21st Century Work Life

Steve Holyer shares why he works as Product Owner coach (amongst other things) and the importance of allowing teams to find how they best have fun together. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services A short description of "Agile" and why Steve coaches Scrum Product Owners. The ever-changing role of the Product Owner. Working with distributed agile teams and what happens when they start to play hard during retrospectives. How retrospectives help teams work better together. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby and Diana Larsen. https://www.amazon.com/Agile-Retrospectives-Making-Teams-Great/dp/0977616649/ Working collocated and working distributed. When retrospectives get hacked. Finding out what "fun at work" means for your team and working within that. Pilar mentions "The Science of Great Teams", a study by Sandy Pentland. How this playful team continues to work together. www.coachingcocktails.com Creating a live community meet-up online, using Zoom. The virtual fish bowl. Pilar mentions another recent episode from this podcast with Paul Thoresen. Twitter @zurcherart www.pobydesign.com

The programme of the Work 2.0 conference, in London, 25 & 26 May 2017, gives a good overview of what companies are addressing when they plan for the future of their workforce. In this episode, Pilar shares some of the session titles that have grabbed her attention.  You can find the programme here: http://www.terrapinn.com/conference/work2/index.stm Pilar will be covering the conference in a future episode. If you would like to attend the conference, we have a 15% discount for you. www.terrapinn.com/virtual  use the code: WXWW

Pilar talks to Paul Thoresen about developing teams, trust, and using surveys in organisations.  Visit www.virtualnotdistant.com for information on our training, coaching and consultancy services.  Paul on Twitter https://twitter.com/surveyguy2 Paul on Medium https://medium.com/@SurveyGuy2 Paul talks about what he learned during his attendance to the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology' conference in Orlando. http://www.siop.org/conferences/17con/ The importance of change management for organisational psychology professionals, most of what we introduce in organisations is going to involve change. Experimenting vs piloting; they're different things. Look for Episode 9 of the Evidence Talks podcast with Paul http://www.futureworkcentre.com/what-we-do/education/evidencetalks/ There's a lot of research at the moment around teams. Paul recommends us to check out the work of Suzanne Bell https://twitter.com/TeamsLab Teams and groups; not everyone forms a team and that's ok! Sentiment analysis. The importance of propensity to trust and swift trust. (Check out episode 117 in this podcast, A Question of Trust and the blog post https://virtualteamtalk.com/2016/11/05/trust-in-teams-1/ ) How we can show we have integrity, competence and benevolent in virtual teams? Paul mentions this article from Science for Work: Teams Going Virtual: Why Focusing on Trust Matters http://scienceforwork.com/blog/virtual-teams-trust/ Paul explains the Rocket Model. http://www.therocketmodel.com/ To create strong teams, you need the processes around it. Dissecting the team. Using surveys in organisations. "Survey readiness checklist" Dialogic OD Paul's work. Social media as a support mechanism for freelancers. Cozy Calendar http://www.cozi.com/calendar/ virtualteamtalk.com

Pilar mentions this episode from HBR IdeaCast, broadcast on 14 July 2016 "We Can't Work All the Time" https://hbr.org/ideacast/2016/07/we-cant-work-all-the-time.html Challenging the identity of the person who sees themselves as a different individual at work and at home. Work-life balance doesn't always mean work-family balance. You might want to check out the 27 March 2017 episode of Business Daily. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p04xd4jy Are customising your notifications the key to achieving separation of work and non-work activities? Work-life balance Work life integration Work-home interference https://www.eurofound.europa.eu/publications/report/2017/working-anytime-anywhere-the-effects-on-the-world-of-work Does job insecurity contribute to stress if you work from home? Unusual suspects who want flexibility in the work: Lisette and Pilar! Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In today's episode, Pilar talks through the things we can tweak as individuals, to make our virtual meetings comfortable. 19:25mins Virtual meetings are gradually becoming one more way of talking to those you work with. And if organisations want their employees from different departments to network with each other, to increase the chances of innovation, they should be encouraging the use of video meetings.  Talking to others through a screen might feel a bit unnatural if you're not used to it, so here are five things to look out for to help you feel at ease.  (For episodes on running virtual meetings, check out episode 107 Facilitating Virtual Meetings with Nancy Settle-Murphy and episode 13 on Collocated and Virtual Meetings (1) Pay attention to your background and any windows behind you. (2) Remember that you have a chat function. (3) Remember that you can mute yourself. (Don’t wait for others to get so fed up with you they mute you!) (4) Do you need to see yourself? Pilar mentions this article http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-videoconferencing-is-more-effective-when-you-cant-see-yourself/439772/ (5) Better to have an audio conversation than an annoying video one.  

In today's episode, Pilar and Lisette share their experiences in virtual coworking and highlight those elements that can be applied to working in a virtual team. Check out www.virtualnotdistant.com for coaching and training for managers of virtual teams or to help with the transition to remote. Check out www.collaborationsuperpowers.com for the Work Together Anywhere Workshop Updates - Lisette shares her experience hiring virtual freelancers - and she has great tips! - We share this article which suggests you're better off hiding your image from yourself during video meetings http://www.hrdive.com/news/study-videoconferencing-is-more-effective-when-you-cant-see-yourself/439772/ - Amazon has created 5,000 new US remote jobs http://www.firstcoastnews.com/news/local/amazon-to-hire-5000-at-home-workers-in-massive-hiring-binge-of-30000-part-time-employees/429755118 - Pilar has been listening to the Leading Wisely podcast with Ricardo Semler and guests and she's loving it! http://podcast.leadwise.co/ Lessons from Coworking in Virtual Team Talk's Sococo space 1. Easy to communicate your mood. Finding a way to allow for serendipity Guiding people on how to use the space A visual component for sharing mood and status 2. No physical commute but a change in mindset. Webcam covers. Use what tech you've got. Flexibility + communication = autonomy! 3. Emotions are part of who we are. Show your willingness to interact. 4. What are you working on? 5. Mix up your communication: chat/audio/video 6. Relatedness and identity, without removing autonomy. Join us for Virtual Team Talk      

What contributes to team members trusting each other in virtual teams? In today's episode, we present a range of thoughts, questions and suggestions to help maintain trust in virtual teams. visit www.virtualnotdistant.com “If we don’t have the trust, eventually you don’t have a team, you have a bunch of individuals that are sort of working together, but not really working together towards the same purpose.” (Mark Kilby) History of Virtual Team Talk and this project 06:50mins "What level of trust does my team need, right now, to be effective?" Calculated Trust: You follow the rules because the cost of not doing so is greater then the value of breaking the rule. How Trust Emerges 13:10mins Self-Awareness: What helps us to build trust, how does my behaviour impact how others trust me You can read the blog post about the first meeting we had in virtualteamtalk.com In this episode you will hear the voices of Mark Kilby, who’s an agile coach working in a company called Sonatype, which is 95% distributed. They have developers all the way from Thailand to Alaska, working from home. And Melanie Pürschel who is developing software for remote teams and she’s currently working on the Team Mood Tracker. As a psychologist in IT she’s interested in how to support teams through technology. And thanks to Terrance, Jochen, Kayt and Kevin for their thoughts and contributions to this project too.  16:34 mins Individual behaviours that help us trust someone or distrust them   06:50mins "What level of trust does my team need, right now, to be effective?" Calculated Trust: You follow the rules because the cost of not doing so is greater then the value of breaking the rule. How Trust Emerges 13:10mins Self-Awareness: What helps us to build trust, how does my behaviour impact how others trust me You can read the blog post about the first meeting we had in virtualteamtalk.com In this episode you will hear the voices of Mark Kilby, who’s an agile coach working in a company called Sonatype, which is 95% distributed. They have developers all the way from Thailand to Alaska, working from home. And Melanie Pürschel who is developing software for remote teams and she’s currently working on the Team Mood Tracker. As a psychologist in IT she’s interested in how to support teams through technology. And thanks to Terrance, Jochen, Kayt and Kevin for their thoughts and contributions to this project too.  16:34 mins Indiv   Trust and conflict. Can you be yourself? Can you trust others to call out unsuitable behaviour? Managers who want harmony all the time. Do we trust/distrust certain professions more than others? How is trust built in cross-functional teams? 27:04minsBuilding trust in new teams and the question of control 36:33mins Designing pairing opportunities to “do” something, the sense of camaraderie, purpose, alignment, can be brought out. 38:49mins  Norm formation and trust emergence. Trust as a broad corridor. 41:18mins Reliability  “Is there anything else we should be talking about?” is a really important question. That can be turned into a process, something that we integrate into our meeting processes. Trust is about understanding people’s behaviour when it doesn’t match our own. 48:10 Traits of people working remotely.  Work life and Home life To screen or not to screen? Some of the resources we talked about: Blog post on discussion on trust https://virtualteamtalk.com/2016/11/05/trust-in-teams-1/ Live broadcast of this topic: https://virtualteamtalk.com/2017/02/14/we-continue-talking-about-trust/ http://www.retrospectives.com/pages/Anatomy.html and search the page for "Making the magic happen" Drexler/Sibbet Team Performance Modelhttp://community.fansshare.com/pic118/w/high-performance-teams/1200/14499_drexler_sibbet_team_performance_model.jpg (104KB) https://runbook.freistil.it/operations/ https://hbr.org/2017/01/the-neuroscience-of-trust http://www.leadershipnow.com/leadingblog/2016/09/the_10_laws_of_trust.html NOBL newsletter http://us9.campaign-archive2.com/?u=e80c7e00182317ea114b75362&id=997a473a8c&e http://ldslights.org/brene-browns-formula-for-trust/

This is the full version of our live broadcast earlier in the year. For an edited version of the conversation, with other thoughts and reflections, and show notes, check out episode 117.  visit www.virtualnotdistant.com

In today's episode, Lisette and Pilar continue their conversation about how the collocated space can evolve by adopting virtual teamwork practices. (Don't forget to visit www.virtualnotdistant.com to check out our services and more blog posts and podcast show notes.) Quite a long catch-up today, but it's all related to our theme... How Sococo is now the first place where Pilar looks for Lisette when she needs to speak to her online and how the different rooms can induce a different mindset. (Hello, Terrance!) (Join Virtual Team Talk to experience virtual co-working and be part of a group of people championing great ways of working remotely with others.) Lisette met Voranc and Ralph in person at a Management 3.0 retreat and it confirmed how much of a bond they'd already built just through online communication. Pilar went to a launch party of a game she voiced and she noticed how strange it feels to watch photos of people working in the office together. We talk about this recent article in Quartz about the mandate from IBM to bring remote workers into the office, with some dodgy research. https://qz.com/924167/ibm-remote-work-pioneer-is-calling-thousands-of-employees-back-to-the-office/ Pilar's article in response: https://www.virtualnotdistant.com/blog/ibm-back-to-the-office 24:00mins Ways in which the Collocated Office can change by absorbing practice from virtual teams. Feedback Ongoing feedback vs performance management. If we only come into the office sporadically, will we take the opportunity to seek feedback when we are in the same physical space together? What works in virtual, might not work in collocated and vv (the processes, the tools). (We have a really old episode on Feedback, episode 5!) Celebrations Don't forget to get together to celebrate group and individual successes! (We have a really old episode on retrospective-style meetings, where we talk about celebrations, episode 19.) Meetings The virtual space accomodates the number of people at a meeting better than the office. eg you might have a large room and only a few people turn up, you can really feel it in the physical space, not as much on a video meeting tool. Starting on time and ending on time. Is physical presence enough? Is there more acknowledgement of who is there in virtual meetings? Can each person make the decision of whether they want to be present to contribute or just to be informed? Recordings and summaries. The end of presenteeism?

In today's episode, Pilar talks with Eva Rimbau-Gilabert about a recent piece of research on how "managing up" tactics differ between collocated and virtual workers (those in close physical proximity to the manager and those working away from the office). The research that Eva shares was conducted by Sebastián Steizel, who is Professor of Organisational Behaviour at the University of San Andrés (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and Eva was director of the thesis. http://www.tdx.cat/bitstream/handle/10803/369313/Sebasti%C3%A1n%20Steizel%20Tesis%20Doctorado%20.pdf?sequence=1 Eva Rimbau-Gilabert's Twitter handle: @erimbau 06:20 Different tactics that people use to influence their boss and how they differ in use between virtual workers and collocated workers.  Ingratiation Rationality Assertiveness Coalition Intermediation Upward appeal 13:00 The use of technology and how this changes when people try to influence their boss.  Synchronous vs asynchronous.  16:54 The importance of synchronous communication to give team members the space to express the importance of what they're raising.  18:55 Networking within the organisation.  23:03 The question of career progression.  25:42 More on advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous communication. And a summary of the tactics mentioned right at the beginning.  30:00 Initial stages on research on wellbeing of teleworkers and how leadership behaviour can influence psychological wellbeing.  35:11 Final thoughts on the diversity of remote teams and the degrees of "virtual"