Coordinating Virtual Teams
If you’ve ever wondered why you bought a lousy vacuum cleaner from a door-to-door salesman, you understand the mysterious psychological power of being in person. Presence gives school plays Hollywood gravitas, fills stadium nosebleed sections and, in an age of high-res webcams and lightning fast connections, will always be the ace in the hole for the old fashioned conference room.
Still, things have never been better for geographically distributed teams, which do away with time, location and other mortal coils. Virtual teams are more efficient, diverse and versatile; they can bring on talented members instantly from anywhere, stay connected at all times and reach markets and clients from the whole world! In theory, anyway.
In reality, teamwork is a mindset, not a device, and gadgets, online collaboration tools and enterprise social tools alone aren’t enough to make a distributed team any more effective than in the dark days of beepers and fax machines. Just because teammates are connected doesn’t mean they feel connected.
Digital interactions can seem overly deliberate and planned, and can make it difficult to command attention (or even tell if you have everyone’s attention). Where face-to-face meetings foster frank, spontaneous discussion, online they can become a kind of semi-interactive TV show where true engagement loses out to idly tuning in, writing emails in another window and speaking up only when necessary.
Sometimes breaking the digital ice involves a little calculated chaos. For meetings, choose technology that makes speaking up as easy as listening, and be sure to give attendees more than one way to chime in: chat windows, screen shares, digital hand-raising, etc. Encourage people to come prepared with something to say, if only to get used to speaking into their mics, and have presenters open the floor for feedback more than usual. Whenever, possible, call on individuals or do a “round the horn” discussion where everyone must speak.
Just as in a brick and mortar office space, a distributed team needs to feel connected beyond the conference call. Try making a private Facebook page for quick thoughts and casual brainstorming, work in cloud-based shared editing platforms such as Google Drive and encourage texting in addition to email. Enterprise social solutions such as Yammer, Chatter and many others allow for real-time interactions and coordination. Aim for an atmosphere of ambient, comfortable discussion, where even though the members are in different time zones, the team is always at their fingertips.
A team should be a group, not an object, and working outside of an office means more than answering emails and logging in at the right times. Even without the intangible power of being there in person, technology has made it easy for a team, however scattered, to be connected, invested and effective. After all, there is always a real person behind the screen.
