Virtually
Amazing
A Look at Virtual
Teams: Learning to Trust and Taking Virtual Teams to the
Next Level
Summary
The future of teamwork has boundless possibilities, and a
few challenges. And the virtual world in which many of
these possibilities exist presents very real, concrete
obstacles. From building trust electronically and
connecting individually and globally, to interpreting
non-verbal communication in a faceless environment, the
following story offers ways to survive in the new team
world. Experts offer insights and tips to non-traditional
team members and share their ideas of what teams and work
will look like in the years ahead.
Teams aren’t what
they used to be. Today’s teams are global.
Today’s teams might meet once a month or once a
year, instead of once a week. Today’s team members
often don’t know each other beyond a voice on the
other end of a phone line or a few paragraphs in an
e-mail message. Today’s managers sometimes have no
way of making sure that people are really doing what
they’re supposed to be doing, or if they’re
“really” going to have that report done when
they say they will. Global, virtual teams — which
cooperate through phones and computers — are a
necessity of the modern world. They’re flexible.
They’re powerful. They’re even
environmentally friendly. But they have brought a whole
host of new challenges with them.
According to Nancy
Ashworth, a management of change consultant with
Hewlett-Packard who has been working with virtual teams
for 14 years, foremost among these challenges is
trust.
“When you’re
working virtually, there are so many more ways that
things can go wrong,” Ashworth says.
“I don’t think
that virtual teaming can be effective if the team members
are in an organization that doesn’t have a high
level of trust.” This problem, she adds, stems from
the different ways in which virtual teams interact as
opposed to traditional teams.
“It’s very
difficult to feel connected to a person you’ve not
yet met,” she says, emphasizing the fact that in
normal interaction, team members have time to get to know
each other over the water cooler. In virtual teams, this
“getting to know you” time is missing.
Because virtual communication is seldom casual, team
members don’t know anything about each
other’s lives: no information, no bond. No bond, no
trust. No trust... well, that’s the problem.
“In our company, if
we make a phone call and voice mail picks up, we make the
assumption that that person is not available because
they’re doing what they need to be doing,”
she says. “But other places, if you aren’t in
your office when people come by, they might make some
negative assumptions.”
Getting to Know Someone Electronically
For virtual teams, this problem is magnified. When there
is no local office for people to come to, unanswered
phones or late-to-respond e-mail messages are even easier
to misinterpret.
Shauna Wilson, president
of Amazon Consulting, Inc., agrees. “We seem to
think that we need to have the person right next to us to
be able to build trust,” she says, adding that
visual cues such as body language, facial expressions,
and gestures go a long way to familiarize people with
each other in person. “As we start building these
virtual teams, we’ll have to replace those
things.”
How do you replace body
language and other face-to-face cues? Both Wilson and
Ashworth offer the same solution: questions, questions,
questions. Ashworth has developed what she calls the
“Instant Trust Inventory” to get people to
find out about each other’s non-work lives. Wilson
advocates the same approach.
“What I’m
trying to do is devise questions where they can get to a
sense of commonality much faster,” she says.
Questions and answers
begin a dialogue. The tendency for virtual teams is to
communicate only when business is at hand, not just to
chat. Traditional teams, which share the same workspace,
chat all the time. In short, small talk is OK. In fact,
though it sometimes seems unprofessional to talk about
your high school days or your child’s “Little
League” games on the clock, it’s a genuine
way for people to learn about each other — and in
turn to trust them, making teaming more effective.
As for the rest, Ashworth
advocates constant communication. “You need to
over-communicate, if anything. You don’t want to
make any assumptions. You don’t want to think that
no news is good news.”
“You verify,”
Wilson agrees. “You don’t assume as
much.”
Over-communicating means
checking in from time to time, not just when a project is
due. It means making sure that your message, in e-mail or
over the phone, is clear and leaves nothing to
assumption. One problem with e-mail in particular, says
Wilson, is that in addition to not having visual cues,
you don’t even have auditory cues that you might
get over the phone — tone of voice, chuckles, and
the “hmmm” sounds of uncertainty. In cold
type, it’s difficult to tell if someone is kidding
or is serious. Misunderstandings are common. To fill the
gap, she suggests, use emoticons — e-mail emotional
cues like the ever-popular smiley-face
“:)”.
Despite the challenges,
both Ashworth and Wilson feel that virtual teaming is the
way of the future. In addition to being necessary in a
global economy, virtual teams have real advantages over
traditional ones.
“I think that you
can do anything that you now do face-to-face, and I think
that you’re going to able to do it better
virtually,” says Wilson. “Virtual teams
empower the team member to make decisions where, in
face-to-face meetings, the senior manager would be making
them. When you move decision making to the people who are
doing the work, it provides much better
answers.”
Also, with a global pool
of workers to draw from when distance is not a factor,
teams have access to the best talent. And as a bonus, the
“leveling” effects of cyberspace provide
access to talent that is often masked in face-to-face
meetings.
“Learning styles
have changed totally,” says Wilson, referring to
the way that meetings are usually dominated by
extroverts. “It’s the quiet people who are
going to rule in the virtual world. Those are the people
we haven’t heard from yet.”
If learning styles have
changed or are changing, then the need for new rules
— and better definitions of roles — becomes
larger.
Virtual teams are less
hierarchical, so it needs to be clearer what each
member’s responsibilities are. As for management,
Ashworth calls for a different type: less rigid and less
domineering. In addition, leaders need to keep the
team’s goals firmly in mind. A common goal —
clearly defined but not bullied into effect — is
essential for globally dispersed teams.
It’s a new way of
doing business. “If someone is not used to working
in isolation or doing a lot of things on their own, they
very quickly lose a lot of steam,” Ashworth says.
The key to maintaining motivation and focus is a clear
objective. This, again, comes from constant communication
and trust that everyone will do their part.
Taking Virtual Teams to the Next Level
Although most virtual teams communicate by phone and
e-mail, Wilson is trying to take virtual teaming to the
next level: total virtual working environments with
shared databases.
“You need to
redirect communication into a virtual office where you
have a ‘file cabinet’ with shared files, so
that you don’t have several different versions out
there that you have to keep track of,” Wilson says.
Many companies spend too much time playing phone tag,
trying to return messages, and navigating a labyrinth of
one-to-one communications. Wilson sees total
centralization as the ideal, with workers pulling
information from the same working documents as everyone
else — which team members would electronically
check in and check out — just like file management
in a real office.
“You’d have a
discussion board that would eliminate one-on-one
e-mail,” she says. “Each time something is
updated, it would send you a message to notify you that
there’s been a change on something you’ve
been watching.” The ideal virtual office (like
MSN.com’s “communities”) would have all
of the common resources of a traditional office —
job boards, project calendars, and common to-do
lists.
With the new communication
and responsibility paradigm that Ashworth and Wilson
advocate — over- rather than under-communication,
shared responsibility, and a clear, common goal —
this type of fully virtual working environment becomes a
real possibility. Fewer people would need to commute.
Rush hour would be less rushed. Talent could be drawn
from all corners of the globe.
With fewer and fewer
people traveling to office jobs, Wilson sees an anecdotal
change on the horizon, as well. “Since people will
be able to live where they want to and work from home, it
will bring community back to the neighborhood,” she
says. “Coffeehouse revenues will
skyrocket.”
November 2001 News for a
Change Homepage
