Improving Remote Team collaboration ?
When we look into the team collaboration during a pandemic, three things look like need to strengthen the team context and it is showing the better result for most of the teams,
What are those?
Building Trust
Creating a shared purpose
Building relationship among team members
First and foremost is, how the Trust factors are in place.
One Harvard study showed at just how effectively employees at high-trust organizations function and feel compared to employees at low-trust organizations, and the results are incredible. High Trust Organization employee contribution is higher!
Some of the factors which promote trust and need to concentrate on remote team members.
1. How well reliability factors are in place among team members? Can they depend on each other on various challenging times? Are they supporting each other to fulfill the common objective?
One of the fundamental ingredients to building trust among team members is to uphold each other at various up and down of the team members Journey. Let us focus on this.
Let us make this a number one rule
2. Accountability: Every team member should be accountable for whatever portion they are performing on. Nobody should be overloaded and nobody should feel that they are merely holding the maximum load. Every team member should put their finest effort to assure they are contributing to their highest level based on their capability.
3. Transparency: Share information openly with the team members. Work schedules, project growth, and task status should be accessible to all members at any stage. Everyone knows why we are selecting on what explanation? There should not be anything hidden.
4. Social activities: There should be an occasion, where every team member is discussing other than work. some moment where team members are exchanging their favorite topics, which promote the team to know each other better. A dedicated session or part of the session to be spent on an informal conversation.
5. Commitment: Commitment leads to trust. Plainly stated, if a team member guarantees to work out or demonstrate something, that individual should deliver on that promise. Gain commitment to taking care of the goals established by the team leader. Team members require to be committed to meeting deadlines because they have an understanding of the underlying strategy and how their individual tasks map into it.
6. Open communication: Apply many channels to associate with the team members. One-to-one to the conversation, group discussion, group chat, one-to-one chat, etc means. Ensure all the ambiguity clarifies and we are on the same page. Set the intention clear and establish team members to understand all these
7. Manage conflict, One of the critical to assure to enhance trust is to handle conflict productively. As a Leader or team members, we require to take care of our conflicts in an effective way. Handle any type of disagreement in a stronger manner so that all team members understand what we are accomplishing and why we are doing so.
Building shared purpose:
Success starts with an explicit and shared purpose, a vision of how that purpose will look when attained, and determining outcomes to accomplish that purpose. A competent team achieves concrete, complete results.
Without a shared purpose, virtual team members could simply concentrate on local tasks and interests while excluding joint endeavors to obtain organizational objectives.
One of the powerful steps for a remote team to establish is to build the team's shared purpose. We all require to recognize the impact of what we are creating because of our deliverables.
for that, we have to
1. Finding meaning for our work. How our contribution is leading to produce an impact? How the numerous end user’s life will be impacted due to our job! how it will produce end user’s life make pleasant. Discussing this all simultaneously as a team and capture those points for subsequent reference.
2. The outcome and Impact, all the teamwork and collaboration result in the impact we as a company we are producing. When we realize the stronger end product, we choose to feel joy, we prefer to find out the significant picture and impact we are establishing in this full picture.
3. Link personal goals with an organizational goal and align. Let us ask questions about our personal goal and analyze how much those are aligned with the organizational goal. Whatever the differences are their let us work it out by reviewing it with the supervisors.
4. Inspire and influence each other, at a different juncture. Let us look for the opportunity to inspire each other, influence each other for the performance and journey we are passing through. We create an ecosystem which is inspiring and energetic to continue on.
Building a better relationship among team members working in a remote system:
The stronger relationship among team members facilitates the team to assist with a better outcome
1) Deep listening: Are we using 2 ears and one mouth! are we really listening. The better approach to connect with others is to listen and understand what others are trying to convey. Be vigilant, Paraphrasing, and summarizing whatever we have figured out. Let us inquire if we are not clear or need accuracy. The purpose of listening to understand better the others.
2) Empathesize with others: It is a prerequisite in the relationship that we understand how others feel and be compassionate toward them. Accept other’s thoughts and acknowledge their message. During conversations, concentrate your entire attention and time on listening then doing whatever you can so the individual feels understood. To accurately perceive his feelings, you can propose questions: “It rings like you’re feeling discouraged. Is that true?” Or, “Is it reasonable to tell that you’re feeling optimistic?”
3) Ask questions, Asking questions is a wonderful way for you to listen and let the other person share. They will feel closer to you when they have shared about themselves and you demonstrate you’re engrossed in what they have to respond. Then share something about yourself so the relationship develops into a two-way interaction that can help establish a bond.
4) Share stories, in the conversation, please share stories related to work or other than work. sometimes the stories help the person who is listening or it could be interesting to know. It helps the conversation to go further and in a process, many things will come up for consideration which helps the people to connect better.
5) Helps other whatever possible ways when as a team member we always exhibited these traits, members will become more related to you in a stronger way. Think from that viewpoint that whatever may be big and small, we desire to support others always.
6) Keep commitment: Whenever team members say, something it is essential they should fulfill their commitment. The part of building a better relationship is to keep the promise and commitment.
7) Build rapport., Rapport forms the basis of purposeful, warming, and amicable relationships between individuals. According to researchers Linda Tickle-Degnen and Robert Rosenthal, when you have a rapport with someone, you share:
Mutual attentiveness: you’re both concentrated on, and engaged in, what the other individual is responding
Positivity: you’re both amiable and happy, and you demonstrate care and interest for one another.
Coordination: you understand “in sync” with one another so that you experience an accepted awareness. Your energy levels, tone, and body language are also identical.
When we take care of all these 3 conditions, remote collaboration among team members will considerably improve.
