As part of my work on the Leading Virtual Teams book, I have been careful to define what is meant by terms describing different ways of working. It’s taken me a while to bring the various terms together, and to reflect on their meaning not just now, but also before the advent of digital technologies and more widely available, reliable, high speed internet connections.
In my childhood days for example, selling Tupperware from your garage was a popular way for women to work from home alongside bringing up children, for example, and that didn’t involve Zoom calls or being online at all.
Similarly, there are many industries in which distributed working (i.e. across a number of different geographical locations) or working remotely (away from a central location such as a campus or corporate HQ) has been commonplace well before we had the capacity to take much of our “office” with us in the form of a laptop or even mobile device.
One of the key themes of the work I have been doing is reflecting on how the way we work impacts on us. More specifically, I am interested in how different modes of working impact on particular aspects of our lives such as physical and mental health, work/life balance or a sense of connectedness.
Inspired by my coach training, in which our coach trainer recently asked us to practice with a coaching tool called Wheel of Life, I have adapted this coaching tool to explore different ways of working such as working from home, hybrid working,
distributed or remote working and working in virtual teams and reflect on how the way you work impacts on you and your life.
Here is one example focused on hybrid working:
Each wheel contains eight sections, including one which is blank for you to add your own category. I have been experimenting with what categories to include based on the research I have undertaken, and the mix of what’s included changes for different modes of working.
For hybrid working, you could reflect on and score:
- Home working environment
- Work/life balance
- Physical and mental health
- Care and family responsibilities
- Socialising with colleagues
- Commute
- Office or campus work environment
- and… a category of your choice
Here is another example that I have completed for working as a virtual team:
In this example, I have added a lower score for “Virtual socialising with colleagues” and high scores for areas like “work/life balance” and “home working environment”.
Try out this resource
You can download this resource and use it or adapt it to better suit your particular needs.
If you have any feedback or comments, I would love to hear from you. Contact me.