It can be hard to feel part of a team whilst you are working in isolation away from your colleagues. I joined a webinar last week with Ben Hunt-Davies & Jamie MacPherson (Will It Make The Boat Go Faster) and they shared a few tips for ensuring your team is still high performing, even when you are all working remotely. Remote/virtual teams are not a new concept - organisation were doing this long before the lockdown - all that has changed is that there are far more of us doing it now. Here are a few takeaways from the session.

1- Having a common goal is vital.

It might seem obvious, but everyone needs to be pulling in the same direction working towards a clear common goal. There must be mutual reliance - where everyone understands their role, and how they will contribute to the team achieving the common goal. Secondly, there must be mutual desire - everyone will have their own motivation for wanting to achieve the common goal and its good to not just understand our own motivations but also understand the motivation of others in your team. And finally, the goal must be measurable - there must be a clear way to measure when it has been achieved.

2 - It's important to clearly establish who is responsible and accountable for tasks, activities and decisions 

Everyone needs to understand their role, and also the role of each of their team members. Using the ARCI system can be helpful for this. For each activity it needs to be clear who is;

• A - Accountable - The owner of the activity and the one person who is ultimately in charge approving or signing off a task 
• R - Responsible - The people who will carry out the activity and get it done.
• C - Consulted - The people who will need to give input before the activity is complete
• I - Informed - The people who need to be kept in the loop, but do not need to be consulted or contribute directly to the activity 

3 - Team Rules help to keep things on track

Spend some time to work out your Team Rules, choosing ones that will help increase its performance. The most effective rules are Simple, Specific, Developed by the whole team, and Constantly reviewed to check they are still effective.