Using Technology To Strengthening Team Ties
Using Technology To Strengthening Team Ties
Just as in face-to-face teams, two of the biggest trust builders in virtual teams are having members do what they promise and "show up" at the meetings they are expected to attend. But virtual teams require additional up-front maintenance. Project leaders, for example, must establish initial common norms and procedures about how communication technology should be used. In "eRooms" or other electronic discussion forums, team members need a common understanding about what to post, when to post, who owns documents, and how to inform others of documents' whereabouts; in addition, all members must subscribe to an electronic etiquette and similar "tone of voice." In audio-conferencing, norms have to be established, such as whether or not members identify themselves before commenting. These up-front norms and procedures may have to be modified as the group members gets used to interacting with each other. For example, e-mail attachments may be OK at the beginning at the project but then become outlawed midstream as members discover that their inboxes start overflowing. "Virtual get-togethers," such as conference calls or e-mail exchanges, allow members to iron out these minor process issues along the way.
2. Ensure That Team Diversity is Understood, Appreciated, and Leveraged
Team members show up with a diverse array of skills, expertise, and life experiences. A leader can take three actions to make sure this diversity is fully understood and utilized. First, a leader can post an "expertise directory" at the beginning of a project, which could take the form of a skills matrix, collection of C.V.s, or list of articles written by the members. Second, the leader can pair diverse members in common tasks and rotate members throughout the project, both practices that enhance bonding and feed the creative fires. Third, the leader needs to establish an interplay between synchronous and asynchronous communications. Topics brought up during the synchronous, real-time audio-conferences or "webinars" can be later dissected in asynchronous forum discussions or e-mail exchanges. Team members who may be shy about speaking up in the presence of senior team members during conference calls may be more willing to unwind in a later series of written discussions.
3. Manage Virtual Work-Cycle and Meetings
Successful real-time, virtual meetings are, by definition, highly choreographed events. Virtual team leaders must oversee an interlinking set of practices prior to, during, and after the meetings. Time between meetings should be spent on idea divergence and exploration (asynchronous idea generation.) Meetings should be used for idea convergence and conflict resolution (synchronous idea convergence.) Together, these two modes of communicating optimize the work cycle.
Before a meeting begins, team pre-planning is crucial. Have electronic discussions before the meeting and post these discussion threads. Identify areas of disagreement to discuss during the meeting. Circulate a clear agenda in advance with time allocations. Post progress on the repository, linking them with project timelines, action items, and responsibility charts.
During the meeting, ensure through "check-ins" that everyone is engaged and heard from. Electronic voting is one way to quickly take a group's pulse, with results displayed instantly on screen. Some teams reported using "minutes on the go" during the meeting, that is, rough minutes logged in a virtual room side window. Only results are recorded, not debates and discussion.
At the end of the meeting, make sure the final polished minutes and future work plans are posted to the team repository. Also, between meetings, encourage idea generation divergence and discussions through threads, instant messaging, e-mail exchanges, and auto-notification of postings.
4. Monitor Team Progress Through the Use of Technology
Team leaders found it helpful to scrutinize asynchronous and synchronous communications closely to monitor team progress. That progress was made visible to team members through shared project timelines and balanced scorecard measures, in a simplified dashboard or one-page summary format -- another helpful practice.
Leaders frequently reported their monitoring of technology and procedures evolved over time. One team leader put it this way:
Our database matured. We initially had a discussion database. Then we added IM. Then we added change request capability. Then we added a call tracking database. Then we added an issue log. Then we created a view called "management view" with schedule, costs spent to date, and project status. Then we added a working section view just for the team. We tried videoconferencing but stopped using it when the team did not find it helpful.
While not all leaders may be comfortable with this rapidly changing management style, such fluid evolution of oversight was a common story among virtual team leaders.
5. Enhance External Visibility of the Team and Its Members
The study's authors observed that leading a virtual team requires parallel processing. While focusing on internal activities, team leaders also had to continuously and clearly represent the team's work to external stakeholders including project sponsors, local executives, and internal and external customers.
This external reporting function was handled in a variety of ways. One leader organized a steering committee of departmental managers and client organizations and then regularly briefed this committee. Another leader expected each team member to "report out" to his or her sponsoring manager. Regardless of which approach was used, leaders usually asked team members to approve reports intended for managers and external audiences to encourage buy-in for the report-out process.
6. Ensure Individuals Benefit from Participating in Virtual Teams
Part of any good leader's job is making sure team members get the rewards and recognition they deserve. Virtual leaders had the same goals, although they achieved them in different ways, including:
o Having virtual reward ceremonies, including sending gifts to each individual;
o Starting each virtual meeting with recognition of specific successes;
o Suggesting to high level executives pleased with team members' briefings to pass on the good word to the members' respective managers.
Some team members respond more to intellectual challenge and fun, so it's important to provide them with opportunities for lectures, conferences, and other avenues for personal growth. The key is to understand what makes each individual tick.
Concluding Observation
Imagine a carbon-epoxy jetliner with gracefully curved wings slipping through the clear blue sky at 35,000 feet. Contented passengers are sipping their beverages and tapping softly on their laptops. The pilots are chatting quietly about World Cup soccer in a serene cockpit brimming with sophisticated avionics. This scene is from a jetliner project with effective virtual teams.
Contrast this scene with another jetliner project literally stranded on the ground. It's over budget, past deadline, and hopelessly mired in controversy. Engineers from two different continents are scratching their heads over why body module components made in twenty-five different countries don't fit together and why the wiring panels don't match. Discussions in the back offices are getting heated and loud. The managers of this project have yet to master the art of leading distributed technical teams.
When innovation and creativity are called for, the crucial factors for success are increasingly the virtual ties that bind.
Using Technology To Strengthening Team Ties - To learn more about this author, visit Dr. Fathi El-Nadi's Website.
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1. Establish and Maintain Trust Through the Use of Communication Technology
Just as in face-to-face teams, two of the biggest trust builders in virtual teams are having members do what they promise and "show up" at the meetings they are expected to attend. But virtual teams require additional up-front maintenance. Project leaders, for example, must establish initial common norms and procedures about how communication technology should be used. In "eRooms" or other electronic discussion forums, team members need a common understanding about what to post, when to post, who owns documents, and how to inform others of documents' whereabouts; in addition, all members must subscribe to an electronic etiquette and similar "tone of voice." In audio-conferencing, norms have to be established, such as whether or not members identify themselves before commenting. These up-front norms and procedures may have to be modified as the group members gets used to interacting with each other. For example, e-mail attachments may be OK at the beginning at the project but then become outlawed midstream as members discover that their inboxes start overflowing. "Virtual get-togethers," such as conference calls or e-mail exchanges, allow members to iron out these minor process issues along the way.
2. Ensure That Team Diversity is Understood, Appreciated, and Leveraged
Team members show up with a diverse array of skills, expertise, and life experiences. A leader can take three actions to make sure this diversity is fully understood and utilized. First, a leader can post an "expertise directory" at the beginning of a project, which could take the form of a skills matrix, collection of C.V.s, or list of articles written by the members. Second, the leader can pair diverse members in common tasks and rotate members throughout the project, both practices that enhance bonding and feed the creative fires. Third, the leader needs to establish an interplay between synchronous and asynchronous communications. Topics brought up during the synchronous, real-time audio-conferences or "webinars" can be later dissected in asynchronous forum discussions or e-mail exchanges. Team members who may be shy about speaking up in the presence of senior team members during conference calls may be more willing to unwind in a later series of written discussions.
3. Manage Virtual Work-Cycle and Meetings
Successful real-time, virtual meetings are, by definition, highly choreographed events. Virtual team leaders must oversee an interlinking set of practices prior to, during, and after the meetings. Time between meetings should be spent on idea divergence and exploration (asynchronous idea generation.) Meetings should be used for idea convergence and conflict resolution (synchronous idea convergence.) Together, these two modes of communicating optimize the work cycle.
Before a meeting begins, team pre-planning is crucial. Have electronic discussions before the meeting and post these discussion threads. Identify areas of disagreement to discuss during the meeting. Circulate a clear agenda in advance with time allocations. Post progress on the repository, linking them with project timelines, action items, and responsibility charts.
During the meeting, ensure through "check-ins" that everyone is engaged and heard from. Electronic voting is one way to quickly take a group's pulse, with results displayed instantly on screen. Some teams reported using "minutes on the go" during the meeting, that is, rough minutes logged in a virtual room side window. Only results are recorded, not debates and discussion.
At the end of the meeting, make sure the final polished minutes and future work plans are posted to the team repository. Also, between meetings, encourage idea generation divergence and discussions through threads, instant messaging, e-mail exchanges, and auto-notification of postings.
4. Monitor Team Progress Through the Use of Technology
Team leaders found it helpful to scrutinize asynchronous and synchronous communications closely to monitor team progress. That progress was made visible to team members through shared project timelines and balanced scorecard measures, in a simplified dashboard or one-page summary format -- another helpful practice.
Leaders frequently reported their monitoring of technology and procedures evolved over time. One team leader put it this way:
Our database matured. We initially had a discussion database. Then we added IM. Then we added change request capability. Then we added a call tracking database. Then we added an issue log. Then we created a view called "management view" with schedule, costs spent to date, and project status. Then we added a working section view just for the team. We tried videoconferencing but stopped using it when the team did not find it helpful.
While not all leaders may be comfortable with this rapidly changing management style, such fluid evolution of oversight was a common story among virtual team leaders.
5. Enhance External Visibility of the Team and Its Members
The study's authors observed that leading a virtual team requires parallel processing. While focusing on internal activities, team leaders also had to continuously and clearly represent the team's work to external stakeholders including project sponsors, local executives, and internal and external customers.
This external reporting function was handled in a variety of ways. One leader organized a steering committee of departmental managers and client organizations and then regularly briefed this committee. Another leader expected each team member to "report out" to his or her sponsoring manager. Regardless of which approach was used, leaders usually asked team members to approve reports intended for managers and external audiences to encourage buy-in for the report-out process.
6. Ensure Individuals Benefit from Participating in Virtual Teams
Part of any good leader's job is making sure team members get the rewards and recognition they deserve. Virtual leaders had the same goals, although they achieved them in different ways, including:
o Having virtual reward ceremonies, including sending gifts to each individual;
o Starting each virtual meeting with recognition of specific successes;
o Suggesting to high level executives pleased with team members' briefings to pass on the good word to the members' respective managers.
Some team members respond more to intellectual challenge and fun, so it's important to provide them with opportunities for lectures, conferences, and other avenues for personal growth. The key is to understand what makes each individual tick.
Concluding Observation
Imagine a carbon-epoxy jetliner with gracefully curved wings slipping through the clear blue sky at 35,000 feet. Contented passengers are sipping their beverages and tapping softly on their laptops. The pilots are chatting quietly about World Cup soccer in a serene cockpit brimming with sophisticated avionics. This scene is from a jetliner project with effective virtual teams.
Contrast this scene with another jetliner project literally stranded on the ground. It's over budget, past deadline, and hopelessly mired in controversy. Engineers from two different continents are scratching their heads over why body module components made in twenty-five different countries don't fit together and why the wiring panels don't match. Discussions in the back offices are getting heated and loud. The managers of this project have yet to master the art of leading distributed technical teams.
When innovation and creativity are called for, the crucial factors for success are increasingly the virtual ties that bind.
Using Technology To Strengthening Team Ties - To learn more about this author, visit Dr. Fathi El-Nadi's Website.
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Dianne CramptonDianne Crampton is an executive leadership coach, team culture consultant, author and president of TIGERS Success Series, Inc. Dianne has been helping CEO's and Executives connect their employees to their core values and goals for over 20 years using the trademarked TIGERS team culture process, which stands for trust, interdependence, genuineness, empathy, risk and success. To download a free white paper on behaviors that build strong teams and behaviors that will predictably tear them down go here. Dianne's contribution to the 2010 Pfeiffer Consulting Journal (an imprint of John Wiley and Sons Publishers) entitled TIGERS Hearted Teams is available in November 2009. Her new book TIGERS Among Us: 5 Winning Business Team Cultures And Why, Three Creeks Publishing will release in March 2010. To receive publishing discounts, subscribe to the free TigerTracks Newsletter here. - Visit Dianne Crampton's Website |
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John BrennanJohn Brennan Ed.D. Dr. Brennan is President of Interpersonal Development, LLC, a training and development firm. Interpersonal Development has provided sales training and coaching to more than 3,000 sales reps from over 100 companies. A native of Australia, Dr. Brennan received his doctorate from the University of Rochester. His dissertation researched the effectiveness of Behavioral Modeling Technology in training people in interpersonal skills. While he has spent most of his career designing or delivering training, he was also a Vice-President of Sales of a training and development franchise with operations in 25 markets. Dr. Brennan has designed and delivered sales training in North America, Asia, Europe, Australia and the Middle East. He has been a guest speaker at numerous national and regional professional conferences. When Microsoft wanted Best Practices articles on sales for their web site, they called Dr. Brennan. The results are at http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/FX011387391033.aspx His firm’s clients have included Volvo, The Prudential, Merrill Lynch, Eastman Kodak, Gannett, Equifax Europe, the Economist Group and countless small businesses. - Visit John Brennan's Website |
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Stephanie RobeyStephanie Robey is President and CoFounder of Pivot Positive, LLC - an Internet marketing business focused on helping people start work at home ventures. Previously, she was employed at The Search Agency with over 20 years experience in graphic design and 10 years experience in online marketing. She was responsible for launching the Conversion Path Optimization (CPO) unit where she and her team have conducted hundreds of optimization tests for online companies across multiple verticals. She is a successful entrepreneur having started and sold 2 companies and remains on the board of directors of the third, PhotoSpin.com Stephanie began her career in the direct marketing realm creating and producing direct mail for many of the major cable television companies and directly attributes her understanding of Internet marketing to those early offline experiences. Stephanie is a graduate of San Diego State University with a BFA in Graphic Arts and also holds an Executive MBA from the Graziadio School of Business and Management at Pepperdine University. Read Steph's Blog Meet Steph and Dave Sign up for our Free 7-Day BootCamp: Self Employed & Rich - Visit Stephanie Robey's Website |
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