Establish team expectations
To continue building trust on your team, be sure to establish clear expectations around working hours, project deadlines, and meetings. For example, scheduling regular one-to-one connections with your team members to check in and to discuss progress on assigned tasks. Working with your team to establish what working hours they should be “online” can add structure to your team’s workday and will ensure everyone is on the same page. Also, using Microsoft Teams statuses to share with people whether your busy working on a project, on a call, or away from your computer.
Meeting best practices
First, be aware of your vocal tone and body language. Since body language can be hard to decipher in a virtual environment, tone becomes increasingly important. This is where emotional intelligence plays a pivotal role. Your tone can set the tone of a meeting. Be sure to assess your mood before entering a meeting and adjust accordingly. Adjust your body language to show you actively listening to your team, sit up straight, make eye contact by looking at the camera or shifting your gaze to each person as they begin talking, but increase your eye contact to the camera.
Maintain a professional appearance (and this can be determined by the culture of your organization and department) when you are in meetings or having 1:1 meetings with your team. In some instances, you may not be as casual as you would like, or you will have to look professional if conducing a presentation. Dress accordingly.
Make sure everyone in the meeting is aware of the “rules of engagement.” Are your team members able to unmute themselves to answer questions? Can they use the chat feature to respond or ask questions? How about those reaction buttons? Are emoji’s or gifs allowed in the meeting? Setting the expectation of how to engage in virtual meetings from the beginning will help. Also, engage with your audience! Ask questions to encourage participation, give people time to pause and reflect and allow for responses, or have a meeting agenda ready so people are aware of the direction of meeting.
Sustain team energy
Often in a remote environment people can get fatigued and burned out. There are multiple ways in which you can keep your team motivated and energized to support one another and to cultivate creativity.
Here are a few recommendations to help sustain your remote team’s energy. At the beginning of each meeting do an energy level check with your team. Ask them to rate their energy levels from 1-10, 1 being the lowest and 10 being the highest. Or depending on the virtual platform use one of the interactive tools to have your team members tell you how they are feeling. In Zoom you can use the reactions button or in Microsoft Teams you can have them use gifs in the chat.
Make sure to celebrate and recognize any accomplishments your team has done for the week. Also, allot time during your meeting to give your team members the opportunity to recognize one another.
Celebration and recognition also align with the practice of gratitude. Use moments in the meeting to thank your team members or encourage others to express gratitude.