The reality is that truly productive teams tend to be close-knit. There’s a strong sense of rapport between the team members. Let’s face it: In a productive team, it’s the teamwork — willingness to try to problem-solve together — that often ensures the productivity. And teamwork depends, above all else, on rapport.

What makes for good rapport? Skill levels matter, as do personalities, but rapport is a trickier equation than just putting capable, fun people together. We’ve all seen individuals who’d make great friends on paper struggle to work productively in a team.

Communication, and the willingness of team members to take the trouble to find and inhabit common ground, are often crucially important factors in rapport building. Yet current workplace and technology trends can make these ideals difficult to reach.

The proliferation of dispersed teams, and teams that combine full-time, part-time and contract staff, can fall prey to various communications pitfalls: colloquialisms and language barriers, time zones, and cultural differences in work style and expectations, for example. These external factors can make it difficult for even the best-suited colleagues to develop a strong sense of one another, and build a productive working relationship.

Tools can present additional hurdles. Each of us has our favorite tools, and preferred ways to use them, and those preferences can cause teamwork hiccups. But the varying experiences and values of team members can also mean that we find some tools more difficult or time-consuming to use, and that can restrict our usage of those tools — and the development of working relationships — accordingly.

Finally, the ongoing focus on brevity — of emails, meetings, documentation, social network updates, phone messages, and so on — can undermine the kind of self-expression that usually forms the basis for understanding and rapport.

Being aware of the factors that can limit the development of productive working relationships is the first step in remedying a rapport deficit within your team. Beyond that, there are many ways we can consciously work to build rapport with our colleagues.

Be Available

We can’t all be available 100 percent of the time, but availability is a big hurdle to developing rapport. If you can’t communicate with a colleague in the timeframe they expect, you need to explain why, and tell them when you’ll get back to them.

This can be an important step in educating your colleagues — particularly remote, contract or new team members — about your work habits and style. It can also reduce frustration on their end, and help them to develop appropriate expectations about working with you — both important factors in building rapport.

Take Time

If you’re addressing a colleague, take the time to give them your full attention and a complete response.

That hastily-dashed-off email sent from your phone that addressed only one point in your workmate’s message may wind up being more confusing than illuminating. But, more than that, if it makes you come across as careless, inarticulate, ignorant, cranky or demanding, it could retard the development of the rapport that’ll make for smoother working relationships in future.

Find Common Ground

Rapport depends on some sort of common understanding. Whether it’s about professional or personal interests, seek to find common ground with your teammate, and try to spend some time in that space.

Ask them questions. Seek their opinions or views. Take what you know of their personalities and interests on board as you work with them. A few genuinely personal lines in an otherwise dry email or IM can make a world of difference to your colleagues’ motivation to help you out on this task, and those ahead.

Share

Your willingness to share information about your own interests is just as important as theirs — perhaps more so if you’re the one consciously trying to build rapport.

Don’t let your chances of developing a strong working relationship be curtailed by a shy colleague’s apparent distance. Make the effort to share something about yourself and you might just encourage them to be more candid with you — a positive first step on the road to better rapport.

How important is rapport in the way your team works? What helps you build rapport with your colleagues?

Image courtesy stock.xchng user tatlici.

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Think about it: You have limited contact with the people you work with. That’s fine, but because you’re not hanging around the office with everyone else, people don’t get to see you in your “peripheral moments” — the times when you’re joking with someone else, making a cup of tea, or heading out to lunch. Although these moments probably aren’t central to the way we’re perceived by our colleagues, I think they really do help to build rapport.

But as a remote worker, your contact is limited, and probably contains a much larger proportion of direct communication, and much less “peripheral” stuff.

So what? So you need to see that each point of contact is an opportunity to build rapport. I promise: This is what makes the difference between remote workers who are fun to work with and really part of the team, and remote workers you’d happily never work with again.

If you’re in a salaried position, don’t leave rapport-building to the week before your performance review. And if you’re a freelancer, don’t think you’ll make up for it by sending a friendly card in the holiday season. You won’t: The damage will have been done by then.

If you’re sending a physical package to your colleague, include a personalized note. It doesn’t have to be a “War and Peace”-length letter — just a quick, friendly note saying, “Here’s the information you wanted. Speak soon,” is far, far better than a blank compliments slip (or nothing at all). If you’re sending an email, don’t rely on the subject line to say what you need to explain, or trot out the old “See attached” followed by your email signature. Take a moment to type a sentence or two — you have the entire keyboard at your disposal, after all.

Include something personal — to connect with your colleagues — in every communication, and your co-workers will be able to fill in some of the gaps that form when you’re not all working in the same office.

What techniques do you use to build rapport with the people you work with?

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We’ll be taking a look at three different screen capture tools. A longtime standard of mine has been Ambrosia’s Snapz Pro X. Another very popular tool is Plasq’s Skitch. And a short while ago, the folks at RealMac software released LittleSnapper, a new tool that takes a different approach to screenshot capturing.

Let’s take a look at what each tool provides…

Snapz Pro X – $69 (Ambrosia)

This is a very powerful tool, although the UI is a little dated. However, the rich functionality plus simple operation makes it a great choice, depending upon your needs. Of course, the price is very high at $69. However, when you compare the functionality to the price, Snapz Pro X is a great value.

Some of the key highlights for Snapz Pro X include:

• Capture screen, objects (menus, windows) and selection.
• Save your image to a variety of formats (PNG, BMP, etc.).
• Live preview what you are about to capture.
• Add watermarks to the image and change borders.
• Change the bit depth of the image from color to grayscale to black & white.
• Record movies of your clicks for screencasts with voiceovers using your Mac’s microphone.

On the downside, Snapz Pro X neither has any additional editing tools nor the ability to share images to services like Flickr or an FTP site.

Note: I had to use LittleSnapper to take a screen capture of the Snapz Pro X UI. I thought this was strange and thus appropriate to share (Snapz Pro X cannot capture its own UI).

LittleSnapper – $39 (Realmac Software)

LittleSnapper was released in late 2008 to a flurry of pretty positive reviews. The application has a ton of functionality and has a very modern UI. The price is more reasonable than Snapz Pro X, and the initial purchase guarantees free upgrades until version 2.0.

Here is a list of LittleSnapper’s key functionality:

• Capture complete web pages, or capture specific elements (via the HTML DOM).
• Capture screen, objects (menus, windows) and selection.
• Collect, tag and rate images. One of the unique features of LittleSnapper is its ability to organize all of your images, rather than leaving them loose in a folder.
• Edit your images via non-destructive tools. Yes, you can add information (text, arrows, blurring, etc.) without negatively impacting the image itself.
• Share your captured images with others via Flickr or via the QuickSnapper service (included with the product).

As I mentioned, LittleSnapper is very easy to use. It has a rich set of capturing tools for both the web and desktop. The file management features are exceptional, as you can group images by project or by rating. In fact, you can even create smart collections based upon specified criteria.

Compared to Snapz Pro X, this tool is much more modern. However, you can’t capture video/screencasts. Depending upon your needs, this might not be an issue.

Skitch (beta) – FREE (Plasq)

Skitch has been in public beta on the market for a little while now. The folks at Plasq have built a Mac screen capture tool that enables you to send the images to the web via their own service, Skitch.com.

My biggest beef with Skitch is that the UI is just completely non-standard. It’s meant to be fun, and you can argue that it is, although some of it just feels clumsy and busy.

Let’s take a look at Skitch’s core functionality:

• Capture screen, objects (menus, windows) and selection.
• Edit your images with text or drawing. Skitch automatically smoothes any drawing.
• Leverage existing iPhoto images and make edits.
• Share your captured images with others via email, Flickr, MobileMe or Skitch.com (included with the product).

Skitch is still in beta and it is unknown what the price will be once it officially launches. I know a lot of folks who swear by Skitch. However, given the user experience, I did not prefer it.

Conclusion

In researching the apps for this review, I came across many other tools that were either freeware, shareware or commercial. However, many appear to have become abandonware, having not been updated in over a year. So, I focused this review on current offerings.

For the money, I really have to say that LittleSnapper wins in this round-up of tools. When it comes to capturing, managing and sharing screenshots, LittleSnapper really takes the lead on all three fronts. Even though Skitch is free, it is also in beta and its UI is clumsy.

I will say that each company’s web site has excellent visual examples and video tutorials on how to use their respective products. Further, each company also has a downloadable trial, so that you can test the software for yourself before making a purchase.

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