Henry O. Evans Design Collection, LLC.

Mastering Virtual Teams

No matter where you reside, nowadays virtual teams consist of intricate individuals that rely on Technology to make up for the lack of face-to-face meetings. Because Managers are under pressure to bring together the best talent they can find from where ever they can find it, remote working and virtual teams have become increasingly popular across the world these days.

Psychological safety is created for virtual teams through managing opportunities, instilling required focus, assigning assumption framework, and providing clarity for all outlooks regarding each team member and management persons. Virtual teams must communicate about regular feedback commitment, response time goals, and general assumptions. Management and all virtual team members are essentially required to discuss each others expectations, in order for virtual teams to work successfully.

Critical Success Factors
As virtual environments continue to transform ways teams nowadays operate, still two most important factors in team success are communication and collaboration! Leveraging intellectual capital and applying it as quickly as possible is today’s corporate motto. Because of current business environments, organizations are continuously reshaping to address threats, maximize strengths, and increase speed.

Technology As “An Additional Team Member”
Technology’s purpose in virtual teams is to overcome complexities of communication, time, distance, and collaboration. Selected technology must be required to match the team’s task at hand. Ways to evaluate technology selections are found in two primary factors; of weighing the amount of information richness required and weighing the amount of social presence required in variously different situations.

Technology with high social presence vs. technology with low social presence; Interactions that are (same-time) or synchronous have a high social presence. These communications consist of video conferences, audio conferences, and face-to-face meetings. Interactions that are (different-time) or asynchronous have a low social presence, such as, emails and voice mails. 

Culture Myths, And Realities
Known as virtual teams most significant boundary is Culture. Being from the same root as cultivate meaning to till the soil, hence describing the way people act on nature, or in other words for people culture is a set of meanings, values, attitudes, and morals shared by members of a group that many use to differentiate themselves from others. Also known as collective programming, culture is looked at like ‘hidden scripts’ that are extremely and essentially important on affecting performance of virtual teams. Why? Because hidden scripts affect people’s assumptions, expectations, behaviors about leadership, habits of work, and team normality.

Team Dynamics
Health of virtual teams for leaders and members are influenced and affected by factors of team dynamics. Technical and adaptive environments are both viable and practical for virtual teams to thrive and exist. In adaptive settings, conditions are unique where there’s not yet a defined solution or routine and in technical settings; schedules, timetables, and project plans are work that is planned and completed according to schedule. Determining whether team’s task environment is more technical or adaptive is key for leadership, therefore adjusting attitudes and expectations are necessary for all team members to merge cohesively as a group. Overall main challenge regarding dynamics of virtual teams is to develop solutions to problems and or strategy to problems that do not yet exist.

Building Trusts
Being effective in teams, not only means fulfilling teams task objectives, but also means building trusting relationships amongst each other within the group. Since people tend to trust others who work or act with integrity, perform competently, and show concern for others well-being; trust to some extent is based on experiences and tolerances. Trust is a critical characteristic that influences collaboration, performance, and overall team success. Trust in working environments is based on team member and leader actions that fall into three categories: 1) follow-through 2) obtaining resources, and 3) reputation for performance and results.

Virtual Team Meetings
General ‘meetings’ purpose can vary from producing deliverables to just catching up and usually are four major type categories of meetings, such as, discussion meetings, decision-making meetings, information-sharing meetings, and product-producing meetings. Based on a continuum of low to high social interactions, meetings are categorized by deciding what technology would be most effective for each particular type. Nature of meetings for all groups is the need to: share information, make decisions, produce products, collaborate, discuss, and coordinate. Choosing the right technical tools or technology enhances our ability to accomplish our goals by giving us a means to use synergy, share concepts, and merge ideas.

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When managing Multiple Time Zones, allow technology to take the guesswork out of working through different times and schedules.