With the world boom of remote work, the challenges of leadership and team communication issues are more relevant than ever. Entrepreneurs talk a lot about tasks and productivity, but they often forget to consider and study techniques that are essential to ensure high performance and team alignment. Close communication and rapport are frequently underestimated, although they can highly impact businesses.
What is Rapport?
Anthony Robbins, a renowned American writer and strategist, presents us with a didactic concept. According to him, rapport is the ability to step into someone’s world, make them feel that you understand them and that you have a strong bond in common. It’s the ability to go fully from your world map to his world map.
So, in practical terms, teams do rapport when they improve direct communication, learn to exercise empathy and tolerance, reduce resistance and create connections. Does it all sound too hard to do remotely? Well, you got a point. We are really dealing with a new reality, but it’s possible and important.
Why Does Rapport Matter?
Focus on Common Projects and Goals
Investing in efficient team communication allows you to concentrate more energy on projects and common goals. Avoid waste of time and distractions by reducing team misunderstandings. Provide the right techniques and tools for your team to communicate properly and work efficiently towards your goals.
Team Engagement
It is important that the team leader also conducts rapport and stays close to the team. As a result, the team will feel confident, valued and motivated for the proposed challenges and sprints.
Productive Collaboration
Team members that are educated to communicate tend to collaborate much more, instead of keeping ideas only for themselves. Creating a collaborative environment is a constant job that can turn tasks much faster and better. Train your team members to be proactive and receptive to each other’s ideas and suggestions while they collaborate weekly on their Kanban boards, for instance.
General Well Being
Rapport makes teams work happier and stress-free. Comply with your team the appropriate ways and means to exchange ideas and feedback about tasks and projects, so that all issues will be treated professionally.
Reduces Rework
When communicating is a habit in your team, asking the right questions and solving doubts proactively becomes a consequence. Thus, team members become more assertive to brief tasks and accomplish them sooner. This happens because teammates are more receptive to communicating in the team.
Saves Time
The more the team members improve rapport, the less time they need to spend explaining themselves. It’s like speaking a common language and becoming more fluent each day. Deliver more in less time, improving virtual communication.
Impacts on Productivity
Rapport promotes team alignment and wellness, and all this highly impacts business productivity. People are dedicated to delivering more when they feel individually respected and the channels are open for their contribution.
Affects External Activities, like Sales
Rapport is not only used for internal communication, but also by sales teams and customer support professionals. Many people would say this ability is priorital for these teams, and it’s right. It just doesn’t mean it is secondary for all other teams. A good starting point to build a basis for that is the set of values of your company. When your company cares about human values, you can draw the guidelines from them.
How to apply Rapport with GitScrum, over the Scrum Framework?
Here are some rapport principles and techniques you can practice using your project management tool for remote work:
1. SMILE
Does it sound silly? Know it’s not. Smiling is considered the number one rapport key. The fact that we work remotely most of the time does not make it less important. On the contrary, it’s as essential as always! Remember many remote workers are feeling isolated and lonely, and we have to “break the ice”. It’s worth in videocalls, text messages?, tasks and job discussions on your GitScrum Board.
2. TREAT TEAMMATES INDIVIDUALLY, BY THEIR NAMES
People love to hear their names. It’s not supposed to be something artificial, but natural. Remember to include your colleagues’ names in every instant messages and emails you address them, adding respectful content. It appears simple, but it makes people feel recognized. Sincere compliments and motivational comments are also welcome. Remember this principle when you use GitScrum as your virtual communication platform.
3. OPTIMISM AND FOCUS ON SOLUTIONS
Train your team to focus on solutions, and guide internal communication to practical suggestions. Mistakes eventually happen, and there are appropriate means to discuss them privately. Nevertheless, the priority of the team must be to think fast, collaborate and help ASAP to solve any issue. First, the solution. Secondly, the lessons. Organize your workflow and tasks for your team to collaborate efficiently with GitScrum.
4. KEEP RAPPORT ACTIVE DURING SPRINTS
Scrum teams organize their work in Sprints. These are time sessions of tasks, with fixed deadlines they must meet and common goals to accomplish. During sprints, communication and collaboration must remain active. That means staying alert about the overall team’s progress, eventual bottlenecks, and offering support among teammates. Be sympathetic and helpful to achieve the global objectives.
5. CREATE CONNECTIONS AMONG TEAM MEMBERS
In order to make your business a great place to work, where team members collaborate closely, you must promote their integration. With GitScrum, you have the tools to encourage them to meet each other and hold discussions. They can learn about each other’s bio and discover what they have in common, or exchange. When you promote daily connections, teams interact more naturally during jobs.
6. UNDERSTAND INDIVIDUAL CHARACTERISTICS
Each person has a different communication style, a different personality. No matter if you work with someone in person or remotely, it’s important to learn to comprehend him/her as a unique human being. Of course, there are common rules for general treatment, but in the corporate world, sensitiveness is also valuable. How to do that? Test different methods and formats to see how your team members understand and respond to information. Check if there are regional/cultural aspects that influence their standpoint and language. Some are formal, others more informal. The company can balance that. Based on your team, you can use GitScrum to build your human development project and improve rapport capacity.
7. MIRRORING
This technique used in person (or by video) means “imitating”, reproducing the behaviours and gestures of the person you are talking to. This is a proven technique for creating rapprochement. However, our suggestion here is that you think of mirroring as learning which language signs are used by your collaborators in all means (written, audio, video), and improve your way to communicate with them. As a result, you will be able to create job requests and tasks specific enough for them, on your project management tool.
8. OPEN MIND AND RECEPTIVENESS
Obviously, it is not possible for a project leader to accept all kinds of suggestions. However, it is interesting that the team maintains a healthy environment that is open to contributions. This way, employees will be more interested in the projects. They can feel confident by warning about a problem or an opportunity. It’s not a problem to discard suggestions, provided that team members still feel they are heard and valued. This will help them keep proactiveness and committment.
9. HUMANIZE YOUR BRAND AND CORPORATE CULTURE
Besides basing your communication on your company’s values, your brand must approach you from your employees, your clients, and your consumers. That’s not only visually, but it means a set of tools: keep open communication channels and display a compatible human image people can relate to. Showcasing a strong brand is preparing the “room” for rapporting with your staff and stakeholders. So, don’t forget it as something apart from work tools and your daily interactions. Have your own project management tool with your custom brand, with GitScrum White Label.
