Make Your Own Lane: Ground Rules For Virtual Team To Support Large Assignments

When I work with virtual team for large projects or ongoing assignments, there are few ground rules that is exchanged with the team.

Live Coaching:

When they work with me they are being trained step by step to handle clients independently in future – both online and offline - when they are ready to offer their skills / services.

When they are confident to bid, quote and execute orders without assistance or being front ended by a project lead, they are on their own.

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A few critical rules are listed here for BECKON Aspirants:

Habit Building

1] Read everything twice.

2] The first time you read everything may not register in your brain

3] Many can be non-readers and are used to receive verbal instructions in their primary occupation

4] Many have repetition as their learning style. Reading twice helps better comprehension and communication.

Correspondence with Project Lead

1] It can be me or someone else in the team who has won the order that will lead the team, liaison between team and client.

2] Phone calls and Watsapp message are not allowed for clarifying doubts and seeking assistance from lead. 

3] Only formal email communication so that the quality check of finished product can be cross checked with ongoing instructions exchanged on mail. 

4]  If team member needs clarity from project leader before sharing quote for their particular scope of work, they need to ask that and draft/ frame their response/ logic accordingly (Example research time required, sources, complexity, methodology etc. to justify their quotes)

5] Even if the task seems difficult, there is absolutely no reason to panic or lose confidence as the project lead will provide adequate guidance for execution because after all it is the project lead’s client relationship that is on stake.

  

Correspondence with Client 

1] When you correspond with real client, both buyer and seller may be working in different time zones – Will the seller be able to call him to check? Hence mail communication is recommended.

2] Without much thought, the length of the exercise/ assignment make virtual team member apprehensive and just to defend their situation, they tend to call to keep project lead informed in advance why something cannot be done. Read this quote at least three times a day.

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3]  Every team member has to curtail tendency to

(A) React mentally

(B) Call and defend your situation

Virtual Team Member’s responsibility

1] Follow ground rules.

2] Consistency in efforts to make yourself reliable team member. 

3]  Micro learn to build skills. 

4] If any team resources has “Spoon feeding” level of dependence on coach that consumes a lot of bandwidth of project lead which could lead to termination and loss of future assignments.

Write to advocating.outcomes@gmail.com if you want to know more about the coaching framework