Overcoming Virtual Team Conflict

Choosing Your Communication Tools

Supporting Remote Team Members

Setting Communication Standards

Dealing with Communication Challenges

Great Collaboration

Understanding the Basics of Remote Management

Navigating Different Work Styles of Collaborators

The Need to Identify Team Assets

A team that knows and understands its own assets is much more effective.

Scratchy Relationships Improve Collaboration

Margaret Heffernan explains what a scratchy relationship looks like.

Barriers to Collaboration

Individualism is a huge barrier to high-level collaboration.

Remote Teams

The digital age is transforming the way you work. Use these helpful tips to determine which team approach best suits the needs of the team and the organization.

Shifting to a Collaborative Mindset

The shift from competition to collaboration is a slow, complex process.

Three Requirements for Collaboration

Helpfulness, curiosity, and time are the three main elements needed for great collaboration.

Incentivize Collaboration

In order to foster collaboration, companies have to create team performance rewards.

The Need for Collaboration

Having the best people in the business is useless if they don’t work together.

Use Collaboration to Motivate Teams

Leaders have an array of tools that can foster collaboration.

Virtual Meetings That Work

Virtual meetings are infamous for their bad behaviors and poor participation, but there is a better way.

Managing a Virtual or Matrix Team

Managing a virtual or matrix team is becoming more common, but the basic principles still apply.

Great Collaboration

Great collaboration occurs when everyone in the organization wants everyone else to be a winner—when everyone is generous with each other, and have common objectives.

Collaboration: Me to We

Unlike his own childhood, his kids don’t know what it means to live alone. They are connected to others continuously. The shift from me to we brings tolerance, and creates a more productive and sharing society that believes there is virtue in collaboration.

How to Increase Productivity in Virtual Teams

Research shows that it’s important for virtual teams to have initial face-to-face contact. That builds “transactive memory systems.”

Face-to-Face Versus Virtual Management

Leaders who switch from face-to-face meetings to virtual meetings can’t see the behaviors that indicate people are disengaged, such as the sound of someone typing on their laptop. Leaders should discuss with their team the rules that apply during meetings.

Using Improv to Improve Collaboration

Improvisation as an art form is inherently collaborative, and leaders who integrate the key tenets of improv into their teams achieve greater success.

Making Collaboration Work

The key to effective collaboration is getting individuals to think together about the what, not the how.

Sharing Ideas

One of the best ways to communicate ideas is by creating simple drawings—you don’t even need to be an artist.

Transparency and Openness Foster Collaboration

People innately want to contribute, but it’s the leaders who model transparency and openness that actually get their teams to share their thinking and ideas.

Humility Is Key to Collaboration

Kelly Thompson explains why, if you want to be a good collaborator, you need to be humble.

Three Surprising Skills of Collaboration

Show your intention to collaborate. 1) Tell the truth with good will; share your views honestly. 2) Show understanding by taking the other person's side; this will require listening. 3) Own your own contribution to the problem.

Leading Effectively in a Virtual Environment

First, be aware of how you come across. What’s your virtual personality? Second, choose media that make it easy to work collaboratively. Third, make sure everyone understands the purpose and principles, and what success looks like. Have them explain it back to you.

Managing Conflict in High Performance Teams

In high performance teams it’s okay to confront or let it go, but not to go underground. The parties to a conflict are accountable for reaching closure. If they can’t, there is a protocol for who to bring in as a mediator/coach. Conflict is usually a symptom of misalignment.

The Cohort Effect

The world’s best teams combine seemingly counter-productive work styles to create unusual success.

Tips on Team Collaboration

You can take several practical steps to ensure a healthy and productive team collaboration. John Foster shares how he develops highly effective teams.

The Habit of Cooperation

Organizations and people who are energized are great at cooperation and conversation.

Managing Virtual Teams

Getting to know individuals better, following up on promises, and structuring conference calls are the necessities of managing virtual teams.

Leading a Virtual Collaborative Team

Collaboration is based on trust. Invest time for team members to get to know each other virtually or, better, in person.

Establishing Personal Connections Remotely

Most senior executives don’t know the personal agendas of key stakeholders. You won’t learn those agendas by asking. To open up a personal agenda you must invest time in a long-term relationship. It works both ways; you must share your own personal agenda.

Engaging Virtual Employees

Ensure that there is two-way feedback in real time. Encourage others to say what they’re thinking. Be sure you’re getting input from people who work with the employee. Have frequent check-ins. Hold two-way video meetings if you can’t meet face to face.

Collaborative Leadership

Collaborative leadership means 1) identifying important partners through a broad network, 2) modeling collaboration for team members, and 3) knowing when to stop collaborating. Collaborate with different people to innovate and get out of the daily routine.

Results Through Collaboration

Successful organizations collaborate virtually with different people. 1) Collaboration requires reciprocity—a habit of giving. 2) Know whom to link with; successful teams network with stakeholders, not each other. 3) Collaboration assumes a complex task.

Habit 6: Synergize

Synergy refers to an effect that is greater than the sum of its parts; creating cohesiveness, energy and momentum.

“Yes, and...” Versus “Yes, but...”

Is there a difference between “Yes, and...” and “Yes, but...”? Yes, and it’s the difference between inclusivity and exclusivity.

Leading More Effectively Remotely

Leading remote teams starts with becoming a great leader and includes using and modeling the right technologies at the right time.

Dealstorming: Solving Problems Through Collaboration

Dealstorming is a collaborative process that brings together all the stakeholders involved in a problem or sale.

Decision Making As a Skillful Collaboration

The collaborative decision-making process takes skillful leadership to pull off. But when you do pull it off, Larry Dressler says, its rewards are significant.

Working In Virtual Teams

Allan Cohen discusses ways to work on virtual teams.

Get Out of Organizational Gridlock by Building Trust

Organizational gridlock can destroy companies, trust and collaboration are the tools that alleviate congestion.