 It has become really common for groups in the modern era to be online entities for groups to meet either Primarily or exclusively online you may not ever be in the same room as somebody else from your group in a physical sense So what I want to do with this video is just provide some tips for effective virtual groups those that meet Entirely or primarily online and make use of online technology So one of the first things I want to encourage you to do is to create a communication charter Communication team charter where you collaboratively create a document that normalizes group communication practices This could be things as specific as when you receive an email from a group member You will respond or at least acknowledge that email within 24 hours or whatever it is or you know in group communication In group meetings, we're gonna raise our hands or we're gonna make sure we're not blaming people for whatever Whatever it is you want to identify here that we can kind of establish these norms as much upfront Establish these expectations set these guidelines up front through that communication charter So a few things that you might want to consider for your communication charter and and having in place there First of all, what technology is going to be used for particular tasks? Are you going to primarily communicate through email as a group or as are you going to use text? Or do you have you know Microsoft Teams or Slack or something else that you're going to use to communicate this team? What's the primary form of communication? What technology is going to be used for collaborative documents or ease and Google Docs or using something else like that? So what technology is going to be used for specific tasks so you can make sure you're all using kind of the same thing? What are the deadlines for updates and submissions? So what are the deadlines for you know? We want an update from every week on these projects on this part of the project or We need things submitted by you know Wednesday so that people can review them at the end of the week And then we can talk about it for a meeting on Monday So any kind of regular deadlines Need to be established up front so people can really plan their work and and plan around that and have things ready on time I mentioned before what are the expected response times? Somebody contacts you about a group issue a project issue What is the expectation for when you'll get back to them? And when should they be concerned that you haven't gotten back to them? What are going to be the meeting venues in times? Are you going to use Zoom? Are you going to use Teams? Are you going to use some other technology that's available to you? And when are you going to do this again allowing people to schedule? These things in their lives and work around them get them on their calendar early So you got to establish this as early as possible any kind of regular meetings and regular meeting times that you're going to be Using as part of your team charter your communication charter up front This is a really important document It just again sets up those guidelines and allows you to have something later on that you can point to say Point to somebody say look, this is what we agreed upon You haven't been doing this. Do we need to make an adjustment here or can you do you think you can? Begin to meet some of these things so anyway I would strongly encourage you to consider even in the most basic sense some sort of team charter communication charters You begin your work Another thing to consider is accountability Some things to keep in mind about accountability first of all in a group The one of the wonderful things is you can share leadership Even if you have an assigned leader or somebody who's you know the de facto leader you can still share leadership people members can be leaders that's the One of the benefits of having so many people in you know working together is that you can share that responsibility You can all be a part of that and develop those skills and and take on that responsibility So you can share leadership however You're gonna want to assign an accountability major so share that leadership But assign an accountability major somebody who's keeping track of who's supposed to be doing what and can follow up with him about that Somebody who's you know responsible for doing that can can say okay. This person's gonna have this part done by this date if they don't We need to reach out to them. We need to see what's happening. So you need somebody who's Tracking that and following those different things to make sure that these tasks tasks are being completed You should really have these these things commitments and timelines Publicly trackable. So I encourage you to create an online spreadsheet or some way that you can track Who's doing what ones are gonna be done by and and you know, what are they working on specifically? What's the time frame? What you know, how does that affect everything else so that you can publicly keep track of these things and know Because what you're working on may be dependent on something else that somebody else is working on So at the very least it would be nice to know when you're gonna have access to that when it's expected to be completed And so forth, but it also just helps people Remain accountable to for what this is what you said you would do. This is what we put down in this document So is this happening or is this not happening and you can go from there then so that personal accountability can be Tracked as well. So accountability incredibly important in a group Atmosphere to make sure everybody's getting done what they said they would get done and and doing so in a timely manner And that we know what the plan is for those things That's I want to pick the right tech tool We have so much technology available It is amazing the kind of things you can do and how much that can benefit a group You don't need it all though And what you need to do is pick the right tech tool for what you're trying to do and then there are a couple guidelines Keep in mind as well with that So once you pick that first of all identify and stick to that agreed upon channel If you agreed to use Google Docs for these things and to share files through Google Docs or whatever it is Then stick to that don't have one person said well, I decided to house it out here I'm using you know the Microsoft 365 platform instead, so I just want to keep it there and you can go there and find it Keep everything together once you've identified as a group something that you're going to use stick to it Right well if you're going to use zoom for meetings don't have one person said well I prefer Microsoft teams so if you want to have a meeting with me It's going to be on teams come on just identify a tool and stick with it to simplify things for everybody Now having said that you can mix and match resources for the greatest impact That doesn't mean you can't use other tools You should in fact use other tools and mix and match these things As as needed to provide the greatest possible impact And then go out and find those helpful apps There are things that you can you know depending on what your group is working on there are different things That can be helpful for you as a group. It may be the G suite They've got lots of things in this Google suite that can be very very helpful to you And I use it a lot with the different different components of it They're all kind of integrated and that's nice and the same thing is true for Microsoft 365 If you're a Microsoft person or whatever it is you want to use find those apps that are helpful and find ways to utilize them Things like zoom can be amazing For meetings and synchronous type things and they record meetings and they can be useful for training and all kinds of things So zoom can be very helpful Doodle poll is an only if you're trying to find a meeting time for example can be really helpful So you can mix and match and find these helpful apps You don't have to make use of everything just because it's out there But find the ones that are going to be helpful for your group and make use of them My final tip for you is to communicate competently and that may sound Kind of obvious, but the truth is we don't do it that much that's part of what we're doing here It's trying to learn how to communicate more effectively in groups But a couple of things we need to do first of all we need to keep the channel in mind There are different communication channels that we use to communicate So for example, is this channel lean or is it rich and where does it fall and that's back from meaning You know real-life conversation is really rich because we have access to all these different channels of communication A text message is very lean because we have just the words to go by maybe some emojis or whatever But still there's a lot of ambiguity there because we're Limiting ourselves in terms of the number of channels There's a lot of convenience to texting and it can be wonderful But we need to keep in mind that it's lean And so when we say something we have to think very hard about how that might be interpreted on the other end or or what not so So is this a lean channel or a rich channel of communication? And how does that impact what i'm trying to do so keep the channel in mind Keep in mind is this synchronous or asynchronous Meaning is this happening in real time or not? So we're in a zoom meeting that's synchronous So there are things we can there are ways we want to communicate there that are different than when we're communicating Asynchronously through a text message or email or something like that. So anyway, keep the channel in mind Bear in mind that syntax matters. There's a difference between let's eat grandma and let's eat grandma There's a difference there So keep in mind that syntax matters in the way that you are perceived as a professional and so even when you're texting You're emailing you're whatever you're writing on on instant messenger or whatever it is you're doing syntax matters vocabulary matters You know it all goes to your credibility and it goes to the understandability of your Statement whether or not the other person can interpret it effectively and and use that information the way that you intend So syntax matters vocabulary matters keep all that in mind and use your best writing skills Manage conflict wisely communicate competently by managing conflict wisely. It's okay to disagree in groups It's okay to state your opinion. It's okay to have conflict even that can be constructive But we need to manage it wisely. Don't let things get personal. Don't let things get, you know, don't Huge teams and and you know big battles like that come out Handle your conflict wisely work collaboratively if you have to work cooperatively but manage that conflict wisely and think interculturally That doesn't just mean people from different countries and but and different, you know racial or ethnic backgrounds and things It certainly applies there and we want to think that way, but you know, but just think that people think differently People think differently. I I work in a huge team from all across the country And and and we think differently people from you know Just because the way the environments were raised and where we live and things like that It's all good. It brings those different perspectives in that's one of the great advantages of working in a group But we have to think interculturally not everybody thinks the same way we do has the same opinions We do we should make assumptions about that kind of thing so we need to think interculturally and and and Use those effective intercultural aspects of communication in our group Odds are you're going to be in a virtual group at some point and and so we're going to have these experiences We're going to have to work in these environments and they can be wonderful There's a lot of productivity that can happen a lot of advantages to working in virtual groups But it has different aspects that need to be managed differently even though even from regular group experiences So keep those in mind that virtual groups are unique and require a unique Touch from us from all the group members in order to make that an effective experience If you have questions about working in virtual teams or groups and how to do that more effectively Please feel free to email me. I'd love to to chat with you about that in the meantime I hope that this has been helpful and giving you giving you some food for thought About how we can work most effectively in the you know growing presence of virtual teams and virtual groups