How Virtual Teams Achieve Real Results
October 22, 2008 nnyq.com editIncreases in geographically dispersed workforces, telecommuting, and other forms of virtual work have had a significant impact on the establishment and development of virtual teams. In spite of geographic separation, time differences, and greater dependence on technology for communication, teams must remain productive while no longer being co-located. This trend is likely to continue, as it pervades and redefines the virtual workplace. Therefore, it is essential to reevaluate work relationships, methods, and communication practices to be certain that productivity goals and worker satisfaction are not compromised.
Virtual teams encounter a variety of barriers to traditional approaches of communication.
Time zone differences, organization and cultural diversity, and our increasing dependence on technology tools can complicate the communication process. Further, the level of comfort with remote communication methods can negatively impact the dynamics of virtual teams, causing confused and delayed communication.
On how many virtual teams are you a member? And what can you and your teammates do to improve the effectiveness, productivity, and rapport of your teams? Whether you participate in a formal team or a loosely organized project team, a permanent team or a temporary one, an internal team or a cross-function team including clients, suppliers, or partners, it’s essential that your teams consider these critical elements of virtual team success:
Know and Nurture Your Team
Virtual teams can achieve superior results, in part, through effective relationship-building, communication, and interaction skills with colleagues that comprise their formal and informal team. It is essential to also understand and nurture relationships within the entire virtual team. Identify all the members and key supporters of your team. Establish ways to keep in touch with all members and supporters with a focus on building rapport, sharing information, and ensuring that everyone feels included in the activities and successes of the team.
Stay in Touch with Team Members
With the time virtual team members invest each day in accomplishing work, communicating with clients, partners and supervisors, and addressing the technological and administrative issues critical to the job, it’s very easy to find little or no time to stay connected with co-workers. Certainly communication occurs when it’s essential to job requirements, but it’s also important to stay in touch with co-workers for non-task purposes. This not only strengthens the foundation of relationships, it assures co-workers that those team members who work remotely are indeed present (albeit in a virtual way!), available, and aware of them and their issues. It also helps to minimize any resentment that non-virtual co-workers may feel toward those who work at a distance from the traditional workplace.
Be Creatively Accessible
The demands of a job, pressures of life, and the distances that often separate virtual team members make being accessible a triple challenge. Establishing both the sense and the reality of accessibility, in spite of being geographically separated, is vital to success. No one doubts that live, real-time, face-to-face interactions generally are superior, but opportunities for this type of interaction are increasingly limited. So, virtual teams must work together to find creative ways to overcome accessibility barriers and to compensate for time and distance factors. They can accomplish this by establishing clear guidelines regarding accessibility. It’s important to agree on: best ways to convey different types of information; frequency for checking e-mail, voicemail, and other sources of information; and standards regarding response times for responding to e-mail and voice mail messages.
Master Effective Interaction Skills
Working within a virtual team will pose some unique challenges for anyone who feels that face-to-face interactions are the only way to communicate effectively. Mergers, acquisitions, curtailment of travel budgets, and global competition have resulted in an expanding geographically dispersed workforce. As part of this trend, it’s critical that virtual team members become expert in the essential communication skills for successful virtual work.
While traditional interactions in the workplace involve face-to-face meetings that incorporate eye contact, gestures, and body posture, virtual interactions can be supplemented in ways that minimize the negative effects of “distance dialog.” Key communication and interaction skills for virtual teams involve effective listening, clarifying what was said and meant, establishing agreements, and checking for understanding. Effective planning, management, and follow-up relative to distance meetings will reinforce these skills.
Deliver Results with Distance Delegation
Those who successfully work remotely or as part of a virtual team find themselves benefiting tremendously from the use of appropriate delegation skills. Delegating tasks and responsibilities can be an unnerving proposition for some people, especially those who like to be in control of things or on top of details. Virtual workers have the added dynamic of distance, resulting in the sense of even less control, more frustration, and elevated worrying. Distance delegation, however, doesn’t need to be riskier or more haphazard if both the delegation AND the follow-up are handled properly. When delegating from afar, it’s important to clearly communicate the task to be accomplished, listen carefully for confusion or concerns, discuss issues, clarify agreements and follow-up action, and establish communication points and accessibility guidelines.
Reach Agreements that Foster Commitment and Collaboration
Setting clear agreements regarding accountabilities and commitments with co-workers, supervisors, and support staff minimize a plethora of difficult, unpleasant, and time-consuming problems. Agreements must sometimes be forged between co-workers who are peers, partners, or collaborators. In these cases, support and commitment are obtained through influence rather than through the assignment of tasks and responsibilities. In a nutshell, team members must be skilled at effective agreement-setting which involves stating needs; explaining importance; establishing expectations; listening for objections; discussing barriers and solutions; and ensuring adequate follow-up.
Establish a Foundation of Trust
Underlying every successful relationship is trust. Without it, people become suspicious, non-committal, uncaring, undermining, and jaded—all of which leads to deteriorated and nonproductive relationships. This further leads to unpleasant work environments, disgruntled workers, frustrated customers, dejected leaders, and unprofitable organizations. It is particularly vital that virtual team members establish confidence in relationships with colleagues and supervisors since distance and the absence of day-to-day interactions can create pressure that will erode trust.
The fundamental ingredients of trust in working relationships critical to the effectiveness of virtual teams include reliability, consistency, and integrity. Knowing how these factors affect trust and how behavior affects perceptions and beliefs is important to the success of virtual teams.
Debra A. Dinnocenzo is president of VirtualWorks!, a Pittsburgh, PA-based firm specializing in virtual leadership, virtual teams, telework, and work-life balance in the digital age. Debra is the author of How to Lead From a Distance, How to Work Together From a Distance, 101 Tips for Telecommuters, Managing Telecommuters, and Working Too Much Can Make You Grumpy. She teaches an online graduate course for Duquesne University on “Leadership in the Virtual Workplace.” She is also co-author of Dot Calm: The Search for Sanity in a Wired World. For more information, order How To Lead From a Distance or visit www.virtualworkswell.com to learn about workshops for virtual teams and team leaders. Schedule Debra to speak to your organization; learn more at www.DinnocenzoSpeaks.com or contact at speaker@virtualworkswell.com