Managing Virtual Teams

How to Manage Virtual Teams by Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst in MIT Sloan Review posits that virtual teams can outperform co-located teams, provided the end-to-end collaboration process – from selecting team members to delivering results – is carefully managed. The key findings of their study are:

• Virtual nature of the team is not necessarily detrimental to its performance; rather, the performance depends on team’s task-related processes
• Any level of “dispersion" – even small levels – impacts team performance
• Social skills and self-sufficiency of potential members are the key ingredients for assembling effective virtual teams

The article outlines the benefits and challenges of virtual team collaboration. The authors then recommend the do’s and don’t of the collaboration in virtual teams.

Benefits of Virtual Teams – better decision-making and outcomes:

• Optimal integration of different pools of expertise and experiences in performing specific tasks
• Exposing team members to more extensive and heterogeneous sources of information, work experience, feedback and networking opportunities
• Potentially bringing to bear international vantage points on a particular project, despite the inherent challenges posed by such national diversity.

Challenges of Virtual Teams – task-related and socio-emotional:

• Communicating effectively, leading to a poor understanding of shared goals, approach and deliverables
• Developing clear task-related processes
• Collaborating to leverage fully the team talent and expertise
• Establishing total commitment and trust

As we see, the benefits and challenges of virtual teams are similar to those of co-located teams. Accentuation of the benefits and challenges for virtual teams makes virtual teams both appealing and complicated.

Recommendations for Managing Virtual Teams:

• Emphasize teamwork skills
• Promote self-leadership across the team
• Provide face-to-face meetings
• Foster a global culture

In addition, we would recommend establishing clear expectations, performance objectives, and ongoing review, feedback and support mechanisms.

Again, these recommendations apply equally to co-located teams but their relevance and importance is heightened in managing virtual teams.

In related posts, we have offered our points-of-view on effectively engaging people in collaboration:

• Mind the Language Barrier: This issue crops up more and more frequently with more international meetings and collaborative projects. The post provides guidance on how to manage the language barrier.
• Second Life as Collaboration Tool: We address the issue of the virtual community approach versus face-to-face meetings.
• Team Leader Must Lead THROUGH the Tools: We propose that the team leader must rigorously use the selected tools, regardless which ones, to manage the entire process. We include specific examples of behavior and actions for the team leader.
• "Collaborative" as Key Job Skill: While the post deals with recruiting people who are “collaborative,” the same idea applies to selecting team members for collaboration.
• What about Me, Person 2.0?: Effectiveness of the person in teams must be facilitated, for effective collaboration outcomes.
• Collaboration Is About People, Not Technology: Technology & tools take up a huge bit of attention. Discussions on collaboration tend to lack a focus on how to make people want to harness this potential.
• Measuring Collaboration: Collaboration is a means, results are the end. So what is the right measure?
• Organizational Challenges: How the organization of today must evolve or perish.

In addition, we include a section on Engaging People in our All Collaboration Directory which offers the best-of-the-web articles on collaboration Strategy and Context, Engaging People, Collaboration Process, and Tools and Technology.

A couple of relevant articles on managing teams from our directory are:

• Eight ways to build a great team (collaboration in large work teams).  Research into team behavior at 15 multinational companies discovered that teams that are large, virtual, diverse and made up of highly educated specialists are increasingly crucial. Yet, those same four characteristics make it hard for teams to get anything done. The article proposes eight factors that lead to success: 1. Investing in signature relationship practices, 2. Modelling collaborative behaviour, 3. Creating a “gift culture,” 4. Ensuring the requisite skills, 5. Supporting a strong sense of community, 6. Assigning team leaders that are both task and relationship-oriented, 7. Building on heritage relationships, and 8. Understanding role clarity and task ambiguity. This article is based on Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams by Lynda Gratton and Tamara J Erickson published in the Harvard Business Review.
• Eight Ways to Build Collaborative Teams.  Key ideas from the Harvard Business Review article by Lynda Gratton, Tamara J. Erickson, categorized by: What Executives Can Do, What HR Can Do, and What Team Leaders Can Do.

Update on 24 December 2010 by Lokesh Datta

See Related Posts:

• You Have Been Asked to Run a Complex Collaboration Project... Now What?
• Collaboration Is More than Team Building and Management
• The Four Ps of Effective Collaboration
• The 4Ps of Effective Collaboration - Redux
• Managing Complexity in Collaboration Demands Rigor
• Cultural Assumptions and Challenges
• Use Visuals to Improve Collaboration Effectiveness
• Get Teammates to Move "Towards" Rather than "Away"
• Collaboration: Building and Sustaining Trust
• Avoiding a Bad Communication
• Current Practices in Virtual Team Management
• Mind the Language Barrier
• You Couldn't Do This By TelePresence
• Second Life as Collaboration Tool

Comments

[Jiby John]

It's challenging for any virtual teams to keep all your team members on the same page. Taroby does help the team managers of a global team achieve that, and adapts the way in which your team works providing better value for money to the customers and clients.

[Lokesh Datta]

It would be interesting to see how the 4 Ps Framework for Collaboration compares and contrasts with the MIT Sloan Model and the HBR Model for Managing Virtual Teams. A mapping of the 3 models with one another could be a fun exercise..

[Lokesh Datta]

Comments from LinkedIn Groups and Q&A on:
Have you managed or participated in virtual teams? What was your experience? What are the lessons learned? What are the key success factors? Please share.

I am a consultant specializing in facilitating virtual teams and doing virtual team building. This requires a close relationship with a coachable leader.
As a facilitator, here are a few tips:
* During introductions, write down the names of everyone on the call/video conference and their location. You may need to call on people by name to ensure their involvement.
* Agree on clear about ground rules up front. For instance, "be here now - no sidebar conversations or instant messaging between participants" is one that I've seen before.
* Be clear about tasks and outcomes from the group.
* Manage time toward objectives
* Agree on work to be done outside the call so next steps are clear

Some challenges of virtual teams are the same as teams that are physically together - trust, motivation, sense of common purpose and place of self within the whole. Translating the OD work we do to a virtual environment is really just a matter of getting used to the technology and not being afraid to ask penetrating questions (which I find somewhat easier in a virtual space).

Hope this is helpful.
By Christopher Grivas, Organizational & Leadership Development Consultant

Personally I find that virtual teams have the following challenges:
- Developing rapport and informal relationships as there are limited socialisation opportunities
- Risk of reduced motivation if some team members are working alone and only sync at intervals
- Risk of miscommunication as some team members may not be as proficient in communicating verbally or by writing
- Difficulty coordinating between different time zones

Recommend:
- Clear coordination mechanisms in place
- Promote usage of socialising tools like Skype/MSN whenever possible
- Whenever possible socialise/interact with physical proximity
- Involve team members on multiple cross-functional teams to add job variety and increase socialisation
- Promote high - real - autonomy, to both teams and individuals
By Joao Belo, Full-time MBA student at Imperial College Business School, London

If there is one word to use to describe the experience (managing or participating) it is: “challenging”

1. It is very hard to maintain focus of a virtual team: individual and local team objectives take time and valuable intellectual contribution away from the virtual-team project. If you are managing, but not leading, the virtual team, some of the members (and/or their valuable minds) will drift away, unless your communications systems and your self-motivation work well which should be demonstrated to your team members (ideally by example).

2. Project communication within a virtual team is different than that of a face-to-face. If you cannot run a tight agenda and project reviews over the phone, email or video conference, it will be a challenge. If you think a phone/video-call meeting is the same as face to face, you are not properly prepared. Some managers of virtual teams might assume that a weekly call with a round-robin Q&A’s during which questions of the sort “So what are you working on?” is the right way to go – there is nothing farther from truth. You have to have specific points on the agenda and specific questions/requests to individual reporters to show that you are on top of the events.

3. A multi-cultural team requires a very diplomatic approach to understanding and discussing achievements & progress. If you are managing this type of a team/project, your ignorance of the cultures (expressions, behaviours, reactions) will lead to tremendous frustrations. My friend “Don Rutherford” wrote a very useful book on this subject. His Linkedin profile has a link to the book on amazon.com.

4. As a manager of a virtual team, you often don’t have the control over financial incentives that the team members can receive. You have to be creative in how you explain and use non-financial incentives to motivate the team members to contribute at, and ideally above, their level of expertise.

5. Maintaining momentum and motivation in a virtual team is a challenge. There is a research done by Mintzberg (published in the Harvard Business Review) that says manager should spend 48% of their time communicating down. In the virtual team scenario, this communication needs to be maintained or increased. Error by managers is to actually reduce this time assuming that every team member knows what to do and is sufficiently motivated to do it.
By Kris Kosmala, Business Development Director at Oracle

My experience was not formally an identified virtual team, as some of us met face-to-face periodically, although there were several I never met We were working on developing a data warehouse - I was the "business expert" working in Carlsbad CA - and there was a DBA in Seattle WA and his two associates [I never met the Seattle team except the CIO] and two IT consultants in Atlanta, GA whom I met twice. Our work was conducted by phone and email - taking advantage of the 3 hour time zone difference between Atlanta and the west coast - with a few meetings with the CIO, and two with the Atlanta consultants. The group was very collegial, and I am "forward" so we were able to prod the project along each day., with a successful conclusion. The group benefitted from the high level of competence of the participants, and thier drive to obtain results.
By Barrett Peterson, C.P.A., Senior Financial Executive in Accounting, Finance and Treasury, IT, M&A, and Management Consulting Professional

As it happens Yes, both in the past and today.

The key is to develop a relationship of trust right from the outset. particularly when there is distance involved. It is best to know that something is wrong earlier rather than later in the deployment cycle.

The end result, however can be very gratifying.
Links: Perspectives & Strategy at http://cio-perspectives.com/
By Peter B. Giblett CITP, LLB, Business Strategist-Speaker-Author (Social Media & IT)

Having worked in a cross-cultural virtual team in Europe, my top tips learnt from my experiences:

1. The importance of understanding the cultures and business etiquette relating to those cultures, of your fellow colleagues. This I believe is single handedly one of the most important aspects in the team leaders ability to build rapport in a virtual team (particularly one which spans numerous foreign countries);

2. As the virtual team leader, be aware that you are the catalyst for all communication, objectives and direction of the virtual team. If communication is not flowing, look at alternative methods.

3. Meet regularly via teleconferences and video conferencing at least once a fortnight. Where possible, meet face-to-face at least quarterly.

4. Invite regular contact via telephone at the individual level. Similar to an open door policy in a physical environment. I found quite often I would have to call each team individually regularly to encourage trust and openess, for others to commence engaging this way.

5. Encourage team ownership by regularly asking people for input and embrace new solutions and perspectives. This also shows that you respect the ability of your team. Reward your team for great work! Be as creative as possible with this.

6. Be organised well in advance. Have clear objectives and direction prior to meeting. Communicate this with the group prior to the video/tele conference. Where possible, make discussions points for the teleconference a tangible visual piece that is sent out prior to meetings.

7. When working on a major project together, start with a kick off meeting by video/tele conference, though prior to this, send out a clear agenda and visible project outline of what needs to be done and ask people to contribute items they feel may be important.

8. Ensure that all action items/ accountabilities and deadlines are communicated clearly at the beginning and through-out the project, both to individual teams and the broader team. It is the team leaders responsibility to make sure everyone is on track through regular phone calls and determining where there may be difficulties or blocks. Much of these issues are eliminated through at least weekly one-to-one contact.

9. Understanding and patience is required! Particularly when working in a virtual team where people come from different countries and speak diverse languages. It is easy to have misunderstandings when unable to see visual cues. This is where cultural understanding is important.

10. Don't shy away from alternative means of virtual communications. Use programs such as Second Life for meetings - it introduces an element of fun.

I hope this is helpful!
By Lorena Paglia, Corporate Resultant (Business Coach/Consultant) at Insight Business

[Lokesh Datta]

Fantastic survey findings from the EIU: http://graphics.eiu.com/upload/eb/NEC_Managing_virtual_teams_WEB.pdf