- Supportive, accessible and coaching leadership.
- An organizational or team culture of empowerment and collaboration.
- An appropriate and viable structure and operational process suited to the task and team members.
- Ownership of the assigned job coupled with accountability, responsibility and decisive decision-making.
- Consistent, reliable, and ongoing communication, knowledge sharing and networking.
- Reliable technology, and appropriate , creatively designed information and communication systems
- A progress monitoring, team assessment and realignment process.
While electronic information and communication systems have eliminated distance and time frames, it has not been able to eliminate the "feel of distance." Like many of you may be experiencing, employees still desire to "see faces" and "hear voices," if it is impossible to be in the same room. But, face-to-face (F2F) meetings are becoming less the norm, because of geographical separation of team members and cost. So, F2F interaction must be used strategically, when it it is most beneficial to the teams task, or when it will enable the team to avert or handle a crisis that would be detrimental to the project.
Another solution is working on devising technologies that enable more "social capital" to be integrated into the virtual work environment. Companies like Cisco are developing digital tools, like the telepresence system, to enable "person-to-person" interaction and create community in a virtual work environment.
A key function of the leader of a virtual team is to establish a team culture and operational process that create:
- Rapport, respect, and trust among team members.
- Commitment to the assigned task, and dedication to the team's success.
- Consistent, effective dialogue and productive working relationships.
- Self-management of personal assigned tasks, plus joint responsibility for team networking relationships.
- Team identity, motivation, spirit, and camaraderie.
- Innovation, experimentation, and risk-taking.
- Community among team members.
A team must become a unit, a collective not functioning as individuals, but as a unified group with a common vision, goal, and task. It must become a spirited group where each member is focused on and committed to the success of the team as a whole, and dedicated to each team member. In a team, it is not about individual achievement, but the accomplishment of the team.
Further, each member must feel that (s)he is:
- Valued and treated with dignity.
- Safe.
- Contributing.
- Allowed to used his/her expertise and challenged to do his/her best.
- Rewarded equitably for making a contribution.
In light of these needs, let's look closer at the dynamics of telepresence and virtual community. Such a discussion can aid leaders and virtual team members construct effective information and communication systems, plus team networking processes.
To begin, daily existence has become less focused on face-to-face presence, giving way to a sense of telepresence.
Our network connections are becoming as important to us as our bodily locations….We are entering an era of electronically extended bodies living at the intersection of the physical and virtual worlds, of occupation and intersection through telepresence as well as through physical presence, of mutant architectural forms that emerge from the telecommunications-induced fragmentation and recombination of traditional architectural types, and of new soft cities that parallel, complement, and sometimes compete with our existing urban concentrations of brick, concrete, and steel. (Mitchell, 1999, pp. 166-167).
It is becoming standard for many forms of interpersonal gatherings in online environments to utilize "instant messaging," "live chats" and "blogging." Then there are social portals like My Space. Social networking portals connect "people based upon data about them, stored in user profiles” (Neuman, et al., 2005, p. 473). In virtual working and socializing the focus of interaction is not on place but on to access. The concern is not on locating a common space in which to meet, but on identifying a mutually available method of connection.
This entails a shift from experiencing through physically seeing and encountering to experiencing through mentally connecting and imagining.
In Connecting: How We Form Social Bonds and Communities in the Internet Age, Chayko (2002) points out that virtual relationships, teams and communities are human associations, acquaintances, and deep partnerships made at a distance, a phenomenon that has occurred in some form since the dawn of human civilization. Such connections are “mind relationships” rooted in sociomental bonds between two or more people. While some are still skeptical, they are considered authentic relationships and communities which can entail mere superficial acquaintances or extremely intimate partnerships. George and Sleeth (2000), noting the importance of copresence; i.e., the knowledge of others, add that in these forms of relationships and community it is important to understand that communication shifts from being a “simple transfer of information towards that of a process among a set of actors” who have distinct behaviors and relationships that are embedded in a network existing in society or an organization (p. 294).
Online social networks and virtual communities; i.e.. collectives connected through the Internet and others forms of information and communication technology (ICT), are a common part of today's society. They are reshaping how organizations are structured, the workplace is configured, communication takes place, and information processed and knowledge created.
Though getting together and socializing is an intrinsic human need in the workplace, with overbooked work lives, long lists of job duties, stressful work responsibilities, information overload, etc., workers have less time to meet in physical group meetings.
Further, with a workforce spread out though out the world, and it being too costly to routinely gather all team members, or department staffs, in one location, workers are adapting to working in virtual work relationships and electronic networks. They are creating and becoming use to virtual mentoring partnerships and online communities of practice.
Wellman (2005) points out that the notion of community has shifted from being defined by “neighborhoods” to “networks;” i.e., they have changed from being identified with “door-to-door” and “place-to-place” relationships, to “person-to-person” connections. ICT allows communities, “networks of interpersonal ties that provide sociability, support, information, a sense of belonging, and social identity” (p. 53) to take shape with little regard for the geographical distance between members. This makes them “person-based” not “placed-based.”
A clear notion of virtual community is still being hammered out. Some understand such gatherings and relationships as “the experience of sharing with others a space of communication.” Rheingold (2000) characterizes virtual communities as “social aggregations that emerge from the Net when enough people carry on those public discussions long enough, with sufficient human feeling, to form webs of personal relationships in cyberspace”(p. xx), and can “help citizens revitalize democracy” or lure them “into an attractively packaged substitute for democratic discourse” (p. 295). Flavian and Guinaliu (2005), add that virtual communities are virtual places where people share experiences, knowledge, and resources, and carry out economic transactions (p. 407).
This notion of digital self-organizing is at the heart of today's dispersed organization, telework workplace, and virtual team. It is what allows a locally or globally dispersed business structure to be conceived, and successfully function. Time and place are eliminated as barriers, opening up the organization to being able to use global time—24 hours in a day—and global human resources—world-wide workforce—to its advantage.
Virtual teams can be strategic business tools to aid in gaining competitive advantage (Krieger and Muller, 2003), or valued communities of practice (Wenger, McDermott, and Synder, 2002) that generate knowledge in the organization’s culture. There are long-standing and short-term virtual teams. (Lipnack and Stamps, 2000). These latter forms of community and networking are key means of creating organizational spirit, learning partnerships, workforce morale, and social capital.
Key to them all is consistent, supportive leadership that builds identity, empowers and coaches.
So, how are you applying these concepts in your project teams?
- How is your team overcoming the "feel of distance" and the "lack of high touch interaction"?
- How are you building effective self-management and community spirit in a virtual environment?
- How is the leader enabling each team member to feel part of the team, be recognized as a contributing member, feel motivated, and take responsibility for the team's success?
- How is each person enabling each team member feel respected and valued?
Chuck Piazza
References.
Chayko, M. (2002). Connecting: How we form social bonds and communities in the Internet
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Flavian, C. & Guinaliu, M. (2005). The Influence of Virtual Communities on Distribution
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George, G. & Sleeth, R. (2000). Leadership in Computer-Mediated Communication:
Implications and Research Directions. Journal of Business and Psychology, 15(2),
287-310.
Krieger, B. & Muller, P. (2003). Making Internet Communities Work: Reflections on an
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Lipnack, J., & Stamps, J. (2000). Virtual teams: People working across boundaries with
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Mitchell, W. J. (1999). City of bits: space, place and the Infobahn. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Neuman, M., O’Murchu, Breslin, J., Decker, S., Hogan, D., & MacDonaill, C. (2005). Semantic
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Wenger, E., McDermott, R. & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice:
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