Virtual Team Success Starts with Management and Trust

By Rita DeCamilli

Trust is one of the most important components of successful virtual teams, and the trust starts at the top with management. If upper management communicates the importance of virtual teams for the company and explains the rational benefits, goals and challenges, its virtual teams have a more positive influence for success, compared to teams that have no management direction (p. 18).

It is necessary for management to provide direction, instruction, procedures and community culture of the corporation. The company is responsible for providing and implementing new support mechanisms. This provides instantaneous trust for a virtual team, and gives the team a higher accountability to perform, knowing there is a higher power to answer to.

Understanding is the unique confidence a team must possess to communicate efficiently. Trust help reassure a team, that they don’t have to be protective or careful in a group. Teams have to become comfortable with one another to ask for help, or ask questions and receive input.

Shared understanding contributes to team performance. It aligns effort, increases member satisfaction and motivation, and reduces problems, errors, frustration and negative conflict. Trust is important for any team, but critical for a virtual team. 

Certainty promotes open information exchange, reduces negotiation cost and conflict and is the number one reason related to achieving goals. Teams involved with upper management engage in more dialogue with one another and conduct brainstorming activities on their own, resulting in the understanding of company business, its strategy, technical requirements and product organization.

Assurance from management and team members is the glue of the virtual workplace. It provides an emotional connection, allowing people to be open with one another in successful communication.

The key is to select one member to keep in contact with a supervisor for team production success.

At Roadrunner Consulting Group RCG, we will devise a strategy to help communications start internally, with goals and objectives in mind. RCG will help communicate trust among your virtual teams for increased output and production. Together we will create a new-found success for you and your company.

We’re not just a company, we’re a successful virtual team.

Should Professionals Text?

By Allison Honoré & Emily Zimmerman

You sit at your desk, and while working on a project, realize you have a quick question for another member of the team. You can see your team mate across the office. They're working on something themselves. If you email them, it might take a while to get a response if they don’t have their email open. If you get up and walk over, you force them to remove their headphones, and because you don't want to be rude, you have to have a little small talk first. Your simple question has turned into a long, arduous dilemma. It may seem too personal, but a simple text message is the medium for the job.

Fostering a casual group text for those involved in a group project enables team members to have a space less formal than an email, it should feel more like a conversation rather than a practiced and edited email. It makes members feel more connected to each other and allows for faster, more effective communication. The ability to have perpetual contact for a group means that those long waits for an email response go out the window, meetings have to happen less often as an update can be given at any time.

A team knows its successes and its failures as they come when the team shares them in real time. A team that keeps up with each other through text messaging also has the ability to be more personal and friendly rather than formal and excessively professional through email. They see each other as comrades and have more of an ability to trust one another and ask for help when they need it, not when it’s too late. For many casual work acquaintances, face to face conversations can be flustering. Having to create a false conversation before and after the actual purpose of the meeting for the sake of being polite slows down the progress of both members. A phone call can seem like a disturbance if the receiving member is working on something else, or is deeply involved in a project. Teams bond easily over text messages because of its dynamic and multitasking nature. A text message conversation helps remove hierarchical boundaries, real or imagined. It puts everyone on a level playing field.

Text messaging has a bad reputation and is dismissed as being more for youth than professionals, but there is no reason it can’t be utilized by anyone. While not every conversation related to any project should be sequestered to a text message conversation, a majority of it can. Compared to non-texters, those teams who exclusively used text messaging in Chris Lam’s 2012 study communicated more, felt more connected, and sent more questions, answers, and non-project related messages. Companies should talk to their teams about text messaging and foster an open enough environment to allow them to utilize this medium. It’s there in your pocket already waiting for you, you just have to know how to use it.

Expert Advice on Virtual Team Success: Suggestions from Professor and Communications Consultant, Steve Krizman

By Rita DeCamilli

Steve Krizman is an associate professor of journalism and public relations at Metropolitan State University of Denver, MSU. He is also the chief consultant of his own firm, Connected Communications LLC., in Littleton Colorado.

Krizman explains that through organizational management studies, it was discovered that employees want to get their information from a supervisor and not from just another person on a team. “It is very important that the project description and delegation of team organization come directly from an internal supervisor.” Krizman said. Managers need to be up-front from the start. When managers feel too busy to communicate, any team will fail.

He explains that, when it comes to forming teams, management needs to set clear goals and objectives for teams to tackle project responsibility. Organizational communication starts from the very top, and needs to be clearly expressed at the onset of team formation, regardless of the group being an in-house team or a virtual team.

“Research has shown me that however a group is formed, some face to face, personal contact needs to be in place before project communications begin.” Stated Krizman. An interpersonal connection is the element of success. Meeting someone is a much better way of understanding human personality. Assuming someone is a jerk with only knowing their online presence, can certainly hinder the outcome of a project and team performance.

Steve recommends the following advice for a successful virtual team:

1. Do find a way to meet in person before the team starts. 
2. Develop a team questionnaire. Find out strengths, weaknesses, work ethic and some personal interests to obtain some common ground while communicating online. This starts to develop trust within the team. 
3. First order of team business is to find out the goals, objectives and purpose of the team. 
4. Decide who is to do what and when, and what will be the best form of virtual communicating that will be most productive for the completion of the assignment. Have the supervisor set the initial goals and expectations for a successful outcome. 
5. Decide on the best platform to use. Slack, Google docs, hangout or video conferencing. Test the technology while setting up to try and avoid glitches. Glitches have a way of setting team meetings and productions back. Technology is advancing as we breathe. Business communication and organization is advancing at a rapid pace. Keep up. 
6. Encourage and support each other. Motivate each other and boost morale, by playing online games. This builds team confidence and competition, giving members an opportunity to learn constructive conflict behavior. 
7. Be accountable. Be transparent. Be clear and consistent. 

Krizman concludes with, “Productive virtual teams plan, organize activities, listen to one another and provide feedback every chance they get. Personal elements come in quite handy when solely operating online. It’s great to Skype, but sometimes it’s great to do one old fashioned thing; pick up the phone and call occasionally. A voice every now and then can relieve stress and job tension. Incorporate the human factor for optimal success.”

At Roadrunner Consulting Group, we value advice from our colleagues in the field. It helps us create a community of shared communication concepts, giving our clients the best results for their needs.

How to contact Steve Krizman:

Assistant Professor of Journalism and Public Relations at Metropolitan State University of Denver

MSU email: skrizma1@msudenver.edu

303-506-1677

@SteveKrizman

https://www.linkedin.com/in/skrizman
http://www.connectedcommunication.biz/author/steve-krizman/
http://intelligentdemand.com/about-us/team/steve-krizman/ 

Online Communication Methods

By Matthew McBride
Online Communication Methods

There are several different types of online communication methods that can effectively organize conversations and information shared between each team member. Services like these are resources that often do not require you to use several alternate sources of communication, such as email, text messaging, or online document sharing applications such as Google Docs. Instead, these communication apps enable teams to only have to rely on that individual app rather than several. In this blog, we highlight some of the most beneficial online applications and services available to your company.

Communication Applications

Many online applications that used to be popular, such as email or forums, have significantly declined in popularity. Authors and Professors of Psychology Kaveri Subrahmanyam and Patricia Greenfield point out that just because these services can be accessed from various different devices does not mean they are more effective communication strategies. Rather, they are simply conveniences for individuals. Many of these services has become outdated and do not have many utilities to help businesses. Instead, a business can have a massive positive impact by using online communication apps that combine the ideas of instant text messaging and forums (2008). One of the most popular communication apps is known as Slack, which can be accessed on cellular devices, computers and laptops, tablets, and various other electronic devices. Slack combines ideas from two of the most useful and popular communication methods – online forums and instant messaging – into an all-in-one app, featuring message storing, threads based on hashtags you create and more. Through this app, teammates can send messages instantly without having to worry about any of their information being lost. All of the information is stored in the cloud and can be brought up again by a team member for reference. Since the application can be accessed from various devices, it can organize conversations, and allow groups to exclusively use this app without having to rely on multiple sources of communication. Slack is one of the most convenient methods of online communication available. As if this wasn’t great enough, the app is free and comes with 5GB of data storage for the team and 10,000 messages that are archived. Of course, if a team wishes to expand beyond the data limits, they can purchase more data and more accessible tools for a relatively cheap price.

Additional Benefits of Online Communication Applications

1.  Keeps focus on the task at hand
2. Allows groups to use exclusively this app without having to rely on multiple sources of communication
3. Organizes messages and allows members to reference them again in the future
4. Can be connected to several other online applications, if needed.

Team and Workflow Management Tools

Does your company struggle to organize information, such as timelines, group tasks and goals, and budget? If so, online project management tools, such as Asana, are the best solution to this issue. Using multiple different online resources to store this information can cause confusion among teammates and potentially conflict. With the online application Asana, members of a team can track progress of individual and multiple tasks and the productivity of each person in a team. Members can establish group goals and contribute ideas through Asana, which can conveniently be integrated into Slack. People who use this app can cross-index to break multiple tasks into multiple pieces. Individual tasks can be turned into multiple projects, and multiple components of projects can be separated into individual tasks or smaller projects. Since the app can cross-index individual tasks into multiple projects without duplicating the same task multiple times, all information is organized and streamlined.

All in One Collaboration Tools

Many companies decide to use applications that serve as a type of social network for completing projects. While some schools use all-in-one tools like Schoology to connect students through forums, study tools, and individual groups, your workplace may benefit from using an application like Igloo Software. Igloo has blogs, forums, document sharing, organizational charts, and calendars (all of which can be accessed from many virtual devices at any time) to help your company connect its users personally through a digital workplace. It is often difficult for companies to develop strong teams and personal relationships when its online employees never meet face-to-face. However, Igloo Software exists to help online workplaces thrive, create a well-produced product, and connect teammates unlike other online services.