Agile Teams

Remote Employees Are Falling Behind. Here’s How to Help Them.

One of the biggest challenges right now facing remote work is remote employees feeling isolated and disconnected from other human beings, outside of those they live with. When a feeling of ‘being on my own’ sets in it can manifest in lots of ways.

Interpersonal work relationships become more stressed, it becomes harder to give people feedback and harder for someone to receive feedback. Small points of disagreement that might normally be handled with ease become bigger and derailing for a team. The language people use can shift from ‘we’ to ‘us versus them’, making conversation more divisive.

How Can We Help Remote Employees Feel Like They Are Part of the Team

One of the best ways around this is to create more space for connection and relationship building. Relationships are the lifeline to fostering trust and psychological safety and when those qualities are strong the less disconnected we will feel and the easier it will be to navigate differing points of view and conflict.

Schedule One-On-Ones With Your Remote Employees

Schedule individual time with people on your team and go beyond the surface level conversation of ‘How are you?’ Ask questions with genuine curiosity and be ready to just listen, without the need to solve or fix anything and be real and vulnerable yourself.

What’s difficult right now?
What do you miss most?
What’s one thing that would make it better?

Normalize the New Normal

Working remotely can be very productive, many people have done it for years but what’s different is that this is a pandemic and for those with kids or multi-generational households there are lots more people in their work space each day who also need their attention. Make it okay that other people might walk through your video during a meeting or that more frequent breaks might be needed during the day to check on others.

Help Your Remote Employees Set Boundaries

The line of work and home does not exist anymore, it all blurs into one. Failure to define and agree on boundaries can leave people feeling frustrated and worn down. Help your team members define boundaries for themselves and then communicate those with other team members. Questions to consider:

What are my working hours?
What are my non-working hours?
How often will I take breaks? How can I schedule those into my calendar?
How do I want to handle emails that come in after working hours?
How can I close out my work space at the end of the day? (i.e. put the computer in the closet, change where I sit, etc.)

How To Create More Connection in a Team Setting

When getting together as a team, even remotely, use these following tips to create connection/

Make it a Ground Rule for Team Meetings to Have Video On

People may push back on this. Make space to hear their objections and concerns and ask if they would be willing to give it a try for a small period of time. Most people find it so very helpful for everyone to be on video that they wonder why they didn’t try it earlier.

Create Space for Connection

At the beginning of each meeting have a check-in question and ask everyone to respond. It can be about the meeting topic or something more personal. This warms people up to the meeting, gets everyone’s voice in the conversation and gives the team an opportunity to learn something about each other.

Example questions include:

My state of mind as I come to our call today is…
One thing I want to celebrate is…
What’s one question you have about our topic today?

Your Turn

How have you been able to help remote employees feel like they are (still) part of the team? We’d love to hear your thoughts!

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings That Help Your Team Thrive

➡️ Do your team meetings always go as planned?

➡️ Are you able to achieve the desired outcome?

➡️ Does your team leave meetings with a clear purpose and clarity in what needs to be done next?

If any of the answers are “no,” keep on reading. We have some tips and tools to help you!

In this article we lay the foundation for leading engaging and productive meetings with purpose, clarity and confidence so that you can support agility within your teams.

The Role of a Facilitator

As facilitators we convene and we host.

Our primary focus is to identify the desired outcomes and then create a space that fosters connection, authenticity, trust, in an environment of equal voice.

A unique characteristic of facilitation is that when it’s done well you hardly know it’s happening. Good facilitators make it look easy…like all you need to do is grab a marker and head to a flip chart or open up a Zoom line and people start collaborating.

In reality there is a lot going on for a facilitator. It takes formal training and practice! Just like playing the piano or flying a plane. Facilitation is a professional discipline that is both art and science.

Mistakes To Avoid When Facilitating Agile Meetings

Here are some common misconceptions and mistakes facilitators make when first starting out.

Believing that you can just do facilitation after having seen others make it look so easy.
Participating in the meeting rather than facilitating.
Cutting short the planning and design phase or not doing any planning at all.
Seeking “agreement” from the group on decision-making.
Believing that your role in the meeting is helping the group reach a decision that has already been made.

It takes time to learn how to properly facilitate meetings. It’s also important to practice the facilitation role throughout your journey by building competency!

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings Like a Pro!

It wasn’t until many years into my facilitation journey that I learned how to:

Really connect a group
Have greater awareness of my own beliefs about the group and understand what a profound impact my beliefs had on my ability to work with a group.
Let go of control; to turn it over to the group.
Really listen to what people needed or were trying to say.

These were profound shifts in my mindset that

…allowed me to move from simply instructing people to write on sticky notes that overlooks the real issue.

…to leading meetings that got to the heart of what is blocking the team and support their journey beyond continuing in their same patterns.

How to Facilitate Agile Meetings

Would you like to get started with leading engaging and productive meetings with purpose, clarity and confidence so that you can support agility within your teams? Here are 3 ways to do just that!

The mindset and practice of Being Neutral
The key steps of Planning and Designing
Decide how to decide

If you are ready for the full roadmap to facilitation, I highly recommend you read the book ‘The Art & Science of Facilitation’.

5 Resources to Get You Started as a Facilitator

In a recent article, we laid out five resources to help you get started, or to continue your education as a facilitator.

These resources include a book, toolkit, website, self-assessment and workshops!

No matter where you are on your facilitation journey, there is room to continue your learning journey to competency!

How The Best Leaders Will Inspire and Guide, Not Boss Their Team Around!

Leadership is a behavioral choice. How you lead, and how you serve your team is up to you, the leader. It’s a choice you make each time you interact with your team.

“Leadership is messy.” ~Ahmed Sidky

In a recent podcast episode of Defining Moments of Leadership, we learn more about this human-centric approach to leadership from Dr. Agile himself, Ahmed Sidky.

How do leaders inspire and guide? Listen to the full episode here.

Leader vs Manager vs Boss

Not everyone understands what it takes to be a great leader. Some take to leadership by assuming the title, but not the work. Others confuse being bossy with leadership.

The best leaders will inspire and guide, the worst will boss their teams around until they fall apart, revolt or even breakdown.

Here are 3 ways leaders can become great leaders.

1 Building Relationships vs Building Systems

While systems play an important role in leadership, managers can set up systems. You do not need to be a leader to be good at systemizing the tasks you need your team to perform.

Instead of building systems, great leaders build relationships with their team members. Building relationships takes time, effort and can’t necessarily be measured with data. As Ahmed Sidky mentions in the podcast “untangling the human web is messy. It’s about people not systems.”

COOs are usually about the process, but once they realize it’s about the people, not just the systems, the investment in relationships will solve most of the problems.

2 Leadership vs Bossiness

The difference between leadership and management or bossiness is this:

“Leaders inspire and guide; management tells.”

There certainly is a negative connotation of “bossy.” Leaders are not always right. When they stay curious, ask questions, and have a genuine interest in the human side of the company they work for, magical things happen in their team. Bosses on the other hand, tell people what to do, what to think, how to act. Bosses do not leave room for spontaneity, dialogue or team member empowerment. They just want to get the job done by telling someone what to do, how to do it, and when.

While leaders are bosses and most bosses have core leadership skills, not all bosses are leaders. And know this: Bossiness is not a leadership trait.

3 Practicing vs Knowing

Great leaders invest time in learning new leadership skills. Awesome leaders take time to practice their skills and take time to build relationships (as mentioned earlier).

The best leaders understand that leadership is a lifelong journey that never ends. Time and effort to gain new skills is great, but the stellar, iconic leader will apply the intentional effort to put these new skills into action!

Leaders Embrace Professional Development

No matter where you are on your journey to leadership, “great” steps include professional development with opportunities that will enhance your competency, not just get you there faster.

At TeamCatapult we hold this value that leaders can expand their leadership range.

Will you do that by intent or practice or hap-in-stance?

I invite you to take an intentional step and begin imagining how this can happen within the context of a cohort of like-minded leaders. Coaching Agility from Within Cohort is the single-best step you can take. Don’t take our word for it. Listen to the video of others, who like you, wanted to become the best leader they could imagine.

The cohort is designed for those eager, like you, to become the leader who inspires, motivates and empowers high-performing Agile teams. To facilitate, train, coach and mentor teams with confidence that is developed through engaging practice with your fellow cohort members.

We start the next cohort in May. Transformative. Empowered. Leadership. Starts here.

Or, if you prefer, hop on a 15-minute call with us.

How to Reignite Your Team Meetings for Success

Previously, we wrote about ‘how to plan and prepare for your next team meeting’ where we outlined post-pandemic meeting formats, and how this shift has affected leadership team meetings and their outcome.

That article was followed by ‘How to Create Purposeful, Intentional Space for Effective Team Collaboration’ where Hybrid Meetings took the stage where we shared tips for team leads on how to encourage participation in their leadership team meeting! This article was written for those leaders who expressed difficulty getting team members to actively participate in a team meeting.

In this article, we will step into the final phase of learning more about leading team meetings which is ‘how to have true dialogue’.

Before you read on, let’s talk ‘GroundHog Day’ conversations first.

“Groundhog Day conversations are those conversations we are having, over and over without resolution.”

What patterns might this type of conversation be falling into? How can you change the nature of the conversation by bringing in a different vocal act?”

Let’s find out together!

Read the Room, Change the Outcome

There are four kinds of conversational action in all of our communication.

Every sentence or phrase we say can be coded into one of these four actions that David Kantor calls “speech acts”:

Move
Follow
Oppose
Bystand

To be in an effective and productive conversation, we need all four of these to be active and valued in the conversation. A high functioning team dialogues when all four of these are active and individuals are fluid in their ability to voice all of the actions.

When one or more of these are missing, teams can get stuck and end up in ineffective conversations that are not collaborative. The result is that Groundhog Moment.

Common Stuck Patterns to Looks for in Team Meetings

The task of a leader or facilitator is to help a team or group notice its own pattern of interaction using the four action propensities. The next step is to help them change the nature of their discourse, particularly when they get stuck in certain patterns.

Fields of Conversation That Groups Experience

The types of conversation that groups experience as they move towards more complex and effective patterns of conversation.

Ways to Prompt a Group Towards a Specific Action

Facilitators or leaders can pose questions to the group to help prompt a certain action.

Who agrees?
What do you appreciate about this?

MOVE

What would you add?
What else might be needed?

OPPOSE

Who sees it differently?
What’s at risk here?

BYSTAND

Where is the group at right now?
What are you noticing?
What is your experience right now?

How To Get Started Reading the Room

What are the actions you’re hearing
What’s the pattern that’s showing up?
What action is missing? How can you prompt the group for a new action?

What are the actions you’re hearing?

What’s the pattern that’s showing up?

What action is missing? How can you prompt the group for a new action?

Still Stuck? Check and Read These 4 Resources Next!

How to lead a meeting effectively

Leading effective team meetings are essential for achieving success in any organization and a huge part of being effective is overall meeting participation.

By using different leadership team meeting formats and models, such as the David Kantor 4 Player Model of Communication, leaders can reignite team meetings and create a more productive and engaged team environment and encourage active participation.

Having a clear meeting agenda and taking accurate meeting notes are also important for keeping everyone on the same page and ensuring that other team members are accountable for their contributions.

Remember to actively engage team members in the meeting, allowing everyone to share their thoughts and ideas.

Finally, set goals and follow-up on the action items discussed in the leadership meeting, making sure everyone is on the same page and ready for the next meeting. With these tips, your team meetings will become more productive and successful, and your conference room will be a space where ideas are shared, progress is made, and everyone feels empowered to contribute.

How to Create Purposeful, Intentional Space for Effective Team Collaboration

In ‘3 Actionable Tips To Plan and Prepare For Your Next Team Meeting’ we touched on what it takes to plan and prepare for team meetings, whether these meetings are in-person, hybrid or virtual.

Leading and facilitating team meetings takes planning and preparation: check out these 3 tips here.

Today’s topic touches on what it takes to create purposeful, intentional space for effective team collaboration, especially as it pertains to hybrid meetings.

Challenges with Hybrid Meetings for Participants

For those team members who attend in-person, they:

Cannot see and/or hear everyone who is virtual
Get caught up in the conversation and forget to acknowledge those who are virtual
Are unaware of a separate conversation that emerges in the chat channel
Hold back, not wanting to have a better experience than virtual attendees

For those team members who attend virtually, they:

Do not feel included, seen, or heard in the conversation. This is the biggest challenge to a hybrid format because many behaviours can create the feeling of separation for those online like:
- Multiple conversations that happen in the room
- It being unclear who is speaking
- The conversation in the room becomes animated but doesn’t online
- Flip charts are being used and are difficult to see
- Contributions have to be made through someone in the room, rather than directly from the person
- Something funny happens in the room but online participants do not see it
Create a nested conversation using chat functions, and risk depriving the full group of the contributions and insights
Cannot see and/or hear who is speaking, what is being said, or what is written on the walls

Challenges with Hybrid Meetings for Facilitators

For facilitators there is:

Complexity. It’s a complex scenario to design and create space for multiple people who will have different experiences that they can see and/or hear, making collaboration difficult, if not impossible.
High Cognitive Load. Facilitating in-person meetings already comes with a high degree of complexity and many things to pay attention to. Fully virtual adds a layer of technology and helps people move around the virtual space. Hybrid brings the complexity of both the physical space and virtual space.

5 Key Principles for Hybrid Planning and Meeting Design

Here are the 5 principles needed to plan and design a successful hybrid meeting.

1. Establish ground rules specifically for hybrid meetings

As the facilitator, you will have some specific requests for participants in order to make the session the most effective. Be sure to share these, along with other logistics and joining information, with participants ahead of time

One camera, one mic, one mouse per person
Be on camera
Be off mute
Be prepared to be called on

2. Level the playing field

Those in the room will have more power than those online. Your design should find ways to level the playing field so that everyone can be seen, heard and can contribute equally.

Establish your ground rules
Assume that remote participants are not seeing and hearing what is being said and shown in the room and check in on their experience.
Use small groups with a trained facilitator to increase the quality of the conversations and help the group stay focused and on task.
An alternative to each participant being on a laptop, remote participants could join via tablet and have a buddy in the room.

NOTE: While hybrid experiences may be necessary and it’s important to make them as great as possible for everyone, consider making everyone remote as the ultimate way to level the playing field.

3 Allow for extra planning and design time

Planning a hybrid meeting will require more time.

General planning and design time guidance are as follows:

In-Person – 2 x the length of the meeting
Virtual – 2.5 x times the length of the meeting
Hybrid – 2.5 – 3 x times the length of the meeting.

Factors to include – technology setup, designing pre-work, envisioning transitions, ensuring EVERYONE can see and hear the same thing. If you are bringing in more facilitators to lead smaller groups, you will need to do some pre-work with them as well.

4 Prioritize the collective conversation

The collective, sense-making conversation is the most important part of any collaborative meeting. Facilitation tools and methods are doorways to different kinds of conversation. They are not meant to be the activity in order to reach a decision; they are meant to give people new and different insights or ways of thinking.

In any meeting, but especially in hybrid, prioritize the collective conversation over the gathering of data or ideas. Use pre-work or design asynchronous work for the session to gather data or do detailed work that is better suited to one or two people (i.e. wordsmithing a mission statement, estimating the workload, researching facts or data).

Do not waste people’s time. Think about the purpose and desired outcome for the meeting and the type of interaction desired. Prioritize conversations and minimize detailed work in a large group.

Carefully consider the conversations needed and think about ways to accomplish them asynchronously prior to the meeting rather than during the meeting.
One of the pros of meeting online is that you can design breaks and space for individual work and then bring the group back together at a later time.

5 Change the frame

Create your design so that you vary the frame being used (individual, small group, large group, written, verbal, drawing, etc.). If you start in a large group then move to a small-group activity and then back to a large group. This shifts the energy in the group and will help people stay engaged. It also helps to level the playing field and give people different ways to get their voice in.

Use small groups to give people time to connect with others and deepen the conversation. Think about how you will divide people up to create varied perspectives in the breakouts. It will be technically easier to pair people in the room with others who are also in the room, and vice-versa for online. But mixing in-person and online in small groups can also be a great way to break down barriers of ‘us vs them’ between participants.

High-tech idea: Use a meeting platform like Zoom and have everyone join using their own device. Use the breakout room features.
High-tech idea: Have an iPad for each Virtual participant and assign them a ‘buddy’ in the room. The buddy will be responsible for bringing them along to small group breakouts happening in the room. (Be sure to rotate the ’buddy’ role to new people so one person does not become stuck in that role.)
Low-tech idea: Ask participants to exchange phone numbers and call one other having a voice-only conversation. Agree on where and how the outcomes of the conversation will be captured and shared with the group.

10 Key Principles for Hybrid Conduct

Last but not least, we want to leave you with 10 key principles for hybrid conduct.

Help participants ‘see each other
1. High-tech idea: Send out a circle ahead of the meeting with everyone’s name and picture.
2. Low—tech idea: At the start of the meeting ask everyone to take a sheet of paper and build their own virtual circle at the start.
Connections before Content
1. Building connection is one component of fostering trust and creating a space where people feel like they can fully bring their voice into a conversation.
2. Start with a check-in that allows people to share something personal about themselves.
Call on People
1. Ask a question: What ideas do you have for the future?
2. Say someone’s name: Cindy, would you like to share?
3. Repeat the question: Cindy, what ideas do you have for the future?
“Nomination” or “Pass the Mic”
1. In this adaptation, prompt the group to who would like to speak first. Then ask the group to pick the next speaker.
2. Share with the group the technique of saying someone’s name and then repeating the question.
Have Two Co-Facilitators
Have a Remote Liaison
1. This person‘s role is threefold:
  1. to make sure that technology does not impede collaboration
  2. support the facilitators and participants
  3. navigate technology to ensure that everyone can see and hear the same things and contribute equally to what’s being created.
Ask Participants to be Facilitators
1. If you are using small group breakouts, ask for one person in each group to step into the role of facilitator.
2. Ask them to be mindful of hearing all voices and not overly driving the conversation. This person should also take responsibility for bringing the themes and summary of the small group conversation back into the large group.
Hear and Be Heard. See and Be Seen
1. Design a working agreement with the group and ask them if at any point they do not feel like this is happening, to say so. This includes asking questions if they are not sure what they are supposed to be doing or seeing at the moment.
2. As the facilitator you will need to rely on the group to speak up if something does not seem right.
Be Clear and Direct with your Instruction
1. Chunk up your instructions, don’t tell them everything all at once
2. Be specific with what the task is
3. Be clear about where and how they should be contributing
4. Adjust your instructions for multiple experiences (this will be the challenging part)
5. It will be easy for people to become lost, or confused because they are looking at something different than you are. Always ask “Is there anyone who is not with me?” or “Is there anyone who is seeing something different?”
Use Virtual Collaboration Whiteboards
1. Use a virtual whiteboard or collaboration tool (i.e. Lucidspark, Miro, Mural, etc) that allows everyone to see and contribute to the work being created.

What comes next?

Once you’ve planned for a team meeting and have taken all the steps necessary to create a space for effective team collaboration, you need to ‘read the room’.

Interested in learning more about facilitation?

Read ‘The Art and Science of Facilitation’

TeamCatapult offers several workshops:

Agile Team Facilitation

Advanced Facilitation

Virtual Facilitation Masterclass

We invite you to reach out to us via concierge@teamcatapult.com if you have any questions about our workshops!