Today, many companies have nearly half of their employees working on virtual teams. Unfortunately, our research finds that many enterprises recycle the same guidelines they use for their co-located teams and hope for the best. Frankly, that doesn’t work.
To help organizations maximize their investment in virtual collaboration, OnPoint Consulting conducted a study of 48 virtual teams to understand the success factors of top-performing virtual teams. Below are five lessons—excerpted from our book, Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading from a Distance (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley, 2010)—for creating successful virtual teams.
Lesson No. 1: Focus on people issues. Virtual teams need to compensate for the lack of human contact. Look for warning signs that a team’s people issues need more attention: team members working independently or teams with an “us versus them” mentality between locations or subgroups, for example.
Lesson No. 1 in action:
• Develop a team Web page to share information and build relationships.
• Use real-time communication tools such as instant messaging or social media sites to create a virtual water cooler of sorts that enables spontaneous communication.
• Send electronic newsletters or updates to the team.
• Periodically collect feedback from various stakeholders to assess the team’s performance.
Lesson No. 2: No trust, no team. In virtual teams, trust develops more readily at the task level than at the interpersonal level. There are three warning signs that trust is in low supply in virtual teams: team members do not refer to themselves as “we”; they do not appear to know one another well; and they do not regard other team members as credible.
Lesson No. 2 in action:
• Make sure teams meet face to face at least once.
• Avoid micromanaging and empower team members to make—and act on—decisions.
• Help people manage conflicts rather than avoiding them.
• Clearly define team roles and accountabilities to minimize frustration and misunderstandings that can damage morale.