“How should we think about tech when planning to collaborate?”

I think the first step really is to take the time to set up your environment and consider what tech needs your team really has.

This means coming at it from “what do we actually need the tool to do for us” versus “which is the best looking or which has the most bells and whistles.” It’s pretty easy to fall into that trap. So being really clear about what it is you want to use it for, and how the team is going to engage with it.

And this really should be a consultative process, not a top-down decision. I mean, if you’re going to collaborate, one of the best ways to lead is to start by asking people and getting their input into the process, because not everyone will have the same needs.

And so, on big teams, that could look like a survey or smaller teams, people could, you know, be invited to convey their thoughts privately or in an email or in the open if they’re comfortable. But a very important consideration when you’re choosing tech for collaboration is accessibility, because you want to make sure it has features that make them usable to everybody.

So captions, transcripts, text to speech, speech to text. Things like different types of inputs, keyboard navigation, instead of relying on mouse clicks and visual aspects like color contrast, and zoom, those are all really important factors that you want to make sure allow your technology to be accessible to everybody.

“What should we do when people’s needs are different?”

The answer to that question, like a lot of things, is to give people as much choice as you can. So you might need to offer a choice to get the most collaboration from everybody on your team. So, for example, in a team meeting, you might have somebody who might prefer to share verbally, someone else might prefer to share in written comments.

And it’s important to talk about how these inputs will be integrated so that every contributor will feel heard. And I’d say also blending your approach can be really useful, perhaps using tech for more everyday “Q and A” type collaboration opportunities and saving the bigger topics or maybe the more emotionally invested topics for in-person conversations.

​“Do we have to know everything about accessibility features?”

I think what’s important is it’s not… it’s not that every collaborator knows the ins and outs of every accessibility feature in every tool. Again, I think the important thing is to normalize the conversation about what people need to collaborate well and to listen when they suggest specific tools or strategies – to have that conversation.

This really helps again, that need that people have to be heard and to be seen, which is really the foundation of good collaboration.