Science and Society

Carolyn Shearsmith, an occupational psychologist at Pearn Kandola and co-author of the report, explains: “Despite the increasing globalisation of companies there is still a significant resistance amongst the old order to virtual teams. They are not seen as productive and this is due to a struggle to communicate effectively.�

Shearsmith recommends that companies strive to put in a level of personal, cognitive trust in how virtual teams relate to one another and this can be driven by the use of videoconferencing.

By comparing the pros and cons of computer-based communication with face-to-face interactions, the report identifies new rules for communicating that will help virtual teams to work together successfully.

Users of electronic communication can take up to four times as long to exchange the same number of messages as communicating face-to-face, the research found, particularly as non-verbal cues can account for up to 63pc of the social meaning within face-to-face exchanges.

Trust can be fragile in virtual teams because of ‘behavioural invisibility’ when teams cannot observe each other, a lack of social interaction and the ‘virtual silence’ caused by not responding to emails and voice messages.

Cultural differences can also become exaggerated within virtual teams. Multicultural teams can take up to 17 weeks to become as effective as teams whose members are of the same culture, Cisco claims.

“Because people aren’t sitting together physically, companies need to put in a set of behavioural guidelines so that everybody can adapt their behaviour,� says Shearsmith.

Karl McDermott of Cisco Ireland says that a key strategy taken by Cisco is the creation of one-stop portals from which virtual teams can work. “Basically, in a single view you can tell what a person’s favourite mode of communication is, whether it’s instant messaging, email, voice over IP, SMS or mobile phone. In terms of people working more flexibly in or away from the office, the portal strategy is a definite plus.�

and later there are some interesting snippets

Duftborg believes that issues like trust and cultural differences need to be mitigated by regular meetings between executives. “While all of us are dependant on email and the internet, it is very obvious to us that we need to meet face to face on a regular basis.

“It is seldom that we are all together at the same time but you can’t rely only on email and the internet, especially as we come from different cultures. This throws up lots of different dimensions to communicating: ‘no’ doesn’t always mean no and ‘yes’ can mean no.

“Knowing people means you have to meet them regularly,� Duftborg synopsises.

Googling the source article let me to this site

with some further insight

The first key point is that teams of people must have trust in order to communicate effectively. But this is a bit of a catch 22 since communication is necessary in order to establish trust. The article points out that companies must facilitate development of effective trust using socialization strategies such as virtual coffee breaks and online chat rooms. Furthermore, the article states that trust building in virtual locations is difficult when people cannot observe the amount of effort or overhear what team members say when they are interacting with others. We have seen online virtual coffee breaks, or other discussions work. But more importantly is the concept of knowing what the other party is doing, and being able to get immediate feedback and validation from others about ideas. Think about being able to chat in real time with a team where half the people are chatting in their second language yet it is possible to have a complete and seamless dialog about ideas.

The next key point is about conflict. I especially like the comments that “spontaneous and clear communications is key to reducing conflict in all teams. This is especially important in virtual teams where there may be more ambiguity about what colleagues are doing�. Once again, we have seen this work for years using Persistent Group Messaging. In fact, we can relate this back to personal experience. Our company is itself geographically dispersed. We have core operations in Chicago yet we have sales, support, and implementation teams in London, Washington DC, New York, and Denver. Furthermore, there was a time at the beginning of our company’s history when we had development teams working out of their homes while we moved offices. During that time we were able to deliver 3 releases of software on-time with no loss of productivity. How? Because we were able to communicate effectively, monitor what each other was doing, and easily resolve conflict through constant and persistent communications.