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Open Communication, Mutual Respect Keys to Intergenerational Harmony

Leave a Comment / Inclusion & Well-Being, Newsletter /

With multiple generations working side by side for several years now, much has been written about the key differences that affect the ability of multigenerational teams to collaborate successfully. Some organizations have taken this advice to heart and work to consciously reflect these differences when it comes to selecting and cultivating teams. Others have dismissed […]

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Improve Performance in Troubled Times through Distance Learning

Leave a Comment / Continuous Learning in a Virtual World, Newsletter /

Face it: Even the healthiest companies must make dramatic reductions in staff and overall spending to remain viable in what may be the worst economy most of us will see in our lifetimes. As staff is cut, more is asked of those who remain. Most times, these additional responsibilities call for new skills. Yet with

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Cultivating Trust from Afar in Tough Times

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter /

Today’s astonishing economic situation affects virtually every working individual around the globe. As organizations are forced to make drastic cuts and other difficult changes to remain viable, the need for competent, credible, trustworthy leaders has never been greater. At the same time, the very nature of our global economic collapse has bred deep distrust for

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Accelerate On-the-Job Learning With (Virtual) Peer Roundtables

Leave a Comment / Continuous Learning in a Virtual World, Newsletter /

If you’re like many of our clients and colleagues, you work some distance away from your key colleagues. This may mean that you rarely get the chance to brainstorm ideas, share lessons learned, or explore difficult issues with your peers. With technology as an enabler, virtual roundtables can be an effective way to exchange ideas

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Building Relationships, One Conversation at a Time

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Newsletter: Essential communication and collaboration skills for virtual teams, Productive Conversations /

Can you build a trusting relationship when you’ve never had an actual conversation? (And no, IM, email, text, Twitter and blog “conversations” don’t count!) While it may be possible, it’s pretty unlikely. Most business conversations tend to focus on tasks and priorities, whether to review the progress of a current project, delegate actions or make

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Proven in Practice – Top Tips Essential to Virtual Project Team Performance

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Team Collaboration /

I’m always gratified when readers write to say that the latest Communiqué really hit the mark. One reader, a colleague and former client of mine, has sent me so many such mails over the last 10 years that I arranged to meet with him – virtually – to learn which tips he found the most

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Guidelines for Great Global Team Meetings

Leave a Comment / Meeting Facilitation Services, Newsletter, Newsletter: Navigating across cultures, Productive Conversations /

Thanks to advances in technology, project team members scattered around multiple time zones work together as a matter of routine. However, without a keen understanding of important cultural differences that are most likely to affect collaboration, many virtual global project teams struggle to achieve their goals, or sometimes simply fall apart. In this edition of

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Seven Attributes of an Exceptional Virtual Collaborator

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter /

Just because someone works virtually doesn’t mean that person really has what it takes to collaborate successfully. In fact, many who work remotely are poorly suited to make the connections they really need to thrive. In this edition of Communiqué, we look at characteristics that make for a successful virtual collaborator, and those that may

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Holding Back: A Counter-Intuitive Approach for Virtual Leaders

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Productive Conversations /

When they first join a new team, members tend to be energized, motivated, and eager to learn the ropes. Many take pride in finding the information and resources they need to tackle their new assignments and may need just a bit of guidance to keep moving in the right direction. After all, absorbing and applying

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Real Cultural Assimilation Takes Patience, Time and Willingness to Adapt

Leave a Comment / Navigating Across Cultures, Newsletter /

A colleague recently landed a job for Export Trading Co. LTD, an agro processing company in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, with offices throughout Sub Saharan Africa. I wondered: Is it any easier to become assimilated into a new culture today than it was for me when I took a temporary assignment in Hong Kong two

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Leading vs. Managing Remote Teams

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Newsletter: Leading effective virtual teams /

As more organizations work virtually, managers of traditional work teams are tapped to lead geographically dispersed teams. When thrust into this unfamiliar territory, many managers flounder, especially those who rely on command-and-control tactics to get work done across locations, functions, cultures and time zones. Joining me in writing this month’s Communiqué is my friend and

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Moving to the Virtual Classroom: 8 Steps to Keep Learners Engaged

Leave a Comment / Continuous Learning in a Virtual World, Newsletter, Newsletter: Continuous learning in a virtual world /

As our workforce becomes more scattered, organizations are being forced to rethink how they deliver training. While the array of solutions may vary, one trait these organizations have in common: They are scaling back or altogether eliminating classroom training in favor of distance learning. Most don’t have the experience or tools to make this move

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Navigating Through Invisible Cultural Tripwires

Leave a Comment / Facilitation Skills Training, Navigating Across Cultures, Newsletter, Newsletter: Navigating across cultures /

It can be really awkward to candidly discuss cultural differences when your colleagues work across the hall. But when colleagues work across the continent or on the other side of the world, these conversations becomes exponentially harder. Yet, by missing the opportunity to openly explore how cultural differences affect its ability to collaborate, a team

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To speed decision-making, get rid of the noise

Leave a Comment / Facilitation Skills Training, Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Productive Conversations /

To be, or not to be? Not all decisions are as profound as Hamlet’s, but some team decisions can be real game-changers. Making tough decisions can stress out members of any team, but when you’re working as a geographically-dispersed team, the decision-making process can be especially draining. Why?  Simply put, the decision-making process for virtual

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Dealing with Disruptive Participants, Virtually

2 Comments / Meeting Facilitation Services, Newsletter, Virtual & Hybrid Meetings /

We’ve all suffered when the bad behavior of just one person can derail a whole meeting. Maybe it’s been the know-it-all who steamrolls over anyone who tries to speak. Or the person who folds her arms and rolls her eyes without a word. It could be the guy who has nothing good to say about

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Building Trust Within Virtual Teams – Small Steps Add Up

4 Comments / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Virtual Leadership /

When we ask clients to name the toughest challenge associated with leading virtual teams, there is one answer that always pops to the top of the list: Building trust. Or in some cases, it’s re-building trust. Building trust is hard for any team, but it is especially hard for virtual teams, whose members have few

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For High Impact Global Communications, One Size Never Fits All

Leave a Comment / Facilitation Skills Training for Cross-Cultural Conversations, Navigating Across Cultures, Newsletter /

You’re poised to launch a Big Change that will rock the world of everyone across your organization, around the world. You’ve spent weeks with C-level execs, Marketing, HR and Legal to hammer out a set of crisp, consistent messages. After weeks of haggling, everyone has finally signed off. At last, you have sent the key

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Overcoming Time and Distance to Stay Connected, Engaged and Energized

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Team Collaboration /

In a world where what was blindly fast is now excruciatingly slow, what was private is now all-too-public, and where meaningful discussions have given way to a stream of 280-character exchanges, a feeling of disconnection has become rampant across the workplace. Despite the proliferation of devices that tether us to others at any time, from

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Virtual Meetings: Design for Worst-Case Scenarios for Best Outcomes

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Virtual & Hybrid Meetings, Virtual Meeting Facilitation Services /

Normally, I ascribe to the 80/20 rule when it comes to planning meetings or designing training. That is, I know I can’t possibly predict every single situation that might arise, so I do my best to anticipate what I think will happen 80% of the time for 80% of the participants. As far as the

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Successful Virtual Collaboration Takes a Lot More Than Just the Right Tools

Leave a Comment / Newsletter, Newsletter: Essential communication and collaboration skills for virtual teams, Team Collaboration /

Your organization has finally gotten wise to the fact that employees need more than just email, a smart phone and a group website to work with their colleagues across the world, or even just down the hall. IT has just unveiled an array of exciting new collaboration tools with great fanfare, complete with training and

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How to Tilt the Work-Life Balance in your Favor in a 24×7 World

Leave a Comment / Inclusion & Well-Being, Newsletter, Newsletter: Essential communication and collaboration skills for virtual teams /

Is achieving “work-life balance” really possible in an always-on, constantly connected world? When telecommuting and flextime were introduced, the thinking was that busy professionals could adjust their working hours to accommodate other important aspects of their lives. (“It’s great – I can coach my kids’ soccer games and then hop onto my late-night con calls.”)

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10 Easy Ways to Disengage Your Virtual Team

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter /

I’m in the midst of rolling out a new virtual leadership series for a client. We start every series by exploring the three building blocks of successful virtual team leadership (literally, the ABC’s): Accelerating Trust, Building Social Capital and Creating a Level Playing Field. One major challenge comes up in every conversation: How to keep

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6 Essential Guidelines for Making Better Decisions, Virtually

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter /

Let’s face it. We’ve all made some pretty poor decisions. Sometimes it’s because we feel we have to keep moving, in any direction. Other times we just don’t want to have to think too hard, so we make the choice that requires the least scrutiny. When we make a bad decision that has fairly minor

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How Virtual Leaders Can Help Others Thrive in a World of Complexity

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Newsletter: Leading effective virtual teams /

Consider this: Today’s companies set themselves up to six times more performance metrics than they did 50 years ago. Top leaders committed to just four to seven performance imperatives; today, CEOs commit to somewhere between 25 and 40. According to Yves Morieux of the Boston Consulting Group, author of a recent Harvard Business Review article,

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Balance Innovation and Expediency for a Supercharged Team

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Newsletter: Leadership and management (general) /

How many emails can I write while “participating” in a weekly review meeting? Which ideas can I repurpose so I don’t have think of new ones? How many calls can I avoid by blasting a group IM? How many minutes can I save by outsourcing dinner prep to the local pizza joint? Yup, for many

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Untangle your Virtual Team with 10 Most-Needed Norms

Leave a Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Newsletter: Leading effective virtual teams /

Precious few virtual teams have explicit team norms, even for aspects of teamwork where the absence of shared norms can really trip a team up. Excuses include: “When would we have time to talk this through?” “Everyone pretty much knows how we need to work.” “We’re too busy.” And my favorite: “It’s too late to

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Rewarding, Recognizing and Celebrating Achievements from Afar

1 Comment / Leadership & Management, Newsletter, Newsletter: Leading effective virtual teams /

How do you celebrate a major milestone? Maybe you call the troops together to share a pizza, or bring in a jug of coffee and a platter of decadent donuts. Better yet, you might treat your hard-working team to lunch or dinner. And if it’s a moment worthy of a special celebration, you might throw

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You’d Be a Great (Virtual) Communicator If Only You Could Just Be Quiet

1 Comment / Newsletter, Newsletter: Essential communication and collaboration skills for virtual teams, Productive Conversations /

Quick: What’s the #1 skill successful virtual leaders must have, which is usually hardest for them to cultivate? If you said “listening,” you’d be right. Why it’s so important is pretty obvious. Virtual leaders must learn to listen for and interpret an enormous amount of information, within seconds, without benefit of body language or eye

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