Building connections in a distributed team
How we keep in touch when we're miles apart.
Last week, the entire Mind Tools team gathered in Leeds for one of three all company ‘Connections’ events taking place this year. And we discussed the usual kind of things that take place at such an event: company goals, financial performance, the regret we feel for having stayed in the bar until 1am.
And we discussed ways of working.
Ways of working is a big topic at Mind Tools right now. This February, we closed the office in Haybarn that had been such a big part of Mind Tools’ history. We’re on the way to closing our office in Edinburgh. Our Denver team has no office in the first place.
By the end of this year, we will be a fully remote company. Which, to be honest, felt inevitable.
During the pandemic years, we started hiring for remote roles. Over time, that shifted our employee base away from our three geographic centres and moved almost all of our day-to-day activity online.
Those colleagues who do still live near one of our offices tend to find that, when they go in, they’re the only person there. That gives them little motivation to return in future and, even when they do, they spend most of their day interacting online with colleagues who aren’t physically present.
For the most part, everyone’s fine with this. But how do we build the kind of strong informal connections that tend to exist between co-workers who sit side-by-side each day?
There was a lot of interest at our company event in how our Learning Experience team do this, so we thought we’d share our approach more widely. We hope it’s useful to you, too.
💬 First, we have an ongoing Teams text chat.
Everyone says ‘good morning’ when they come online, and ‘goodnight’ when they leave. Throughout the day, there’s a constant stream of questions, jokes and GIFs. It’s our virtual version of the usual office buzz.
Then, we have scheduled events:
📈 Monday - Weekly Teams meeting, 60 minutes, mandatory.
For an hour a week, we discuss open and upcoming projects, talk through issues and share advice. You probably already do something similar.
🕶️ Tuesday (Morning) - Virtual Reality coffee morning, 30 minutes, optional.
This one’s a bit more ‘out there’, and we’re lucky to work for a company that encourages experimentation. Everyone on our team has an Oculus headset, and we’ll meet in Rec Room or Horizon Workrooms to have a chat. Tends not to be work-focused.
📖 Tuesday (Afternoon) - Book Club, Microsoft Teams, 45 minutes, optional-but-encouraged.
A chance to learn from and with each other. So far we’ve discussed Julie Dirksen’s Design for How People Learn, Patti Shank’s Write Better Multiple-Choice Questions to Assess Learning and Nick Shackleton-Jones’ ‘5Di’ development process.
☕ Thursday - Coffee Afternoon, Microsoft Teams, 30 minutes, optional.
Not everyone on the team likes the VR headsets. One team member gets sick using it. So we alternate tools to make sure there’s space each week for everyone.
🥂 Friday - Friday Drinks, Microsoft Teams or VR, 30 minutes, optional.
It’s our version of the pub after work. Sometimes we have a drink, sometimes we play paintball or Among Us. It’s a fun way to end the week, and it takes place during work hours. Nobody’s expected to stay late. (In fact, most people chat for 30 minutes then finish early).
When we do get together, probably just a couple of times a year, the focus tends to be on socialising - with a bit of work thrown in as a secondary concern.
If that sounds like a lot, it doesn’t feel that way. Between the pressures of project work and responsibilities at home, most folk attend between two and three of these events each week. But they’re always available, and everyone’s welcome.
The key thing here is that we’re deliberate about all of the above. A sense of belonging contributes to on-the-job performance, connection to the organization, and a reduction in sick days. There are nine people on our team. The last time someone handed in their notice was in 2017.
Some caveats
There are a few contextual factors that we should add before wrapping up.
Many of us have worked together for years. We were well past Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing when the pandemic hit.
We also already worked in a hybrid form before the pandemic. Interacting online was the norm for us for over five years.
But while we were well-placed to adapt to a sudden lockdown, and to the later closure of our offices, we’ve had to work hard to maintain the connections that make us feel like we belong. It doesn’t happen by accident.
This topic’s a bit of a diversion from our usual newsletter fare, but it seemed to strike a chord with colleagues from the other Mind Tools teams. So we hope it’s been useful to you too! Contact custom@mindtools.com or reply to this newsletter from your inbox if you want to chat about our approach in more detail.
💡 Follow-up time!
Regular readers will know that, last week, we gathered ‘Hot Takes’ from our CIPD Festival of Work fringe event, in partnership with the cool folks at Emotion at Work.
We then asked YOU to vote for the ‘Hot Take’ that you’d like us to discuss in a special crossover episode of the Mind Tools L&D Podcast and the Emotion at Work podcast.
Well, the results are in! And the winner is… 🥁🥁🥁
📝 Hot Take 4: Learning & Development: Most employees aren’t actually that interested in L&D.
A scandalous claim, worthy of further discussion!
Look out for that episode in your podcast feed in the coming weeks!
🎧 On the podcast
The HR and L&D sectors are built on a foundation of outsourcing. Often, the secret ingredient to ensuring those products and services add value is… the person buying them!
So, this week on The Mind Tools L&D Podcast, we ask: what are the characteristics of a client who has a high likelihood of gaining value from their supplier?
Unfortunately, we tend to find it’s the clients who are willing to put in more effort from their side - with our help.
Says Samantha Nicks, from our US sales team:
‘It involves so much more from a client, outside of just working with us [Mind Tools]. It involves more effort at their end internally to do the analysis and to get [learner] feedback…. [So we] need to figure out the best way to help them get that information.’
Our team have loads of experience in guiding our clients toward a great result, and your suppliers probably do too. If you’re having issues making an impact with your outsourced learning platforms or content, ask your supplier partner to help.
For more ideas, listen to the full episode here:
You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, Spotify or the podcast page of our website. Want to share your thoughts? Get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or #MindToolsPodcast
📖 Deep dive
Our shift to remote working wouldn’t have been possible without the support of leadership, and a culture based on trust. As survey data from Qatalog and GitLab demonstrates, one of the biggest hurdles to asynchronous work is a culture of digital presenteeism, where employees feel pressured to prove they are at their desks by immediately responding to Teams or Slack notifications, or by quietly sitting through meetings they have no real need to attend.
While it may seem counter-intuitive, this appears to be particularly acute for employees who are fully remote, with 70% reporting they feel pressured to prove they are working, compared to 49% of those who rarely or never work from home. As the authors of the report write:
‘This suggests that those working asynchronously are worried people won’t recognize that they are working, even in organizations where async work is possible. It also highlights the need to talk about async, normalize it, and set expectations – even in companies where it is happening extensively. It isn’t enough to simply let it happen. It needs to be intentional – which starts with leadership.’
Qatalog & GitLub (2022). ‘Killing Time at Work ‘22’
👹 Missing links
⚖️ Here’s What Happens When Your Lawyer Uses ChatGPT
When Roberto Mata sued the airline Avianca, claiming he was injured when a metal serving cart struck his knee, Mata’s lawyer cited several cases to support his argument: Martinez v. Delta Air Lines, Zicherman v. Korean Air Lines, and Varghese v. China Southern Airlines. The only problem? All of those cases were ‘hallucinated’ by ChatGPT. The episode is a cautionary tale about the perils of rushing to adopt generative AI tools, or accepting their output at face value.
🎓 The First Year of AI College Ends in Ruin
In this article, Ian Bogost dives into the ‘arms race’ that’s taking place on university campuses, as students and teachers adapt to technologies like ChatGPT. While Turnitin and OpenAI have developed algorithms to detect essays and assignments that feature AI-generated content, these tools are essentially black boxes. If a student’s paper is flagged for AI content, what does that really mean? Has the entire paper been written by an LLM? Or has the student merely used ChatGPT to correct grammatical errors? What level of AI use are universities prepared to accept, and how do they even begin to police it?
🏢 The real reason behind the hated ‘return to work’ push
According to Dr Libby Sander, there are two main reasons behind the push to get everyone back into the office: commercial property values and fear that ‘lazy’ workers will slack off when they’re at home. But as Sander points out, the research suggests the modern office is not always conducive to productivity. Instead, she advocates an approach where different states are aligned to different tasks, and workers have the flexibility to match where they work to what they’re working on.
And finally…
In the most important story of the week, Bobo flying squirrel recently faked his death to get his owner’s attention. Thanks to our friend and colleague Tracey McDonald for sharing this, and bringing Bobo into our lives.
👍 Thanks!
Thanks for reading The L&D Dispatch from Mind Tools! If you’d like to speak to us, work with us, or make a suggestion, you can get in touch @RossDickieMT, @RossGarnerMT or email custom@mindtools.com.
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