One easy way to build stronger bonds with your virtual team.
By: George Makowski
Tags: Workplace Communication, Working From Home, Work, Meetings, Empathy

We’re all trying to do our best in a world forever changed. Everything is that much more difficult; spending time with family and loves ones, recreational activities, and even something we used to call a “vacation”. All those dreams of sun-drenched beaches, rolling pastures to stroll across, and jagged mountains to summit, dashed under a blanket of uncertainly.

It’s also harder to do our jobs when the office is now your living room or kitchen. I saw someone in a meeting once in what looked like their utility closet, it was so small. We’re all making do with what we have, yet it’s clearly there to see if we take notice: none of this feels comfortable or secure.

I have to admit that I don’t miss the daily commute into the CBD, nor the weekend ironing of shirts for the week ahead. In fact, I haven’t ironed a thing since March and for that I’m forever grateful. But what I do miss is the connection you get from being in the same space as your teammates. Off-hand comments and ad hoc conversations made in passing throughout the day. Even a simple look of acknowledgement between co-workers; body language means so much that we don’t miss it until it’s gone. Well, not gone, but more precisely replaced by virtual heads on a screen.

I recently had the chance to be interviewed for a new job by a four-person panel, and it was the strangest of experiences. Matchbox-sized viewports with miniature people asking scripted questions. Sometimes I swear I saw one of them nod or smile, but it was so imperceivable that I dismissed the notion and instead babbled on until my ears felt warm. You know the feeling? When you realise you’ve been talking for too long and have potentially lost your way and are now talking about how weird it is to work in shorts all day?

Communication flows naturally when we’re physically around our tribe, so how can we embrace it when we’re a virtual tribe?

The point is, conversations tend to be deeper and far more meaningful in person. Even if the other person doesn’t say anything, their slight nods or smiles (hopefully not frowns) tell you whether or not what your saying is landing. Without those non-verbal cues we are effectively talking to ourselves, because so much of what we say relies on feedback. Even those presenting to a crowd can perceive the mood of the people, the accumulated vibe of an audience.

While the technology and methodology around working from home improves, we’re left with changing how we interact with each other to counteract the lack of non-verbal cues. And change is the hardest thing to make happen because we’re hardwired for the path of least resistance. But it’s not about making sweeping changes to how you operate; it is about making small yet meaningful shifts to communicate better.

I work in project management at a government department, looking after grants funding, IT development and regular payment and communication cycles to hundreds of services in the state. Quite often my teammates and I will open a video chat in MS Teams and sit in there most of the day while we work. Sometimes we mute ourselves (or each other), but we’ve discovered the benefit of a virtual office environment where we can collaborate, talk through problems, seek each other’s input and bring much needed humour into our days.

But one of the problems I encounter a lot in this sterilised new world is the lack of detail in communications. Emails, meeting requests, planning sessions — all striped down to their bare essentials. Take the old Outlook meeting request. Almost every time I receive one it only has a few words in the subject line and nothing in the body. It leaves me with a feeling of frustration and anxiety, and as an introvert I work hard on my own communication skills to avoid creating those two emotional states.

Because we’re physically detached from each other now, our brains don’t register us being part of a tribe. Our manager (leader/alpha) isn’t around for us to emulate and take directions from. Our tribe-mates aren’t around us during the day, so a natural form of isolation takes hold and we can interpret that as being ostracized. Thousands of years ago, if you were thrown out of your tribe it would likely mean death. The tribe hunts together, it cares for each other and there is security in numbers. Without the tribe, your life expectancy wasn’t long — between extreme weather, lack of water or a sabretooth tiger, the dangers were all around you. Fight, flight or freeze was born in these times and it’s still embedded in our limbic systems today.

While there are long-term methods of mitigating our ancestral tendencies, like mindfulness meditation, we can take quick and easy steps to keep our connection to tribe strong.

Meeting requests

Subject lines

Write a concise but informative subject line. “Payments — Q2 review and lessons learned discussion”, is a good subject line because it talks about the business area (payments) and what we’re going to be meeting about (reviewing what lessons we learned in Q2).

“Meeting — payments”, is not so good. What payments? When? Did I do something wrong? Are we changing processes? Too many questions, not enough detail, and no one knows why they’re accepting the meeting request. People will begin to form preconceptions and judgements and bring those into the “room”.

Write an agenda

Too often in these meetings one can sense how little preparation the facilitator has made. No agenda for everyone to follow along with, no list of documents needed for the discussion, and most evidently no clear path as they stumble from subject to subject. The worst is when the meeting lead, well, doesn’t. They’ve made a meeting and now expect others to take charge and work out why they’ve all gathered, and whether or not this will be another pointless waste of time they could be using for chair dancing. It happens more than you realise.

Write a bullet-point agenda in the body of your meeting request. Clearly and simply establish what the meeting is about, what’s to be discussed and what outcomes the group will be working towards. Then finish with any necessary documents for the meeting, and either attach them or include accessible links for everyone. No internal SharePoint or TRIM links if people are attending outside of the organisation!

You can be a great meeting host by taking a little time, and empathy, before you start. What would help the attendees when they receive your invitation? It really is helpful to think of it as a party invite — would you send one without all the relevant details? Who it’s from and what it’s about, where it is and if you need to bring anything? The same applies for meetings, and it pays to make this small effort in terms of productivity. But also, something more: esprit de corps. I’ll get to that later.

Start your online meetings with context and structure

A concise and informative subject heading

A clear agenda written in bullet points

A list of required reading, either beforehand or during the meeting.

And writing these three simple things helps you create a clear flow for the meeting. You have to think through what it is you want to achieve, what needs to be discussed and why, and what call to action you can end the meeting on. Because if you ask people to come to your party and they leave with a feeling of “why did I bother?”, then they’re that much less likely to accept your next invite. And we’re trying to build stronger bonds here, not weaken them.

It’s not only introverts that benefit from minimising uncertainty. It’s good practice to communicate more in writing, because we can’t do it in person. Add more detail, think through the steps and provide greater context to everything you do so there’s less ambiguity for your teammates.

Rule #1 is "no assumptions", and you can help stay true to that by clarifying as much as possible so others don't need to interpret what you mean.

Virtually bonding with your team matters.

A tribe works when everyone is connected, focused on mutually beneficial outcomes, and cares for each other. Our workplaces have become our tribes in many ways. Exercising empathetic routines can have positive changes for you and your workmates because they are actions, not words. You’re actively demonstrating through your actions that you’ve taken the time to think about your tribe.

No one gets thrown out for being part of the team. You feel security, certainty and a sense of belonging when you strengthen your bonds, which in turn increases happiness. And happiness leads to increased productivity and efficiency, creativity and a sense of purpose.