Work on the book is making good progress at the moment. I am focusing on working through edits and responding to feedback from reviewers.
Meanwhile I am also working with the publisher on the format, layout and cover. As Leading Virtual Teams will be published online under an open licence, we want to make it as accessible as possible.
This month I am also planning ahead for the summer, setting out deadlines for the final stages of the editing process before the book gets sent for copy editing. Summer is my busiest time at work as we have our flagship conference in early September and there is always a lot happening in the run up to that. So work on the book may be a little slower for the next period.
Remote Working Radio Season 1
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 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 like revisiting or exploring different frameworks to think with, not necessarily to adopt them whole, but because they usually offer me small nuggets of inspiration. Here are some examples of what I explored and what I found out along the way:
Ways to explore your traits, motivations or fears
Enneagram Core Motivations: This is a tool which combines modern psychology with an ancient personality system, and it helps you identify one of nine core motivations. There is a helpful post that explains how to choose your type, and plenty of free online tests available to experiment with. I found this really helpful as a prompt for reflection and enjoyed thinking about which core motivations I would NOT choose and why.
Gallup Clifton Strengths Assessment: this is a popular assessment tool, particularly in a work context. Whilst the assessment tools either require a paid subscription or one off fee for completion, there is a wealth of articles, tools and resources online via the official site. This could be good fit for you if you are working in a large organisation for example, and may be something employers offer.
Myers Briggs Personality Types: This is probably one of the best known frameworks, and it offers free online tests as well as resources to explore. I have done several of these over the years as part of recruitment and coaching, and always found it helpful not least because it’s interesting to see if your answers change over time.
Spark Types: This framework offers a free test to help you find your Spark Type and is based on the work of Jonathan Fields, and his accompanying book ‘Sparked – Discover your unique imprint for work and what makes you come alive’.
Harvard Business Review: If you prefer to explore rather than do an assessment, there are plenty of examples online to help you reflect on different leadership styles or personality types. I found the later video especially helpful as it focuses on potential limits rather than strengths.
Beyond finding a fit
At times, finding a framework you feel affinity with can be hard or feel unproductive. So here are some ideas for what I explored in that situation, starting with Emilie Wapnick’s TED talk and related book, How to Be Everything (and you can be a ‘multi-potentional-ite’). I have always been interested in working (and thinking) at the intersection of different interests, different disciplines, and so the perspective Wapnick shares chimes with me.
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.
Subscribe
Subscribe to receive monthly news about the Virtual Teams Book and remote working radio sessions.
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).
