Let’s imagine you are on a remote call and things are wrapping up. Maybe you are busy summarizing actions or asking the group if there is anything still to be said. The conversation has been rich, the engagement high, and you are feeling positive about the impact this meeting will have for the team. Everyone says goodbye and the call ends. The group goes back to their day and there is silence until the next meeting.

Meetings are high-energy moments. Collaboration, thinking, and focus make them unique opportunities for connection in the day. However, these should not be the only moments where collaboration is nurtured in your team or organi zation. This chapter will focus on what you can do after the call, both immediately as the call ends and with the time in between meetings.

The minutes after the call, when the interaction is still fresh in everyone’s minds, are really valuable. By reiterating anything that happened (whether it was actions committed to or really human moments of connection) you increase the chance of it being remembered by the group. If little paths were created in our brains, immediately reinforcing them increases the chance that they will remain. As a remote facilitator, you really want to amplify the healthy stuff that happens so that it happens more and more often. Before you know it, these things which you so carefully nurtured will be assimilated into the team’s culture.

Some practical examples for how you might amplify immediately:

• Send an email with a screenshot of the outcomes/decisions/actions.

• If your organization uses a messaging app (e.g., Slack, Skype), send a message thanking everyone and sharing a line or two about any observations you had: “Thanks for that everyone. I really enjoyed the energy, it felt like we had a really good conversation.”

• Include a unique detail about the meeting in your communications. Maybe someone’s child popped into the screen briefly. Remind the group of this connection because in so doing, you are reminding them of the people behind the screens. It can be as simple as adding, “Please send Quinton our love and thank him for making an appearance ©”

• Send a short line saying goodbye. This simple action creates a small moment of connection after the call, albeit fleeting. Maybe include a reference to the different time zones to acknowledge all the different perspectives: “Bye everyone, I’m going to grab a coffee. I hope you have a good day or evening.”

Have you ever been on a call where you sensed friction? Maybe a nasty comment was made or someone stopped speaking and you could read the frustration in their expression. It is easy for conflict to be overlooked or ignored in remote spaces. When the call ends, the issue becomes invisible and it requires intentional effort to connect with the relevant people afterward to reach resolution. If these moments of conflict are not addressed, they can fester and create dysfunction that becomes increasingly more difficult to deal with, especially in a distributed environment.

Naturally, this is a sensitive space and requires context- based responses and intuition as to what the specific situation and people require. If something uncomfortable happens on a call, a natural response is to hope that it will be better next time. Avoid the temptation to be hopeful in remote spaces. Be intentional about addressing issues because they seldom resolve themselves. If someone behaved in an offensive manner on a call, find a way to give them constructive feedback afterward. If someone seemed really down, reach out to check that they are okay. The quality of your remote meetings will be impacted by the quality of interactions surrounding these calls.

Meetings are a form of synchronous communication, as is texting someone and expecting an immediate response. If we consider that a lot of distributed companies have chosen flexibility and access to skills outside their location over co-l ocation, then we need to be mindful that synchronous communication can be at odds with these goals. Time zone differences and the value placed on flexibility mean that an overreliance on synchronous communication can create rigidity: people have to be online regardless of their time zones and other needs.

An example of asynchronous communication could be someone creating a document with a suggestion, sending it out for comments, and setting a deadline for comments (e.g., three days from now). In their own time, participants can add comments, ask questions, and build on each other’s ideas. If there is high consensus and clear outcomes then a meeting is not required. If there are points of contention then a specific meeting for that purpose can be called.

When thinking about introducing more asynchronous ways of communicating and connecting in your team, the following guidelines can be helpful:

• Trust by default: If you do not get a response immediately, rather than assuming ill intention, trust that the person is doing what they need to and will reply when they can. Do not expect an immediate response.³⁴

• Over-communicate: If you are using text, misunderstandings are possible—so if in doubt, over- communicate.

• Create constraints: So that making decisions and taking action do not take too long, setting constraints in the document can help. This could mean deadlines for responses or clearly framing next steps if a certain condition is reached (for example, 20-plus comments are unresolved).

We maintain that face-to-face meetings are important for creating connection and solving complex problems. We also acknowledge that sometimes meetings happen that could have been emails. Asynchronous communication is a really valuable tool for teams to maintain productivity and collaboration outside of calls.

If we consider that meetings are influenced by the quality of the connection between the individuals involved, how might we work on building that connection outside meetings? If we are thinking in the context of co-located office space, there are a lot of coincidental moments that build connections for in-person teams. Maybe it’s having some fun together at the PlayStation or chuckling while you hear your colleague cursing at their computer. All these little moments present unplanned opportunities to connect. It’s a little more difficult for incidental connection to happen for remote teams. However, that does not mean that it is not possible.

We often start conversations with new distributed teams, bringing awareness by asking something to the effect of, “Given that we’re a remote team, we’re going to miss out on some of the in-person things that we have all probably enjoyed at some point in our career. What are some of the things you have enjoyed about being on a team?” When people start thinking about these things it provides an opportunity to get creative about how we mimic them in remote spaces. Some things that some of our teams have come with have been:

• Music: Creating team Spotify playlists that we keep adding to

• Watercooler talk: Having a running call open that anyone can join while working, not with the intention to talk but just to feel like we’re working together and to pass the occasional comment

• Virtual games sessions: We love the Jackbox games available on Steam. A few teams play these games together once in a while, and they’re a bit like virtual board games

There’s a lot of room to get creative here and it is important that you allow your team the opportunity to choose. If they suggest or decide to try something, it is more likely that they will be invested in its success. Ask the question and let them find their own answers.

Creating fun mechanics and discovering what a team enjoys are not the only conversations a team needs to have. Another important consideration for teams is agreement on how they will perform other team-related activities in a distributed environment. Making these agreements explicit is fundamental in setting up your distributed space. How your team behaves when they are not on calls will filter into how they behave when on the calls. How will we give feedback? If we cannot see each other speaking, where do we make conversations being had visible? How do we manage expectations of availability? There are lots of questions to choose from. Allow your team to think about how to be a team in a remote space and to establish some baseline agreements.

When thinking about remote meetings, the time after the meeting can be leveraged to embed the outcomes achieved and nurture a collaborative culture over time. While the meeting is fresh in people’s minds, the time immediately after the call can be used to remind people of actions and extend personal connections made. Conversely, if something unhelpful or potentially harmful happened in the meeting, be sure to follow up offline and as far as possible, reach a healthy resolution to set future engagements up for success. Finally, looking beyond traditional meetings, there is an opportunity to find mechanisms for connection with teams that mimic in-person interactions, such as having fun together.

Take some time to consider one or two of the questions below in relation to a meeting you are responsible for:

• Amplify: What happened in a meeting recently that you would like to see again in a coming meeting?

• Dysfunction: How have you dealt with tension in remote meetings in the past?

• Fun: How might you introduce a little fun to your remote team?

1. Amplify immediately

2. Deal with fallout

3. Asynchronous communication

4. Replicate in-person interactions:

   1. Create a playlist

   2. Running meeting for watercooler talk

   3. Virtual game sessions

5. Remote team agreements