Building digital rapport

Building digital rapport

When teams work remotely, minor tensions and distractions can become exaggerated. When we engage in face to face conversations, we adjust what we say and how we say it to the physical and tonal clues from the other person(s). This ability is reduced when we see only heads and shoulders, in the small pictures of gallery view when there are more than 4 people on a Zoom or Teams call.  It attenuates even further when communication is mostly by email, when the potential for misinterpretation of the other person’s intent is much higher.

Erica Dhawan’s video blogs on digital body language (easily found on You Tube) offer lots of practical advice on good practice in building rapport and teaming remotely. She recommends considering five questions (which I have adapted here) before sending an email:

1.     Does it provide enough context for the recipient to know why you are sending it?

2.     Is the meaning clear? (What might be ambiguous?)

3.     Is the emotional tone appropriate? (How do you want them to react emotionally?)

4.     What language will convey the emotions I intend?

5.     Is it clear what I want them to do in response?

Amongst other good advice is to be aware of the power differentials in the relationship and the impact these may have on both parties’ expectations of communications between them. Your tactics and style in communicating will depend on your perceptions of the relative power distance and the degree of closeness you feel towards each other.  Two people, who are equals and who know and respect each other well, can get along pretty well with short, straight to the point messages. Communications from someone who feels lower in the power stakes to someone higher, who they are not close to, would typically require more explanation and be more thoughtful.

There are six areas a team coach can usefully help a team focus on when developing its digital protocols and personality:

1.     All team video meetings

2.     Dyads and trios (sub-team video meetings)

3.     All team emails

4.     Individual to individual emails

5.     Video meetings to external stakeholders and influencers

6.     E-mails to external stakeholders and influencers

All team meetings

The first question here is: Is the team of an appropriate size to have good virtual meetings? A critical factor is how many people can be on the screen and engaged with each other at the same time? The maximum appears to be eight plus a coach, or none when the team meets on its own. Numbers larger than this reduce the view of each participant to the point where it becomes difficult to detect body language and facial expression.

Other useful questions include:

·      How will we prepare for our meetings, so there is a clear agenda and clear intended outcomes?

·      How will we ensure that everyone’s voice is heard equally?

·      What are our protocols for encouraging the voicing and discussion of contrarian perspectives?

·      What are our protocols for off-line conversations through chat boxes? Used productively, chats can provide valuable additional information without interrupting the flow of the main conversation. They can also flag areas that need to be addressed as the conversations evolves. Used unproductively, they distract attention through private sniping.

·      How will we be appropriately supportive of each other?

·      How will we incorporate fun into our meetings? (Learning is enhanced through appropriate and measured humour.)

Good practice in team meetings increasingly includes creating space for people to reflect before they all pile into a discussion. This process doesn’t have to be lost in a virtual room. Frequent two person breakouts, for example, can provide an opportunity for team members to help each other think through what they want to say on a difficult topic, before re-joining the full meeting. Similarly, when the team is divided in its views on a topic, they can split into two rooms, each tasked with considering the issue from the perspective of the other sub-group. Somehow, it is a lot easier to this virtually, than in person, where people have to physically move around.

Video dyads and trios

Working in small groups creates opportunities for building collegiality and trust. But this will only happen when the transactional processes are mediated by learning processes and relationship processes. However, it is much easier to engage in natural relationship building in groups of this size, through simple activities such as sharing hopes and fears, cultivating greater vulnerability, exploring each other’s needs for support and showing appreciation. +

In pairs, it also often easier for people to have authentic conversations about how they collaborate, through questions such as:

·      What would you like me to do more of or less of, to help us work better together?

·      What can we do better together that will add even more value to the team?

·      What permission can we give to each other, to give honest, in the moment feedback?

It’s normal in well-managed meetings to end by summarising the decisions made and what everyone is going to do to implement them. To enhance collegiality, however, it helps to end with “How do you feel now about the discussion we have had (compared to when we started it)?”. This has several benefits. Firstly, it surfaces unvoiced concerns or perceptions of being railroaded, which may reduce enthusiasm for the tasks assigned. Secondly, it reinforces the sense of caring for each other as colleagues.

All team emails

Email overload is a fact of life for most knowledge workers. While there is not a lot you can do about emails from outside the team, you can create protocols around internal emails. One of the simplest and most effective protocols is to label every internal email as Action, Advice, Acknowledgement, or Information and have collective agreement as to what these labels mean. Action indicates that the sender wants other team members to do something. Good practice is to make the action specific in the first two lines. Advice is a lesser form of action – “please tell me what you think”. Acknowledgement indicates that the sender wants recipients to take note of the contents and say that they have done so. (It is the antidote to ‘I didn’t see that email”). Information indicates “You may want to refer to this at some time, but it requires no action at this time.”

A practical way that teams and their coaches can address the issues around internal emails is to choose the correspondence from a few days and ask everyone to rate a selection of items on the following characteristics. (Invite everyone to select three they had a strong positive reaction to and three they had a negative reaction to.)

·      How immediately clear was it to you what this email was intended to achieve?

·      How helpful was it in terms of your own work?

·      How useful was it in terms of you supporting colleagues in their work?

·      What was your emotional response to the language? (Motivated, pleased, neutral, irritated, rebellious)

·      How appropriately did it balance being succinct against giving detail?

The principle of intent (what the sender meant to achieve) and impact (how the receiver responded) forms the basis for learning conversations.

Collectively rewriting a sample of the least effective emails creates a learning opportunity for everyone. The team may even consider having a monthly award for the most helpful email…

Individual to individual emails

The same approach can be applied to emails between individuals but here we can place more emphasis on the human interaction. The critical question is “What can we do to make our emails more supportive of each other?” While it can be difficult in the full team to bring into the open the power dynamics, the relative privacy of a one to one conversation allows for an open conversation about how the more powerful person can encourage, by their choice of language, less deference and greater positive challenge from their less powerful colleague. For example: “I’d value your honest opinion about this...”

Video meetings and emails with external stakeholders and influencers

Much the same principles apply, but there is usually less opportunity to engage with outsiders in agreeing protocols. In the context of video meetings, it can help to provide external participants with a written guide to Getting the best out of our virtual meetings  and reviewing key points at the beginning of a meeting. For emails, it may be possible in some circumstances to respond with a message along the lines of “I thought it might be helpful to clarify our understanding of your message…” 

Summary

If, as studies indicate, the proportion of people working some or all of the time from home has risen from 5% to 45% and will continue at a similar level, teams need to get much better at how they communicate virtually. Coaches can help them in this, but they must also take a hard look at their own virtual communication!

© David Clutterbuck, 2020