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Rules Of Engagement In A Virtual World In this second paper in our New Way to Work series, Keith Ferrazzi, author and founder of the Ferrazzi Greenlight Research Institute, delves into a wealth of research on virtual teams in an effort to prescribe guideposts for setting up, managing and engaging virtual teams.
We start with a look at selecting the right people for virtual teams and virtual work; understanding the impact of team size; and considering the use of advisors rather than team members to keep teams sleek yet well informed.
You’ll learn about the optimal styles of communication for virtual teams. We’ll even dig into some interesting neuroscience and the creation and maintenance of team ties built on trust.
Introduction
The trend to virtual teams continues unabated. Clearly, we have our work cut out for us to make sure we’re as effective collaborating remotely as we are face-to-face. The notion of virtual teams applies as an overarching organizing principle as well.
Leaders that used to manage a hierarchy, then a matrix, are now managing relationships with a network of individuals they may never have met inside and outside our organizations. That broad virtual engagement makes sense.
87% of respondents to our 2013 Greenlight Research Institute study on team effectiveness agree that relationships with their informal network has greater impact on achieving goals than people from within their formal reporting structure.
In our first white paper, “Characteristics of a Highly Engaged Enterprise”, we described the essential qualities of engagement – measure engagement, implement more engaging communications, and follow the rules of engagement in an increasingly virtual world.
Now it makes sense to explore in more detail how the best of leaders are following the rules to score higher engagement and correspondingly better business results.
Technologies that help our virtual teams become more productive, successful, and innovative are an important aspect of it.
They’ve existed for years under labels like “Unified Communications” and “Collaboration” and internal social network platforms.
But the Greenlight Research Institute study found the impact of today’s tools to be decidedly mixed.
More than 80 percent of respondents felt virtual communications technology improves employees’ sense of engagement.
Yet more than half said constant connection to all streams of information distracted more than it contributed to their job satisfaction and productivity.
In this paper, we’ll examine practices that leverage the full value of engagement solutions within virtual teams.
Melanie Turek, Vice President, Research at Frost & Sullivan, is one of many voices saying organizations achieve clear competitive advantage deploying blended communication/collaboration technology in advance of their competition.
We’ll look at a number of case studies that bear this out.
As part of Greenlight Research’s focus on cracking the code of human behavior, we’ll also offer some useful rules related to leveraging engagement tools.
They ease the orchestration of high definition audio/video with a simple user interface that allows users to engage each other almost as naturally as if they were in the same room, which eases enterprise – and business network-wide adoption.
And we’ll even look at how you can leverage neurochemistry to positively impact engagement for your virtual team.
We hope you find this informative and useful in advancing the success of your teams.
i Lepsinger, Richard; DeRosa, Darleen (2010-09-09). Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (Kindle Locations 261-267). Wiley. Kindle Edition. companies ii http://www.kpmg.com/CN/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/Global-IT-Project-Management-Survey-0508.pdf iii http://www.onpointconsultingllc.com/2011/10/the-profile-of-success-building-high-performing-virtual-teams/ iv http://businessjournal.gallup.com/content/25834/Discovering-the-Elements-of-Great-Managing.aspx#3 v Unify press release vi http://dbm.com/us/en/doc/onboarding.pdf
