Virtual Teams

We live in an age where people from thousands of miles away from each other must trust each other to accomplish significant amounts of work.  These global virtual teams operate around the Globe and often, around the clock, to achieve amazing results with diversified talent.  For example, ReSource Pro is a company based in New York City with a facility in Qingdao, China.  This facility, which is 7,064 miles away from New York City provides  back-office administration for insurance underwriters across the United States.  In short, the services do not take jobs out of the U.S. but provide essential administrative services, allowing the underwriters to focus on customer service and new business development.  The teams must trust each other between China and New York, along with clients trusting that the Qingdao facility will provide efficient and accurate paperwork in a timely manner.  It is truly a web of trust from one side of the world to the other.

As we continue to analyze global teams in terms of trust factors, it is important to consider the research.  For instance, using a sample of 59 global virtual teams, researchers determined that “Our results suggest that the development of trust in the context of multicultural global virtual teams is related to aspects of culture, conflict, task interdependence, and communication. Teams whose membership is more collective in nature tend to report more positive evaluations of trust within the group. Thus, culture matters, despite the virtual nature of the teams….Not surprisingly, aspects of communication are also important for the development of trust in these border-crossing virtual teams. More frequent interaction among team members is related to stronger trust, marginal to variables pertaining to culture and diversity” (Mockaitis, A., Rose, E. and Zettinig, P.  2009, p.6).

The research points, highlighted above, were generated by the Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings (2009).  These sample findings reinforce the concepts, among others, of culture and communication as leverage points to build and sustain trust.  What does this mean for the global virtual team?  It means that the Virtual Team Manager must take active steps to find commonalities across cultures and create opportunities where differences exist.  These virtual teams will spark actions that harness the collective culture of the virtual team, as it creates a unified focus all its own.  And, with regard to communication, successful virtual teams will have a systematic approach where people can be heard and understood.  This communication success will also be grounded in a blended approach where team members have a variety of ways in which to share information, build relationships and sustain the human connection.  Ultimately, trust on the global virtual team requires some preliminary thought and engagement with the team to establish a virtual environment that makes the most sense, in terms of team engagement and accomplishment.

- DEJ
Source: Mockaitis, A., Rose, E. and Zettinig, P.  The determinants of trust in multicultural global virtual teams.  Academy of Management Annual Meeting Proceedings.  2009.

What if 100% of all employees were engaged on your virtual team?  If this was achieved, it is highly likely that the virtual team would become extremely successful.  Each team member would feel connected to their work, understand the mission, have the right tools, experience recognition, gain access to training and generally want to do the best job that they can.  In short, the engaged virtual team will become the prototype for virtual teams around the World as the collective bar is raised towards excellence and peak performance.  Prior to transitioning into this “Engaged Zone”, let us critically think about some of the major challenges that virtual teams face.  According to the cutting edge research by RW-3 Culture Wizard of 600 virtual team members across the Globe, there are key challenges that can be directly improved upon via proactively engaging employees.  These findings include specific challenges expressed by a majority of the virtual team respondents:

• 85% of respondents felt that the “Absence of Collegiality” is a challenge on virtual teams
• 81% of respondents believed that another challenge is the “Difficulty Establishing Rapport and Trust”
• 77% of virtual team respondents considered the “Difficulty Seeing the Whole Picture” as a challenge
• 66% of those surveyed on virtual teams viewed “Sense of Isolation” as a challenge

Employee engagement can significantly contribute towards lessening the challenges mentioned above.  For instance, with collegiality, when the virtual team is engaged one-on-one and as a team, it can be very helpful.  As the Virtual Team Manager takes time to get to know everyone and stimulates a culture where people know each others’ hobbies, interests, strengths and personalities, it seeks to buld collegiality.  In addition to the approaches mentioned for enhancing collegiality, employee engagement principles align well with building rapport and trust.  A practical outcome of this alignment would be for the the virtual team to have consistent communication, solid ground rules and agreed upon core values.  In terms of seeing the big picture, a Virtual Team Manager who is strong in employee engagement, will routinely find ways to ensure all team members have a clear understanding about the big picture along with corresponding roles, tasks and responsibilities.    Finally, no virtual team member should ever feel isolated, if they are engaged by their team and their manager.  This is due to engagement being grounded in a strengths-based approach that seeks to advance individual strengths, while connecting the team to each other in a meaningful and significant manner.

Source: RW-3 Culture Wizard.  The Challenges of Working on Virtual Teams: Virtual Teams Survey Report – 2010.  New York, NY.  http://rw-3.com/VTSReportv7.pdf.

On the virtual team, asking questions is a powerful tool to learn from failed goals and take action to improve.

To what extent does your virtual team learn from failed goals?  Beranek, Broder, Reinig, Romano and Sump in their article, titled, “Management of virtual teams: guidelines for leaders”, provide keen insights for our consideration.  They note that “In our experience working on virtual project teams, we often observed that more can be learned from failure than can be learned from successes. Even though people are more willing to discuss successes, it is just as important to draw out the mistakes and failures so that they are not likely repeated. Team leaders should ensure that what went wrong is discussed thoroughly and how those mistakes can be avoided in the future” (p. 255).  The relationship between these points with goal setting and execution is that the more our virtual teams learn from failed goals, the better off they will be.  While the pain of missed goals can cause discontent among virtual team members, it requires a strong leader to focus thinking on the elements of failure.  In so doing, once the elements are discovered and analyzed, they can be integrated into future goal setting and implementation.  The #1 challenge with this self-reflective behavior is that it requires open, honest and candid thinking.  Failed goals cannot simply be analyzed on a surface level but must be critically examined from multiple angles to determine the root cause.  Once the root cause is identified, the virtual team can brainstorm solutions, which can be meaningful in future goal opportunities.  By sustaining transparency and a genuine interest in taking proactive steps to solve problems and reconcile failure, the virtual team leaders will leverage significant opportunities for success.

Source: Beranek, P., Broder, J., Reinig, B., Romano, N., and Sump, S.  Management of virtual project teams: guidelines for team leaders.  Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 16, 2005)247-259.

Karen Sobel Lojeski has been on the cutting edge of research on virtual teams for years.  According to her comprehensive analysis, high virtual distance (physical, operational and affinity), equates to a 93% decrease in the virtual team’s innovative behavior (http://sloanreview.mit.edu/files/saleable-pdfs/50412.pdf).  A virtual team that lacks innovation, will be limited with adapting to change, integrating new perspectives and ultimately achieving dynamic goals.  As a result, it is critical that regardless of the level of virtual distance, the virtual team creates an environment where innovation is fostered and nourished on a consistent basis.  A solution to the challenge of innovation in a virtual environment is for the team to create and deploy a New Idea Factory.  The presentation below builds on the discussion within the 7 Essentials for Managing Virtual Teams book and provides and a step-by-step process to ensure innovation is a cornerstone for today’s virtual teams.

The human connection on virtual teams accelerates when two-way communication aligns with technological platforms.

Based on the research of Ton van der Smagt in Enhancing virtual teams: social relations v. communication technology, the underlying theme within virtual team communication is that it needs to be two-way and not simply a monologue of one person and then the other.  At the root of this perspective, is that the relationships need be continually enhanced and active listening must be paramount.  The implication of this research is that virtual teams can and do have effective communication especially when the technological elements provide useful tools.  In other words, how can a virtual team review a document and actively listen to each other if the technology is not present to do so?  The answer is that they cannot.  Technology plays a meaningful role within communication on virtual teams, just as much as the relationship building and active listening.  Technology and human communication must be balanced and aligned with each other in order to be effective.  In a virtual team, we must have both to not only survive but to thrive.  Perhaps communication in a virtual environment stimulates team members to think more creatively, accelerate concentration and enhance problem solving skills, in order to properly align the technology platforms for communication and the human communication itself.  Ultimately, a discussion about technology and communication on virtual teams can perhaps best be understood in the words of management guru, Stephen Covey, who said, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood.”

Source: van der Smagt, T.  Enhancing virtual teams: social relations v. communication technology.  Industrial Management & Data Systems, 100/4 (2000).  MCB University Press.

Turn creativity upside down - engage a virtual team.

In a study of 11 Dutch companies with face-to-face (F2F) and virtual teams, results indicate that the amount of creativity between F2F and virtual teams was not significantly better from one modality to the other  (Kratzer, Leenders and van Engelen, 2005).  And, that the key towards having creative ideas on a virtual team comes down to the management of factors with proximity, degree of blended communication approaches and task coordination (Kratzer, Leenders and van Engelen, 2005).

There are three implications from the findings in the study above, titled “Keeping Virtual R&D Teams Creative.”  First, virtual teams can be amazing conduits towards idea creation, development and deployment. When virtual teams have a diversity of opinion, perspective, culture and thought, it adds value to the innovation process.  Second, companies that engage virtual teams within R&D save money by not having to maintain a brick and mortar location with all of the associated costs.  These costs savings can then be reinvested into continued R&D to drive company products and services to the next level of success.  Third, many aspects of the virtual team experience are within control of the manager.  When the manager has a sense of control, this can be shared with the team members and collaboratively, they can advance the goals in an engaged and motivating environment.

As we consider these mission critical elements for a virtual team, it is important to note that the virtual approach towards today’s business challenges, can yield amazing results to the bottom line.  The key is to not to just jump into havng a virtual team but thinking strategically about how the team will add value to your company’s mission, vision, values, culture and goals.  Sometimes the first step is the most challenging but as the virtual team and its benefits, including creativity, become infused into the company’s collective mindset, significnat advancements can be achieved.

Source: Kratzer, J. Leenders, R. and van Engelen.  Keeping virtual r&d teams creative.  2005 Industrial Research Institute, Inc., pp.13-16.

Spain won the World Cup in 2010 because of shared trust, teamwork and power. Today's virtual teams can take a lesson from Spain's Championship Playbook.

Over the years, the field of research focused on virtual teams has expanded. The result is that increasingly, we are gaining critical insight into the inner dimensions and dynamics of virtual teams. One implication of advanced knowledge, skills and tools in the virtual team arena is that managers can more effectively lead their teams towards successful and ethically-driven results. For instance, in one qualitative analysis, researchers studied 18 global virtual teams for a Fortune 500 company to learn more about issues related to “Power and Trust on Global Virtual Teams” (Panteli and Tucker, 2009). One of the major findings in the study was that “in the high trust teams, power differentials do not disappear; rather power shifts from one member to another throughout the life cycle of the project depending on the stage and its requirements. Several interviewees described the power within their team as originating from knowledge and noted that at any given point in time the most powerful was the individual with the most relevant information. In these situations coercive power was rarely used, and significant emphasis was placed upon collaboration” (p. 114, Panteli and Tucker, 2009).

The “aha” moment in this case is that it is okay for managers to share power with other team members. And, in fact, by doing so, it elevates trust levels because everyone has a voice and can participate when needed most. Seen through this lens, Virtual Team Managers must be cognizant of finding ways to build trust via shared power. From the beginning, the Virtual Team Manager should set the expectations, that power will be shared and that the collective good outweighs everything else. When the team rallies around the common goals and knows that they are equal partners in the pursuit of those goals, it infuses stronger communication, trust and the culture of excellence sought by high performing virtual teams. This could very well be one of those major differences between a virtual team and a collocated team. If the virtual team with high trust shares power, many collocated teams thrive from more formalization, top-down management and focus on rules. It is not a matter of one is necessarily better than the other but just that they are different. In recognizing this difference, it reinforces the perspective, that varying personalities and management styles perform better on virtual teams than others. And, that if the virtual team is going to build and sustain trust, then facits, such as power, must be shared and deployed towards leveraging overall success.

Source: Panteli, N. and Tucker, R. Power and Trust on Global Virtual Teams. Communication of the ACM. December 2009, Vol. 52, No. 12., pp. 113-115.

What is Employee Engagement? The Conference Board published “Employee Engagement, A Review of Current Research and Its Implications” in 2006 which reviewed research conducted by 12 major research companies on employee engagement. Looking across these studies resulted in employee engagement being defined as: “A heightened emotional connection that an employee feels for his or her organization, that influences him or her to exert greater discretionary effort to his or her work” (http://www.thepracticeofleadership.net/2007/03/11/defining-employee-engagement/).  The Gallup Organization has studied employee engagement for over 30 years and has developed the Q12, which includes 12 questions that have been positively correlated with employee engagement.  The themes in these questions include: job expectations, right equipment, best work opportunity, recognition receipt, development encouragement, perspectives matter, job alignment with mission, commitment of employees, work friend, progress conversations and improvement opportunities.

In short, we can imagine that the main drivers in collocated employee engagement would likely be similar to those in a virtual environment or at the very least, a great place to start.  The main difference would be in how exactly to deploy the strategies to leverage the most success.  And, it would be likely that electronic instead of face-to-face communication would be engaged, which means the Virtual Team Manager must not only be cognizant of the drivers for employee engagement but must also find creative ways within the structure, process and culture of the team to bring these engagement factors to life.  One way the manager can implement employee engagement principles is by creating an atmosphere that supports and nurtures the principles.  If the Virtual Team Manager typically takes charge during meetings and rarely asks for input, he could simply ask for the team’s input and then seek to integrate the ideas into something meaningful towards how people interact or how goals are achieved or even within the underlying processes for project management.  This seemingly small gesture can lead to a big win with the team when they begin to realize that increasingly, their perspectives matter and do in fact make a difference.  This is what employee engagement is all about.  It positions the virtual team members to be excited, motivated and continually striving for peak performance because they now have some element of control within their environment.  Ultimately, the virtual team is intended to be a cohesive unit focused on a specific goal.  The more the Virtual Team Manager can foster an environment where people feel a part of something bigger than themselves and a genuine connection to other members of the team, the more likely excellence will become a cultural norm.

Change can only occur when the virtual team strives to think about things differently or are forced to think about things differently due to internal or external circumstances.  Recognizing that the speed of change can occur rapidly on a virtual team it is important to stay ahead of the change curve.  This proactive stance may appear at first to be a “no-brainer” but how often is it down?  How often does the Virtual Team Manager engage the team to think about possibilities and potential?  Too often, virtual teams are stuck in the day-to-day tactical tasks and responsibilities.  When the virtual team is consistently presented with the ability to ask, “What If?”, amazing things can happen.  Once the team works together to ask questions focused on potential, it creates a sense of momentum that can spread like wild fire across the team, from coast to coast.  People on virtual teams want to feel a sense of connection with each other and asking, “What If?” can help pull together the diverse strands of personalities, culture and perspectives that exist on virtual teams.  If the team can get into the habit of asking, “What If?”, then they need to move to “Now What?”.  In other words, it is one thing to detail the grand ideas and quite another to implement them.  Even if 30% of the new ideas are enacted, just imagine the impact on the team, goal achievement and sustained results.  In other words, “What IF?”

-DEJ

Recently, Dana Jarvis was invited to develop and teach a course on Managing Virtual Teams for Stephens College MBA students.   This exciting opportunity and honor has allowed Mr. Jarvis to engage business students in the knowledge, skills and tools necessary for today’s complex virtual teams.

Excerpt from Course Description:

During this course, students will gain an inside perspective on managing virtual teams.  We will focus on the 7 Essentials for Managing Virtual Teams model, which is based upon comprehensive research and first hand experiences of professionals working daily in virtual environments around the World.  The model covers the following essentials for managing virtual teams with the “people factor first, technology factor second” orientation.  In this way, the true value of the model is that instead of consistently creating a virtual team focused on technology first; this approach places people at the heart of ensuring goal achievement.