Teams: managing virtual teams

Helen Kelly

The Virtual Team has evolved as business has spread wings to operate globally. Members of Virtual Teams work for a business unit in the usual way but may not live in the same geographic area.  Sometimes people call these teams Geographically Dispersed Work Groups.  Team members may never meet in person but meet via video conference or using web cam and net meetings.  They work electronically and may use specialty software called virtual team software.  Team members may all report to the same person in the traditional employee arrangement.

1. Walk the Talk

We know the heart of successful project management:  work to a strategy, set realistic goals, choose the right people for each job, assign tasks and deadlines clearly, confirm that everyone understands his or her responsibilities, keep accurate minutes, note action items, benchmark, coach team members, report results regularly, adjust along the way, meet deadlines, and stay within budget. 

When it comes to managing a Virtual Team, it is essential to walk this talk.  There’s no popping in and out of offices to check on this or that detail, no lunch meetings for discussions, conflict resolution and filling gaps in understanding and expectations.  Keep up clear communication; there’s not much room for lapses.

2. Introduce Everyone

Post photos of the team members and ask each person to introduce him- or herself.  You may arrange for people to join a conversation via GoogleTalk or Skype and introduce themselves while everyone is looking at the photos.  For a bit of fun, use Flash and have people smile, wave or wink.

3. Provide Contact Information

Create a secure page that details email address, geographic location, time zone, and the person’s team role.  Create a chart showing example time differences.

4. Create an Identity

If people don’t meet face to face in somewhere called business home, they’ll wish for a symbol or other sign of the team’s identity.  As their first team task, ask them to work together and create a Team Page.  Someone might suggest a team logo or team colours.  What’s essential is that everyone feels a sense of identity and likes the symbol or picture of it. 

5. Establish Leadership 

Based on backgrounds, experience, and preferences, decide whether this will be a self-directed/self-managed team, whether the team will elect a team leader or whether you, as the manager in charge will lead the team.  Then let everyone know.

6. Establish Trust

To mitigate the problems of caution, distancing, hidden feelings and worries festering, emphasise the beauty of team effort where each contributes a special talent. Then make sure the metrics reflect it.

Ensure that tasks and deadlines are clear and realistic.  Name each person’s role and put it into print on the team page and even onto a team letterhead.  Invite people to speak openly about any issue and break the ice by doing so yourself.  Hold an open discussion about the pleasure of trust and ask for suggestions about the best ways to build and sustain it among people who may never meet.

7. Check Frequently on Perception and Consensus

While you want to people to share ideas and challenge one another enthusiastically, you don’t want a lively clash of personalities.  Establish a system - or ask the team to establish a system - for making regular checks on perceptions of progress, process, cooperation, workload, contributions, communication, trust, quality, and technical matters relating to the team’s work.  Check the team’s perception about whether the form of management is working well or needs tweaking. 

8.   Keep a Diary

As the responsible executive and centre of team gravity, you will have the usual balls in the air.  However when people are a dispersed work force you need to do more than keep your eye on these balls.  Keep a large format diary where you make not only the ordinary business entries but where you also keep a Virtual Team Early Warning System.  Note red flags, queries, possible need for proactive preventive action, and other information that helps you manage people you don’t often look in the eye.  

9. Provide Feedback, Coach People, and Have Fun

No matter the work form, at various times people need feedback, coaching and fun.  Use the Diary jot down reminders about feedback and ideas for having fun.  Use the Early Warning System to flag needs for coaching. If you coach by email, be prepared to spend time typing.  Better to use internet phone calls and where necessary, make sure one of you gets on a train or plane.

10.   Virtual Team Software

Do virtual teams need bespoke software for online collaboration?  The jury is still out on this one.  For some, virtual team software is a useful tool for organisation, workflow, document management and other matters relating to administration and managing information.  Some people use virtual team software as a substitute for managing the team and team members, hoping that the software will ensure that people share trust, intuition, creativity, knowledge, learning and wisdom.  I haven’t found hard evidence that using specialty software improves the virtual team process, relationships, team spirit, trust and the rest of the human factors that are fundamental to successful geographically dispersed team working.

Going further

• Groups and teams - there is a distinction between a group and a team which is not always understood.
• Working Together Profile - we all have different ways of working with other people and systems. In teams we can play different roles.
• Building the team - starting your first job as a manager, taking over a new team or re-building an existing one.
• Cultural Framework Profile - companies are not all the same. They have different cultures, different ways of working.
• Dirty Work Groups - an approach to team work that puts ideas first.