BUILDING TRUST IN REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED – Chapter 02

***Continued from Chapter 01 (Covered previously: Virtual Teams- Meaning & Interpretation, Trust in Remote Teams, Affective & Cognitive Trust)

Link to Chapter 01:

BUILDING TRUST IN VIRTUAL/ REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED- Chapter 01

Building of Affective Trust In Remote Teams

01: Prioritize On Boarding More Than We Usually Do:

According to research, affective trust tends to be more important to foster at the beginning of a relationship. Accordingly, on boarding well becomes even more paramount for virtual team building. A few key elements for remotely on boarding the team may include:

02: Avoid Cliché Icebreakers.

How often do we find ourselves asking “How was your weekend?” to break the ice before the start a meeting? Their answers to this question feel worn, tired, and un-engaging.

To shift the mood for the team and build affective trust, we will want our virtual team building to focus on non-cheesy icebreakers. Cheeky, enlivening icebreaker questions can reveal something new and intriguing about the person you might not have known before.

03: Have A Buddy System

An excellent way that remote companies can build affective trust is to build a buddy system as part of their virtual team building. In the team, here are two ideas we could try to put a buddy system into practice:

04: A Dedicated Channel For Non-Work Related Conversations:

A place for “watercooler chat” is a real requirement to building the affective trust a team needs to thrive. Some examples of non-work related chat channels may be:

1. “Good morning” chatter in the mornings when we hop online.
2. Having a  pets channel in Slack and asking everyone to share their pet pictures.
3. Questions to know each other better and to uncover unlikely connections.

05: Give Opportunities For Non-Work Related Video Chats:

Text Chat is nice… But there’s nothing like getting to see folks’ facial expressions and hear them laugh, when it comes to building affective trust. As a result, video chats would be a key part of how we do virtual team building.

One thing to be wary of if we decide to do this is that people may be severely burnt out on being on video meetings all day. They may not be eager to engage in yet another video meeting, even if the topic itself is fun.

Building of Cognitive Trust In Remote Teams

If affective trust is all about the “heart” – the emotional closeness and rapport someone feels – then cognitive trust is as all about the “head.” Cognitive trust stems from believing in the reliability and capabilities of someone else. Cognitive trust is quite easy to forget – and yet, it yields tremendous results. Studies have found how cognitive trust tends to have a stronger correlation with leadership effectiveness.

01: Willingness To Show Vulnerability As A Leader:

Being vulnerable and admitting our shortcomings as a leader aids to build trust. Vulnerability around our weaknesses and mistakes demonstrates empathy.  The more empathetic someone is, the more likely they were to trust them. To put this into practice, we can try saying something like:“I feel like the X project I’m overseeing is not going as well as I would like… might you have any advice?”

02: Make our Intentions Crystal Clear:

Making our intentions behind our actions clear is one of the most effective way to build trust. This means being open about why we are saying something, why decisions are made and why some decisions are not made. When we are opaque about why we are changing our mind or choosing to sit on something for a while, it destroys the trust someone has of us. For example, when we need to give someone tough feedback, if we make our intentions clear, they are most likely to trust and be open to hearing that feedback.

03: Walk The Walk-  Follow Through On Commitments:

This seems to be especially powerful. How clear are we demonstrating that we are following through on our commitments? During one-on-one (or) all-team meetings, try saying: “Based on the feedback, I’m changing X. How does that sound?”

What Is Psychological Safety?

Every person in every organization creates a psychological zone around them. This zone influences how those around them think and feel. Those that can increase feelings of safety can also significantly strengthen their team’s performance. A person’s ability to create psychological safety is a learnable skill. As one focuses on improving their emotional intelligence, their ability to influence their team and organization’s psychological safety will improve.

Psychological safety is a shared belief that the team is safe for interpersonal risk-taking. In psychologically safe groups, team members feel accepted and respected — safety increases when the four quadrants below thrive.

The Impact Of Psychological Safety

To enhance challenger safety, individuals in a group need to know that they are safe to express challenging ideas. A person who knows that they need to work on self-awareness could increase challenger safety by deliberately growing in awareness of stressful situations. For example, if individuals know they are working with someone they find challenging, they need to be mindful that they have a bias to remain open-minded.

Something as simple as taking the time to notice and name stressful emotions can yield real benefits. When one names a stressful feeling, that emotion becomes less intense. Naming a stressful emotion creates a distance from that emotion and allows an individual to relax intentionally.

At the heart of all this is building an awareness of one’s role in creating trust and psychological safety. Without intentionally creating new patterns, the brain will fall back on old patterns of behavior. It is up to individuals to decide to become a better version of themselves. Beneath the surface of wanting our team to “feel good” is a deeper desire for our teams to trust our intentions, and trust that we will act on them. If we can focus on building affective and cognitive trust – and not merely the vanity of how many people are showing up to a Zoom happy hour – our deepest desire for true team building can become a reality.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

BUILDING TRUST IN VIRTUAL/ REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED- Chapter 01

Now that our team isn’t working in the same office anymore, the things we used to say to each other in the hall – a simple “hello” in the mornings or a smile at someone as we walked by their desk – are absent. Gone are post-lunch catch-ups over coffee or asking about how a co-worker’s weekend was when we go to fill up our water bottle.

So what do we do? How do we bring back trust and cohesiveness in the team? Games and activities are charming, sure. But does it truly help build trust in a remote team? We have to dig deeper for more meaningful and more sustainable ways of building trust in a remote team.

What is a Virtual Team

“Virtual team” is an odd phrase. It sounds like something that only exists in a digital alternate reality. But virtual teams are very much a reality, and they’re becoming more prevalent with each passing day. A virtual team is no longer an outlier. Organizations have realized the benefit of using technology to look beyond their local community for talent. It’s almost become the norm—and of course, the whole virtual trend has been boosted by the recent pandemic. Regardless, it’s clear that virtual teams are here to stay. The first, and perhaps the highest, is understanding what virtual teams are and why they’ve gained such popularity so quickly.

A virtual team (also known as a geographically dispersed team, distributed team, or remote team) can also refer to groups or teams that work together asynchronously or across organizational levels. Powell, Piccoli and Ives (2004) define virtual teams as “groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed workers brought together by information and telecommunication technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks.  Virtual teams can be defined as “small temporary groups of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed knowledge workers who coordinate their work predominantly with electronic information and communication technologies in order to accomplish one or more organization tasks.”

What Is Virtual Team Building

One of the biggest misconceptions about virtual team building is that it’s only about helping our team “feel good.” Warm and fuzzy sentiments about each other on the team is unquestionable pleasant – but that does not mean we should optimize for them in a team. When a team is constantly looking to “feel good,” they end up flattering each other while avoiding to speak the truth. Conflict is brushed under the rug. Preserving face is valued over honesty and mutual accountability. The team’s culture – and performance – will suffer, as a result.

Rather, to get virtual team building right, we will want to focus on fostering trust in a remote team. Trust, after all, has enormous benefits to a team’s culture and performance that we often don’t fully recognize. Studies have found how trust is linked to improving job performance, increasing employee engagement, and opening up channels of communication. Trust is the oil in the engine that helps any team (remote or co-located) get to where it’s trying to go.

But trust can be a blanket word. Something we casually toss around, without precision. When we aspire to build trust, we can lose our sense of what that means to begin with.

To do virtual team building right, we must then distill specifically the type – or types – of trust we should be looking to cultivate.

What Exactly Is Trust?

Interpersonal trust and psychological safety can be conceptualized as mirror images of social interactions associated with individual, team, and organizational behaviour. Is it possible that when we interact with others and perceive that they’re capable, caring, ethical, and predictably consistent in their behaviour that some type of “switch” in the brain turns on to signify we should trust them and feel safe with others?

The Two Kinds of Trust That Come into Play

Virtual happy hours and team-building games at your monthly all-hands meetings are always fun and entertaining—but a monthly virtual gathering isn’t enough for building tight-knit relationships. Because social connection is about building trust, specifically two kinds:

Affective Trust

Affective trust is one type of trust that we really rely on as a team to be effective. It’s the kind of trust that is based on the feeling we have about someone that’s positive. It’s enormously important in a remote team because we don’t get that as much. In a remote setting, we often over-invest in excelling at our job and performing well (cognitive trust) vs. getting to know our colleagues (affective trust). Affective trust is needed most in the beginning of a new relationship.

The days of sharing our weekend plans in the break room or getting after-work drinks might not be as doable as they used to be, but we should still create space in our virtual work day to spark those conversations whether it’s through a Slack DM or a virtual coffee chat. Establishing a buddy system to help new hires get to know their teammates (and vice versa), or creating dedicated non-work channels in Slack or Teams for people to socialize (e.g. a pets channel for folks to share stories and photos about their furry family members) are also worth trying. 

Cognitive Trust

Cognitive trust is our belief in someone’s dependability and reliability. We build cognitive trust through our actions. It’s our ability to follow through on our word, show humility, and do what’s best for our team. To gauge how well we are building cognitive trust, we may ask ourselves:

Each time we show our competence, it’s like we are making little deposits in our team’s cognitive trust bank.

Bottom line: We need both affective and cognitive trust to cultivate connection.

***To be continued in Chapter 02 (Building of Affective Trust & Cognitive Trust in Remote Teams,  Psychological Safety in Teams, Its Importance) Link to Chapter -02:

BUILDING TRUST IN REMOTE TEAMS: BEHAVIORS ASSOCIATED – Chapter 02

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa

FOSTERING TEAM SOLIDITY

The pandemic has had a huge impact on individual and collective health and prosperity, and no one knows when our economy and our society will be healthy again. Yet opportunities exist. If companies and leaders can inspire team members to proactively solve problems, set aside old practices, test and prove innovative ways to work, and pilot new systems, the likelihood of organizations surviving — and, indeed, thriving — is much greater.

The single most important component are caring leaders: leaders who adapt to serve their employees and their companies and create positive traction. It is important for leaders to take steps to build trust and cooperation among their employees to maximize productivity and team satisfaction. Modelling best behaviours and creating shared experiences, they must evolve and adapt, and some behaviours that can help them are:

1. Develop Rules Of Engagement

Ask people what it takes to have a great team, what the definition of a great teammate is, and what actions each needs to participate in to support those definitions. Once done, ask what phrase could be used, without people being defensive, to create accountability. What it does is it levels the playing field and re-establishes trust.

2. Define Clear Commitments

We lose trust when we perceive others have not followed through on what we expect; yet these commitments are often not clearly articulated, mutual and measurable. In new teams or in teams trying to recover trust, it is important to have clearly articulated agreements and accountability measures to ensure everyone involved has aligned expectations.

3. Show Trust First

As the leader, are you trusting them? Where are you holding the reins too tightly, thinking you are best to handle a particular client or project? What information are you holding back, assuming others cannot handle it? Trust them more, and they will begin to learn they can trust, too.

4. Share and Be Receptive

Trust is determined by openness, credibility, and respect, practiced consistently. Leaders must foster an environment where others’ differences are accepted and look out for others’ welfare. Leaders who share thoughts and feelings and who are receptive to the thoughts and feelings of others build trust.

5. Model Respectful Argumentation

Establish a regular routine that supports the process of argumentation during all team meetings. Argumentation among team members instigates positive tension that leads to mutual respect, trust, and innovation. By learning how to respectfully disagree, people learn that there is no need to mistrust someone with a different perspective, because argumentation feels a lot different than mere arguing.

6. Identify Why Trust Is Low

Think of trust as deposits or withdrawals from an account. Low trust is a result of too many withdrawals. There are several areas that can build or break trust with teams. One thing leaders can do is to identify the reasons for low trust. By getting down to the root issues you can start to rebuild trust.

7. Have Team Members Interact on A Personal Level

Create an opportunity for the team to interact on a personal level at a retreat, challenge, or event. Make it easy for people to be authentic, tell stories and reveal their character. It is with this shared experience that a structured dialogue about earning each other’s trust and respect can evolve into the best way to work together as team. A didactic exercise alone cannot produce trust.

8. Share A Regular Meal

People are hard to hate up close, and nothing brings togetherness like sharing a meal. Engage in activities (a monthly team lunch or coffee) focused on nonwork discussion. Engage in personal sharing exercises, discuss vacations and personal and professional goals, or have a self-awareness workshop, such as a personal assessment tool, to create mutual understanding. Teams that eat together build stronger bonds.

9. Understand Communication Styles

We all have different behavioural styles, and when we encounter someone who approaches tasks or communicates differently than we do, it can lead to mistrust. By discussing motivators, work styles and how each style prefers to communicate, you will bridge misunderstandings and begin to build trust.

10. Create A Necessity

From a practical standpoint, it is all about creating a “necessity.” Human behaviour is most likely to adapt when changes are a matter of survival. The most effective method I have seen work is to create that necessity. Put those that you perceive as not trusting each other into a team and define the project success in a way that forces trust building.

11. Don’t Be Afraid to Be Vulnerable

It is so powerful when a leader shows vulnerability to their team. When anyone is vulnerable their team often responds with empathy, which starts a cycle of trust. If you need to build trust more quickly, hold an offsite and ask everyone on the team to develop and share two growth goals with the entire team. This provides everyone with an equal opportunity to be vulnerable and to support each other.

12. Teach Safety Instead

We cannot teach trust any better than we can teach a fool proof method of falling in love. Trust equals an outcome, rather than a catalyst. Instead, teach safety and trust will grow. When we feel safe, we trust. Try criticizing in private, praising in public or other safe practices, and watch the trust build on your team.

13. Learn Each Other’s Stories

Everyone has a personal history that impacts how they show up in their professional setting and the lens by which they view the world. Establishing trust requires team members be given the opportunity to share the stories that have shaped them. This allows the armour to come down so they can see each other authentically and develop the compassion that will guide them through the challenging times.

14. Do Charitable Work Together

Sometimes the best building of bonds and trust is outside the walls of the organization. Those who serve others by building a Habitat house, meeting kids and families under cancer care, or serving meals and educating the homeless often get something far greater than getting along better at work. Volunteer experiences where trust can be built often directly translate positively and immediately.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

BARRIERS TO TEAM OPERATIONS: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

The collaborative nature of teams means they are subject to pitfalls that individuals working alone do not face. Team members may not always work well together and focusing the efforts of individuals on shared goals presents challenges to completing tasks as efficiently and effectively as possible.

Three Barriers to Building a Team

1. Flimsy Leadership

Everything flows from leadership. And when there is a problem in the team, usually, it’s the leader’s fault. The wise king Solomon said, without a vision, the people perish. There could be several reasons that a team is not working, and most often, it starts with the leader.

1. Is there no vision for the team?
2. No one in the team knows where they are heading?
3. Is there favouritism being practiced by the leader?
4. Is the leader too critical of new ideas or suggestions?
5. Is the leader’s style too imposing on everyone?

It could be various reasons, but usually the problem has its roots with the leader.

• Fragile Communication

Communication is key to the proper functioning of a team. And poor communication can lead to misunderstandings, resentment, offences within a team. Sometimes it’s because one person’s frankness or direct approach offences another person; and another responds in hurt. While conflict is normal in teams, without resolving them, this poor communication can lead to destructive conflict and cause a team to break down.

• Vulnerable Team Dynamics

Teams can fail because some people just cannot work with others. For example, if we have two extremely opinionated team members, we will be seeing conflict all day in the team. Also, if we have team members that are ‘yes’ men; we won’t see a lot of participation and open discussion in the team. The thing is that, we must find the right mix of individuals to make a team; not just in terms of personalities, but also in terms of skills and abilities.

While these right individuals may have disagreements in approach and perspective, but that’s the idea behind a team, different individuals bringing different points of view so that synergy within the team can be achieved.

The Secrets of Great Teamwork

Today’s teams are different from the teams of the past: They are far more diverse, dispersed, digital, and dynamic (with frequent changes in membership). But while teams face new hurdles, their success still hinges on a core set of fundamentals for group collaboration.

The basics of team effectiveness were identified by J. Richard Hackman, a pioneer in the field of organizational behaviour. He uncovered a ground-breaking insight: What matters most to collaboration is not the personalities, attitudes, or behavioural styles of team members. Instead, what teams need to thrive are certain “enabling conditions.” These conditions—a compelling direction, a strong structure, and a supportive context—continue to be particularly critical to team success. Modern teams are also vulnerable to two corrosive problems— “us versus them” thinking and incomplete information. Overcoming those pitfalls requires a fourth critical condition: a shared mindset.

The Enabling Conditions

1. Compelling direction: . . . . . . . . . The foundation of every great team is a direction that energizes, orients, and engages its members. Teams cannot be inspired if they do not know what they are working toward and don’t have explicit goals. Those goals should be challenging (modest ones do not motivate) but not so difficult that the team becomes dispirited. They also must be consequential: People have to care about achieving a goal, whether because they stand to gain extrinsic rewards, like recognition, pay, and promotions; or intrinsic rewards, such as satisfaction and a sense of meaning. In remote teams, direction is especially crucial because it’s easy for far-flung members from dissimilar backgrounds to hold different views of the group’s purpose.

• Strong structure: . . . . . . . . .Teams also need the right mix and number of members, optimally designed tasks and processes, and norms that discourage destructive behaviour and promote positive dynamics. High-performing teams include members with a balance of skills. Diversity in knowledge, views, and perspectives and demographics can help teams be more creative and avoid groupthink.

Team members from diverse backgrounds often interpret a group’s goals differently. This is one area where remote teams often have an advantage. Cosmopolitan members bring technical knowledge and skills and expertise that apply in many situations, while locals bring country knowledge and insight into an area’s politics, culture, and tastes. Larger teams are more vulnerable to poor communication, fragmentation, and free riding (due to a lack of accountability). With remote teams, people in different locations often handle different components of a task, which raises challenges. Repartitioning the work to give them ownership increases motivation and engagement and improves the quality, quantity, and efficiency of work.

Destructive dynamics can also undermine collaborative efforts. We’ve all seen team members withhold information, pressure people to conform, avoid responsibility, cast blame, and so on. Teams can reduce the potential for dysfunction by establishing clear norms—rules that spell out a small number of things members must always do (such as arrive at meetings on time and give everyone a turn to speak) and a small number they must never do (such as interrupt).

• Supportive context: . . . . . . . . . . . This includes maintaining a reward system that reinforces good performance, an information system that provides access to the data needed for the work, and an educational system that offers training, and last—but not least—securing the material resources required to do the job, such as funding and technological assistance. Ensuring a supportive context is often difficult for teams that are geographically distributed and digitally dependent, because the resources available to members may vary a lot.
• Shared mindset:. . . . . . . . . . . Distance and diversity, as well as digital communication and changing membership, make teams especially prone to the problems of “us versus them” thinking and incomplete information. The solution to both is developing a shared mindset among team members—something team leaders can do by fostering a common identity and common understanding. Teams now often perceive themselves not as one cohesive group but as several smaller subgroups. This is a natural human response: Our brains use cognitive shortcuts to make sense of our increasingly complicated world, and one way to deal with the complexity of a remote team is to lump people into categories. But we also are inclined to view our own subgroup—whether it’s our function, our unit, our region, or our culture—more positively than others, and that habit often creates tension and hinders collaboration.

Incomplete information is likewise more prevalent in remote teams. Shared knowledge is the cornerstone of effective collaboration; it gives a group a frame of reference, allows the group to interpret situations and decisions correctly, helps people understand one another better, and greatly increases efficiency. There are many ways team leaders can actively foster a shared identity and shared understanding and break down the barriers to cooperation and information exchange. One powerful approach is to ensure that each subgroup feels valued for its contributions toward the team’s overall goals.

**Sources: The works of J. Richard Hackman

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

TYPES OF TEAMS: BEHAVIOURS ASSOCIATED

Teamwork, in times of cloud computing and collaborative software, it’s one of those qualities that everyone wants to see in their company. But the truth is that for different types of work teams, different forms of integration and collaboration develop and allow them to function better. What type of team we have depends on its purpose, location, and organizational structure. Each type of team comes with its unique set of strengths and weaknesses. Some of them may be as follows:

Task Forces

A task force is a temporary team created to address a single piece of work, a problem, or a goal.

The term “task force” originated in the Army. An Army task force was designed to provide flexibility in operations since it could be formed without the reorganization or repurposing of the division. At the time, army operations were performed by formal groupings such as divisions or battalions, but wars created new challenges that demanded flexibility in how resources were used. Formation of a task force allowed officers and equipment that formally belonged to different groups to come together for a single specific purpose, without reassigning responsibility for those assets or requiring the reorganization or repurposing of the division. Task forces were temporary and easily disbanded after their work was complete.

Today, in business, government and other arenas, task forces are special ad-hoc committees created specially to deal with single problems or issues. Many organizations use task forces to bring together experts to assess, make recommendations, or take other actions to address a single issue or topic. The task force usually begins by assessing the factors that relate to its work. Next, the team typically identifies and analyses possible solutions and develops recommendations and plans for implementing them.

Generally, a task force will not have responsibility for implementing its recommendations once they are made, although individual team members may have a role in doing so. Task forces do not have the power to compel others to accept their recommendations. Indeed, the results of their work may be accepted in part, rejected in part, or even ignored altogether.

Cross-Functional Teams

A cross-functional team comprises people from different departments and with special areas of expertise working to achieve a common goal. The range of knowledge on cross-functional teams creates a broader perspective that can lead to new ideas and better solutions.

Cross-functional teams include members who bring different types of knowledge and experience from areas such as finance, engineering, human resources, and marketing. These teams occasionally may draw on subject-matter expertise from outside the organization by inviting external consultants or customers to join a team. By combining people with diverse task-related backgrounds, cross-functional teams can take a broader approach to addressing a problem or completing a set of activities. This can lead to new ideas and more creative solutions. It can also make a team’s efforts more efficient and effective by including information that can help avert risks or poor outcomes.

Example of a Cross-Functional Team: . . . . . .  Many business activities require cross-functional collaboration to achieve successful outcomes. A common example is service improvement. To better meet customer expectations and achieve higher satisfaction rates, a company first needs to understand what customers are looking for. The marketing department is responsible for gathering that type of customer data. Operations staff members have expertise in how to design the process for delivering a service, so they would need to be involved in making any changes to that system. The human resources department oversees training, and employees may need new skills to succeed with the new process. If any information technology is involved in supporting the service improvement, then people from that department should be on the team. Finally, accountants may be needed to identify any new costs and additional savings.

Challenges of Cross-Functional Teams: . . . . . .  Even though diversity of knowledge and perspective is the big advantage of cross-functional teams, it can also be a source of problems. People who work in the same discipline or area have a common understanding and a terminology for their work that is unknown to others. Shorthand expressions or common acronyms that are familiar to one person may be confusing to others. This can make communication between members of a cross-functional team difficult and subject to misunderstanding.

Cross-functional teams may be more likely than less complex teams to have members with divergent perspectives on how work gets done. For instance, engineers value precision and attention to detail, while those who come from more creative areas such as marketing may prefer a less rigid approach. These differences in styles may also be reflected in the personalities of team members. It can take extra effort to collaborate when you have to take into account the preferences and styles of widely dissimilar individuals.

In some organizations certain departments have more status than others. A common distinction is between those in areas that contribute directly to revenue, such as sales and manufacturing, and those that do not, including support departments like purchasing and IT. Perceived differences in relative importance or credibility can undermine the effectiveness of cross-functional collaboration.

Virtual Teams

A virtual team is a temporary group created to accomplish specific tasks by using technology to collaborate remotely. What sets them apart are:

1. Virtual teams rely upon computing and communications technology, especially Internet access.
2. Virtual teams can be cost- effective and take advantage of technology and the availability of distributed employees.
3. There are six common types of virtual teams: networked teams, parallel teams, project development teams, functional teams, service teams, and offshore information-systems development teams.

A virtual team is a group of individuals in different geographic locations who use technology to collaborate on work tasks and activities. The use of this kind of team has become prevalent in organizations due to the increased availability of collaborative technologies, the shift toward globalization in business, and greater use of outsourcing and temporary workers. Virtual teams require effective project management to facilitate communication and coordinate member activities.

Types of Virtual Teams: . . . . . .  There are six common types of virtual teams.

1. Networked teams: . . . . . .   are loosely organized; they are usually formed to address a short-term objective and are dissolved after they accomplish that objective. Similar to task forces and cross-functional teams, networked teams frequently bring together people with different expertise to bring broad perspectives to discussing an issue or problem.
2. Parallel teams: . . . . . .   are highly task-focused and draw on individuals from different functional areas and locations. While they generally complete their work on a defined schedule, parallel teams may not be disbanded but may instead remain to take on a subsequent set of tasks.
3. Project development teams: . . . . . .   work on complex sets of activities over a long time period. They may be formed to develop new products, deliver a new technology system, or redesign operational processes.
4. Functional teams: . . . . . .   are comprised of people from the same department or area who collaborate on regular and ongoing activities, examples of which include providing training, executing marketing initiatives, and conducting research and development.
5. Service teams: . . . . . .   work with customers to address their purchasing and post-purchase needs. These teams enable a company to provide consistent service, often 24/7, to support customers wherever they are.
6. Development teams: . . . . . .   make use of lower cost labour, typically offshore, to develop software, conduct research, etc. They are typically created by dividing up the work of larger projects and assigning specific pieces to independent contractors or teams of developers.

Challenges of Virtual Teams: . . . . . .  The geographic dispersion of team members and the lack of regular face-to-face meetings present three challenges to the success of virtual teams.

1. Coordination of tasks: . . . . . .   A virtual team needs a clear set of objectives and a plan for how to achieve them in order to focus and direct collaboration among team members. They need clear guidelines and norms for how individuals will accomplish their work. Even more than traditional teams where individuals work in the same location and time zone, virtual teams require effective project management to facilitate communication and coordination of tasks among members.
2. Team-member skills: . . . . . .   Beyond their functional expertise and experience, virtual team members need to be effective users of technologies such as video conferencing and other collaboration tools. They must learn to communicate well in writing to avoid misinterpretations that might be more easily avoided in a face-to-face conversation. When virtual teams cross national boundaries, differences in language and culture require the ability to negotiate barriers to communication and collaboration.
3. Relationships: . . . . . .   Virtual team members need to build relationships with colleagues through the use of technology, which can often seem impersonal. Distance and lack of regular personal interaction can make it difficult for trust and group cohesion to develop. When these are missing, team members can lose focus and collaboration can suffer, leading to delays, conflict, and other performance issues.

Self-Managing Teams

A self-managing team (or self-managed team) is a group of employees working together who are accountable for all or most aspects of their task. It is a group with a common purpose in which tasks and responsibilities are determined by the members. Self-managing teams share work tasks and supportive or managerial tasks.

A self-managing team has considerable discretion over how its work gets done. This means the majority of key decisions about activities are made by people with direct knowledge of, and who are most affected by, those choices. Self-managing teams are distinct from self-directed teams. Self-managing teams work toward goals that are set for them by outside leadership, whereas self-directed teams work toward a common goal that they define.

Advantages of Self-Managing Teams: . . . . . .  Organizations in various fields use self-managing teams to boost productivity and motivate employees. Members of self-managing teams plan, coordinate, direct, and control their activities. For example, they set the work schedule and assign tasks. In this way they share both the managerial and technical tasks. Team members also share responsibility for their output as a whole, which can inspire pride in their accomplishments. Because they eliminate a level of management, the use of self-managing teams can better allocate resources and even lower costs.

Disadvantages of Self-Managing Teams: . . . . . .  The lack of hierarchical authority means that personal relationships can overwhelm good judgment. It can also lead to conformity, which can inhibit creativity or make it difficult for team members to be critical of each other. Self-management adds a layer of responsibility that can be time-consuming and require skills that some team members may not have. Members of a self-managing team often need training to assist them in succeeding at jobs that have a broad scope of duties.

Types of teams depicted in a Matrix overview:

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.

VIRTUAL COLLABORATION: INTERCONNECTED HUMAN BEHAVIORS

Virtual collaboration is the method of collaboration between virtual team members that is carried out via technology-mediated communication. The collaborators are physically separated from each other and can only interact virtually.

Realizing true collaboration — in which the whole is positively more than the mere sum of the individual parts — is intricate in any environment. Individuals have to set aside their egos, trust one another, and share their expertise willingly.

In a virtual workplace, collaboration can be all the more difficult to attain, especially when team members work for different groups/ teams, are essentially strangers to one another, and have different cultural and professional backgrounds.

Virtual collaboration holds amazing promise. When successful, it enables talented peers to work together regardless of location and organizations to mine the collective wisdom of a widely dispersed employee population. It is paramount to organisations that want to succeed in today’s business climate. But virtual collaboration comes with its own unique challenges — especially for leaders whose previous experience has been mainly with collocated teams, such as:-

Organization Commitment Is Absolutely Essential 

Organisations need to empower and enable collaborative processes that connect employees in every department and provide them with better access to information. Today’s companies have a bewildering variety of collaborative tools at their fingertips. With everything from team calendars and discussion platforms to document and screen sharing software, modern technologies deliver remarkable improvements in the ability for companies to collaborate across locations and time zones. 

Attune For Dimension

Teams have been getting larger and larger, some even exceeding 100 people for complex projects and this trend has made true collaboration increasingly difficult to achieve. One solution is to use a flexible, fluid team structure that consists of three tiers: a core, an operational level, and an outer network. Using this hierarchy groups together those who need to collaborate with one another for particular purposes, and exclude others who aren’t important to that process. Another tool is the Relationship Action Plan, which can be used to manage an organization around loosely configured, flexible teams.

Apprehensions With Social Media 

People are more prone to collaborate with others who are similar to them. The trick is to find the common ground between such individuals, and social media — blogs, wikis, online collaboration tools, etc. — can play a huge role in doing so. Those companies that have begun to use social media for internal purposes are starting to reap the benefits.

Virtual Games 

Another effective way to get team members in the right mindset for working together is to have everyone play virtual games that encourage collaboration. Such games can be customized to a particular company so that players have to pool their knowledge and internal connections to find solutions.

Some examples of online role-playing games are “Scavenger Hunt”, “World of Warcraft” and “EverQuest”. In such multiplayer games, players must collaborate to survive in a fast-changing environment with fierce competitors and incomplete or ambiguous information from which to base important decisions — that is, an environment not unlike many hypercompetitive global markets.

Leaders, for instance, will often step down to allow others who are more qualified to take the reins. This helps encourage leadership, an atmosphere of collaboration as well as sacrifice for the greater good of the team.

Train For Collaboration. 

Many skills are difficult to train and develop. Some experts, for example, contend that leadership is more nature than nurture. Not so with collaboration. PricewaterhouseCoopers, for instance, has had great success in training employees to collaborate by targeting communication skills, emotional intelligence, teamwork, and networking.

Collaboration. Chart with keywords and icons. Sketch

Emotional intelligence  

Business school professor Amy Edmondson’s Brightline Initiative TED Talk reflects on the concept of teaming: a situation where strangers come together quickly to solve problems despite distance, expertise, time zones, and status. While our colleagues and coworkers aren’t complete strangers, these unprecedented times and working conditions certainly are.

So, how can teaming solve this issue? Edmondson shares three key qualities that have contributed to teaming success:

1. Humble in the face of challenges ahead
2. Curious about what others bring
3. Willing to take risks to learn quickly

When a group of strangers (or a group of people working in strange conditions) all do their best to exercise emotional intelligence and stay humble by creating situational humility, remain curious by embracing diverse opinions, and are willing to take risks to learn quickly, then problem solving in a virtual world will be easier than ever before.

Have Role Clarity But Task Uncertainty. 

Many managers believe that teams collaborate best when the roles of members are flexible but the group has a clear idea of how to get from A to B. But the reverse is actually true, according to a study of more than 50 teams in different industries. That research found that collaboration increased when people had clearly defined roles but were uncertain about how to achieve the team’s goals. The uncertainty encouraged everyone to collaborate and think more creatively about different ways in which to accomplish the group’s mission.

Increase Cross-Cultural Awareness

The first thing that everyone on an international team should do is to understand the challenges that various global team members face. For example, most of the international organizations in my environment conduct their virtual meetings in English. This often results in “code switching,” where participants in remote locations switch back to their native language in “off-line” conversations about items covered in the meeting. When that happens, the English language speakers report feeling dismissed and left out.

A frank discussion of the difficulty of processing information in a second language (on one side) and the feelings of exclusion (on the other) can bring increased understanding and empathy for all concerned.

Co-Create Team Rules And Norms

It is important for all collaborative teams, but absolutely essential for cross-cultural and virtual teams, to understand and agree upon standards and expectations for communication, decision-making, conflict resolution, and meeting protocol. Equally important is the clarification of priorities as well as each individual’s role, responsibility, and accountability.

Build Virtual Trust

With collocated teams, trust grows out of mutual work experiences and personal interactions – usually extended over time. Virtual teams don’t share this context. Members often have no idea of the work environments of their counterparts, nor do they have insights into a teammate’s work ethic, past performance, or personal life. Strategies that help remote teams bond, so that participants can build or deepen personal relationships,include:-

Blended Communication Mediums

Communication mediums run a spectrum from “lean” to “rich.” A lean medium transmits less information than a rich medium. For example, if you are emailing, texting or typing in a chat window (lean mediums), there is nothing that gives added clues to the meaning of what you write. Because they lack social signals, lean mediums are poor transmitters of emotion, intent, or humor. But when the message is straightforward and easy to understand, a lean channel is fine.

The more complicated, emotional, or nuanced your message is, the richer your channel should be. A communication channel becomes richer as you add human elements. Telephone calls and teleconferences give listeners access to vocal clues. Videoconferencing allows participants to view facial expressions and hand gestures.

The ‘Face To Face’ Advantage

In face-to-face meetings, our brains process the continual cascade of nonverbal cues that we use as the basis for trust and professional intimacy. Face-to-face interaction is an information-rich communication channel in which voice, body language, proximity and eye contact are all present to give deeper meaning to our messages – and to allow us to gauge the instantaneous responses of others.

Content Curated By: Dr Shoury Kuttappa.