Welcome to the course orientation 🙂
If you are registered for this course, you will receive 2 emails from me each week, one on Fridays to introduce the topic and a second one on Thursdays with a round up of resources and a quick recap.
Course overview
Each course topic includes a podcast to listen to, prompts to help you reflect on your practice and inspiration to explore the topic further. Here is an overview of the course and the dates on which each topic is released:
>> Part 1: Orientation and a brief introduction to Leading Virtual Teams (21 April ’23)
Part 2: How we work and onboard new colleagues (28 April ’23)
Part 3: Setting shared expectations (5 May ’23)
Part 4: Fostering a shared team culture (12 May ’23)
Part 5: Leading team activities (19 May ’23)
Part 6: Course reflection – Setting intentions for your practice (26 May ’23)
Course companion book
To get started, download the course companion book, Leading Virtual Teams. The book is free to download in different formats and we will use individual chapters from the book throughout the course.
For each topic, individual chapters are sign-posted. The course podcasts include the key points for each topic, so there is no need to read each chapter unless you wish to take a deeper dive into a particular topic.
Listen to the course podcast
This course is podcast based and you can take part by simply listening each week as a new topic is released.
This week’s episode:
S02E12 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 1 – Course Orientation
In the first course podcast (29 min), I introduce the topics of the course and show you how to take part. For this orientation session, we’ll be focusing on the Introduction Chapter of Leading Virtual Teams.
Don’t miss the next episode
The podcast is called Leading Virtual Teams and you can find it on most podcast platforms including:
You will receive a weekly email as new course episodes are released, and you can also subscribe to the podcast to make sure you don’t miss a course episode.
Reflect on your intentions for the course
Reflecting on what’s important to you is a key skill for leading virtual teams. This week, focus on setting an intention for what you want out of this course.
There is no wrong way of doing this. You can choose to write your thoughts down or you might prefer to simply think about things. Get started with these prompts:
- What do you most want from taking part in the course?
- What practical constraints do you have?
- How can best overcome or work within these constraints?
- What would you like to change or learn more about?
Not sure where to start? If you’d like to develop your approach to reflecting on your professional practice, then have a look at the dedicated activity in Chapter 2 of Leading Virtual Teams, which includes helpful hints and practical tips to get you started.
Explore tools and resources
As this is our orientation week, your main focus should be on finding your way around the course and the key course materials including the book and podcast. Here are some further tools and resources to explore if you’d like to take a deeper dive:
Tool for reflection: Leading Virtual Teams – Wheel
I have adapted this coaching tool to help leaders and managers reflect on their approach to leading virtual teams. The wheel contains eight sections, including one which is blank for you to add your own category. You can download this template, print it out and add your own scores or make a copy to edit. If you’d like to learn a bit more about how to use this tool, listen to a previous podcast episode that goes into more detail.
Further reading:
There is a wealth of information out there about how to lead virtual and hybrid teams and each takes a very different approach. These are two of the most popular books I’ve comes across:
- J. O’Duinn, Distributed Teams, 2nd ed. (John O’Diunn, 2021).
- Warzel, C and Petersen, A. Out of Office (Scrible, 2021)
Connect #lvt23
If you’d like to connect with me and other participants during the course, use the hashtag #lvt23 on Mastodon, Instagram and Twitter. I’ll be posting a few times each week during the course, and I’d love to hear from you.