Three types of remote teams

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From the course by University of Toronto

Communication Strategies for a Virtual Age

5 ratings

University of Toronto

Communication Strategies for a Virtual Age

5 ratings

Communication has changed! The traditional rules for speaking and presenting, meeting coordination, influencing people, negotiating and selling ideas no longer apply in a world of skype, messenger, video and teleconference. This course will act as an overview on several concepts each of which could be a course of their own and our goal is to give you tools that you can practice and perfect on your own. By the end of this course, you will be able to: • Apply communication principles and techniques for in-person and virtual teams • Use a science based approach to create impactful presentations • Refine your communication style to better persuade and influence others • Implement a unique strategy to pitching ideas • Run more effective and impactful meetings • Incorporate strategies to have positive difficult conversations and make people feel valued and listened to What makes this course so effective? Many educational experiences describe and explain, but in this course we will apply and demonstrate. We teach practical and proven concepts, show you how to apply them and give you opportunities to practice them in a safe and supportive environment. This course is full of opportunities to put the ideas presented into practice and test their effectiveness for yourself. Why should you take this course? We will challenge the preconceived ideas about what it means to be part of a virtual team, and support you to be a dynamic team contributor no matter where you work. In this course you can expect to be both energized and uncomfortable – like in most experiences that result in positive growth and change! This course is offered through the University of Toronto School of Continuing Studies (https://learn.utoronto.ca/).

From the lesson

Introduction to Virtual Teams and Virtual Communication

This module is intended to create a foundation for the course by challenging your ideas of not just what virtual communication means, but also communication as a whole. This module will also introduce the foundational ideas of the whole course.

Three types of remote teams5:50

Meet the Instructors

Ivan Wanis Ruiz
Instructor
Continuing Studies

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.

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