Connect Casually

Hi Anil,

Think about what you were doing before working remotely to grow your team. Go through those elements and see what you can apply virtually.

I would recommend people meet with one another in a less than business-like way maybe once or twice a week to do a check in. At Vivo Team, we call that a D.O.S.E. (a Direct, Ongoing, Swift, Encounter) in which people do a quick check in about what their priorities current are, what problems or stuck points they’re and the impact on the team, as well as a ‘win’ they’ve had in the last seven or ten days and the impact on the team. That helps people stay connected.

I would also encourage people to check in with each other on a casual basis, with those colleagues that they feel close to and actually did connect with when they were in the office – that’s another way. One of the other things to do is to get together once a week or every two weeks and have a presentation on some new thing that you or somebody in the team has recently learned. These ways of staying connected can be really helpful.

There are lots of webinars, for example Vivo Team puts out lots of what we call “Swag Bags” for people to check-in. Watch one of those (videos), they’re only one or two minutes and then stay together after that to have a conversation about what you learned, how you might apply it, etc. It’s all with the intention of staying connected with one another, because what we’re noticing, working with a multitude of teams, is that people generally don’t tend to do the more casual connecting like they did in the office. You can do that virtually, it just takes a little bit more discipline to do on a regular basis.

So there are some tips to try!

*names have been changed