Author: Maren Deepwell

Leading Virtual Teams: Missed moments

With the holiday season coming up, our team has had a long overdue in person Team Day and we are also planning a virtual get together in a few weeks. These social activities are important to virtual teams, and I really value the opportunity to spend time with colleagues in a more relaxed way.

Blended approaches to working together can help shape the dynamic of the year, and punctuate long periods of remote working with new inspiration and energy connecting with colleagues in person can bring.

That said, this year it’s proving hard to make that actually happen. A mix of post-pandemic factors, cold + flu season, taking long overdue leave and simply bad luck have resulted in many of us missing one or more of these important moments.

Does it really matter, though, that we are not able to all meet together? Does it make a difference that I miss a Team Day or a get together?

Here are my thoughts on this:

Yes, it does…

In our team we set clear expectations that we meet in person 3-4 times a year. In 2022, thanks to train strikes and various other factors, our meet up got delayed and rescheduled several times, and it really had an impact. Relationships can change if you lack an expected amount if in person interaction.

Touch base: One of the aspects of being in an organisation in which everyone works from home that I find challenging is that I can easily forget how different an experience home-working is for each of us. What you see on a video call is only a small sliver of colleagues’ reality. Meeting in person really helps me touch base with colleagues and get a different perspective on how everyone is doing.

Joining in: We often have a social focus for meeting in person, and we have tried out a lot of different activities over the years. I enjoy joining in those activities, and being part of everyone interaction in a different way. The recent activity I missed out on was an escape room, and I am sorry I missed it!

Getting a sense of things being ‘normal’: This is a clumsy way of putting it, but I am not sure how else to express it. What I mean is that, our team met 3-4 times a year in person in 2019 and it matters to us that we are back to meeting in person in 2022. Things are not the same as in 2019, but we aim to have a blend of working from home and meeting in person, and it feels reassuring (and fun!) to get back to that schedule. Care

No, it doesn’t, if…

It’s a reality of any virtual team that someone is off or unavailable and thus misses out on a shared experience. The larger the group of people trying to get together, the higher the chances that people are missing out. There are plenty of ways to make up for the missed interaction, such as:

Share what happened: in the case of our Team Day, colleagues took photos and shared these with everyone afterwards, and also shared their stories at the next virtual meeting. We talked about what happened on the day and included everyone in the conversation.

Make it clear what others got out of it: we had planned to swap Secret Santa presents on the day, and these swaps largely moved online. We also went through some training for a new productivity took we are trying out, and that, too, continued virtually so that everyone could take part.

Encourage alternative forms of engagement: in the weeks after the event, we offered other ways to engage, and continue to conversation even though we were busy and had a lot of other things happening at the same time. That’s a crucial point for me: if it was important enough to spend time and energy to bring a group of people together, then there should also be an emphasis on afterwards including everyone who wasn’t able to get there.

Care goes both ways

During this year, I have been thinking a lot about the boundaries between work and personal space, about finding balance between the needs of the employer and the needs of the individual. In my context, working for a small employer with fewer than 10 employees, even a very small number of colleagues being unavailable as planned has a huge impact.

Today, for example, out of 6 employees: 33% are on holiday, 16.5% are off sick, 16.5% are not scheduled to work, and 33% of us, two people, are working.

When you are working in a team or organisation of a small size, balancing the need to work together on things and share experiences with the needs of each individual can be a difficult balancing act. Care goes both ways. We want to show care for each individual and their needs (take leave, be off sick, work flexibly) and also the needs we have as a team (collaborate in real time, meet to discuss new plans, spend time together).

Those missed moments can add up. In order to have good cohesion as a virtual team, you need to have enough of them with enough of your team to benefit long term. Which is why I am already looking forward to our next get together 🙂

08/12/2022
Hacks for Hybrid Working… flex course reflection
In the past couple of months I had the wonderful opportunity to work on a project outside my day job. Together with the awesome folk at Reclaim EdTech, and working closely with Lauren Hanks, we embarked on a journey to design and run a four week flex course all about hybrid working.

It was interesting to learn more about the format of flex courses, which are run regularly each month in the Reclaim EdTech community (check out the events calendar). I have experience of different formats of courses, but I hadn’t come across one yet that uses this format, combination of Discord, blog posts, videos and interactive sessions.

With a blend of synchronous and asynchronous element, I love that these course fit around busy schedules, and are available to offer expertise and support when needed.

What the course was about

This particular course focused on a different topic each week, and here is a quick overview quoting Lauren Hanks’ post:

EVENT SUMMARY

For many of us in Higher Ed, hybrid working is here to stay. So whether you’d like to create a better work/life balance juggling being on campus with working from home, or you are looking to move from crisis mode to a way of working that is more sustainable, healthful or simply a little more joyful, this course is for you. Join us to explore hacks to create a better hybrid workplace for everyone.

We are excited to join forces with Dr Maren Deepwell, author of Leading Virtual Teams and each week features ideas to try out, prompts to reflect on and resources with a host of community voices. Here’s our topic list:
- Week 1: Hybrid Working Unpacked
- Week 2: Digital Tools in the Virtual Workplace
- Week 3: Exploring Hybrid Working Hacks
- Week 4: Complete your Hybrid Working Roadmap
The final post we published at the end of the course gives you a bit of a flavour of what it was all about in practice.

Week 5: Checking In

What I learnt along the way

What I enjoyed most about the course are two things: firstly, it was super stimulating to work with Lauren, who, like me, lives and breathes the reality of leading a hybrid workforce day in, day out. We had a lot of fun running sessions, designing activities and reflecting on the questions from our participants.

It was a huge learning curve for me to work with a different team, in a new environment, and having such experienced collaborators made it all feel easy and interesting. You can always tell when you are working with folk who know how to work together virtually, and it was impressive to experience that as a ‘newbie’.

The other aspect of this project I really got a lot from was the input from everyone who took part. As well as synchronous conversations happening around live sessions, we had an ongoing chat for the course which brought up thought provoking points every week and activities like a splot site that gave us a glimpse of what other people’s homeworking and hybrid working spaces look and feel like.

We do something similar in my own team each year, and it never stops being useful to see what others’ day to day looks like in reality.

A highlight of the four weeks was definitely a hybrid working radio show on DS106 radio, for which we were joined by Jim Groom. Chatting hybrid working hacks for an hour was definitely too short!

It was also stimulating for me to step into a different role professionally, and getting to focus on the design and delivery of a course. It’s been a few years since I last did that and it was useful to flex those muscles once again.

Look out for a podcast coming soon, in which Lauren and I will reflect together and share our perspectives on Hacks for Hybrid Working 🙂
07/12/2022
Getting back to running.

I miss being a runner. It’s been more than two years since I ran Half Marathons, and whilst I have never been particularly competitive, I miss the balance and headspace running used to offer me.

For 2020/21, I am definitely giving myself a lot of grace. Running was not a priority as life imploded. I had a lot going on that year besides COVID. For the past 14 months, running had to take a back seat as I recovered from a serious shoulder injury. It started as a frozen shoulder and then turned into something the consultant called a 1% chance injury. Only 1% of people who get frozen shoulder go on to develop what I had. It wasn’t fun.

So now, I need to do strength training to get more left side back to full strength and yoga, to get some flexibility back and a full range of motion (I am still a little removed from where I want to be). What I am most looking forward to however is getting back to running, or rather feeling like going for a run.

Couch to 5k

When I asked my physio for advice, he gave me a great 5k programme to try. It’s designed to enable me to get back to running without risking injury to the precious shoulder. This week, I am starting with 30 min, 4:30 min walk, 30 sec run, repeated 6 times. Each week, the run duration gets a little longer, so that I am moving from running 1 min per every 5 minutes, then 2, then 3 and so forth.

I am not going to do more than 30 min until I can run the entire time, and I am hoping to just get back to 5k by spring.

Fitting running back into my life

One of the biggest problems I have is fitting running back into my life. I know I have the time, but FINDING the time is harder than it looks.

Avoiding dark runs and runs when it’s too cold (asthma), and also work, dog walks and so many other things I am doing each week.

I love home-working and hybrid working, but one of the challenges for me continues to be getting enough exercise in, even with our daily dog walks. But running before or after work in the darkest weeks of the year is a mixed bag.

That is one of the biggest advantages of the plan I am following. It’s always 30 mins, and at the moment I am trying to fit it into my lunch breaks.

Wish me luck, and see you out there!

06/12/2022
Preparing to wind down work for 2022

It’s December and for me, the quietest time of the year. That doesn’t really mean that things aren’t busy, but some of my biggest deadlines are currently a few months into the future, and there is no more major travel planned between now and January, so this is as ‘quiet’ as it gets. And I am keen to capitalise on that.

As someone who actively tries to become less efficient and work less hard (looking for more sustainable, balanced productivity instead) this time of the year offers a much needed chance to spend some time tidying up. Here is what I intend to do in the run up to the holidays:

Calendar refresh

I have plenty of recurring meetings in my diary, and at the end of each year I check in on them. I look at whether I still need the meeting at all, whether the time still works, what’s changed and how I can adjust and plan for my week better.

The kinds of meetings I often change are individual catch ups, mostly due to working patterns changing or the focus of collaboration shifting.

Long term to do list clear out

My long term to do list is a a long list of things I want to tackle at some point, action items that are usually neither urgent nor important. Long term to do lists, for me, are the back of the back burner.

This is where I brain dump ideas, links to things that may be interesting one day, long term hopes or ideas that I could investigate.

At the end of each year, I review and prune my list. Usually there are a couple I have actually implemented, which can be marked as completed. Some have become obsolete and get deleted, whilst others may now move towards the actual planning phase.

Pruning other to do lists

I also prune and tidy my other lists, primarily trying to complete quick wins and plan for larger pieces of work come 2023. I try to be realistic, spacing them out for the new year, so that I don’t start January with a completely unachievable list on day 1.

Clear out the old…

Alongside that, I have a clear out of files and folders, my inbox and desk. Out with the old… and make space for fresh thinking for the new year. I usually book a half day out in my calendar in the last working week of the year, for precisely that purpose. I want to make sure I have time to clear up, and leave things in a nice way for the new year.

One thing I don’t do is to send 100 emails clearing my inbox just before I finish for the year. I am the recipient of many of these from others, and I dislike it personally. If something wasn’t urgent up to 23rd December, it can probably wait until 3 January.

So in order to empty my inbox, I schedule or draft emails ready to send in the new year and that way, I don’t get lots of harried responses and others don’t get 100 more emails from me.

…in with the new

One of the biggest joys of ending the year is to start planning for a fresh new year. I ordered a new journal yesterday, and this is always one of my favourite things to do. Have a little re-arrange, tidy and make space for new things.

05/12/2022
2022: My #FemEdTech Year
Early this year, I shared this post :

This month a few of the long standing volunteers of our network are getting together to try and re-energise some elements of our community activities. Whilst much has happened over the past few years, activities like the curation of our twitter account and amplifying the posts tagged with the #femEdTech hashtag have been difficult to sustain.
https://femedtech.net/published/care-and-curation-femedtech/

Since February then, each month for me started with #FemEdTech, first stepping back into the role of curator myself and also working together with other volunteers to set up a sustainable workflow that would enable others to get involved once again.

During the course of the year, we updated the information to get involved and the form to sign up, which, if you haven’t yet come across it, is available on the FemEdTech Open Space.

in April, our first official ‘guest’ curator took the the helm (thank you, Anne-Marie, for being our trailblazer this year) and from then on all months except for June, when I was back in the curator slot, were led by members of the community: Giulia, Clare, Sarah, Catherine, Leigh and Dani, handing over to Lorna just yesterday.

It was amazing to see individuals giving time and energy once more, to reinvigorate our corner of a social media platform which turned increasingly toxic as the year progressed. Maybe, in future our conversation may move elsewhere, but for this year, our network came back together around the #FemEdTech hashtag. And what a year we had.

Head over to what’s been published on the FemEdTech Open Space and be inspired by the thoughts shared there: reflecting on collective voices, claiming open education as a feminist space, a pedagogy of cake and… the momentus moment at which many of us were able to meet the FemEdTech Quilt in person for the first time:

Head over to Flickr to see the photos from the event (this image is by Frances Bell on Flickr) and read more about this wonderful project in the blog post.

It was a wonderful day which infused me with hope and gratitude and joy, and reminded me of the power of this community and the #femEdTech network and why I contribute.

Handing over lead curation

Since January, I have enjoyed acting as lead curator, and now I am grateful to hand over this role to Lorna, who will be at the helm of supporting guest curators for the next period. It’s fantastic to see that after the unavoidable hiatus in 2020/21, the conversation has been re-energised and continues to connect and amplify voices.

I am already looking forward to signing up for a curation slot in 2023, and to see where our conversations lead us next year, on Twitter #femEdTech and maybe elsewhere, too.

Posts from my previous stints as a curator
- 2022 care and curation
- 2021 still in pandemic times
- 2020 during the early days of lockdown
- 2019 my second time as a guest curator
- 2018 when I first volunteered
02/12/2022
Out now! Leading Virtual Teams
Today is an exciting day for me, as my book goes out into the world. It’s my first experience of this kind of publication, and feels quite different from anything I have published before.

As an Open Access publication, the book is immediately and freely available to download and read online and I am really looking forward to celebrating the launch of the book this evening in conversation with ALT’s Chair, Professor Helen O’Sullivan.

Thanks and acknowledgements

First and foremost I would like to thank the Association for Learning Technology for the support for this venture. Special thanks go to Professor Helen O’Sullivan, Chair of the Board of Trustees, without whom this publication would not have happened, as well as the Trustees at time of writing, who reviewed the manuscript: Bella Abrams, Peter Bryant, Lorna Campbell, Elizabeth Charles, Shonagh Douglas, Sharon Flynn, Natalie Lafferty, Keith Smyth and David White.

Many of the examples in this book were collected between 2017-2022 in my role as CEO of the Association. I am grateful for the input from everyone I worked with, especially the core staff team, with whom I shared the transition to becoming a virtual team and the years since. The transition was a unique opportunity for me and the team as a whole to shape a new era of a long established organisation. Many of our experiences from 2018-2020 were chronicled in collaboration with Martin Hawksey. Martin has given his kind permission for this book to include many of the ideas we originally blogged about.

This book is subtitled Field Notes from a CEO because my years as an Anthropologist taught me how to adopt a researcher’s outlook. Although I have settled into a different mindset in my ten years as a CEO, no longer just observing, but leading, I still find myself just as curious about seeing the world from someone else’s viewpoint and doing my best to walk a few steps in their shoes. Leading a virtual team has challenged that ambition in interesting ways, and provided me with a new field for inquiry. My fondest thanks to the Material & Visual Culture staff and colleagues at the Department for Anthropology at UCL, who inspired me so much during my time there.

Last, but certainly not least, I would like to acknowledge all the open practitioners and researchers who have shared their insights and provided input along the way.

Thank you.

Get your copy

You can read and download a free digital edition, published as an Open Access publication by ALT in partnership with Open Academia. The Open Access print edition, published by Lulu.com, will be available to purchase soon.

Digital edition – out now

Print edition – coming soon

Leading Virtual Teams is licensed under a Creative Commons licence CC-BY-NC-ND, copyright Maren Deepwell 2022.

Sign up for the free Leading Virtual Teams course

If you’d like to learn more about leading virtual teams, join my free course starting in spring 2023. This course translates key parts of the book into practice:
- Onboarding and setting expectations
- Fostering a shared team culture
- Managing people and processes
- Strategies for succeeding in hybrid workplaces in the long term
This course offers a unique blend of inspiration, practical support and resources. Join us to explore ways of working in the hybrid workplace that are aligned to your goals and values and how to lead with agency and authenticity.

Sign up now

Explore resources, blog posts and podcasts

There is a wealth of resources and inspiration in the Virtual Teams blog posts, more recent blog posts and resources and podcasts .
01/12/2022