So now, we understand the three major traps in communication that apply both virtually and in person. But one thing we haven't done is identify, what do we mean when we say virtual communication? So by the end of this lesson, you will understand the three major types of virtual teams and how you make people feel like a strong part of that team, irrespective of which one it is. So here are the three types of virtual teams that we will be discussing. Number one, a team where everyone is in one location except for one person. Number two, a team where everyone is in a different location, and you never see each other in person. And number three, and here is the most common. Where you all work in the same location but still talk virtually. That is the biggest, most misunderstood, and often forgotten virtual team. So let's look a bit more specifically at the first one, a team where everyone is in one location and one person is broken apart. That could be a team where everyone's here, but the manager is somewhere else. It could be a sales team that is responsible for a region, but the manager of that team is somewhere else. It could be a virtual assistant helping out an organization with some filing work or dictation work. It can be a friend of mine who was a translator. She works in the woods, but she works with a very, very large law firm in downtown Montreal. So that is one virtual team. What's a virtual team where everyone is in a different location? Another friend of mine was a sales rep for rather large medical devices, and she was responsible for the West Coast of North America. There were five people on her team. Each one had a different region of North America, and their manager was in one of those locations. So this team almost never met. They knew each other for years, but they were almost never in person. And lastly, there's the team where you all work in the same place, and you know exactly what I'm talking about, where you send an email to someone you can see. Where you're working with someone who is one halfway over. But still, it's way easier to just send them a text message. And that is the most common type of virtual team. Now, why am I bringing this up? What's the point of this lesson? because up to this point, you're going like, yeah, aha, yeah, yeah, makes sense, so, so? How do you reward someone where the whole team is in one place except for them? How you can you use that same thing to reward when no one is in the same place? How do you reward someone in the exact same way when you're all in the same place? because right now, you're thinking of three different ways to reward, and you're saying, well, what do you mean by reward? Someone does a good job. What do you do? Exactly. What do you do? And the answer is very simple, and here's the main learning. We are in a virtual age, but we are still human beings. And the one way you can reward, irrespective of what your virtual team that you work on, is recognition, virtual recognition. So here's a pro tip. When you want to recognize someone, it's great to go one-on-one and say, you did a great job today. But if you want to be a master at making people feel valued and rewarded in the virtual age, recognize them with a group email, recognize them with a group message. Because recognition in front of your peers is the thing that'll really make people loyal. it's a thing that will work irrespective of which virtual team you work on. So how does that apply to communication? Let me give you a little story. I used to work on a sales team, and the manager of the sales team was in a virtual location. Half of our team was in-person, and the other half we saw only occasionally, so they were virtual as well. We would have bi-monthly meetings, so we always had virtual conversations, and they were almost always by audio, so phone conferences. And the reason was some of us were so remote that we didn't have really good internet access, but we all had good phone access. So some of us would dial in on our computers, and some of us would dial in on our phones. And the manager would start off every single meeting by recognizing one person in that group, and we all felt like such a part of a team. And you better believe that as that conference happened, that video conference with our manager, usually when the manager was talking, we were sending emails following up on that congratulations. So the key to strong virtual teams, irrespective of which one it is, is recognition in front of your peers.