CAVO Ep. 97: Strengthening Remote Teams Through Meaningful Connections

In today’s virtual world, strong relationships are key to productivity, engagement, and well-being in remote teams. Shane Spraggs, Forbes best-selling author, productivity consultant, and CAVO Visiting Virtual Expert, joins Dr. Deanna Davis, Associate Professor of Leadership at National University, to explore how connection, trust, and shared experiences drive high-performing teams. Together, they share strategies for fostering a culture of belonging, support, and collaboration no matter where employees are located.

Transcript

SPEAKER_01: 0:01

Welcome to the Center for the Event of Virtual Organization Building to Remote Team Super Connection. I'm Dr. Deanna Davis, Associate Professor in the College of Business, Engineering and Technology at National University. And today I'm joined by Shane Fragg's, our current combo visiting virtual expert. He is a Forbes best-selling author, productivity consultant, speaker, and trainer. Today, our discussion will focus on strong relationships within remote teams that are essential for productivity, engagement, and overall well-being. So welcome, Shane, and thanks so much for taking the time to come and chat about this important topic.

SPEAKER_00: 0:50

Thanks, Deanna. It's uh it's great to be here. I'm a big fan of uh of what you guys do and uh and and obviously this this topic.

SPEAKER_01: 0:58

Wonderful. Well, I'm excited to just dive into our conversation, but to get us started, please tell us a bit about yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 1:08

Sure. Yeah, I've I've been a business leader for over 25 years. I've got a number of uh businesses under my belt, and um I've uh a very strong interest in project management and how people work to be productive. Uh uh my current company is called Future of Productivity. We uh we help small businesses um who are s who are successful but stuck uh to get past uh you know the the plateau as we call it. So um what uh my my specialty is is oh well through the pandemic, really got a uh very interested in remote work and and how remote work can be not just good for the business but good for people as well. Uh and we obviously published a book uh that uh that that you mentioned. Um and what I found is since remote since the pandemic has subsided, we've had a lot of people talking about, oh, you know, return to the office, hybrid, whatnot. Um but the real conversation is that the type of work has fundamentally changed. And you know, it's it's not about not as much about where you work, it's how you're working. People these days are working remotely from the office. So I'm a big proponent on making sure that everyone understands the best ways of working with virtual uh employees and and virtual team members.

SPEAKER_01: 2:26

Wonderful. Well, thank you. And it's clear you bring such valuable experience and insight on this topic. So let me begin with the first question is what do you think are the biggest challenges that remote teams face in building strong interpersonal connections, and how can leaders address them?

SPEAKER_00: 2:46

I'll just start off by the stating the obvious the the real challenge to building strong remote teams is the leaders. Uh, you know, we have a lot of uh a lot of leaders in uh larger companies these days who just don't believe in remote work, uh, and that's a that's a challenge to overcome. Um my perspective and position is similar to uh you know a uh report that was done by the Wharton Neurosonic Neuroscience Initiative that talked about can people build strong relationships uh when they're at a distance? And to sum it up, their report came up with this great phrase that says brains that fire together wire together. And what it basically says is that when people work together, they they obviously build relationships. Uh and you have to look no further than online games to see this happening all the time. Uh we've all heard stories probably in the news, uh, or maybe you know somebody who has a uh you know a kid who plays games like Call of Duty, and these these individuals form very strong bonds with others without ever seeing them in person. You and the news news all is fully stories where people meet their Call of Duty buddies after six years of playing together, and it's the first time they met each other, uh, and they they're they're as strong a friendship as anyone else, uh any other friendships they have out there. Uh and the same thing happens at work. So um the the the starting point is really to recognize that the uh it's you know that it's not a barrier, it happens. Uh and if you want to, I can go through some things that encourage uh the development of uh of strong relationships.

SPEAKER_01: 4:25

Yes, okay. I mean, I I definitely agree with, and your analogy was just perfectly on you know par with what's going on with building those communities. Um, you know, even in video games, like you said, it's it's actually connections and it's year-long connections, and they're remote, they've never seen each other. So um I definitely agree that those relationships can be built, you know, and they are built. And even though, like you said, most leaders are not moving back to traditional return to the office, they still remote work is still valuable. It is still a necessity, and and that's definitely one of the champ challenges that uh remote work is the remote teams are facing right now. But um, like you mentioned, your analogy of the communities and the belongings, um, how does a sense of belonging impact employee engagement and retention in virtual environments?

SPEAKER_00: 5:18

Well, uh we'll start off by again a little bit more uh understanding here. I'm I'm a big proponent of the concept of relatedness, and this comes from a a uh landmark uh uh uh approach from a couple of individuals uh uh from the 80s, uh Richard Ryan Everard Desse, they they penned the self-determination theory, and up to that point, they you know largely it was believed that um motivation was extrinsic. In other words, it was applied to you. You um uh you either had it, you know, it was a carrot and stick situation, you were going to be punished if you didn't do something, uh or someone you know more more senior to you told you to do something. What they put out was they said motivation was more actually intrinsic, and it was driven by three factors. The uh ability to feel accountable for the work, so having some autonomy over it, um, the you know your ability to do the work, your uh uh and also the relatedness you had to the people you're working with. And relatedness is a funny term, it's not quite friendship, but it's a stronger level of relationship between individuals than um than uh than you know uh small talk. So we all know small talk, we get on the phone with or a meeting with somebody, and the first thing we do is hey, how's the weather? You know, it doesn't really add anything to the real you don't really learn much about people through it. And so one of the things that uh really helps is if an under if a manager understands the concept of relatedness and how to build it. And it can be built through um through very simple things such as uh adding icebreakers at the start of meetings where you know you you know if you have a longer meeting, maybe a weekly team meeting, you start it off in the first five minutes, you say, Okay, um what's a what's a smell that reminds you of your childhood? Right uh and that gets people talking, uh or you play a small game. Uh, for example, you can do a micro game such as uh a um rock, paper, scissor battle between the you know the six or seven people you have on the team, and it gets people a sense of of uh familiarity with how other people live and work, and that relatedness grows into trust. So trust is essentially people keeping keeping their commitments and people feeling they they have a sense of relatedness or they know that individual uh and uh and that's where trust comes from. Uh so some some things that you can you know that people can do is is uh to help build relatedness is uh put some emphasis on on recognition and appreciation. So the manager needs to be intentional around uh re telling people that you know that they've done a great job, that they you know uh recognizing when milestones are hit, um celebrating you know simple things like birthdays, people need recognition. And then uh there needs to be some inclusive decision making. So uh managers shouldn't just it's not a direction, it's not you're not there to direct the work, you're there to guide the work, you're there to facilitate the work, and that's a big decision, a big uh change of perspective managers, especially new managers, need to have with when it comes to comes to work. You're not there to do it or tell people to do it, you're there to have a bunch of experts on your team who can do the work for you, and your job is to facilitate it. Uh, and so by giving them the ability to to have a say in in how the work can be made, can be done, uh, be by even having a uh say in what work should be done, uh, will go a long way to building employee engagement.

SPEAKER_01: 8:55

That's great. And and it sounds like that's the importance of teamwork, you know, working with the team and from the leader's perspective and working with the organization and working with the employees to reach the goals, um, you know, and have it related and intentionally relate the employees in the remote work environment. And so what you've addressed definitely is is very instrumental in building that relatedness and ultimately trust, you know, among employees. Um so you definitely touched upon some very important and valuable um ideas about how to build that intentionally. So um, but that trust also leads to communication, which um is my next question. Um, what role does informal communication play in strengthening relationships among remote team members?

SPEAKER_00: 9:44

Great question. You know, informal communication is of course very important. Just because they're remote and not in the office, we're not just treating them as a person on a screen. We need to need to work towards having a community within your team. Uh, and you know, to do this, you it comes back down to this word intentionality. You have to be intentional about everything. So um communication to me is is vastly important. There needs to be a clear sense of communication guidelines that is agreed upon with the team. There's so many different communication tools these days that it's not it's easy to not even to not only um use the wrong ones, but put things in the wrong place, say things you think are benign that are uh you know are gonna uh be offensive to other people. So, for example, uh putting sarcasm in an email often goes the wrong way when you least expect it. You might be trying to be funny, uh, you might be trying to add a little bit of levity to it, but it just gets misinterpreted. So I have some basic rules when it comes to communication. So, for example, uh I always tell I also teach, so by the way, I teach project management at local college here, uh, and I I always tell my students, say you know, use emails for facts. You know, there's no there's no room for discussion or disagreement or opinion or emotion inside an email. And a lot of people get that wrong. The same thing largely applies to chat. So this is the other this is one of the things that has really become popular over the last five years that really wasn't um you know is around in the tech sector, but Slack and MS Teams and other similar tools have become more popular since then, and and they're starting to supplant email as the primary source of communicating with people. It's easy, people do it in the office. Uh you can send a quick message, it doesn't require a lot of thought because you know you're not setting up I find the subject line of email gets in the way. Um but they also have the same problems, you know. So some simple guidelines like if you have if you're having a conversation with somebody and a third person j joins in, that's probably time to sit down and have an actual meeting. Because you get these problems where two people are chatting, you get these, you know, one gets their their message out before the other, and you don't really know they start to race each other and adds a bit of friction and frustration. So you know, use chat for for quick things. And but it's great for informal communication. Having some guidelines around uh how to communicate with each other are very important so people understand the rules of engagement. Uh and uh and then stake some time to teach your team members what is good look like for virtual communication. Uh and so you know what's what's appropriate, what's not, and then build some some some time into your meetings as well as maybe occasional um you know uh facilitated remote work, sorry, remote activity that isn't work-related, uh, into your into your schedule so people have a chance to to be humans with each other.

SPEAKER_01: 12:51

Yes, those are that's the the the aspect of the human part of it, you know, just the informal communication and and and understanding, you know, the ins and out and innuendos of of what communication can look like on the other end and understanding that. So you definitely provided some some great recommendations for strengthening those relationships and and a work remote environment. So um, and as we talk about relationships, Shane, how does fostering strong relationships within remote teams impact productivity and overall team performance?

SPEAKER_00: 13:26

Well, as the as the you know the as well it's well known that you know two plus two equals three when it comes to people working together. You get better creativity, you get better innovation, um, you get uh people can support each other uh through difficult uh uh tasks, uh they can support each other when there's issues that are coming into their work outside of work uh that are preventing them from being productive. And so having these strong relationships is vital to to productivity in a company as a whole. Uh it's not about having a bunch of individuals just doing their tasks. And so um, you know, it leads to higher higher trust and and better collaboration and faster problem solving. And you know, from a manager's perspective, you're not there to watch over their shoulder. So and you're not and you shouldn't really do that in the office either. So you can you should do is you should work uh to to parry people up or you know create small groups within your team to tackle some of the challenges. Look for opportunities for people to you know, senior individuals, to work with junior individuals, to offer some mentorship. Mentorship doesn't always have to come for the manager, uh, or coaching doesn't always have to come for the manager. So give them uh an opportunity to to help each other, and that builds strong relationships as well. And that again um helps people feel more accountable to the work uh and uh and makes things make people make encourages people to feel better about what the work that gets done.

SPEAKER_01: 14:56

Yes, right, and mentoring, um also coaching, you know, it helps um build morale too in employees and opportunities for growth and also empowering employees. So those are definitely um you know some important aspects of not just leaders of employ you know of other members of the workforce that can you know participate in those opportunities to building those strong relationships. Um so yeah, exactly.

SPEAKER_00: 15:24

And it's one of those takeaways today is that you know, if you know, if every person should have a mentor, everyone should be a mentor. Uh it's always an opportunity to both teach somebody or or help somebody through a process, um, but also to learn as you do it. You know, I you know, famous proverb, you know, to teach is to learn twice, you know, and um but what what a lot of companies get wrong is they forget to teach people how to mentor. It's a skill to be able to uh you know provide active do perform active listening uh and ask you know open-ended questions, guide the the mentee, uh, and it's not something that that people do are understanding intrinsically, and so companies need to do a better job to teach these core skills.

SPEAKER_01: 16:08

Yes, I I definitely agree. Um, so what are some innovative ways companies can foster a culture of empathy and support in remote teams?

SPEAKER_00: 16:19

Yes, yeah. So I've kind of touched on a couple of them. I think it's very important that managers understand um the building blocks of motivation. So, you know, are people uh do they have autonomy over the work? Are they competent with you know in their their role? Uh you can imagine, you know, it's sort of like a Goldilocks situation. If they're not competent enough, they feel stressed, they may not be able to perform the work, if they're too confident or competent or overqualified, they may be lack there may lack interest in it. So it's important for managers to know how to uh pick people who can do the work that matches their skills. And then the relatedness aspect. It's again, it's a fuzzy concept, it's uh a little bit more difficult to understand. Uh, but uh if you think about it in terms of people just need to know enough about each other to to to feel some familiarity, that's that that you can go a long way from that. Uh I really strongly encourage companies to teach active listening skills. And uh that is at its at its basics, you know, use you know, you've got two ears, one mouth, you know listen, listen twice as much as you you talk. Uh, but it's it's actually listening to reply, you know, to listening to to understand as opposed to listening to respond. Um and uh you know um I also uh in another one another one of those areas that the companies fail to teach managers, managers unfortunately get the the butt of all this because uh a lot of times companies just hi know they take a a good employee and make them a bad manager as the you know as it's known to be known to do. Um and we've been in this for years, way before the pandemic started. We've always had bad managers because companies don't invest the right the right enough time to teach them the the required skills. And something as simple as you know how to delegate work. Delegation is a is an art form. You have to there's a lot of aspects you just can't tell people to do work. Um there's a lot of uh negative aspects to that if you do it wrong. Um then there's also how to run a one-on-one. You know, how do how do I how do I sit down with somebody and and listen to them and get the most most out of them so that they can take away from that and be productive outside of that? Um and then I'm a I'm a big believer in simple things like icebreakers, as we talked about earlier. You know, a simple fun question at the start of a meeting can add a little bit of levity during the day and give people some sense of of uh of team and culture. Uh and uh and then you know um celebrate celebrate wins. You know, make sure you understand recognition. I have uh I I had a conversation with a company not too long ago called Chocolate Soup, who whose whose whole business is to provide ways to recognize remote employees. Uh, and one of the ones I that uh I like is they have this this Lego trophy almost, so you can you you can you can you can send bricks of Lego to people and and those bricks can be added to their personal Lego tower and you and you can see you know you can recognize events and milestones of their career and they can have it on their desk and they can share with others. So there's um you know there's there's a lot there to uh to to work towards. Um and uh you know, I think we've also hit on a few others today.

SPEAKER_01: 19:30

Yes, I love that idea about the Legos. I mean that's great incentives and acknowledgement and you know that that goes a long way. And if you know more leaders and organizations take advantage of those type of incentives, um that's definitely ways to foster that um culture of support in remote teams. So you definitely provided some valuable and insightful information, Shane, um building stronger remote teams through connections. Are there any closing thoughts that you would like to leave with our listeners?

SPEAKER_00: 20:03

Yeah, you know, and one of the things that it I want to be clear that remote isn't all or nothing. Um there's still value in getting together in person. I I try to remind any entrepreneurs that uh are starting out uh with a with a you know, most entrepreneurs these days are are avoiding the office because it's expensive. And it and what we're gonna see over time is that we're gonna have more companies pop up literally in people's basements, um, and they're gonna grow organically, remotely, and they're not gonna hire people in the same vicinity. And so we're gonna see more remote or or or hybrid or complex team structures as we go forward. And I want to just imp impose on those individuals who are starting businesses to take some money and put it aside, the money you would normally put into an office, say that five, six thousand dollars a month to um to to pay for your office and all your office supplies, maybe an office manager, take a portion of that and put it aside to get people together in person. You don't need to do it all the time, but I love hearing stories about companies who will fly their teams together together together and spend a couple days. Um I heard one of my uh one of the ones I was recently heard about was it's a large company, about 500 people. They're sending everybody to Portugal for for a week.

SPEAKER_01: 21:20

Oh, wow.

SPEAKER_00: 21:21

Which is crazy. You know, um and I can only imagine the amount of you know oversight and and you know management of that that weekly long event, but what a great experience for somebody who has never been out of the uh you know out of the country uh and gets to go to experience a different culture entirely with somebody who they work with and only meet on on Zoom sessions. So you can appreciate that that's a great way to instantly build a strong sense of relatedness with somebody which will continue within the office and pay dividends over and over again. So don't just because you're working remotely, doesn't mean that there's bad things to being to getting together in person. But like everything else, there's these are all ingredients you need to use in order to to build the the right model that that uh that that works best for your company.

SPEAKER_01: 22:09

Exactly. That's that's what it's all about. Whatever works you know for the goals and and values and culture of your organization is what um should be the focus. So I definitely appreciate your feedback. Now, Shane, how can our listeners connect with you? You provided such important information. So how is there a way that they can connect with you?

SPEAKER_00: 22:28

Yeah, well, I've got a couple of ways. You know, the um the easiest one I've been sharing for a long time. I'm one of those fortunate people who have a unique name on LinkedIn. So you search for Shane Sprags, uh, you're going to find me on LinkedIn because I I'm fortunately the only one. Um I also encourage people to reach out to my website, uh uh future of productivity.com, uh, where you can see the type of work we do with with businesses, uh, which is you know it it's applying all the all the best practices of remote work. I like to look at it as I I like to work with with the organizations to make to to help them uh uh find ways to make their team members human, look at their teams as humans, and how do you manage your humans uh you know, so that uh that they can be their most productive and therefore give the most back to you.

SPEAKER_01: 23:16

Great. Well, Shane, you have shared great strategies and tips to help managers create a culture of belonging, support, and collaboration, even when employees are spread across different locations. So it's definitely been a pleasure talking with you, Shane. Thank you for joining us and sharing your expertise and support of the Center for the Advancement of Virtual Organizations. Your insights have been invaluable, and we're confident that our listeners will gain much from the information that you have shared. Thank you so much. We appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_00: 23:52

Thanks, Gianna. It's been a pleasure.

SPEAKER_01: 23:54

Thank you.