Category: VirtualTeamsBook

#LTHEchat 254: Hybrid working: new frontiers in professional practice. Led by @MarenDeepwell

Image of a team leader doing a team review with his team virtually. (Source: iStock)

I am really looking forward to returning as a guest to the wonderful #LTHEchat for a conversation all about hybrid working. I’m curious to hear different perspectives and see where this conversation leads us. Below is a re-post of the original post on the #LTHEchat site:

For #LTHEChat 254 we are going to shift our focus from learning to work. We will explore ways in which learning and teaching practices can inspire a more sustainable and equitable hybrid workplace.

Digital technologies enable remote and hybrid working in new and more connected ways, but it is by no means a new practice. Many industries have depended on home working over the centuries. In the UK we are at the beginning of a new era of widespread homeworking, prompting urgent questions about the rights of hybrid workers, working conditions, and how new working practices may increase inequality. Some workers may now have more flexibility working from home, but the pressures of competing demands such as caring for children or other family members whilst earning an income remain constant. Other issues such as the increasing digital surveillance of employees and privacy concerns around hybrid working practices further highlight the need for a careful and considered approach to setting out policies for the future of working remotely.

One indicator of the changes in how we work is new laws and policies that seek to formally express how the relationship between employers and their digitally connected and increasingly distributed workforce is changing. For example, in the UK we have not yet seen an introduction of a code that would give employees a legal right to disconnect, whilst other countries, including France (2016), Italy (2017), Spain (2018), and Portugal (2021) have introduced such policies over the past five years and others including Ireland are working towards doing so.

We invite you to share your experiences of hybrid working and critically reflect on some of the downsides alongside the positives. What do we gain when we move beyond simply translating office-based practices and envisage a truly hybrid way of working? How can we help create welcoming and warm hybrid places to work that help sustain well-being and work/life balance? How can we empower ourselves and others in making hybrid working an equitable and engaging reality that benefits the organisation and the individual alike?

We are at a watershed moment for remote working in the sense that we have an opportunity to set out a vision for what is ahead that is informed by lessons from the past, as well as, the shift in perspective that the pandemic has brought about.

In 2017, I set out to find creative and fun ways to work and build meaningful relationships in the virtual workplace. The resulting Open Access book, Leading Virtual Teams, brings together case studies and practical advice to build on. This LTHEchat #254 offers an opportunity for a conversation about current practices and how things are changing.

Join us to share your own inspiration, questions, and prompts for reflection. From recruitment and induction to establishing effective and sustainable ways of working in the hybrid workplace we will explore the highs and lows of what it means to work in hybrid organisations in the long term.

30/01/2023
How to… Lead Virtual Teams.
I am really excited to share a glimpse at my next project: How to… Lead Virtual Teams – a course in ten podcasts.

What is it like to manage a virtual team and to lead an organisation from home? How can you not only meet budget targets and KPIs but balance business needs with employee happiness and wellbeing?

My aim for Leading Virtual Teams as a book was to explore current practice in succeeding in a virtual workplace and questions what the future may hold. The book provides practical advice and case studies as a source of inspiration and a prompt for reflection for virtual teams and their leaders. From recruitment and induction to establishing effective and sustainable ways of working in the virtual workplace for small and medium sized organisations, this book explores the highs and lows of what it means to work from home long-term and sets out a new kind of professionalism for virtual teams.

The course I am running this spring translates the ideas in the book into practice.

If you’d like to learn more about leading virtual teams, then join in and come along. 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
The course offers a unique blend of inspiration, practical support and resources.

Curious? Here’s what’s in store.

The course is free to join and open to all. It is designed for emerging and established leaders and managers working in a hybrid or fully virtual setting. The course offers you opportunities to listen, reflect and explore:

Listen

The course has ten parts and each part is introduced by a podcast episode that sets out the key ideas for the topic. I have chosen the podcast format to enable you to follow the course at your own pace, listening when it suits you and also to minimise screen time needed to take part in the course.

Whether you listen to the course as you walk the dog, cook or sit in a comfy chair, this course is designed to take you away from your screen and constant stream of notifications. You just have to listen.

Reflect

Each topic is accompanied by prompts and questions to help you reflect on your professional practice. You will use these prompts to take a deeper dive into ways of working in the hybrid workplace and reflect on how your leadership style aligns to your goals and values. Each topic will help you reflect on your a different aspect of your approach, your agency and authenticity.

You can choose whether you write your reflections down, share them with others in the course or keep them private for yourself.

Explore

In addition to the podcast, each topic comes with a short summary blog post, which includes resources and tools to explore. Some topics will include structured activities for you to try out, others will link to external sources for more inspiration.

Sign up
20/01/2023
Virtual Team Adventures in Asana
Our team is currently moving to Asana. “Asana is a web and mobile “work management” platform designed to help teams organize, track, and manage their work.”

This is a big moment, as we have tried and not adopted various other similar tools including Basecamp, Trello, Google Tasks and Project Management tools within Google Workspace.

However, things are finally moving into place, and with a couple of colleagues alreday familiar with and/or inspired by the platform, we are embarking on the long road to embedding new ways of working in our virtual team.

To say that I’m excited is an understatement. (and a big thank you to Lauren Hanks for extra inspiration).

Training

One of the joys of adopting a new tool for me is the training. I love the process of learning about a new platform from the ground up, and there is plenty of support available in the form of online documentation, courses and online sessions.

I found the online training really helpful, and also completed the self-paced courses. It’s good to get the basics right and I want to get a good feel for what everyone in the team is learning.

Topics like:
- Create Projects and Tasks
- Keep work on track with clear Due Dates, Assignees, and Custom Fields
- How to manage your own to-dos with My Tasks
- How to effectively manage communication with teammates with Comments, Notifications, and Inbox
can open up great opportunities for discussing how we collaborate and work on projects as a team.

Re-imagining my to do lists

I recently blogged about winding down work for 2022 and part of the post was reflecting on and revisiting and pruning my to do lists.

Enter Asana.

I really found it helpful to have to revisit not only what’s on my to do lists but also how they are organised and what I keep where.

As part of my coaching with clients I often work through different models of prioritising work but I haven’t reviewed this for myself recently, so this is definitely going to be a priority as part of my transition.

I am considering some new lists, dedicated for things I want to do less of or stop all together as well as lists of things I want to do or need to track.

… getting everyone on board

Time to learn and embed a new platform like this is always a challenge. No matter what tool you use, it will take longer to transfer workflows and processes than just doing the established/familiar thing.

Also, it takes time for everyone to get a feel for why we are using this tool, why we are making this change, instead of continuing to use the established ways of working.

In our team we are not finding that too difficult at the moment, primarily because we are all agreed that things have to enable us to have a better overview of what we are all doing and where progress is being made.

It’s also a bonus that Asana offers lots of different ways for individuals to manage/view their own tasks in whatever way they prefer. That is popular with everyone.

Next steps

As well as my own to do lists and general projects, we are going to be moving 1-to-1 meetings into the new platform from January, which will support our use of Asana regularly. We are also moving our overall business plan, which is due to be updated in February, and again, supports regular use.
13/12/2022
Leading Virtual Teams: Book launch in a post
It’s been such a pleasure to celebrate the launch of the Leading Virtual Teams book last week, and a special moment for me as it is my first solo book publication. This post brings all the resources and information about the book together in one place, so whether you’d like to catch up or take a deeper dive, jump right in:

About the book

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

What is it like to manage a virtual team and to lead an organisation from home? How can you not only meet budget targets and KPIs but balance business needs with employee happiness and wellbeing?

Leading Virtual Teams explores current practice in succeeding in a virtual workplace and questions what the future may hold.

In 2017 I set out to find creative and fun ways to work and build meaningful relationships in a virtual team. To find ethical ways to work online, respecting employee privacy and building trust between the organisation and its staff.

This book provides practical advice and case studies as a source of inspiration and a prompt for reflection for virtual teams and their leaders. From recruitment and induction to establishing effective and sustainable ways of working in the virtual workplace for small and medium sized organisations, Through case studies and practical advice this book explores the highs and lows of what it means to work from home long-term and sets out a new kind of professionalism for virtual teams.

Book launch recording

It was great to see so many of you on 1 December 2022 to celebrate the launch of the book. You can now access the recording of Professor Helen O’Sullivan and Dr Maren Deepwell in conversation, sharing insights into ALT’s journey to becoming a virtual organisation and the story of how this book came to be.

Free to download

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

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

Order your printed copy

More stockists coming soon. For now, you can order a printed copy from:
- Barnes & Noble
- Amazon
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 .

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
09/12/2022
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
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