In the last couple of years, we have all been doing a lot more consulting “virtually”–Asking questions, clarifying assumptions and expectations, trying to support individuals who live and work in regions and time zones that are different from our own.  Learning to manage and support virtual collaboration is critical to success for consultants today. 

When we meet and work ”virtually” we lose 60% of the communication signals that we receive if we meet and work face-to-face.  We lose facial expressions, eye contact, body language, and some level of verbal intonation and emphasis.  In other words, a lot of information gets lost, and that makes collaboration and cooperation more difficult. 

Getting clarity  and agreement on specific objectives, team roles and responsibilities and progress can help.  We have inserted a couple of links here to tools that assist internal consultants capture in clarifying next steps and accountabilities quickly, efficiently and effectively. 

• RACI is a Responsibility Matrix that captures ownership and accountabilities for key project tasks  raci
• Team Goals/Roles Tool helps teams assess and track progress on role clarity, team cooperation and movement toward goals teams-goals-roles

These tools can easily be adapted to reflect the specific needs and roles of your project.  They can also easily be uploaded to share on any virtual meeting platform to enable discussion and consensus-building.  Our goal is to provide structured templates to assist internal consultants in capturing, documenting and sharing virtual team responsibilities.  Using these simple tools on any size virtual effort can create greater understanding, accountability and ownership for success.