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I’m seeing a new generation of technology emerge that can make dispersed teams more productive than collocated teams.
Forrester Research’s Henry Dewing says some enlightened users of the latest tech actually prefer to meet in their video and web-conferencing platforms over a physical conference room, and use online and virtual tools even when meeting in person.
Sharing to improve information and functionality are an integral part of a productive conversation. To make virtual teamwork work this well, you’ll likely need to move your team to a new set of behaviors, not just to a new generation of technology.
Human engagement is the first priority. Indeed, one of the “old way” to “new way” behavior changes requires the team to trust team leadership enough to give up their familiar process – calendared conference calls and manual orchestration via email of everything shared and decided – for an approach assisted by emerging technology.
The behavior gaps that keep virtual teams from reaching their goals can be closed by adopting three key practices:
• Setting ground rules for managing virtual communications
• Aligning personal and professional goals
• Strengthening relationships to enable the candor required for true collaboration.
Do a personal and professional check-in:
While it’s common for employees who are collocated to chat about what’s going on in their lives, sharing a recent success at work or a personal story before a meeting begins, it’s much less common among virtual teams.
They often spend their days in conference calls, where muting and multitasking are the norm before – and even during – a meeting. However, this efficiency-driven approach to team collaboration overlooks something important: Humans are intensely social beings.
They need to feel connected. Personal sharing is one of the easiest and most overlooked ways to create that connection, especially when staff members work at a distance from each other.
A personal/professional check-in at the beginning of meetings makes people feel part of a team. It’s probably the easiest way to overcome the isolation that can creep in when people don’t work together physically.
Don’t allow multitasking: Research shows that multitasking during conference calls is extremely common. In some studies, as high as 90 percent of people acknowledge they do other things during these calls, from a wide range of places, including the kitchen, the pool, and yes, the bathroom.
Regardless of when and from where you join a team meeting, I can’t emphasize enough how important it is for collaboration that everyone be mentally present and engaged during meetings, not working on another project or checking email.
As a manager, if you set that as a 90 percent of people acknowledge they do other things during conference calls. 8 expectations from the outset – and call on people often to share their thoughts – chances are good that they will.
I’ve started calling out people who are multitasking when they should be participating and assign small, usually humorous penalties to offenders such as putting one thin tenth of a bitcoin in the virtual team party fund.
Chris Corey SEO Wildman
