Global Virtual Team

This is a recent article written by me on Global Virtual Teams and the ways to establish trust, confidence and communication in the team.

Introduction

Last decade has seen rapid penetration of Internet, and innovation led development in long distance communication technologies. This not only has reduced the geographical restrictions in personal and professional life of a person but has enabled the people all over the world to compete, collaborate, share knowledge and share work.

The increasing globalization and integration of businesses has prompted the formation of teams that are diverse, multi-skilled and unbounded to a physical location. Organizations are faced with increasing challenges to coordinate tasks across time zones, physical boundaries, cultures, and organizational contexts. The increasing globalization of trade and corporate activity increases the pressure to innovate and provide quality services to worldwide markets. This has led organizations to choose the most qualified people regardless of their physical location. These remotely connected teams are known as Global Virtual Teams (GVTs). GVTs are different from intra-national virtual teams because they are not only separated by time and space, but differ in national, cultural, and linguistic attributes. Moreover, global team members may differ in their functionality, which adds complexity to group dynamics.

Benefits of Global Virtual Teams

A GVT is beneficial owing to the increased number of options and resources it provides. The present global environment is highly dynamic and an organization needs to adept itself not only with the environment but with the different requirements of its customers also. A GVT enhances the adaptability, flexibility and resource utilization of an organization and that too sometimes at a lower cost. This allows companies to better communicate and coordinate the tasks between geographically separated team members, making it easier to expand internationally and reducing geographical barriers.

A GVT can enhance the flexibility of a given task or project by distributing it to multiple locations. It can provide the solution or service to a problem without actually brining the different experts together.

Almost all the businesses have realized the importance of customer satisfaction and quality of services. A diverse GVT may allow organizations to unify the varying perspectives of different cultures and business customs to avoid ethnic biases. A GVT may respond to the specific and varied needs of customers quickly and effectively.

GVT can also improve resource utilization by leveraging time to their advantage. A team can work asynchronously to bridge different time zones so that it can be more productive during a work period. GVT can also help corporations lower their labor and overhead costs. This can be achieved through reduced travel, accommodations, and other miscellaneous expenses.

GVT has proved beneficial in different types of businesses. Apart from services oriented industries like IT industry, GVT is finding its uses in knowledge sharing also. Recently Newcastle Hospitals NHS Trust, UK has decided to install software to allow doctors to work virtually, to speed up patient care, improve responsiveness and boost productivity. The Trust is deploying Siemens’ HiPath OpenScape communications software to synchronize medical teams in various locations to enable faster decision-making and improved access to patient notes.

Managing and Leading a Global Virtual Teams

In this section, we will discuss the ways in which a GVT can be managed effective and uncertainty can be reduced.

The uncertainties associated with GVT can range from hard issues like unclear objectives and goals to soft issues like employee morale and visibility. Personal interaction and casual conversation limit the comfort level between the team members. Moreover, Non-verbal cues - like body language, tone of voice and a simple glance – are simply missing which are essential to improve the communication and build trust between the team members.

The role of a team leader or facilitator is extremely crucial in the effective working and realization of performance potential of a GVT. Some keys to success of a GVT are –

1. The team members should be self-motivating and self-starters. Many people perform better in the social stimulation of an office. Moreover, young internet savvy generation may perform well in a virtual team because they are used to managing personal and professional relationships using chat or public Web pages (such as My Space or Face Book)

2. Create face value - A small amount of face-to-face contact helps the team members to know one another well. Stanford Graduate School of Business professor Margaret Neale strongly recommends a physical launch when starting work with a virtual team. “An initial in-person meeting not only allows people to interact within the context of the team and the task, it allows them to sit together at lunch and get to know each other,” she says. If the initial virtual meeting is well organized, structured, and conveys a clear goal, the probability of team success will be higher.

3. Set clear goals, common rules and expectations - Goal setting and common rules are crucial in virtual teams because the team members may not discuss the issues face-to-face which make it difficult for team members to maintain a unified purpose. If the team members do not have a clear and shared understanding of organizational goals then they may not achieve their intended purpose. A team needs to understand the organizational goals and then the members of the team should set team goals and assign tasks toward the fulfilling of the goals. Each team member should be clear about his/her individual role in the team.

4. Complementary roles and responsibilities - It is crucial for a virtual team to understand the role and capabilities of all the other team members. Each and every team member must know his or her role, the role of others, and to who they may look for resources and support. A virtual team may not achieve its performance potential if team members don’t know the true capability of one another. Some ground rules are also established in the formation of the group which address responsibilities and tasks; and likewise identify remedies and protocol when individual and group responsibilities are not fulfilled.

5. Managing the meeting – Before the meeting, an agenda should be sent to all the participants and a plan should be made about the discussion. A person who knows all the participants is better equipped to coordinate the meeting and avoid confusion. Moreover, the proceeding should be well documented. At the start of the meeting, some time can be kept for social interactions.

6. Monitoring team progress and reinforcing the stated goals – The team progress and an individual progress should be mapped against the goals stated earlier. This can be facilitated by using technology such as Microsoft Project etc. If an individual or whole team is behind the schedule then the goals should be restated and reinforced to improve the overall performance of the team.

7. Enhance visibility of the team members - When managing a virtual team, a leader must make sure each team member has a clear understanding of her role and, just as important, the roles of her teammates. When a team works in isolation, there is an inhibition in team members whether their contribution is visible enough to provide them good opportunities in future. Sometimes, team members fear that they may lose out on a promotion opportunity because of lack of visibility. A team leader must also take special pains to highlight each individual’s expertise for the rest of the team. It is the responsibility of the team leader to have a good handle on each member’s strengths and experience. During the course of a meeting, he can point out the ‘go to’ person on any particular issue and give people the opportunity to put their expertise on display

8. Timely feedback and performance evaluation - It is important to remember that virtual team members need, and deserve, feedback from team leaders. Virtual team members do not have the benefit of receiving feedback from supervisors or seniors regularly; therefore, special times should be set aside during which team leaders can provide feedback.

The above mentioned steps are not exhaustive or conclusive but some of the uncertainties can be reduced if a team leader or organization follows them.

Building Trust and Relationship

A study by Cisco Systems shows that virtual teams can take up to four times as long to build trust than face-to-face teams. If you throw different cultures into the mix, it can take those virtual teams up to 17 weeks before they bond and perform as well as a team based in one location.

As mentioned earlier, it is difficult to bring the team members of a virtual team together and it directly impacts the relationship between them. The ideal way of building relationships with team members is to spend time together which is not possible in a global virtual team.

A comparative study of a high-trust GVT and low-trust GVT is as follows:

Relationship is developed in a GVT when the team members complement the working of one another on an ongoing basis; and a diverse and multi skilled team is necessary for this purpose. The professional relationship between the team members lead to the development of trust and also results in enhance productivity of the team as a whole. The trust and the positive group behavior enhance the team bonding and it leads to greater trust and ongoing participation.

One way to promote trust is to have smaller groupings and make their tenure together a longer period of time. If the team members know they’ll be working together for a long time they’ll have an incentive to work together and trust each other much more than they otherwise would. Trust can also be built up an initial meeting at the time of team formation (this has been discussed earlier also).

Another important method to enhance the trust is to make the work visible i.e. electronic posting of the work assigned and completed by an individual. This way the team members can see each other’s work and progress at anytime. Posting the work may also help align the team members’ goals and helped them work effectively.

Finally, trust evolves with time. It starts mostly based on one’s trustworthiness while there is little knowledge and a weak structure. It then evolves to some combined balance of trust and structure as members acquire more knowledge of each other, the team’s goals, norms, etc.

Culture

Cultural differences add value and diversity to a GVT. Diversity here refers to ethnic or regional diversity and not to the functional diversity. Diversity helps a team to reduce the occurrence of "groupthink" and allows a team to make better and more creative decisions. It also helps to provide specific and quality service to the customers who may have different requirements depending on ethnicity or culture.

However the advantages of a diverse team come at a cost – a team may not jell well owing to language barriers, or cultural reasons. Cultural differences may lead to problems and if the differences aren’t addressed and understood, it is very easy to dismiss or come to distrust a virtual colleague. If culture is not understood then a team may not present itself to the customer as well. Cultural differences may range from types of culture (high context and low context), ascent, ethnicity, religion etc.

High context and Low context culture may lead to confusion between the team members or between team and the customer. For example, Asians, South Americans and Middle Easterners are high context cultures and these people do not express their feelings and thoughts explicitly, and naturally they think low context cultures are too talkative and obvious. At the same time, people from low context cultures - Americans and most Europeans - are much more open and direct and think that colleagues in high context cultures are sneaky and mysterious.

Difference in ascent of Americans and Asians may lead to confusion and delays in the tasks. Moreover, delivery speed of Asians is greater than that of the Americans and it may also add to the delay.

A good way to approach cultural differences is to learn as much as possible about the culture. This may include sessions with knowledgeable people or special training sessions about the culture of a region or country.

Effective Communication

Communication can be improved by following the processes, rules and with the help of technology. The following rules and methods can be used to improve the communication –

• Meeting agenda before the meeting should be send
• Visual interaction, common message board and visual aids can be used using technologies like video conferencing, web conferencing and WebEx
• A person or a team leader who is known to every one can coordinate the discussion
• Understand and be aware of cultural differences in praise and criticism
• Speak slowly and clearly, use a higher tone of voice, avoid slang, jargons and colloquialisms, keep words and sentences short and confirm understanding through repetition and by asking questions
• Avoid humor, irony, and metaphors as these usually don’t translate well and may be offensive
• Understand that silence, referred to as the most concerning behavior, may not reflect a lack of interest but may simply represent time needed to think or just wait for a formal invitation to participate
• Collaborative software and techniques like email, virtual chatting, calendaring, file sharing, faxes, voice mail, data conferencing, etc. can be used.

Conclusion

Global Virtual Team is a necessity for an organization that strives for providing quality services to the customers spread over wide locations. There are a lot of advantages with a GVT but there are a lot of challenges too. The challenges range from cultural differences to trust between the team members. The challenges can be addressed to a certain extent by following certain set of rules and procedures and by enhancing trust between the team members.