A Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams

Yael Zofi: That's an interesting question because actually in gathering information for my book I interviewed over 150 virtual team members and virtual managers, and when I started to do the interviews I thought everybody knew what virtual teams were but there was no one consistent definition, everybody had various definitions. My definition is very simple; a virtual team could be somebody that's working across the street, across the hall or on the other side of the world. Its team members who are working together, but there's still that common purpose element, working together on goals, but they're physically apart. So the traditional definition of teams applies here, but the key difference is they're working together while physically apart.

Rachel Salaman: And how common are virtual teams today?

Yael Zofi: Very common and actually growing in numbers. There's various studies that show different percentages in the city that we did on virtual teams. The numbers were 70 percent and growing, I actually think that number is much higher. They bring a lot of possibilities in terms of talent, in terms of location. These days companies are very much about getting talent where it's necessary, saving money, bringing people quickly to solve a problem, so virtual work can occur anywhere at any time. So there's pros and cons to it, but the numbers are definitely growing and I think we're seeing a real shift in how managing and leading and working virtually is becoming globally.

Rachel Salaman: And what kinds of challenges do virtual teams face because of their virtual nature?

Yael Zofi: Right, technological challenges, those are actually changing as technology improves. There is speed and time zones, cross-cultural challenges, sometimes there's language differences, and I refer to the scene in Lost in Translation, even if we all speak English we may be speaking different kinds of English. Running meetings and working anywhere, anytime, has its advantages, it also has some of the challenges of social isolation or feeling like 'I'm by myself' or finding it difficult to establish team spirit and motivate people or building trust when there is that distance. There's also greater risk of misinterpretation or misunderstanding occurring. You know, when you and I are in person it's much easier to understand the context and what's going on and what your desk looks like and how your day is, when we're not there could be a greater chance for misunderstanding and feeling less connected.

Rachel Salaman: Your book is full of really practical tips to help managers, from setting up a virtual team to ensuring its ongoing effectiveness. If we can start at the beginning of that process, what should managers look for when they're selecting the members of their virtual team?

Yael Zofi: Sure, a couple of things in terms of setting up the team. One of the interesting things about virtual teams is often times they're formed very quickly to solve a problem or bring some subject matter experts together, and the whole set of processes is skipped because they're expected to... you know, "Hey, a bunch of smart people put together, let's solve our problem. We don't need ramp up time, we can just go do it." So often the problems come later if a team wasn't properly set up. When a manager has the luxury, because sometimes they don't, sometimes the team is formed and the project manager or the leader, even the team members, are just told "This is your team and now you need to make it work," but when it's possible to select team members or even select new team members there are different opinions, but according to my work and a lot of the work I've done over the years with virtual teams it's very important to keep in mind a couple of really good qualities for team members.

A starter for one, somebody who is adaptable to change, comfortable with autonomy, able to deliver on time, can work on some complex problems and technical issues, enjoys being involved with team projects and has interpersonal skills to build the relationships with others, and can share knowledge and ideas. What was interesting is that you'd think that somebody who is more of an introvert or somebody who prefers to work alone is a better team member in a virtual environment, because they would be more comfortable being on their own or working in a situation where they may not have as much interaction. On the contrary actually, a lot more of the research shows that those who prefer to work with others, more of the extroverts, seem to be effective as virtual team members because they... and actually a lot of the managers, most of the managers I interviewed, they prefer team members who enjoy initiating, who seek to communicate, to reach out when there's a problem. So that's why I found more that the extroverted personality is a desirable quality. That doesn't mean that if somebody is an introvert they won't be successful, they can be extremely successful in the virtual environment. They would need to make some steps or have a team process for making sure that they communicate and let others know what they're up to, because it's very easy to get lost in the virtual environment so you need to initiate.

Rachel Salaman: And you talk about the importance of developing a Team Charter, can you explain what that is and why it's important?

Yael Zofi: Yeah. I compare setting up a virtual team to taking a road trip. When you think about taking a road trip, what do you need to do? You want to think about what is our goal, our destination, you want to consider who comes along for the ride, which is what we talked about, what are the qualities to look for in team members, and follow the rules of the road. The Team Charter in particular is one of the most important activities in the early phases of team development because it's almost like the credo for "Here's our vision, here's our goal, here's our operational... it's not the plan but it's our operational building blocks, our road blocks; these would be the principles that we want to operate in." Then the Team Charter kind of lets the team know, what are the rules, what are the resources, how do we want to identify or acknowledge progress, how do we want to check or when do we want to check, and it outlines somewhat the sponsorships, the support and the direction; almost like sets up the course for how you want to operate your team. The purpose of doing a Team Charter could be a collaborative approach that the whole team throws together in the early phases of its development, so we all have input into it, and then its posted somewhere; could be posted in a shared drive or a shared space so that as new members come into the team they know what the Team Charter is, what's the direction, what's the goal, what's the outline. So everybody has more clarity and they don't have to make assumptions for how the team needs to operate, they have some clarity about 'Here's the main objectives, here are the main goals, and this is how the team is oriented'.

Rachel Salaman: And it's different from Team Codes, which you also talk about?

Yael Zofi: Team Code is a little different, Team Code and Team Charter, they go together, they don't have to be separate. Team Code is the Code of Conduct, that has to be more the communications – what is our Code, how do we want to communicate, what's the response time on an email; if you send me an email should I respond to it within 12 hours, within 24? What is the acceptable and unacceptable behavior that guide this team? And you'd think some of these are common sense, and they really are, but sometimes, often times actually, a lot of the misunderstandings and miscommunications occur because a team doesn't have an etiquette, a Code, protocol for participation, for communication, and so people operate the way they think or the way they used to from the previous team they worked on. I often recommend, you know, take it out for a test drive, set it up, create it, trying it out for a few months, and whatever doesn't work, change it. So if our team meetings are not running as smoothly and some people have to get up extremely early and other people are staying up very late, doesn't make sense to rotate the team meeting? Maybe it does, maybe we need to re-look at that Code and say "What do we agree as a team? How do we do that? What roles are people going to take?" So a Team Code can be and should be probably more closely evaluated and tried out for a little while.

Rachel Salaman: It's interesting that you say in the book that as a rule of thumb you think that people should pick up the phone rather than write an email within a virtual team. How important do you think documenting communication is, because often email is a way of creating a paper trail isn't it?

Yael Zofi: Yes. Actually the rule of thumb of picking up the phone was something that was various and a number of managers and team members I interviewed for the book said, they said "When in doubt, pick up the phone', and they also said, in terms of communication, the possibility for misunderstanding, several people said to me 'When in doubt I pick up the phone." Email is very effective for collecting information, informing, for working with team members that here at night might be their morning and vice versa, and documenting a paper trail and making sure that it's a decision paper trail or informational paper trail and that helps to lead to a decision and conversation. You still need to do the brainstorming, you still might need to connect with a person, whether on the phone or via video. The thing is, when in doubt pick up the phone, it's a very simple concept. If you think about we're very familiar with the phone, the phone has been around since the 1800s and people are familiar with it, and so the tone on the phone can give us an additional context communication cue. So you can tell if I'm talking and I'm smiling here right now, and you can tell by voice or tone, my tone, whether I'm awake, tired, listening, engaged. So it doesn't give the face-to-face interaction, but many people are pretty comfortable at this point with telephone conversations.

With email, with the time lag, sometimes that could create misunderstanding or people could read into the conversation. What was interesting with email during my research and my work with the virtual teams, when working across cultures email is very effective for various cultures where English is not their first language, because sometimes having that extra time to reflect or even communicate via email is easier because they can respond, they can take their time, they can clarify, they're not put on the spot, because some cultures are not comfortable with a conference call, particularly with different levels in the organization, with somebody they perceive as a manager or decision maker, they may not feel comfortable speaking up. So email serves as a wonderful tool, and the key is the combination and what's the combination that works best for your team.

The third element which I call... you know, so there's written, there's voice, and there's a virtual in-person. The virtual in-person I call anything that could be caught on video, and that's anything from the simple video capabilities of a video camera and Skype, to more interesting capabilities like Second Life and a virtual avatar type of thing, which is quite interesting work that's going on, it's been going on for a while. What was interesting, and I'm still kind of interested about what's going to happen in the next decade or so, the adaptation of video is something that many people are resisting, and I had several people I interviewed say things like "Well I don't want people to see what I'm wearing" or "I don't want people to see what I'm doing while I'm on the call with them." Video, there's some resistance to that, but I think it's also not as common yet, but I think that might be changing in the next 10 years so we'll have to see.

Rachel Salaman: And you mentioned conference calls a few times and obviously they happen quite a lot I would think in virtual teams. What are some of your top tips for conference calls?

Yael Zofi: The interesting thing with a conference call is making sure whether it's weekly or daily, and also understanding the purpose of the call; some calls are for information sharing, some calls are for updates. The key is to make sure that this is a good experience for everyone, so they don't describe it as pointless or a nightmare or tedious or running from one call to the other. So some of the good techniques of setting up conference calls, I actually offer ten in the book, and then I give all kinds of different stories with different types of personalities and challenges in the virtual environment, but the first thing is select a facilitator that can keep things moving. This facilitator does not have to be the manager or the leader, it can be somebody that's skilled at facilitating, could be a team member, could be a role that's rotated. When possible try to distribute an agenda beforehand, and it doesn't have to be fancy, it can be sent very quickly, not even as an attachment, just inside the email, 'Here are the five things we want to review' or whatever it necessary. So always there's a business reason, what's the agenda.

It's good to identify things up front, even if you did it in the agenda just a quick 15 second "Welcome everybody," identify the objectives, have ground rules in place at the beginning of your call for saying hello, how people introduce themselves, saying your name each time you speak, how to use your mute button. The fifth technique is give feedback to participants, what they did well, what they need to shift focus; be aware of who your participants are, of course, so it may not make sense to do it in the call itself, maybe after the call. Number six is ensure everybody is treated with respect, even if their ideas might be different, or criticizing folks on the call or letting somebody dominate the air time and is going to drill the conversation. Often times, when I actually run a workshop, I do a webinar in managing virtual team meetings, that's the number one question I get: how do I handle a dominating person. If you believe that discussion is going off track, intervene if you need to, and if you have the ground rules up front then it's easy to do that because then you can say 'Thank you for making this point, let's note it, but since it's not part of today's agenda let's put it on the side and we will come back to it later', and do it in a professional, nice way.

The eighth technique is maximizing everybody's input, of course try to get everybody involved, make sure that everybody has an interactive experience, so they don't mute the phone and multitask and forget about the call, there's actually a role for them. Stay on time; it's amazing how many calls people drop off within the last 10 minutes, or they go over and people have to run to the next piece, and usually it's the last few minutes that a lot of decisions happen. Number ten is evaluate; so you're constantly evaluating as you're conducting, this is precious time, use it wisely. Did we resolve what we needed, did we brainstorm, did we make a decision, was everybody's time well spent, how can we do this more effectively?

Rachel Salaman: You mentioned earlier how important relationships are in virtual teams, and you talk about trying to create a virtual water cooler to encourage people to get to know each other. How can you actually do that in practical terms?

Yael Zofi: Yes, this one is just to create some fun, create some history, create the conditions that if we were working in an office and we would walk to the water cooler or the cafe, some way to replicate some of that environment of interaction, where people could meet each other in break rooms or chat near the coffee machine or celebrate birthdays. So we don't have the luxury of face time, but you can still simulate some of these creative gatherings to connect your team members to you and to each other. So there's various suggestions offered in the book, and I can't take all the credit because some of them were just best practices that some very fun, enjoyable, exciting virtual teams do. For example, one team had a kick-off conference called Virtual Party, a welcome party; people could share a quote or a motto or find what's your common ground, what's your common thread before the meeting. You can set up a "get to know each other" virtual gathering, I've known of teams that do virtual happy hour. One team I worked with did virtual birthdays, every time it was a team member's birthday everybody got a box, the team member whose birthday it was got a little bit of a bigger box, and they all opened it at the same time during the team meeting. Some teams do things like not just always having the team meeting with everybody, they assign break buddies who can chat with each other during the break or share a brainstorm.

A lot of food going on, that's also for getting a team spirit, a lot, several teams actually that I spoke to, one in particular, they did a virtual team recipe exchange globally, and they had team members in Australia, in Asia, in the US, in the UK and Israel, four different time zones, and what they did was everybody exchanged a recipe with each other and they had to cook or make that recipe, and then get on the call and eat that food while they're on the call and comment about it.

So those types of interactions are very creative but they're very simple ways to create this team spirit or sort of replicate that in-person interaction, build the story, make your team stronger, get people to feel connected, and then when they meet in person, obviously if you do get a chance, and it is one of the recommended best practices to at least try to meet once a year in person, those precious moments are important moments to really connect your team. So one team when they met in person in San Francisco did a boat trip, and that half hour, hour that they were on the boat was a real bonding time for this team and they still talk about it. So it's those bonding moments that connected team members on a human level, and that's really important when you're working virtually because then when you and I talk next time we have a shared experience, and that shared experience grows into a relationship, and that relationship grows into an understanding and that builds into trust. So at the human level we still connect to each other via relationships, whether they're in person or virtual.

Rachel Salaman: You touched on trust there and in your book you talk a lot about the importance of trust and accountability. First, how do those two things relate to each other, accountability and trust, in a virtual team?

Yael Zofi: Accountability is what connects trust. There is a model that I use, I've used this for many years, which is the wheel of trust model. There are four elements that build trust in the virtual environment, and accountability is like the spokes of the wheel and it connects it all. You know, if you're accountable, if you're going to do what you say, then I'm going to start to trust you. You know, if you're going to follow through in your deliverables, if you're going to bring information in, if things are falling behind you let me know. So trust is interesting because virtually there's something called "instant trust"; I will instantly trust you but it will instantly also break if you don't demonstrate accountability.

Rachel Salaman: You say in the book that it's useful to recognize cultural differences in virtual teams, but when you're doing that how can you avoid stereotyping?

Yael Zofi: When team members are assembled and they're from diverse cultures, there are some cultural traits that are differentiated, but the truth is they're more similar than different. I used to do an exercise when I taught at NYU, New York University, I used to call it The Pepper Pot Soup Exercise. So it was like a soup, if you cut different vegetables in a soup and you put them all together, they're different but they create this amazing, wonderful, tasty soup. So the idea of class-cultural communication is bringing a group of people together who are at the onset or maybe at face value very different, and there might be some cultural disconnects going on because they lack that informal communication or there's difference in perception or status or how they interpret various elements, but the truth is there are various ways that teams can actually enable and develop stronger bonds because of cross-cultural communications.

I define these into five clusters, and those are mindset, persona, orientation, structure and process. So when you're working in the virtual environment across different cultures, it's finding out what the underlying assumptions, beliefs, attitudes about the world that make sense to that culture, and it's out of curiosity and the desire to learn, which is actually the five letter acronym that I use in my cross-cultural work, L-E-A-R-N. The first one is listen, just stop and listen to that culture, take it in, kind of like if a plane would take me and land anywhere in the world, then I'd walk out of the plane; what's the first thing I want to do? I just want to look around and listen, take in the environment, get a sense of what's going on. The next piece is effectively communicate and responding and building on ideas. The third is avoiding ambiguity, which has to do with creating a safe environment that creates participation.

The fourth is respecting differences, and that's really what I find in a lot of my work with various teams and cultures, and particularly when there's misunderstanding; they want respect or they want to be understood. So it's not necessarily stereotyping when you say "Well in this culture this is a high context culture, a low context culture. This culture is more focused on relationship first, business second." These are not necessarily stereotypes, it doesn't mean everybody is like that, but it could help to understand how they engage. So suspend your judgment, and that's tough, but I approach cross-cultural learning as like "What can I learn about this person, what's unique about their background?" I mean, they're made up of all these other layers, part of it is a cross-cultural layer, which in the virtual environment is a whole new way of operating, and it's challenging for virtual managers because this one is not as easy to grasp sometimes, it's not as easy to say "Here are the five things you can do, if you do this you'll be fine," this one is a learning process.

Rachel Salaman: At the end of your book you share some thoughts on the future of virtual teams, how do you see this phenomenon developing, and with what impact?

Yael Zofi: I see virtual teams definitely increasing. I think that our conversation now in about 10 years will be common and probably the new way of work for almost everybody. Already it's happening where people are working in the virtual environment, and even if they're not working in a virtual team, if you think about it, we do a lot of things online, we work with people every day we don't see. We do online banking, we do online shopping, even in our private lives. I hardly go to the supermarket any more, I buy many things online, I don't even like to go to a store any more if I don't have time. So not just virtual work, virtual teams, it's also the nature of how we operate as human beings. So I do share quite a bit of my thoughts about the trend of global leadership and virtual leadership, and it's a concept that's actually the concept I started with about 10-12 years ago at the turn of the Y2K, remember? That's when I got to work with a lot of virtual teams, even if we didn't call them virtual teams back then, with the number changing and the computers crashing, and of course they didn't and we're all still here, but a lot of the virtual teams, especially in technology, were working through these challenges. So I came up with this concept and it bubbled in my head and it sort of became something I was writing about a bit, which is the role of leaders in the 21st century and the role of leadership is no longer managing change, it's really managing connection. How do you become the agent of connection, how do you enable the human connection, because technology is going to change how we operate and it is changing how we operate? So we still have to be the keepers of the flame and enable the human connection.

So there are seven dimensions of global leadership that came up again and again, and that's what I was exploring, and actually that's where I started in the world of virtual teams. I think and what I see virtual teams are on the rise, the generation that's incoming into the workforce is more comfortable working virtually, with a lot of social media and digital media becoming common to the teenagers and the college students. Even my book is still a physical book but is available virtually on Kindle Edition and various other things, and maybe if I write this book in 10 years there wouldn't be a physical book. So virtual work is definitely on the rise, and the future is very important, and there are some key elements of leading virtual teams, whether you're the actual manager or leader or even managing at the individual level where there's a mindset shift, an openness and engagement and attitude that will enable connection in a virtual world.

Rachel Salaman: Yael Zofi, thank you very much for joining us.

Yael Zofi: You're welcome. Thank you.

Rachel Salaman: The name of Yael's book again is "A Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams." I'll be back in a few weeks with another Expert Interview. Until then, goodbye.