corporate culture Archives

Virtual teams’ management requires leadership to use people skills and communication technology to build trust, teamwork and relationships.

Leaders want to know the “tricks” to managing virtual teams. We want better tools, systems, and processes that will take groups of people spread around the country, or even the world, and transform them into well-oiled high-performing teams. Here’s the secret: There are no tricks or shortcuts to building a team (virtual or otherwise). Even with the best processes and technology, virtual teams are still made up of people who need to build relationships, create trust, and collaborate to be a successful team. I know the blog title was a little misleading (a clickbait and switch), but now that you’re here, let’s move beyond the illusion of “tricks” to real people-focused ways to address virtual challenges: build relationships, communicate as human beings, and optimize time together.

Build Relationships

We may respect titles or acquiesce to hierarchy, but we build a relationship with a person, the whole person. We’re often encouraged to separate our personal life from our work life, which is a lot like asking us to cut off our right arm to fit through the office door (and I don’t type well one-handed). When we bring our whole self and connect with someone else as a whole person, we find more in common, build better connections, and increase trust. As virtual teams, we don’t bump into each other in the halls, or at the coffeemaker, to help us build these connections more casually. Our interactions are more limited and more formal, occurring mostly during meetings and…well…more meetings.

In a virtual team, we have to create opportunities to make more informal connections. It sounds ridiculous to work that hard to create “natural” interactions, but when we don’t plan and protect this time, our attention will be hijacked by some fire-of-the-moment, and what’s “urgent” will consume what’s “important.” So, how do we purposefully create opportunities for connection?

Use Existing Meetings

Carve out time at the beginning of team meetings to connect as human beings: share what we did over the weekend, discuss a favorite hobby, or talk about anything other than work. We can also use virtual meeting tools to create smaller breakout groups for more intimate interactions, and then come back together to share important points or a new tidbit we learned about a teammate.

Create Virtual Cafes

Meet 1:1 or in small groups for an online coffee break or happy hour. –Even if we work in different time zones, it’s 5 o’clock somewhere.

We need to build in those human moments to stay connected even when we’re thousands of miles apart.

Communicate as Human Beings

Continuous communication over technology does not mean communication is clear or effective. It just provides a digital trail to prove messages were sent. I won’t call out specific tools because I might get sued, but you know the ones. The tools that allow us to constantly ping each other with emails, instant messages (IM), texts, etc. What we often forget is that even when we use these tools, we still need to communicate with the brains of human beings. Ongoing distractions interrupt our concentration, limit our focus, and reduce productivity. We need to use the right tools in the right way:

Email

Email is best used to confirm information (that has already been discussed), and share information that is clear, concise, and not inflammatory. To make emails more effective try some of the following: Use the subject line as part of the message– “FYI,” “Response Requested,” “Action Required” or even “Action Required. Otherwise, will send X by Y date.” (That last one usually gets a response. Whether or not it’s a “good” response, depends on your audience). Call attention to due dates in emails by putting them in red. Keep emails short and summarize key points. Short emails take more time to write, but long emails take more time to read. So, if we want emails read, we should keep them short.

The above examples are focused more on US corporate cultures. We may need to adjust our approach to the team, company, or country cultures in which we operate. Regardless of the approach, our goal is to be effective.

IM

IM is good for a quick back and forth chat or to align schedules for a meeting. When either email or IM goes on too long, stop the thread. Summarize the text and identify next steps, or jump on a video conference to discuss.

Video

Video is better than both email and IM when we want to communicate more complex ideas. Only about 25% of communication is made up of the words we use. The rest is tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language. That means text-based tools leave out 75% of our communication. So, we shouldn’t be surprised when our meaning isn’t always clear.

Unplug

Technology tools are not just about sending information, but managing how and when we receive it. To improve our focus, we can block time on the calendar to turn off our email, IM, and phone. The book “Deep Work: Rules for Focused Success in a Distracted World” by Cal Newport offers great insights and tips to help us improve our concentration and get work done. If you are really struggling to focus, then stop reading this post, and go read Cal Newport’s book instead.

We can’t let technology dictate how we communicate. We need to use the tools in ways that will improve our communication. When we assume communication has been read and understood just because we click “Send,” that’s when things fall through the cracks (and often fall apart).

Optimize Time Together

The goal is to meet in person as often as schedules, pandemics, and fuel prices allow. Once face-to-face, we don’t want to squander our time, squeezing too much content into back-to-back meetings or doing work we could have done remotely. We want to use this precious in-person time to connect with each other and build stronger relationships. Of course, work has to get done, but spending time on people is also essential. When we know and trust each other, communication is easier, collaboration is more effective, and our work will be more productive long after the in-person meeting is over.

No Shortcuts to Building Teams

There are no magic “tricks” to leading virtual teams. Virtual or not, we work with people, and that requires focus, communication, and intentionally building relationships. When we align our approach with how people “work” (inside and out), our communication and collaboration will be more successful. No tricks required.

Fast-growing companies want to quickly hire and onboard people who are not only smart and capable but also a good “culture fit” for the organization. The question is, what does “culture fit” mean, and how do we communicate company culture in a way that is both clear and tangible?

Define the Culture

Company cultures have been described as “the way things get done around here” or “the water in which we swim.” Neither of which are particularly helpful when talking with applicants or onboarding new employees as they dive into the deep end. Leaders must explicitly define and set expectations for the company culture they want to create.

One of the key ways to communicate company culture is through a company’s vision, mission, and values. Unfortunately, some companies create lengthy vision and mission statements or have a list of core values a mile long. The result? None of it is useful. These cultural artifacts may be displayed on a website or flashed across a screen during meetings, but often people don’t even know where to find them, let alone how to embody them. Three things must be true to communicate culture effectively: Head-Heart-Hands.

Head – Are the vision, mission, and values so clear and concise people can easily explain them off the top of their head? Our brains haven’t changed in thousands of years. We may have a vast amount of storage space, but we have a very small working memory to process and retrieve information. Why is that important? If we can’t easily remember the vision, mission, and values of our company, then it’s unlikely they will influence our behavior.

Heart – Are the vision, mission, and values inspiring? People want to feel motivated by the purpose of the organization and connected to the values. They want to feel energized by the vision for their future and proud to belong to a successful work community.

Hands – Are the vision, mission, and values actionable? Culture is not just an idea. Culture flows through people’s “hands” in the actions they take, the work they do, and the relationships they build.

We must be able to know the culture in our Head, so it can inspire our Hearts, and be delivered through our Hands. Through this integration we connect with culture as a whole person, and this connection distinguishes true commitment from passive compliance. True commitment means we authentically give our time, attention, and talent to achieve results, and those results are aligned with the company culture we aspire to create.

Explicit communication about mission, vision, and values is important, but it is not sufficient in how we communicate culture. As the old saying goes, people may pay attention to what we say, but they are far more likely to pay attention to what we do.

Live the Culture

Anyone can slap words on a wall and call them values. Organizations have “espoused values” (what they say their values are), and they have “values in practice” (the values they live day in and day out). How closely aligned an organization’s espoused values are with the values in practice is a measure of cultural integrity, and it is palpable in “the way things get done around here.”

Leaders must actively seek feedback about where organizational values are aligned and where there are gaps. This takes courage and candor, both from the leadership who ask the questions and the people who provide feedback. Creating a culture of courage and candor is the topic for another blog post (and many, many leadership books). We can start by asking a few simple questions:

“What are examples of how we live our values?”
“What are examples of how we are not living our values?”
“What is at least one thing we could do differently to close that gap?”

If we really want ongoing honest feedback, we must do at least three things:

Create Safety – People must feel safe providing honest feedback. Some leaders have created trust and safety among their teams. However, even more leaders think people feel safe when they don’t. Rather than assume everyone feels safe, assume everyone does not feel safe, and solicit feedback accordingly. One of the easiest ways to solicit “safe” feedback is through a brief, anonymous survey with open-ended questions like the ones above. Surveys are not a perfect mechanism for feedback, but they’re a start.

Acknowledge Input – Acknowledge people’s feedback and summarize the resulting themes. This helps people feel heard and connect the dots between their input and the feedback from the overall team or organization.

Take Action – The only thing worse than not soliciting feedback is soliciting feedback and not acting on it. Sometimes the actions we need to take are clear. Other times, we may not know how to solve a problem, and we have to ask for help. It’s not about finding a “perfect” solution. It’s about taking action to experiment and try new things, so people see that we genuinely want to live the values we espouse.

Grow the Company Culture

As companies grow, the culture naturally changes. The core values are still fundamental, but the diversity of perspectives and how those values are lived will grow and expand. Like an acorn that grows into a towering oak tree, values are the seed that will guide authentic growth. So, how do we grow a culture as we scale a company? One of the best ways to grow and keep people connected to the culture is to encourage stories about how people are living the values.

Human beings are natural storytellers. We have passed on knowledge and understanding through stories for generations, especially knowledge that may be difficult to define, such as culture. Encourage people to tell their stories about how they are living the values, how they see others living the values, and the impact these experiences have on them, both large and small. Integrate a diverse range of voices into what the values mean to different people. Diversity of thinking and perspectives is critical to creating a strong, sustainable culture and overall organization.

Culture is not just something that happens around us, it is something that connects us and becomes a part of us. As a result, the way a company culture is most effectively communicated is not through slides in a presentation or a list of values on a wall. The most effective way to communicate culture is through the thoughts, actions, and experiences of the people living it.

Tag: corporate culture

Three Tricks to Managing Virtual Teams