In this episode, listen as Catherine Mattiske, CEO and Founder of The Performance Company (TPC) and id9 Intelligent Design, chats with Dr. Samantha Hedgspeth about ways to utilize collaborative tools to connect with others by appealing to important preferences, developing a balanced presentation with clear messages, and using simple techniques that maximize attention and engagement in a virtual environment. Catherine is the 2021 CAVO Virtual Conference keynote speaker.
In this episode, listen as Catherine Mattiske, CEO and Founder of The Performance Company (TPC) and id9 Intelligent Design, chats with Dr. Samantha Hedgspeth about ways to utilize collaborative tools to connect with others by appealing to important preferences, developing a balanced presentation with clear messages, and using simple techniques that maximize attention and engagement in a virtual environment. Catherine is the 2021 CAVO Virtual Conference keynote speaker.
Welcome to the Center for the advancement of virtual organizations podcast. Today we will discuss collaborative tools for clarity in the virtual work environment. I am Samantha Hedgepeth. And it is truly a pleasure to welcome back Catherine Mattiske, ski CEO and founder of the performance company and the ID nine intelligent design system. Catherine brings to this discussion 30 years of subject matter expertise. She is an international success in leading and training co located and virtual teams. In addition, we invite everyone to join us and to register June 15 through the 17th for our 2021 kaavo virtual conference. Please register and Catherine Mattiske ski is our keynote speaker this year, you can access the cobble website in the description of this podcast. Welcome, Catherine. And thank you so much for joining.
01:08
Thanks so much. It's great to be with you.
01:11
Yes, and again, just to reiterate, our discussion today is centered around collaborative tools for clarity in the virtual workplace. So let's begin, Catherine, how would you rate the ease of clear communication in a co located working environment versus the virtual environment on a scale of one to five with five being the best clarity of communication.
01:41
So in a co located environment, communication can still struggle. So I wouldn't give it a five out of five, I'd probably say a four, for ease. But in reality, it's not very easy in virtual at all. So I'd say a two, however, we need to strive for a five we need to strive for clear communication in every virtual interaction, you see is a virtual leader, you've got a special responsibility to have a constant virtual presence, and to keep your team on track and to be available for your team members.
And one quick communication, when to take you up that scale to get you closer to five is to celebrate contributions and accomplishments. And that's a vital part of virtual team management. And I see people not doing that, that will instantly take you up that scale. So when you're leading a virtual team, it's important to consciously think about the types of communications you use and when to use them.
02:44
Alright, so cielo celebrating the contributions of others is a type or form of communication is what I'm hearing correct?
02:53
Yeah, absolutely. And it's so easy. And yet, because we get into the day to day flow of work, and we've always got big task lists and so on, sometimes leaders forget to do that just to stop and celebrate.
03:07
Yeah, yeah. So then, not celebrating obviously, would be, you know, one of the obstacles to clear communication in the virtual environment. Do you have a list of others?
03:20
I think if we come back to basics, if we look at what is the role of the virtual leader, the long term professional relationship of mutual support is key. It's between you, the global virtual leader and the team members, and everyone needs to be focused on improving business results. Now, to be successful at that a partnership requires a mutually beneficial focus. And that includes things like expectations, trust, what the results are, that we're striving for an opportunities to seek out Win Win outcomes where everybody wins. The successful leader in a global virtual leadership role builds a relationship of trust and open communication. And here's where the obstacles really come in.
The first thing is often a leader doesn't know the fundamentals of the business. So I would say Step one is to learn the fundamentals of the business, as a leader, and particularly for each of his or her team's internal clients, who are the external vendors, who are the other key stakeholders? What are the business issues and what are the business goals and have a thorough understanding of everyone's perspective? I think the successful person in a leadership role, especially in the virtual environment, becomes a valuable partner in delivering value added solutions to the organization.
I think one of the biggest obstacles though of all of them, invert is trust. And it's really important that virtual leaders, whether it's, you know, leading across a suburb, or a town or a city, or a virtual leader who's leading globally, they need to know what trust is and what it isn't. And I think the obstacles come all down to the root cause of this issue of trust. You know, trust is not surveillance, trust is not creating an adult daycare center where people have to show up at a particular time and be supervised and audited. Trust is not around reputation, or authorization, or having this sort of closed loop control. It's not around belief or accountability or hope.
And it's not around having this inverse of risk or the absence of risk. Trust in a virtual environment is really basic. It's around keeping your word. It's around telling the truth. Even when it's really hard to tell the truth. If something's gone wrong, it's around ponying up and saying, hey, this has gone wrong. It's around keeping your promise as a leader. It's around walking your talk. It's about being honest, and decent and respectable. It's about building integrity. And it's about having and building a reputation and credibility that other people give you not what you say your reputation is, but how other people feel that your reputation is or how other people view you credibility. When those obstacles come up, they come up generally, because something has gone wrong at a really foundational level. And for me, what I see is often that foundation stone is that trust issue.
07:02
Wow, those are all great points. And that kind of segues or maybe even answered my next question. Because you, you mentioned, you know, keeping your word tell the truth, walking in your talk, you know, honesty and integrity. And those are all foundational truths to a really good healthy relationship, whether co located or virtual work environment. And so are there any other collaborative tools or points that you feel will also optimize connections by appealing to important preferences?
07:41
I think there's lots of technology tools out there. And I think we've become better over the last 12 or 14 months, since COVID-19. came to our world. And if we think about moving back in that time, the concept of a virtual team for many virtual teams, was when we go back to kind of March 2020 people were seated together in their offices, and now due to the Coronavirus, they're working from home.
And in the beginning, they really struggled to continue to work amongst the chaos, you know, they had kids working at home, they were trying to deal with elderly relatives, they're trying to do all of the things that they were doing in a life in this very frightening prospect. But now that we're more settled, are we any better off? Yeah, we probably are for some things, but we've still got challenges. And now new challenges have come up. And if we have a look at the types of virtual communication and some of those collaborative tools, you know, most of us now have had, if we have never used zoom before, for example, we're now pretty ofay. With zoom, we can hop onto a virtual call, and so on.
But there's lots of other communication, things that we can still explore, even if a virtual team has been in place for the last 12 months or even even longer. And I like to call those things the three C's. There's collaborative tools around communication. There's collaborative tools around conferencing. And there's collaborative tools around coordination. So if we look at each of those three, around communication, it's really how do you communicate with interacting with virtual team members? And how do you generate and share ideas and solutions that all comes under that bucket of communication.
So in here, we've got things for that daily interaction could be by a phone call, could be by a conference call, for example. So it's just audio or it could be by email, or it could be on some sort of chat or instant messaging. Like teams, or we use slack in our organization. So all of that's come up into play. And if you've never used a instant messaging, and you're still going with your team on emails, your inbox is probably exploding and has probably been exploding for months now. So what we did was we said, okay, and it was really me,
10:26
I said, I'm done with email in between team members, because my email was all my external emails from clients, all of the junk mail coming in from the world, and then all of the team email as well. And I thought my inbox was just, you know, it needed to go to Weight Watchers, honestly, it was just hideous, it was just exploding. So I said enough. And so what we did was we moved all of our interaction with our virtual team members to slack was a game changer. In the first week, I got this little pop up from slack. And it said, you have saved yourself 5000 emails, and I went across the team and equator, Happy Days, that was fantastic.
So the first thing that I would say is, if you're bound by email, get off that leave that for a particular purpose, and get onto some sort of online chat or instant messaging. The second piece around communication is the generating and sharing ideas and solutions. And again, you can use something like slack or teams or whatever. But bring yourself up to date with some sort of discussion board or online collaboration. So there's jam boards, there's team sites, there's Microsoft Project, there's a whole lot of stuff out there. And we also use Trello, as well. And so we'll talk about Trello a bit later, as well. And look, I get paid by none of these people. But I'm just telling you what we use to hopefully be able to help. And so that's the communication piece when it comes to conferencing.
And so in the conferencing bucket, we're looking at collaborative meeting tools. So that's allowing teams to share and interact documents and information. So again, there's like Microsoft Teams and Skype, and we use so. So I think one of the traps, though, with conferencing is that we've all become a little bit addicted to zoom or teams or whatever platform we're using. But I just want to go back a step to if a virtual team only became virtual because of Coronavirus. And as you are booking that next zoom call, think about if I was in a geographically co located office, would I book a meeting room. And for many of the zoom calls that you have, you may not have said I'm going to bring this group together, I have been sitting on so many meetings, that I don't need to be there.
And that is a red flag for me. So when I get a meeting requests for zoom from one of my team, I have this policy and I've had it for 10 years to say, I do not meet with my team for an update meeting, you can send me an email, I can check Trello I don't need to actually meet with you for an update meeting. If you want to book a meeting with me, then we're working together, you can send me an email with a progress update. I don't need to meet with you. I can read I'm an adult and I can read. If you want to meet then let's work. And that's my policy around time with me. Otherwise, my calendar becomes jam packed with sometimes useless meetings. So just keep that in mind. Would I book a physical meeting room? If yes, go ahead and book a zoom call. If no, then you know, send an email, do something else updated Trello board whatever you're using in order to get that collaboration.
And the last bucket is coordination. So coordination is all around where do you store and share files. Now, if you've never worked virtually before, and it's something new for you. This is like Nightmare on Elm Street, because you have to be here as a leader, the supporter and the police around where our files stored correctly, what's the versioning and so on and so forth so that everybody is on same page. And we have people in our team that have seemingly more police stripes than others. And they are on it. It's like if they see a file in the wrong spot, they move it. And that's really got to be the mantra across the board. We use Dropbox. But whether you using a Google Drive or Microsoft OneDrive, or a server of whatever type, that coordination of storing and sharing files is absolutely key. So that's the three things. So just think coordination, communication, and conferencing. And that's really the collaborative tools that I would say, think about each of those buckets, and think about how you can really optimize all of those things to make it really work for you and your team.
15:53
Excellent insight. Thank you. So in developing a balanced presentation, in the virtual work environment, in an effort to provide clear messages, what are some of the techniques that will maximize attention and engagement in that virtual environment?
16:16
So we really come down to two things. One is around presentation skills. And the other is really around presence as well. And so in a virtual environment, they the key thing here in what you just said is attention. How do you maximize attention? So what that means is, are people 100% focused on what you're saying and presenting, when you say it and present it or are they off doing their emails or looking at their phones, or doing a project work or whatever in the background. So the upshot is, if there isn't zero attention, then you cannot, it's humanly impossible in the brain. If there is no attention, you cannot get retention of messaging, you therefore can't get engagement, and you can't then get any action because people have been attentive.
So this is the fundamental building block of your presentation, you must maintain attention. So the first PCs is around you, you the presenter, and when you are being the presenter, and I go to a lot of meetings where the presenter is pretty shocking. And so they kind of just slump and they're not really interested in whatever well who wants to listen to them, right. So when you show up to do a presentation show up as if you are in a physical meeting room. So dress appropriately for your audience dress for success. When you are sitting in front of that camera, turn the camera on. And I'm completely okay with not being one of the world's supermodels, I get that I'm not. But when I mean a physical meeting room, I don't walk in with a paper bag over my head, they see who I am.
So turn your camera on. And sit up straight. Avoid slumping, like, I sound like your mother, but really, you know, be there be present. And don't be eating a sandwich on the side. And I was in a meeting the other day and the presenters like, you know, eating, eating their sandwich and drinking coffee or whatever, that's not doing anything for my attention. So show up and actually present, even if it's just with your team, as a leader, that's your presence, the second pieces around your presentation itself, your presentation on a virtual needs to hold their attention. So where I see people going wrong, is they just deep dive into the detail because they know where they're going. So let's just go back to basic to adult learning principles.
19:22
And that's the concept of global versus specific. So two types of learning preferences in the world. People who are global, and people are specific, and there's very little crossover. So people who are global need to see the big picture, they need to see where they're going. They need to see the overarching plan. People who are specific go, you know, I'm happy to go through this step by step they need to dive into the detail. They love a list. So we've got these two types of people out there, and very rarely do they cross. For me. I'm a global learner. And as soon as I've got the global picture, I'm happy to die. I've been to the specifics, but I need to know where I'm going first. So we've got these two types of people. So in a presentation structure, start with the big picture.
So that's simple do a slide of the agenda of the meeting. Now, that sounds like something was that was from out of the 1960s. But how often do we go to a meeting, where there is no agenda for the meeting, where it just starts, and we go through a laundry list of things, instead of saying, Here is our agenda, one slide, and then go into each topic. And then let's say there's five topics in the in the agenda, go through an overview of each of the topic that's for that global learner, then dive into the detail where you're hooking in that specific learner, and then come up a level and summarize, and then do it again, overview detail summary, and then do it again for the next topic, overview, detail summary.
And then at the end, do the big summary. Now. It's really easy, but that just doing that will restructure presentation. So every section, if you're in PowerPoint, or in Google Slides, whatever you're using, just put at the beginning of every topic, a topic header, slide, and then give the overview, and then go into all the detail. And also designed for interaction. I learned to play the piano. And I started when I was 10. And I still play. And I remember my teacher when I was 10 years old, saying, Catherine, you need to work on your phrasing. And she kept saying it's and I had no idea what she was talking about. And then I remember saying to her what seems to be you know, years later, but probably only weeks later, I said, What's phrasing. And she said, it's like taking a breath. Get to the end of every section of music, you know, where you see the curb line for those of you that know how to read music, but you see the curb line where that stops. Just take a breath.
And when you are designing your presentation, rather than going, you know, it's super fast speed through the whole thing. Just stop and take a breath. And when you take a breath, you don't have to say the fatal words. Are there any questions because they never are. that's a that's a crazy thing to say in a presentation, all you need to do is stop and take a breath and be silent for a few seconds. And if people have questions, you're working with adults, they'll come in and ask the questions. And then on you go. And the other thing to do is to design for interaction. So have some slides in your presentation with questions on them. What's your blink response to these what resonates with you from what we've been doing? What's going to be your next action actually designed for interaction.
So when you're creating that balance presentation, the thing is keep attention and keep engagement all the way through. Without attention, there is no retention of what you're saying. And there is no engagement. So you need to be on your game, showing up that this is the most important meeting of your day, even if you've got three or four to do. And you show up with presence. And you've planned a presentation. That's really meeting the needs of that global and specific learner starts with the big picture dives into the detail through every topic and you're summarizing all the topics as you're going. You're stopping for that interaction, and just having those moments of silence that would be my advice.
24:02
Wow. And that is excellent advice. Excellent advice. And so I heard the bullet points of presentation and presence for us to stay mindful of the two types of people which you described, you know, the global vision. So that's the people that want the big picture. And then people that want the details, macro and micro and then provide a slide with an agenda overview, slide overview, details, summary that really organized, how to capture and to put it in your words to keep attention and engagement all the way through. That was really good, Katherine. Really good insight. So you've given us so much so many nuggets. Are there any other best practices you recommend in connecting with others? There's in the virtual space,
25:02
I think some of the things in virtual have been lost, especially in the last 12 months, I think in many of the interactions, we've gone back to more of a nuts and bolts relationship that's based on tasks and project lists, and so on. So I would say to virtual team leaders, virtual managers, virtual leaders in general, the one thing I do with all of my meetings is I am first they're a and it doesn't matter if you are 10 minutes early, and your first or 30 seconds early to the meeting, and you'll first be the first one on the line. The reason I do that is because those first couple of minutes where everybody is joining, I just chat, I find out what's happening with people.
And I try and connect with them. And if I haven't connected with someone, for a while, maybe it's a few days or a week in my team. I say to them, hey, we've got this meeting coming up, can you just join 10 minutes early, they think I've got an agenda, but I don't, I just want to chat to them and find out how they're going, what they're doing, what's going on in their family and their world in whatever. And we just chat. And I think one of the things that's easy to lose in virtual is that personal connection, it's all very well looking at virtual working as being highly productive. And it is, but you need to remember to have the water cooler chats that you used to have in the office. And those water cooler chats all the coffee.
And making those friendships and connections is equally as important virtually as it is in an office situation. So in a virtual world, though, you need to plan for that a little bit more, you don't just bump into somebody and say, Hey, do you want to have a coffee? you actually can't do that accidentally. So you can do that, though, as a bumping into someone if you show up early for a meeting. And so you might also say at the end of the meeting, Hey, can you stay back for a second? And I just want to have a chat. And in those times, I just simply ask how you going? or How are you doing? Or my ultimate question is what's happening. And then I remain silent. And people talk. And that's what's really important for me as a leader is to find out what's going on. Often in a meeting, I will get the sense that one of my team is overwhelmed, upset, angry, agitated, anxious, whatever the emotion is, and I don't know what's going on and drives me mental. And I don't want to be part of their everyday lives. I don't live with them, you know, I'm not part of their family.
But I do need to lead the team. And so just taking that extra time, to be more of an open communicator and to share is really important. On the practical sense. The best practices around connecting with these other people in a virtual workplace is to really sought out your practice. What types of virtual communication are you using? And what method Do you use for what situation and having really clear Glock guidelines across the team of, you know, how are we going to use email? When do we use email? How do we use meetings? When do we book a zoom call? When Don't we? When are we live? Would I gather these people in a meeting room? Normally? And when do I use online collaborative tools? Like how do we use, for example, Trello or slack or whatever you're using?
And what are the rules around that? But you know, what, if you don't have that team collaboration, and that team relationship, it's just like a physical team being together, the whole thing will fall down. The thing is in a virtual workplace as I work in with my team, is if you don't have that team connection in a virtual workplace, you're sunk, really. And so you might be able to survive with a bit of a broken team in a co located physical workplace. But it seems like it just goes on steroids when you go in virtual. The cracks that were hairline in an office environment become like the Grand Canyon, and often the bonds that were okay In an office environment often becomes strained and fractured in a virtual environment. And so you really have to work hard at keeping all that going much more.
And you know, I see some pretty crummy leaders in a in an office environment, they just become disasters virtually. So it may be time to kind of as you're brushing your teeth in the morning to look in the mirror and go, what kind of virtual leader Am I how connected? I'm out to my team? How much do I know about them, and do something about it? And it's actually really easy. You just ask the question and stop talking and people will talk.
30:39
Yes, I agree. And that brings me to your book leading virtual teams, managing from a distance during the Coronavirus because you have several assessments in there. Is that correct? Is that?
30:57
Yes, absolutely. There's several assessments in there for team leaders and team members, and things and activities that you can do with your teams to really heighten that virtual presence and that virtual capability amongst your team. And I wrote it just as the coronavirus pandemic was gripping the world and got it out super fast, you know, in April 2020. And it's been a great help for people to really say, Okay, how do I do this differently.
And so, as the pandemic kind of resolves itself, and so on, the basic premise of working virtually will change forever. So I hope that helps for people to be able to really audit what's going on in their world, with their, with themselves as a leader, and also with their teams. And certainly use all of the tips and tricks in the book, and also read the stories of how virtual leaders adapted to moving virtually, especially during the really frustrating, difficult, unknown time that we've all just lived through.
32:10
Yes, and you being the author of over 30 books, if our listening audience wants to contact you, for further guidance services, or to purchase your books, how can they reach you?
32:24
Absolutely. So just go through to the ID nine, intelligent design.com website. And I think you're going to post that link, and also connect with me on LinkedIn as well. I post regularly on LinkedIn, there's a weekly newsletter that comes out with all sorts of tips around learning and development and also working virtually as well. And so just join me on LinkedIn, just connect with me, and I'd be happy to help in any way I can. And also on every newsletter, I've got a talk to Katherine button, which goes through to my live calendar, books and time in my calendar and just chat. You know, I'm at the part of my career now. I call it the Mother Teresa era of my career, where I'm just happy to help. And I'm not going to invoice you, if you if you show up in my calendar for a 15 minute appointment or a 30 minute appointment. I just want to help. So just show up and I'm happy to help.
33:25
Amazing. So you have just given us again, a wealth of knowledge. And we thank you. And we thank you so much for sharing. And we also thank our listening audience for joining us in support of the Center for the advancement of virtual organizations North Central University. We greatly and truly appreciate Catherine all of your insight and best practices share today.
33:55
Thanks so much. It's great to be with you.