences in their respective ideas. Instruct them to identify the best of the best.

Finally, over a five-minute period, invite everyone into the dialog or simply ask each foursome to present the one idea they feel stood out most in their discussions. In roughly 12 minutes, you’ll get a variety of thinking and lots of lively conversations instead of a bunch of blank stares.

Shifting to virtual

Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, conducting a 1-2-4-All exercise was as easy as asking participants to push chairs together and talk. In this new era of video conferencing, facilitating 1-2-4-All is a little trickier, but it’s not impossible.

The idea for the Concentric Consensus templates stemmed from a need we identified when we designed and facilitated an annual kick-off for the Global Partner Solutions group in Australia. 

One of the first activities of the day was called “Empowering You,” an event-wide conversation around the principles by which they wanted to all hold each other accountable. The objective was to define a “team code” that was co-created with all 105 attendees, giving everyone a voice regardless of hierarchy. 

The 1-2-4-All model was an excellent method for arriving at consensus, but with such a large (virtual) group we needed to tweak the interaction model. We designed the 48-node Concentric Conversations template to host a 1-2-4-8-All conversation which utilized MURAL’s voting feature to facilitate our “all” step of the process and select the five top principles. It was a huge success, so we decided to release it to the world for all facilitators to use! 

Because the number of participants ranges per meeting, we also developed templates for smaller groups so you can use them no matter the group size:

8-node Concentric Consensus template

12-node Concentric Consensus template

16-node Concentric Consensus template

24-node Concentric Consensus template

48-node Concentric Consensus template

96-node Concentric Consensus template

5 Tips to ensure you see success using these templates in virtual meetings

1. Utilize breakout rooms

Using Zoom or some other service, create smaller workgroups vs. having everyone in the same chat room throughout the entire exercise. Once everybody has had the chance to think independently, create rooms for pairs, then foursomes and finally the group at large. Randomly assign participants to respected groups.  

2. Mute/unmute participants

To provide emphasis — and reduce distracting background noise — we recommend muting everyone but the person sharing his or her ideas.

3. Turn video on/off

Similarly, we suggest you only allow the individuals/teams who are speaking to appear on camera. This will keep the focus where it needs to be.

4. Set up a chat channel

This can be a good way to facilitate conversation and avoid people from talking over each other when others are presenting. 

5. Capture feedback in a shared workspace

We’re partial to MURAL, so much so we created the Concentric Consensus templates exclusively for the platform. 

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Use this template when a large group needs to create key points for a topic or question and write down those key points to a consensus. This is an adaptation of the Liberating Structures 1-2-4-All for 48 people.

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From too quiet to total consensus

You’ll find using these templates will get everyone generating ideas without it devolving into a free-for-all. The shy in your group will also appreciate an opportunity to express their thoughts without having to do so in the spotlight. In short, our Concentric Consensus templates can create unified virtual teams by allowing them to get a sense of what the collective group thinks. Another advantage of the templates is anyone can go back later and trace through the steps to see how the ideas evolved (just zoom in on the Microsoft graphic to see what we’re talking about). 

The next time you need your team to quickly arrive at a shared understanding, try the Concentric Consensus template to make your meetings more effective. But why stop there? If you’re looking for additional ways to boost productivity in your meetings, you can browse our resource library for advice on how to improve remote collaboration and even download additional MURAL templates.

Want to learn how to ask meeting attendees better questions?

Thoughtful questions are the secret to an engaged audience. For a pocket guide to the questions you should always ask, download the free Facilitator’s Guide To Questions from our resource library.

The post Don’t just ask anyone for ideas. Ask everyone for them. appeared first on Voltage Control.

Here at Voltage Control, we’re passionate about educating individuals and companies about why facilitation skills are important. As the workplace shifts toward more remote work and a hybrid workplace, virtual collaboration training becomes even more important as leaders and facilitators won’t always have the luxury of having every team member present in a physical room. Virtual teams are becoming more common and the best leaders will need to adjust the way they manage and train their teams – just because all teams aren’t in-person anymore doesn’t mean they can’t be equally, if not more so, effective. 

The Voltage Control team has always been remote (outside of our former in-person events and workshops), so we practice what we preach of our extensive knowledge on this topic. The new virtual landscape unlocks many opportunities for collaboration and partnership that weren’t possible before. Now, we can connect with people around the globe via interactive virtual workshops, attend conferences, or productively collaborate with the team, all from a remote or home office. This is without the cost of travel, renting event room space, and provides more possibility to bring people together who would otherwise be unable to attend – collaboration and meaningful work are now possible with internet access alone! Greater diversity in collaboration is another resulting benefit. We have the power to solve problems and create collectively at a higher level than ever before. The question now becomes, how do leaders and facilitators train virtual teams to collaborate more effectively in the remote workplace?

Here are 5 ways facilitators can promote more effective virtual collaboration training:

1. Facilitate Productive Virtual Meetings

One of the biggest differences of working virtually is that screen time replaces face-to-face interactions. Remote facilitation skills are more important than ever with virtual meetings and teams. Always schedule with purpose – no purpose, no meeting. Identify the main goal of the meeting and distribute an agenda beforehand. When planning a remote meeting agenda, scale down expectations on how much time participants will invest (try to limit to no more than 2-4 hours/day). 

Another way to promote virtual collaboration training is to create homework and group work. Have teams read material as pre-work so they come to the meeting prepared and less time is wasted during the meeting itself to get the group in sync. During the meeting, consider assigning group work and splitting into small breakout groups to complete tasks or exercises. Then, the groups can finish their work on Slack, email or smaller video calls, leading to more productivity and less wasted meeting time. (pro tip: Try Zoom’s “breakout room” feature to organize people in separate spaces).

2. Adjust Design Sprints for a Remote World

Team standups or weekly check-ins are relatively straightforward, making an easier transition to the virtual world. However, complex meetings such as remote Design Sprints will require more virtual collaboration training. 

Typically, a Design Sprint is a five-day process for tackling a business problem. Here are some ways that we’ve adapted our Design Sprint model for remote work:

• Move Slower: The pace of the Sprint needs to be slower in a virtual setting, due to distractions, limited ability to read the virtual room, and other inevitable delays.
• Tweak the Schedule: Five full days in person is not equal to five full days virtually. People can’t be expected to be glued to their screens for long periods of time. That’s why we shifted our remote Design Sprints to a series of mini-workshops as opposed to five full days. 
• Set the Stage: Virtual Design Sprints need more planning because there are outside factors to consider. What are the best tools to use? What adjustments need to be made for timing? What are some methods to optimize engagement and interaction? Set expectations before the workshop so team members come prepared with all the right tools and know their deadlines and deliverables from the get-go. As a facilitator, you demo the expectations and process for everyone else, field questions, and then let them go off and do their work. The goal of virtual collaboration training is to have everyone on the same, productive page.                                                               

3. Promote Human Connection

As a facilitator and/or team leader, training your virtual team to collaborate more effectively also means promoting connection with each other. Without the possibility of in-person “water cooler” conversations or after work team happy hours, don’t be afraid to get creative. Team bonding is still very much possible in a virtual environment. Here are some ideas for virtual ways to connect:

• Randomly match up different team members for virtual “coffee chats” – this gives people who might not otherwise interact a chance to meet and get to know one another.
• Hold a virtual happy hour on a Friday afternoon for the team after a successful week.
• Have beginning of the week standup meetings where the whole team joins via video and discusses their goals, updates, and questions with the group.
• Prioritize 1:1 meetings with those on your team.
• Sprinkle in elements of fun and surprise – for example, start meetings with a funny or inspirational video, add funny GIFs to presentations, or try implementing Kahoot! (an online quiz tool and game-based learning platform) to fuel some friendly competition.

4. Utilize the Right Tools/Technology

Tools and technology are even more important for virtual collaboration training when a team is remote. Some of our favorite tried-and-true tools for virtual collaboration are:

• Zoom – Videoconferencing platform with breakout room capabilities.
• Trello – A place for assigning work and tracking work progress using a Kanban-style list-making application. Assign individuals to cards to create clear to-do lists and organize priorities.
• MURAL & Miro Templates – Use our custom templates to help teams collaborate virtually. 
• Basecamp – Real-time communication tool to keep track of everything you’re working on in a shared space. 
• Focus To-Do – Pomodoro time and task management app that helps you perform tasks efficiently. 
• Process Street – Make checklists for your team to help you remember and keep track of all of your to-do’s. 
• SessionLab – Dynamically design, organize and share workshops and training content.
• Slack – Team messaging platform that is a smart alternative to email. It allows the team to have a shared view of work progress and purpose
• Loom – Screen recorder that allows you to capture video screen messages instead of sending long emails. It’s also helpful for sending team members visual directions if you cannot screen share in real-time.
• Doodle – Calendar scheduling system for time management and to easily coordinate one-on-one and team meetings. 
• World Time Buddy – World clock, time zone converter, and online meeting scheduler to coordinate and plan across different time zones.
• Google Docs – Smart editing and styling tools support joint teamwork to flow smoothly and easily and keep ideas in one place. Teams can work on different pages or in different docs accordingly. 
• Google Drive or other cloud storage – Drop all assets and work content into a shared space for easy access for all team members. Use different folders to organize information. 

5. Reference our Virtual Guide

Finally, reference our in-depth Virtual Work Guide. Virtual collaboration training and facilitating with a distributed team is both an art and a science. We created this guide for you to build a foundation for promoting quality work in the virtual workplace, and it expands on the above topics in more detail.

The future of work looks different, but bright. Successful virtual collaboration training will take some additional work and planning, but will eventually lead to more effective teams in this increasingly virtual work environment. We look forward to helping teams transition to the new business landscape!

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By now, most of us have acclimated to a remote workplace, mastering the art of unmuting on video calls and staging our Zoom backgrounds to perfection. However, tools for remote meetings are constantly evolving, reimagining the way teams communicate and connect. While the in-person workplace may now feel abstract, company culture and employee engagement are experiencing a renaissance. These aspects of a team are an integral part of a company’s success. Poor company culture can be detrimental to a business. In fact, one in five Americans left a job due to poor company culture in 2019 according to a report by SHRM. Without the proper remote meeting tools, toxic workplaces can fester, even virtually. To cultivate engagement and achieve maximum collaboration leaders need to continue learning and leaning into new resources that support their remote teams.

Here are some of the best tools for remote meetings you need to know.

1) Scheduling Tool: Calendly

Meetings all commence in the same manner–by scheduling one. Simple enough. But synching various team schedules can be a nightmare, especially if participants live in different time zones or don’t share calendars. We’ve all felt the frustration of one key participant unable to attend and having to start the scheduling process from the beginning. To streamline this, companies can take advantage of the tool Calendly for all scheduling needs. Calendly is a free web-based tool that helps participants easily schedule meetings without redundant back-and-forth emails. 

Remember, the key to an effective meeting is to invite only the participants it requires to reach the meeting’s objectives. Leaders can easily fall into the habit of inviting everyone. But if someone attends that doesn’t provide value, it can actually be counterproductive to the overall efficiency of your meeting. Only invites who needs to be there and do it easily with Calendly.

2) Project Manager Platform: Asana, Monday, Basecamp, Trello, Etc. 

Many of us have already discovered and used a multitude of project management tools. These user-friendly collaboration platforms are designed to support communication and keep track of projects. They’re an effective way to stay organized and keep projects on schedule. Some platforms have more integrated features than others but most of them are relatively the same, providing a centralized location to submit pertinent project information and real-time status updates.

But beware, there is one significant defect that overlaps all of these tools. They must actually be adopted and used by the entire team to work.

We’ve witnessed many teams optimistically launch a project management tool to keep remote teams organized and communicative, only to have half the team active on the platform with the other half resistant to embrace the technology. These platforms won’t work if the entire team is not updating their tasks. Before implementing a project management tool, be sure everyone is on board and have every team member commit to the process. If you find this doesn’t work for your team’s workflow, don’t force this solution. Move on to another platform or system to better collaborate remotely across all skill levels and preferences.

3) Guidance: The Virtual Work Guide

For many teams, remote work was something they were thrust into. Newly remote teams were ill-prepared and lacked the skills and knowledge to make meetings a fully collaborative and effective experience. We created the Voltage Control Virtual Work Guide to help teams transition to the virtual workspace. It is a free resource that will help you understand how to best conduct virtual work meetings, virtual facilitation, remote Design Sprints, and how to keep and promote human connection in a virtual landscape. Well-designed virtual meetings will foster remote team alignment and fuel synergy.

4) Recognition Platform: Nectar

Recognition is important before, during, and after a meeting. Backed by science, we know that recognizing achievement is key to creating serotonin in the body. Thanking your team for their work and commitment does wonders for getting the juices flowing. Take recognition and team support to the next level with the tool Nectar. The platform allows remote team members to easily recognize and reward one another. Incorporating a healthy balance of positive reinforcement not only creates a supportive team, but it also cultivates a community.  

5) Website Feedback: Pastel

Collaborating on design and UX projects can be a challenge for remote teams. Shuffling through and implementing edits and feedback is a time suck. For website design, Pastel is the virtual collaboration tool you didn’t know you needed. Teams can leave comments, mockups, and copy suggestions across the website’s pages. This virtual collaboration tool makes exchanging feedback on websites streamlined and coherent.

6) To-do Lists: Focus To-do

Maybe an entire project management tool isn’t exactly what your team needs to stay on track. But you’d still like something to help organize and prioritize tasks, Focus To-do is what you need. This Pomodoro time and task management app helps teams perform and complete tasks efficiently. It’s an especially helpful tool to use to time your meeting’s brainstorm and breakout sessions.

7) Mind Mapper: Coggle

Remote teams may need more support for complex projects. Coggle is an excellent tool for remote meetings, especially when intricacy is involved. This diagram builder can be used for taking notes during meetings allowing teammates to contribute and edit your diagrams. The flexible mind-maps include multiple starting points, branches, and loops to represent process and workflow. Clarity is now just a Coggle away. 

8) Courses: Magical Meetings

Maybe you need a bit more than a guide for a renewed perspective on meetings and you’d like to discover even more methods and tools for remote meetings. To fully immerse yourself in meeting systems and better develop your approach, sign up for the Magical Meetings course. This comprehensive course will teach you how to make every meeting magical–from how to unearth valuable checklists and appealing agendas and getting the most out of your participants.

Virtual meetings don’t have to be met with eye-rolls or yawns. If designed with purpose and intent, they can inspire deep and creative thinking. Meetings can also draw teams closer, even at a distance. This requires the right facilitation skills that take time to master. To hone in on your technique, join us for our virtual community facilitation practices. These free weekly meet-ups help facilitators perfect their craft and improve meeting quality. You will practice your facilitation approach, discuss fresh trends, and connect with and learn from fellow facilitators. Exceptional meetings begin with exceptional facilitators. 

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