Manager Hacks for Building a Sense of Belonging within a Virtual Team

Feeling a sense of belonging as part of a team at work has become a bit of a hot topic in the past few years. This is no surprise given the rapid globalization and distributed nature of teams. Managers used to be able to rely on the office and the daily proximity of team members as a relationship-building accelerator. Now that many teams are almost exclusively virtual, the approach has to be different. It’s still possible to create a sense of belonging in a virtual and distributed workplace, but it requires more intentionality; with fewer ad hoc moments of connection, relationship-building has to become a workstream rather than something that just happens by itself. The benefit is that the focused effort can lead to even stronger and purposeful connections.

Here are some ideas you can leverage to create a sense of belonging for your virtual team members…

ArticleKara DavidsonMay 6, 2024virtual, managers, leaders, meetings, belongingComment

Rethinking the Status Update Meeting

All too often, weekly (or monthly) status updates end up being a verbal report-out by team members to the team lead. The team members feel like the time is wasted and the information could have been better communicated in an email. The team leader struggles to get anyone to participate outside of their own report. Now that many of these calls are happening in the virtual space, it’s no wonder that everyone on these calls is multitasking and disengaged.

But what can you do? As a manager or project lead, you need to get updates from the team to make sure all the work streams are on track. How can you rethink—and hopefully reinvigorate—the status update meeting?

ArticleStephanie JuddApril 15, 2024meetings, meeting design, check-ins, manager check-ins, conversations, status updateComment

Powerful Questions to Transform Your Manager/Employee Check-Ins

Here are a few questions to consider for your next Manager/Employee check-in. If you’re a manager, try a few out on your employees. If you’re an employee, try to answer them ahead of your check-in and see if they inspire a different kind of touchpoint.

Beyond the Performance Review: Develop a Culture of Continuous Improvement

Reference

Instead of providing direct instructions and advice to employees, a manager who acts as a coach will ask open-ended questions to help their employees reflect and move forward with intention.

Download this resource to learn how managers who are empowered to be coaches support a culture of continuous improvement throughout the performance review process.

Tool: Manager/Employee Check-In Diagnostic

TOOL

This Google Sheets template will help you diagnose the quality of your manager/employee check-ins. Discover whether your time is well-spent, or if you have opportunity to have more meaningful, effective, and inspiring conversations.

Unlocking The Power of Process Conversations

Process Conversations focus on alignment around HOW work gets accomplished. This is different from the typical conversations at work about WHAT needs doing. Often, HOW work will get done is rarely discussed. And if it is considered with any kind of intention, it’s usually considered by a leader in isolation, who believes that how the work is done should be a decision they make unilaterally.

Process Conversations are great opportunities for leaders to inspire others, generate buy-in, and drive engagement. AND they’re an access point through which to engage and inspire UP the chain of command as well.

ArticleStephanie JuddNovember 13, 2023meetings, leadership, alignment, engagementComment

4 Things that Go Wrong with One-on-One Check-ins (and How to Avoid Them)

Manager check-ins, one-on-ones, touchpoints… Whatever you may call them, they are the foundation of a strong manager-employee relationship and the lynchpin for supporting your employees in many ways. This 30-minute-or-so recurring meeting between manager and employee seems so simple that it’s often taken for granted and therefore underutilized. They are used as opportunities to get project updates or chat about anything, when they could be so much more supportive of the employee’s professional growth and development. More often than not, we hear about employees or managers who simply put them off, postpone them indefinitely, or end up using the time as status report opportunities rather than truly leveraging their power.

It’s time to go back to the basics. Here are 4 things that go wrong with your manager check-ins and how to avoid them.

ArticleStephanie JuddOctober 16, 2023meetings, leadership, alignment, engagementComment

Capitalizing on Your Conference: What to do next

Fall is conference season. For many professionals, at some point in the fall, they’ll pack their bags, head to a hotel and mix with industry peers. There’s a lot to gain at conferences—knowledge, skills, relationships—but it can be hard to capitalize on all that conferences have to offer in the moment. Here’s a step by step approach to maximize the conference value when you’re back at your desk the following Monday and have a chance to take a breath.

Process Conversations are great opportunities for leaders to inspire others, generate buy-in, and drive engagement. AND they’re an access point through which to engage and inspire UP the chain of command as well.

ArticleKara DavidsonOctober 2, 2023meetings, leadership, conference, conferences, keynote, presentation, speakerComment

Three Common Mistakes When Developing a Learning Experience

Just as not every individual contributor will be a fantastic manager, not every leader will be a fantastic teacher. Fortunately, these are skills that can be developed and there are rules of thumb that can be applied to ensure that content experts can jump into the role of inspiring and engaging a new generation of folks in their area of expertise.

Here are a few of the common mistakes we see leaders fall into when creating learning experiences.

ArticleStephanie JuddSeptember 11, 2023presentation, meetings, learning and development, learning designComment

Plan the Best Strategy Retreat of Your Career - Part 1: Define Success

The most important thing you need to do once you’ve broadly identified the need for a strategy retreat is to define success. There are a few ways to do this, but the crux of this step is to make sure you and your team are aligned on the “why” for the retreat. Why is it happening? Why should people show up? Why should they care? Why should they contribute? Don’t just focus on the routine… we’re meeting because that’s what we do every year. Instead, aim to uncover why this retreat specifically needs to happen this year. Although you may already have a cursory idea of agenda topics, this step should take you beyond thinking about “what” you’re doing, and bring focus and sophistication to your meeting design.

ArticleStephanie JuddOctober 6, 2021meetings, strategy retreatComment