From Hack the Crisis to the Scottish brewer using his facility to manufacture and distribute hand sanitizer, right now in this COVID-19 pandemic, humans are doing what we do best: adapting. Remote collaboration is the emerging need of the times. Everyone’s coming together around a single idea — finding creative ways to connect and do business without actually making physical contact.

Pivoting work effectively as your teams begin to recalibrate from home may be challenging at first, but your team will be as effective as your foundation, so lay it well and try to have a little fun while you’re at it.

Remote Collaboration Needs 

To master effective dialogue at a distance, get your team’s buy-in on implementing these highly effective communication practices.

(1) Listening deeply to not only what is being said (or typed)  literally, but also to follow the intent of the meaning.

Focus on inquiry by:

• Paraphrasing: I’m hearing you say <use your own words to reflect>
• Asking for clarification: Can you provide an example?

(2) Evoke people’s genuine voice by encouraging your peers to reveal what is true for them and for yourself:

• Invite participation: What do others think? Or who else has an idea?
• Provide support: We have not heard from Katherine yet, I wonder what she has to say?

(3) Hold space so others can fully express themselves. This is  a way to truly respect and value other people’s views as legitimate. To respect others is to listen for the coherence in the other person’s insights.

• Validate others: I think there is merit in Kathy’s idea.
• Be vulnerable: I admit I do not know, I wonder what happens when…

(4) Let go of certainties. These are rigid, non-negotiables that limit dialogue. You needn’t suppress what you think nor advocate your opinion with single-minded conviction, conversely:

• Look for trade-offs: What are pros and cons of this approach?
• Validate your hypothesis: How can we design an experiment to learn more? 

Adapt Your Leadership Habits to Thrive in Tough Times 

Leadership teams are looked upon as the invincibles, and while the rest of the organization may count on your invulnerability, the path to becoming a true team starts with your curiosity to become more than the sum of the individuals you represent. Open up! 

Developing habits to listen, to let go of uncertainties, to hold space, and to invoke true voices of others are learnable skills, habits that can be developed by leadership teams to face the next wave of uncertainties around the corner. We need our leaders, senior managers, and strategists to wonder and learn together with the rest of the organization as our world shape-shifts at an incredibly blinding pace. Our organizational leaders must brave this change with humanity and humility. Will you step up? 

Build a Habit Around Collaboration, and Not Just for Those You Manage 

Leadership teams need to become highly collaborative, not just working groups. Strong communication habits help you tap into dynamic systems, personal and organizational, that accumate compounded benefits for your team over time. (Read: Harvard Business Review The Discipline of Teams). In NYTimes bestsellers The Power of Habit (Charles Duhig) and Atomic Habits (James Clear), the authors emphasize the compounded gains that thoughtful communication and other positive habits can create for organizations and persons.  

If you’re on an agile team already, you have practiced your daily Scrums, and have a rhythm with your sprint planning, reviews, and retrospectives. Through regular practice, effective Scrum teams become agile enough to adapt on a daily basis to changes in their environment while also maintaining focus on their goals. These good habits foster autonomy within the team, as each person practices making informed decisions and taking empowered actions at the local level. These teams might have more practice than others in demonstrating trust in each other’s decisions and capabilities.  

Here’s a tip for not-yet-agile teams: Schedule 15 minutes to connect each morning to coordinate and identify opportunities to collaborate around removing obstacles. Make an agreement that everyone who can do so attends via video for your remote meetings.

We apply these effective remote collaboration strategies in our virtual certification trainings.

This article is was first published at Scrum Alliance Agile matters blog.