3 tips for successful virtual collaboration

Virtual teams: common and complex

For over 15 years, I have worked with virtual teams, that is with teams whose members are spread across geographies. Our meetings more often happened behind screens rather than in an office.

Covid-19 pandemic accelerated the transition to remote working and numerous companies have adopted hybrid working methods since the end of lockdowns, fueled by technological advances.

According to an HBR study, remote workers tend to feel less connected than their onsite colleagues. They feel left out of priorities and communications, even on topics central to their job responsibilities or common projects.

In a virtual environment, it is also harder to emulate feelings of team belonging, of engagement, and to say “we” rather than “I” or “them”.

Isolated, unmotivated, and lacking cohesion, virtual teams often struggle to deliver results.

Definition :

Let’s come back to the concept of virtual team, as the name can be misleading: do virtual teams really exist?

A team is a collection of individuals with a common goal. Looking up virtual in the dictionary will yield the following results:

1. To be theoretically, as a possibility
2. To hold the conditions of existing: potential, possibility

These definitions would seem to imply that a virtual team is a possibility, and not a fact.

And it’s rather true. The potential teams, the collective opportunities will only materialize if there is a will to activate them, to identify talents and combine them to build something greater than the individualities. (By the way, this holds true for all teams).

My passion for collaboration

I love this type of collaboration because it gives the opportunity to engage with people from other cultures and horizons, to be creative to sit around the (imaginary) table diverse talent and figure out a way to make it all work together.

Thanks to my Organisational Relationship System Coach (ORSC) training, I know that each team is different, with its own energy and intelligence, and that the role of the manager is to listen to the collective, reveal it, and serve it to achieve greater performance.

3 tips to develop relationships and collaborate remotely

#1 – setting aside some time to get to know one another and develop social interactions

Developing social interactions starts with a very simple question: how are you doing today?

When I coach teams, I begin our sessions with a little ritual in the shape of an informal chat, akin to the coffee break usually taken prior to entering a meeting room, this little moment enabling social bonding.

This virtual coffee is a key moment to welcome where everyone stands, to connect to the other but also an opportunity to overcome the barrier that the screen creates by trying to truly understand one another.

Teams too often dive right into the matter at hand, without taking a moment to acknowledge what or who sits on the other side of the screen.

Unscripted interactions are also a tremendous source of creativity, which feeds innovation.

#2 – Defining our common ways of working

Through coaching, I focus some time on identifying the team potential and its ways of working: how does each member want to contribute to the collectivity? how do we want to work together and interact?

Going back to the definition of “virtual”, the second option brings me to view the team as an entity which holds the conditions of its own existence.

I like this idea of potential. A potential that the manager or team needs to understand, grow, and guide through a long-term vision.

What does everyone contribute? What is the team potential? How can it be developed and grow?

#3 – Developing a two-way communication

Communication is an essential lever to develop remote collaboration. According to a 2020 study published in the MIT Sloan Management Review, 47% of participants cited effective communication as crucial to their transition to remote work.

In cross functional projects I managed, I placed a substantial emphasis on communication right from project inception, so as to ease team members’ integration and so as to understand where each one stands, what each one brings and what each one needs so as to perform.

Active listening is also a key resource which is essential to any relationship.

The more time, space, and structure the leader or project manager will give to interactions, the stronger and the more frequent the interactions and relationships will be, with a positive impact on creativity and engagement.

As an ORSC coach, my role is to guide leaders and project managers in the development of workshops where we collaborate to foster collective intelligence while integrating the know-how and the soft skills.