The magic power of flattening virtual geographical teams

I pondered on how to improve and lead the effective virtual teams across multiple locations awhile. Based on my own experiences, observations, informal interviews & discussions with virtual team members, I have put together a few thoughts on how to overcome time and distance to achieve exceptional results from virtual teams.

What is the power of virtual team?

In a nutshell, a cross collaboration of multiple location teams brings strong talent, expertise, speed to deliver and diversified views to solve the problem. I have come up with 4 steps to lead the effective virtual teams.

The POWER of a VIRTUAL TEAM - Together Everyone Achieves More like - The Rabbit and Turtle Modern Race Story

1. Clear Definition of the work

When working with virtual partners, delineating the work is one of the most important discussions at the beginning of the project. To avoid having a long conversation about the process over e-mail/phone, needs to develop a Virtual Collaboration Charter. It’s a shared document that everyone in the group can have access to review the charter.

What should Virtual Collaboration Charter contain?

§ Goals
     What is the desired outcome of our work together?

§ Scope

     What are the high-level deliverables by following the standards and 
     procedures?

§ Resources

     What resources, skill sets, and expertise required?

§ Schedule Boundaries

     What are the major constraints on your schedule? Do we need to plan 
     for time-zone differences?

§ Milestones

     How will we benchmark our progress and review the work?

§ Define and agree on roles, tasks, and processes

  Have each person share a “role card.” Need to itemize important information 
  in the “role card” such as:

  1.Team member’s role/title, 
  2.General responsibilities,
  3.Work schedule, 
  4.Define close collaborators – one person is a lamplighter to another virtual 
    collaborator to guide and assist what’s happening on the ground
  5.Key Tasks,
  6.Decisions,
  7.Deliverables,
  8.Milestones that individual is attached to
  9.Establish a code of conduct – set healthy boundaries, and establish a 
    code of conduct to which team member holds himself/herself accountable

§ Agree on protocols

  Guidelines are needed for important activities such as group decisions, 
  tracking progress, sharing updates and who in the group needs to be 
  involved in each of these activities?

2. Build Productive Relationships between virtual teams

The success of virtual team collaboration comes down to the relationships team members have created. That could be phone or SMS’s or Skype or WhatsApp or emails or IM’s or any other forms. It’s critically important to establish and maintain rapport, credibility, and true mutual respect from a distance.

a.      “Meet” your colleagues online

   i.     When you are a Virtual team member [VTM], working with your colleague, you should know all your collaborators. If you have not met everyone in person, begin with a little background research. Google, LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are obvious starting points but think about your personal contacts too.

   ii.     Ideally, try to meet your coworker as closely as it could be via video chat, followed by phone as a distant second. The more information available to VTM (facial expressions, gestures, vocal tone), the better VTM can interpret communications from this person later on.

  iii.     Initiate a get-to-know-you conversation in person or online. Pose these questions to your colleague:

 1.  Where are they based? Are they also navigating remote work?
 2.  What’s their professional background? Their current role?
 3.  How are they approaching your joint work, and what information do they have 
     that you don’t – about the project, the client, your organization?
 4.  What prospects for the work excite them?
 5.  What risks are they worried about?
 6.  What are their expectations about how you will collaborate?
 7.  Which communication tools do they like to use, and which do they dislike?
 8.  Do they have any major constraints you should know about, such as a 
     deadline for another project?
 9.  What percentage of their time are they devoting to this project?
 10. Overall, try to share each other work envrionment 

b.      Establish Trust

As in face-to-face relationships, trust in a virtual context requires transparency. Meaning, what you know, what you want, and what you can do. But these signals are harder to read in virtual collaboration due to distances apart.

Make the most of “swift” trust. Genuine rapport develops slowly, but people feel a surge of friendliness and goodwill when the group first creates. Try to improve your credibility by beating deadlines, and be generous with praise or gratitude, especially in writing.

Be easily predictable. Keep regular hours, and schedule check-in calls at the same time every day or week. Respond to emails, texts, calls, and the like, in a routine way, even if only to say you will respond later. Setting accurate expectations is more important than sending the message that you are always open for business.

Be persistent. Don’t assume that because interacting online feels awkward at first, the relationship is doomed to fail. Keep developing a healthy relationship, and keep looking for opportunities to make a personal connection with your colleagues. Over the period, you and your virtual team colleague will be synced up literally fast before you complete your full sentence.

c.      Manage Conflict

Conflict that erupts over screens is not much different from in-person fights. Because communicating online is confusing, to begin with, and because it disinhibits antisocial behavior, you will want to be especially proactive in confronting disagreements before they turn bad. The following dos and don’ts can help you have productive interactions.

Building and developing strong relationships with colleagues whom you don’t see every day requires persistence, empathy, and a genuine caring behind the machine. To bring it, in reality, it requires enormous practice, adapting situations, and strong communication skills across a variety of communication mediums.

Do

§ Try to discuss interpersonal conflicts in person as much as possible. 
  If you can’t, use video chat or a phone call or ask your manager to mediate.

§ Pursue task-related arguments. If you don’t agree with a plan of action or 
  design or solution, speak up constructively without attacking personally.

§ Take your problems to a dedicated problem-solving avenue such as one-on-one 
  call or “Open Project issues/concerns” agenda item during a meeting.

§ Try to switch venues – from email to phone to video chat when you can’t 
  resolve a disagreement easily.

§ Practice Active Listening – check your understanding by paraphrasing 
  what you see and hear.


Dont's

§ Don’t try to resolve complicated or personal concerns over e-mail.

§ Don’t wait for task-related disagreements to turn into personal.

§ Don’t blindside team members or embarrass them in front of their peers 
  either in email or over the phone. If team members feel that you are not 
 treating them fairly, they won’t engage in the project from that point onwards.

3.      Communicate Effectively

Communicating with virtual team members can feel like screaming into the wind. It takes much effort to keep others on the same page. The following methods may help you to capture team member’s attention, and limit the amount of time you spent on it.

a.      Pick the right communication channel – plan ahead if it’s a group communication

b.      Bridge time zones –

         i.     Get some real face time, even with colleagues in different time zones. If you can’t find a mutually convenient hour, be the one to compromise.

           ii.     Find a shared window of time in your working days and make sure that you’re regularly available during the period.

           iii.     If you don’t have any available hours in common, discuss explicitly on how they will manage in your absence

c.      Surmount language and cultural barriers

        When you work with people in different countries or cultures, you can close the gaps in multiple ways:

i.  Ask them how they prefer to communicate

ii.  Build on common ground – are you both sticklers about punctuality? Do you geek out about the same things?

iii.  Do your own research – learn about their culture and traditions.

d.      Email Communication – it’s art in particular while communicating with virtual peers.

i.     Craft your subject line carefully

  ii.     Lead with what you want

  iii.     Provide clear context

 iv.     Spell out your request

v.     Make it memorable – use powerful, vivid language, and create a good impression

   vi.     Say thank you

   vii.     End with a call to action – refocus their attention on your central objective

e.      Hold team members accountable – maintaining accountability with virtual collaborator requires empathy and ingenuity.

         i.     Push team members to commit to concrete plans – it’s an action item plus a deadline.

         ii.     Let virtual team members know they have an audience – you need to ensure that business customers and other stakeholders know about their work, and call out specific appreciations what other talks about virtual team work delivery. In other words, make your collaborator work visible to others.

        iii.     Create a sense of reciprocity – it should not be a one-way street. Push back against the illusion by showing that you’re in a mutual relationship, and both of you are committed to delivering the project.

        iv.     Maintain a positive, generous frame of mind – your grievances may be legitimate, but grousing about them will only poison the relationship further. Try to interpret their communication with an assumption of ‘Positive Intent’ only.

f.       Give and receive feedback – try to have a one-on-one with your collaborators and exchange feedback mutually in a respectful way once in a month or quarter on a regular basis.

       i.     Think about the bigger picture of the project delivery / common objectives – all your feedback should be revolving around

  ii.     Start on a high note – Be warm, and don’t skip the usual small talk. Emotion is harder to read over video or on the phone. Try to be explicit about your positive feelings by calling it out (e.g., I enjoy working with you)

  iii.     Express honest appreciation for the other person’s work

  iv.     Give feedback about a specific incident/behavior

v.     End on a positive note – you may send a follow-up email briefly summarizing what you agreed on, and thanking them again for the discussion.

4.      Conduct Virtual Meetings Effectively

It may sound simple to conduct meetings when you have a group of members in the room and another group of virtual members on the call. In reality, leading an effective virtual meeting is no easy task. The following methods may help and lead an effective virtual meeting:

a. Plan ahead (if it’s a group meeting)

b. Identify the participants and set clear agenda

     i.   Agenda Item, Who, Time allowed

     ii.  Purpose,

     iii. Objective,

     iv.  Attendees and roles,

     v.   Location,

     vi.  Date and Time,

     vii. WebEx Details (you may encourage and recommend video conference ahead),

  
 c. Set clear expectations for participation,

 d. Set clear meeting ground rules (e.g., virtual team members should keep it
    mute in case they don’t speak)

 e.  Assign roles

     i.   Facilitator

     ii.  Scribe

     iii. Timekeeper

     iv.  Presenter

     v.   Experts (right SME’s to the meeting)

     vi.  Truthteller – this person will help you create an atmosphere of candor
          by modeling an honest engagement when the meeting goes a little bit 
          out of context and a bit chaotic. Generally,experienced team member, 
          who knows the rest of the group fairly well, will take this role.

     vii. Planter – this role will pose targeted questions to spark 
          conversation when many people in the group don’t know each other 
          well or don’t have an interactive session.

     viii. Contributors – these members are the working group or key members for
           the meeting

 f. Audible and video – ensure that every member in the room should be close 
    enough to the phone receiver and camera; it needs to be clearly audible and 
    visible  to virtual team members

 g. Engagement – it’s a facilitator task to call out the names of the virtual 
    members to get engaged to the conversation. Facilitator should be constantly
    vigilant to think about virtual member’s expert knowledge and their inputs

 h. Try to have 15 minutes’ lobby for interaction with virtual team members  
    after important meetings – Facilitator should plan out to give minimum 15 
    minutes’ for clarification with virtual team members in case they were not 
    clear any decisions or not heard clearly due to technology issues or 
    questions around next steps after everyone left the room.

 i.  Finally, minutes of the meeting should be sent out to all meeting members 
     within 2 to 4 hours on the same day with no delay.

I would like to end my note with this - there are a million ways to be a successful virtual collaborator. With diligence and some experimentation, you will find the rhythm that’s right for you. It’s not that easy, but it’s not hard either. Once you set your connection straight with your virtual collaborator, reaping benefits will be exponential.