As I have been working on my book Leading Virtual Teams, I have been talking about working remotely on DS106 Radio on the Remote Working Radio Show.
What has started out as a lot of music and a bit of chat from me and sharing updated on the book has grown into an hour of chat with special guests, exploring how we work from home, what challenges we encounter and tips for developing your own practice.
The show is taking a break over the summer, so here are the recordings from season 1 for you to catch up with and enjoy. A huge thank you to my guests who joined me on air and shared their insights.
We will be back on air in the autumn for season 2.
I was curious to explore this particular framework, especially as I sometimes listen to the Gretchen Rubin podcasts.
Four Tendencies described
There is a dedicated book that makes for interesting reading, however to get started, here is how Gretchen Rubin explore the concept:
By asking the one simple question, “How do I respond to expectations?” we gain exciting insight into ourselves. And when we know how other people respond to expectations, we understand them far more effectively, as well.
We all face two kinds of expectations—outer expectations (meet work deadlines, answer a request from a friend) and inner expectations (keep a New Year’s resolution, start meditating). Our response to expectations determines our “Tendency”—that is, whether we fit into the category of Upholder, Questioner, Obliger, or Rebel.
Knowing our Tendency can help us set up situations in the ways that make it more likely that we’ll achieve our aims. We can make better decisions, meet deadlines, meet our promises to ourselves, suffer less stress, and engage more deeply with others.
Whilst you do need to provide an email address to complete the short quiz, it is free and has been taken by 3 million users. I always find myself choosing between options and feel a little that none of them really describe me particularly well, but it is not too long and the result feels authentic: My dominant tendency is to be an Upholder (“I do what others expect of me—and what I expect from myself.”) and that rings true to how I see myself.
The report I receive is four pages long and I find it helpful to read through it. It mentions both upsides and challenges of this particular tendency when it comes to communication, work and daily habits.
A new insight I take away from the quiz is that whilst there is a ‘relentlessness’ about this kind of person, which can be tiring for me and those around me (something I AM familiar with) there is also a suggestion that being good at keeping commitments to myself and a strong sense of self preservation helps protect me from burnout.
There are quite a few books by Gretchen Rubin that I haven’t read, including the Happiness Project, and the one that appeals to me the most is about daily habits, called Better Than Before. So that is going on my reading list 🙂
Explore for yourself
If you’d like to explore the quiz for yourself, head to the online quiz page and get started.
After finishing a complete draft of the book in April, my reviewer group has been busy working through each chapter. I have ~20 volunteer reviewers who provide feedback and I am really grateful for all the work they have been doing. This week, by 6th May, the review period comes to a close and at that point it will be my job to work through the comments and feedback and get the next draft of the book ready. This will also involve picking up formatting errors and trying to clean up the references as much as possible. During May and June I will also start work on the cover of the book and finalise the publishing deadlines for the production partner. Exciting times!
Virtual Teams at OER22
I really enjoyed talking about Virtual Teams at the OER22 Conference in 28 April. Long-time colleague and friend Lauren Hanks, Director of Operations at Reclaim Hosting and one of the Co-Chairs of last year’s edition of the OER Conference, and I, are getting together to reflect on the connections between open education and open approaches to online collaboration and work.
As leaders of virtual teams, we want to critically examine what lessons we can learn from open approaches to learning and teaching and how we can use that knowledge in an increasingly virtual workplace.
This session builds on a recent episode of the Remote Work Show on DS106 Radio, in which we started to unpack some of this.
Remote working radio…
I will be doing not one, but two remote working radio shows this month. Following on from our session at OER22, Lauren Hanks and I will be on the airwaves to continue our conversation. There is also a second show in the works for this month with a special guest joining the conversation, so look out for the dates and times for both.
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Wow. It’s really happening. This time, we are hitting not only the virtual but also the physical road again in order to journey to the OER Conference. OER22 here we come!
The last time the OER Conference took place as planned as in Galway in 2019, and since that time, three years ago, no edition of this very special event has gone to plan. In 2020, OER20 pivoted online with less than two weeks to go, and became very much a pandemic conference. In the crisis mood of those early days of the pandemic, OER20 became a free event with refunds winging their ways across the globe to participants who suddenly had a lot more to worry about than a cancelled conference.
Helloooer CC-BY Bryan Mathers
When I look back at the posts and reflections from that year, it really hits me how much the world changed for all of us, and for this event as well. Our small staff team worked wonders to make this one happen.
In 2021 we did plan to hold OER online, and then decided to join forces with the Domains Conference from Reclaim Hosting, bringing two communities together for what turned out to be… a journey into the wonderful unknown. OERxDomains21 was born.
Title image from the OERxDomains21 programme
I organise, speak at and go to a lot of different conferences of all shapes and sizes. Each conference has its own way of working, and there are some big differences between them.
The OER Conference feels to me very much like a labour of love. It has its own voices, its own way of interpreting the criteria for peer review, its own priorities of what is important and what is not.
I have had the privilege of being involved in organising this event since 2015 and in that time I have learnt much about the generosity of the people who shape this event, their shared passion for open education and the values that connect them.
Inspired by the OER Conference I became an open practitioner and an open leader myself. I joined the community that this conference supports here in the UK and increasingly in other countries, too. Through the OER Conference I made connections with others who lead important work in this space, and I am grateful to be part of an expanding network, a community that is coming together again this week.
We are coming together in person and online to recharge and re-connect. To share, learn and discuss. I am so excited to see friends, colleagues and new acquaintances in person and online. For those who are unable to take part, there will be a lot of OER Conference goodness openly shared and disseminated after the event, adding to what is now a substantial collection of videos and resources.
Let there be penguins!
As you may have noticed by now, the GO-GN Penguins have taken over OER22 for this year, and they are truly everywhere, both online and in the physical world. I recently shared a True Story of how a Westminster meeting led to… penguins. I am deeply grateful to the creative, collaborative and collegiate minds at Visual Thinkery and at GO-GN for helping us bring this year’s event to life with these penguins centre stage. Usually I am more of a shoe(tweet) sort of conference goer, but I must admit that the penguin theme defeated my shoe selection… so I went a little overboard and decided to go fully ‘on brand’ in a different way for OER22.
A photo of my hand with painted nails, one of which is an image of a penguin
… and there is a session, too
In the last bit of the programme on Thursday, I am excited to actually get to lead a session in the programme! Long-time colleague and friend Lauren Hanks, Director of Operations at Reclaim Hosting and one of the Co-Chairs of last year’s edition of the OER Conference, and I, are getting together to reflect on the connections between open education and open approaches to online collaboration and work.
Title slide for our session: Open in action – building connections in virtual teams.
As leaders of virtual teams, we want to critically examine what lessons we can learn from open approaches to learning and teaching and how we can use that knowledge in an increasingly virtual workplace.
This session builds on a recent episode of the Remote Work Show on DS106 Radio, in which we started to unpack some of this (recording to follow).
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.
Graphic showing an overview of different Modes of Working – CC-BY by Dr Maren Deepwell, Leading Virtual Teams (2022)
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:
Example of a wheel adapted to reflect 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:
Example of a wheel with scores adapted to reflect on working in 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.
In January I officially started my coach training in order to become an accredited coach, an ICF Associate Certified Coach, via Katie Linder’s Higher Ed Coach Training. Having completed the first part of the course, I am about to start the next one, which will focus on coaching fundamentals in a deeper way.
The notebook pictured above is my celebration, a gift to myself for taking this next step along the path to getting formally credentialed.
The coach training includes formal assessment, and it’s been a while since I last had to write an assessed essay or undertake an exam! I found the experience really positive however, and appreciated that we had a number of assessment options to choose from.
One of the options I didn’t pick was to develop new coaching tools, and whilst I didn’t do it for the assessment, it has inspired me to start designing some new tools to try out and share with my fellow coaches.
Coaching practice
What’s most rewarding for me about coach training is working with clients. I really enjoy working together to reflect, set new goals and find out what the next step might be. Some of the tools I have been working with include writing a personal mission or vision statement (in one sentence), which is harder than it sounds.
I tried it out for myself, and it prompted interesting reflections for me. If you’d like to have a go yourself, start with your goal and values and try to express these in one sentence.
Curious about coaching?
I currently offer prop-bono coaching and discounts for paying clients as part of completing my coach training. All coaching with me includes:
Exploratory conversation
Coaching plan
Six 1-hour coaching sessions (online)
Coaching resources
If you are interested in coaching, get in touch to arrange a free 30 min conversation to find out if coaching with me is a good fit for you.
1-to-1 Coachingpackage: £210 for six sessions (normal price £420)
