Maren Deepwell

Search results for: “virtual teams”

  • A year after publication: Leading Virtual Teams

    A year after publication: Leading Virtual Teams

    A year ago my book Leading Virtual Teams was published, and I can very clearly remember all the wonderful excitement that led up to the launch, and am still grateful for all the encouragement for this Open Access publication.

    A year on, and the book, which was initially inspired by the work Martin Hawksey and I did at ALT, has turned into a whole host of resources, two free courses and a podcast which informs my wider work on hybrid working leadership development and coaching.

    A year in Leading Virtual Teams

    To celebrate the milestone, this post gives a quick overview over what’s happened in 2023 and if you are just discovering the book or my work, this is a great place to start:

    Open Access publication – December 2022

    Leading Virtual Teams – Field Notes from a CEO by Dr Maren Deepwell, was published in December 2022 as an open access publication by the Association for Learning Technology, UK. You can read and download a free digital edition, published as an Open Access publication by ALT in partnership with Open Academia.

    Digital edition – out now

    I also recorded a preview of the book on the podcast:

    Print edition via Lulu Press – January 2023

    The Open Access print edition, published by Lulu.com, came out in January and you can order it via:

    Podcast season 2 – March 2023

    I started the podcast in 2022, but in spring 2023 things really started happening. Each week, I share ideas and strategies for creative and fun approaches to help you succeed and lead in the hybrid workplace. Each episode includes tools, resources and strategies for different aspects of hybrid working, and links to blog posts and further reading.

    The podcast is available on different podcast platforms and I hope you enjoy the show. You can find it on: Anchor, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts and Spotify.

    Free Leading Virtual Teams course launches – April 2023

    This was my first venture of translating the book into a course, and I learnt a lot along the way.

    If you’d like to explore the course, all materials are freely available:

    Week by week

    Podcast season 3 with weekly episodes – September 2023

    In September I was excited to have Season 3 of the Leading Virtual Teams Podcast finally underway. It’s a new season in every sense… and that is why I kicked off with ‘new pencil case’ moments in episode.

    This episode celebrated the start of September, and the new season or start of term for many of us. I have recently tried out a ⁠new gratitude journal⁠ share ideas for how to find bright spots in a busy time of year. I also give you a preview of what’s in store for season 3 and the upcoming run of the ⁠Leading Virtual Teams course⁠ in October.

    Free Hybrid Working Habits course launches – October 2023

    I have experienced a lot of ups and downs working from home, managing remote workers and collaborating virtually, and I chronicled this in my book, Leading Virtual Teams (2022). One of the things I learnt along the way is that a good work/life balance and relationship with digital technology may look a little different for everyone but that the journey how we get there is similar. That’s why I designed this course: to share practical tips that you can use to find ways to make hybrid working really work for you (or you team or organisation) in the long term.

    It’s been great to see the course attract lots of listens and interaction. Although I do encourage people to register for free, only about half of the people participating in the course do. Others prefer to simply subscribe to the podcast to listen along and explore at their own pace.

    The topics for the course resonated well with participants, especially those designed to help manage digital overwhelm and setting life/work boundaries. Plus, I really enjoyed recording these as well, which is an added bonus!

    The course resources and podcasts are now freely available and you can explore topics at your own pace. The easiest way to do that is to listen to the course podcast:

    If you’d rather see everything at a glance, the Course information page provides a handy guide to the course and links to all previous topics:

    1: Audit your hybrid working habits to find out how your current habits are impacting on you and what to change;
    2: Set boundaries for a better life/work balance and stick to them even when things are busy;
    3: Increase productivity away from the screen by using strategies for communicating and collaborating outside of meetings;
    4: Communicate more effectively in the hybrid workplace in a way that works for you and reduces digital overwhelm.

    Special guest Martin Hawksey returns to the conversation – November 2023

    In November we went back to the origins of Leading Virtual Teams! I was delighted to co-write together with Martin Hawksey, and we created this joint blog post and special podcast episode:

    Working in the open

    It’s been a wonderful year, and it’s also been a lot of hard work. Practically all my work in this area since the publication of the book has happened around the edges of my day job, and especially until the end of September that was a very full on commitment. Since focusing full time on my free-lance work I have had a little more scope to take on paid work in this space, and thus give this topic a bit more time in my day to day work.

    Every now and then I get an email or a message or someone speaks to me at a conference about something valuable they found in the book, something that helped them in their work or opened up a new perspective and it always, always makes my day.

    I have chosen not to publish the book commercially, instead going the Open Access route with the book and all the resources and courses I have published since, because I want as many people as possible to learn from the mistakes I made and the experiences I recount, and find a better way to manage blended, hybrid and virtual organisations. One downside is however that I have not much data about how many people engage with the work I do, and with an ever more fragmented social media landscape getting a feel for one’s reach is more challenging still. Which is why I value it so much when folk do share some feedback or send me a message.

    All in all, it’s been a fun and rewarding year working towards putting the book into practice and making the ideas in it available to a larger audience.

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  • Leading Virtual Teams Revisited – with Martin Hawksey

    Leading Virtual Teams Revisited – with Martin Hawksey

    This week we are going back to the origins of Leading Virtual Teams! Join us, Maren Deepwell and Martin Hawksey, in this joint blog post and special podcast episode:

    Maren: Hi Martin! Been a while since we last blogged about leading virtual teams and hybrid working. So… I have lots of questions to get us started: tell us a bit about what your current work set up is like, and what you are particularly interested in when it comes to all things virtual/hybrid working. 

    Also, I am curious to hear how you think things have changed since the dark days of lockdown working. I have been doing some research into the data around home-working and evolving policies here in the UK (for example this 2023 report and the flexible working bill and this WIRED article provides a helpful insight into what’s not being tackled). What’s your take on the evolving picture of hybrid working?

    Martin: Hi Maren, thanks for having me back! For just over the last year I’ve been working for a UK based Google Partner. We have offices in Manchester, Edinburgh and Utrecht, but the focus is very much on remote working. Even in a post pandemic world I see many businesses still trying to find the right fit around hybrid culture. One of the key challenges I see is how to replicate the benefits of being co-located when employees are hundreds of miles apart. For now let’s put these benefits in the broad bucket of ‘watercooler moments’, ad-hoc opportunities for social interaction as well as work discussions. Seemingly effortless and tricky to measure the benefit. It’s something I remember us talking a lot about and I know you’ve shared a number of approaches and strategies which can help. Where I work a recent internal ‘pulse’ survey has highlighted a desire for increased opportunities to work collaboratively. The business is exploring various approaches, including one of the skeuomorphic virtual office spaces, Kumospace. This pilot highlighted there could be real benefits in restructuring the way teams work, a virtual focal point with awareness mechanisms like location, icons, and camera status making it easier to immediately speak to someone if they are available. The challenge was the price point. It was interesting to read the surveys you highlighted which include data on the overall economic benefit of hybrid working. Whilst we had many anecdotal examples of conversations that unblocked issues or identified business opportunities it is hard to put a value on them. The other challenge was there was low engagement across the business in the pilot space. So while we could see benefits for our team, but possible to justify for the business. Does this example resonate with what you’ve seen? Do you get a sense that organisations are still trying to work out how to make hybrid working work?

    Maren: It’s clear that businesses are still on a learning curve when it comes to hybrid working long-term. In the media, there is a lot of debate on whether or not there’ll be a big return to the office, but I think recruitment and retention without a flexible offering will be so challenging, that organisations won’t have a choice. There are a lot of parallels between the use of technology in education and training, and the use of technology in the workplace. Similar to how student expectations have shifted when it comes to digital, so have employee expectations, too. Organisations who don’t offer flexibility or effective hybrid working won’t be able to recruit or retain the diverse talent they need without entrenching structural inequalities further, for example disadvantage employees with care responsibilities. A few years ago we talked about the effort it takes to create and sustain employee engagement online, and your experience with the skeuomorphic virtual office space really chimes with me. Anecdotally it feels like ‘everyone’ wants more connection and collaboration, but at the same time they’d like that sense of connectedness to be maintained by others, so that they can dip in and out as they wish. Even something as simple as internal chat channels require a lot of effort to maintain. If you are using something like Slack or Mattermost to coordinate customer support tickets, then every support ticket becomes a reason to engage (and the value proposition is clear). However if you are in a water cooler or social space there is usually no external prompt to engage and someone usually has to take responsibility for kick-starting engagement by posting something. What are your thoughts on this?

    Martin: The term ‘effort’ resonates with me. Internally in our department we’ve switched to using an all day Google Meet with breakouts for individual teams. In a recent conversation with a colleague about using this space effectively we talked about how it takes effort to join the virtual office, similar to the effort it would take to get to a physical office. I would also agree it requires someone taking responsibility for the use of virtual spaces. I would go even further and say it requires leadership. Similar to having an office manager it needs someone to take responsibility for monitoring and supporting the online office. Something I remember us discussing previously was effort in terms of cognitive load. Part of this is the brain doing overtime trying to analyze micro movements in facial expressions. Looking towards the future I think this could get a lot easier with the next generation video conferencing hardware. I recently had the pleasure to have a short demonstration of Google’s Starline immersive conferencing solution. This combines technology that can scan a face in 3D, and present this to the viewer maintaining a depth of field without the need of special glasses or headsets. The result is incredibly impressive. It was only a brief experience so I can’t talk to the long term effects. Two things I did learn was that maintaining a realistic 1:1 scale was important, so it’s unlikely we’ll see this technology on smaller screens. The other detail was for this solution they are focusing on capturing and displaying detail in the face. For example, when the person on the call held up an apple there was a strong 3D effect, but I could see some fragmentation in the detail between the apple and the person’s fingers. Still lots of unknowns with this type of technology including whether it will ever be affordable for the masses, but interesting times!

    Maren: It’s really interesting to look out how technology might shape things in the future and what sort of skills and capabilities folk may need to develop to effectively deploy more advanced solutions. One thing I have been thinking about a lot recently, and also a topic I covered in the hybrid working course I ran recently, is increasing productivity whilst stepping away from the screen. There are a lot of reasons why we are glued to our screens, but the longer I work in a hybrid or fully remote setting the more I realise that I need to design my days to be a lot less desk based in order to be at my most productive. From getting more movement in and giving my eyes a break, to finding new ways to connect and communicate without staring at a screen I am interested in how we can mix things up a little more. 

    Listen to the full conversation in the podcast 🙂

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  • Top 5 listens on the Leading Virtual Teams podcasts

    Top 5 listens on the Leading Virtual Teams podcasts

    It’s July and time for a mid-year top 5 review, helping you catch up on the most popular episodes on the Leading Virtual Teams Podcast!

    No. 1 – S02E12 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 1

    The most popular episode so far this year is the intro to my How to Lead Virtual Teams Course. In the first course podcast, I introduce the topics of the course and show you how to take part. For the orientation session, we’ll be focusing on the introduction chapter of Leading Virtual Teams.

    No. 2 – S02E11 – OER23 Special: What’s so important about open practice for hybrid leaders?

    This episode shares a lot of excitement about OER23, an event which I have been fortunate enough to help organise since 2015 and which is always a great highlight of my year. This year, I was especially looking forward to the conference, partly because it’s in one of my favourite parts of the world, the Scottish Highlands, and partly because it gave me a chance to catch up with many friends and colleagues I haven’t seen in a while, including long-time collaborator, Lauren Hanks.

    Lauren and I have been talking about hybrid working and leading virtual teams for the past few years, and at least year’s OER Conference we even ran a session together: As leaders of virtual teams, we critically examined what lessons we can learn from open approaches to learning and teaching and how we can use that knowledge in an increasingly virtual workplace. Since then, I have been thinking a lot about why open practice is so important for knowledge workers, and particularly managers and leaders who work in hybrid, distributed or fully virtual team: Read the blog post.

    No. 3 – Special Episode with Martin Weller

    In this episode I welcome a special guest, Martin Weller, as we talk about writing books, virtual learning and virtual working and what we are learning along the way. 

    No. 4 – Book Preview: Introduction to Leading Virtual Teams

    In this episode I read an extract from the introduction of my book, Leading Virtual Teams. 

    Leading Virtual Teams – Field Notes from a CEO by Dr Maren Deepwell, was published 1 December 2022 as an open access publication by the Association for Learning Technology, UK.

    No. 5 – S02E19 – Meditation and mindfulness for hybrid and virtual teams

    During the recent Mental Health Awareness Week, I looked for new tips and ideas for virtual and hybrid teams keen to embed mindfulness and meditation into their ethos. In this episode I share ideas and practical approaches. You can find more information in the episode blog post.

    Listen to the podcast

    Each week, I share ideas and strategies for creative and fun approaches to help you succeed and lead in the hybrid workplace. Each episode includes tools, resources and strategies for different aspects of hybrid working, and links to blog posts and further reading. On this page, you can find links to the all episodes and further resources in the show notes.

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  • #LVT23 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 6 – Set intentions for your practice

    #LVT23 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 6 – Set intentions for your practice

    Congratulations on making it to the last part of the How to Lead Virtual Teams course!

    In this final part of the course, we are going to complete a closing reflection. Our focus now shifts back to your intentions for the course and how you might develop your professional practice.

    Listen and reflect

    This week, the podcast (25 min) includes a guided reflective exercise to help you reflect on what you have learnt and how to translate that into practice. You can listen to the episode as usual, or take a more structured approach and bring a notebook and pen to note down your reflections as we go along.

    Listen

    We are going to focus on:

    • What did you learn? What did you learn about your approach to leading virtual teams?
    • How has your approach evolved or changed in the past few weeks?
    • What first steps do you need to take to apply what you have learnt?

    After you have listened to the podcast, take some time to write down further thoughts and reflections. If you’d like to share your reflections with others, share them using the hashtag #lvt23 on Mastodon, Instagram and Twitter. I’ll be looking out for your posts.

    Set intentions for what’s next

    Below are the links to all the course materials, so you can revisit them in your own time. Taking part in this course should act as a prompt and support you to develop your approach to leading your team, project or organisation. If you are not sure what the next step is, here are some ideas to get you started:

    Gather feedback: use this course as a basis for gathering feedback from colleagues and peers and learn more about what aspects of your approach work well and what aspects you can develop further. Leaders and managers often find hybrid working lonely and it can be hard to identify why certain situations or relationships aren’t working the way you expect. Ask specific questions or focus on particular aspects of your approach, such as 1:1 meetings or sprints when asking for feedback.

    Make a plan: use the ideas from the course to set out a development plan for yourself, and identify practical aspects of your current work set up, routines or strategies you’d like to develop. Making a milestone plan can be a really helpful step and this podcast episode gives you a step to step guide to getting started.

    Identify support required: if you are feeling overwhelmed now might be a good time to take a step back and focus on what support you might need to support your professional development and wellbeing. Look out for a special coaching offer for course participants via email.

    Explore all course materials

    All course materials are freely available:

    Week by week

    Share your feedback about the course

    Thank you so much for taking part! It’s been a fantastic experience to share the past few weeks with you all and I hope you’ve found something along the way that’s inspired you and helped develop your approach to leading people and projects in the hybrid or fully virtual virtual workplace.

    This is the first iteration of How to Lead Virtual Teams. I’m keen to hear your feedback, good and bad, so that the next run can be even better. Please take a few minutes to complete this course evaluation form. Thanks!

  • #LVT23 How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 5 – Leading team activities

    #LVT23 How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 5 – Leading team activities

    This post provides all the information you need for Part 5: Leading team activities (originally released 19 May ’23). Each part includes a podcast to listen to, prompts to help you reflect on your practice and inspiration to explore the topic further. 

    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:
    S02E16 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 5 – Leading team activities

    In this episode (35 min), we focus on practical activities to foster a positive culture for hybrid and virtual teams. We’ll explore a number of examples of online and blended activities and ‘hacks’ and consider how to meaningfully reward and motivate your team. For this topic, we’ll be referring to examples from Chapter 2 and 3 of ⁠⁠Leading Virtual Teams⁠⁠.

    Listen

    Reflect on this topic

    These prompts are designed to help you identify blind spots and open up new ways to think about the way you work. Setting aside some time to reflect helps you develop your critical, analytical and reflective skills as a leader or manager:

    • How could you be 1% more comfortable at work?
    • What would work for your team? Why would it work?
    • What barriers do you have to work within (such as cost, institutional protocol, technical limitations etc).
    • What would you want to achieve?
    • Activity: Choose a particular activity of hack from the episode and reflect using the prompts above.

    Explore tools and resources

    Here are some further tools and resources to explore if you’d like to take a deeper dive:

    Say hello #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. 

    Catching up?

    If you are catching up with topics you have missed, you can find all the information you need to get started on the catch up page.

  • #LVT23 How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 4 – Fostering a shared team culture

    #LVT23 How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 4 – Fostering a shared team culture

    This post provides all the information you need for Part 4: Leading team activities (originally released 12 May ’23). Each part includes a podcast to listen to, prompts to help you reflect on your practice and inspiration to explore the topic further. 

    Mid-point check-in – 5 min

    Before we jump into the new topic, let’s check-in with how things are going halfway through the course. You can do this simply with a pen and paper, or if you are keeping notes somewhere throughout the course, go back to the notes you made during orientation week. During orientation, you were invited to set intentions for the course. We explored what you most want to get out of the course, and what you’d like to learn more about. We also considered what constraints might block your progress.

    Check in with your intentions now and really focus on your needs and interest. What has sparked your curiosity? When did you stop to think about something new? What concerns have arisen? Note your reflections and re-adjust your approach to taking part.

    If you are just getting started or catching up with topics you have missed, you can find all the information you need below:

    Past topics:

    Podcast | Blog post | Part 1: Orientation and a brief introduction to Leading Virtual Teams
    Podcast | Blog post | Part 2: How we work and onboard new colleagues
    Podcast | Blog post | Part 3: Setting shared expectations

    This week:
    Podcast | Blog post | Part 4: Fostering a shared team culture (12 May ’23)

    Future topics: 
    Part 5: Leading team activities (19 May ’23)
    Part 6: Course reflection – Setting intentions for your practice (26 May ’23)

    Check-in done? If you’d like to share your reflections you can use the hashtag #lvt23 on Mastodon, Instagram and Twitter. I always love to hear from you and how things are going, so you are most welcome to drop me a line via email, too. Simply respond to one of the course emails with your thoughts.

    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:
    S02E15 – How to Lead Virtual Teams: Part 4 – Fostering a shared team culture

    Working in innovative ways, as virtual and hybrid teams, offers us the opportunity to re-imagine how work and what our day to day feels like. In this episode (34 min), I’ll be discussing ways of fostering a shared team culture. Simply put, we’ll be exploring the question ‘What do you want your team or organisation feel like on a day to day basis?’ and how do you achieve that. For this topic, we’ll be referring mainly to examples from Chapter 2 of ⁠⁠Leading Virtual Teams⁠⁠.

    Listen

    Reflect on this topic

    These prompts are designed to help you identify blind spots and open up new ways to think about the way you work. Setting aside some time to reflect will help you develop your critical, analytical and reflective skills as a leader or manager:

    • How would you describe the culture in your team or organisation?
    • Are there any existing problems or habits you are seeking to change?
    • What would you like to see happen?
    • What are the barriers that are stopping you?
    • What experience and skills will help you achieve your aims?

    Explore tools and resources

    Here are some further tools and resources to explore if you’d like to take a deeper dive:

    Say hello #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. 

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