I don’t know about you, but one of the things I’m finding most challenging about working remotely is communication. Things that I used to be able share verbally in passing, or be made aware of, now require a conscious effort and time to share. That adds pressure and stress in these busy times, so I thought I’d spend this week sharing some research on virtual teams and remote communications and things we sll need within our teams to be considering, or how we’re approaching these aspects today.
Many companies had already started using platforms like Teams before the pandemic surfaces, which stood them in much better stead than a lot of companies, but it has also meant they have assumed that more sophisticated tools will engender more effective virtual communication. Global studies of dispersed teams in multinational organisations has revealed that performance depends on how people use these technologies, not on the technologies themselves.
It’s one thing to organise and implement a virtual team, but ensuring that team has the communication skills necessary for success is quite another.
Many organisations simply apply their tried-and-true best practices from traditional, in-person work teams without taking into consideration the unique characteristics of the virtual workplace. It’s no wonder, then, that a research study found that more than 25% of virtual teams were not effective and experienced a decline in performance.
The challenge we face is to create a virtual workplace that functions as a “high touch” environment, providing multiple points of contact and interaction between team members in a structured, engaging, and open and transparent way. No easy task, if we’re being honest. But research has shown 10 best practices, that I thought I’d share and explore with you.
1. Match the technology to the task.
Teams have many communication technologies at their disposal, ranging from email, chat and videoconferencing. People often default to using the tool that is most convenient or familiar to them, but some technologies are better suited to certain tasks than others, and choosing the wrong one can lead to trouble.
Communication tools differ along a number of dimensions, including information richness (or the capacity to transfer nonverbal and other cues that help people interpret meaning) and the level of real-time interaction that is possible. A team’s communication tasks likewise vary in complexity, depending on the need to reconcile different viewpoints, give and receive feedback, or avoid the potential for misunderstanding. The purpose of the communication should determine the delivery mechanism.
So consciously do the match:
Use leaner, text-based media such as email or chat, and bulletin boards on teams when pushing information in one direction
Audio and videoconferencing are richer, more interactive tools better suited to complex tasks such as problem-solving and negotiation, which require squaring different ideas and perspectives.
The more complex the task, the closer you should be to in-person communication.
2. Make intentions clear.
Most of our communication these days is text-based. Unfortunately, when text-based tools leave too much to interpretation, common biases and assumptions can cause misunderstandings and lead to unhealthy conflict that hurts team performance. Intentions get lost in translation for several reasons:
People tend to be less guarded and more negative in writing. When we cannot see the response of the person receiving the message, it’s easier to say things we would not say in person. Emboldened by technology and distance to complain, express anger, or even insult one another, team members can be more negative in writing than they would be face to face.
Negativity goes both ways. People on the receiving end of written communication tend to interpret it more negatively than intended by the sender. Emotions are expressed and received mostly through nonverbal cues, which are largely missing from text-based communication. Research suggests that recipients of an email that is intended to convey positive emotions tend to interpret that message as emotionally neutral. Similarly, an email with a slightly negative tone is likely to be interpreted as more intensely negative than intended.
People read with different lenses. In written messages, we often assume that others will focus on the things we think are important, and we overestimate the extent to which we have made our priorities clear. Unfortunately, it’s easy for critical information to get overlooked.
To prevent these biases from causing problems on your team, ensure that you are crystal clear about your intentions. Review important messages before sending them to make sure you have struck the right tone. Err on the side of pumping up the positivity or using emojis to convey emotion to mitigate the tendency toward negative interpretation. 😊 😉 ☹
Go out of your way to emphasize important information, highlighting parts of the message that require attention, using “response requested” in the subject line, or separating requests into multiple emails to increase the salience of each one.
“Good communication is the bridge between confusion and clarity” – Nat Turner
3. Stay in sync.
When team members don’t interact face to face, the risk of losing touch and getting out of step is greater. This can happen for a number of reasons.
When teams are not co-located, it’s more difficult to tell when messages have been received and read, unless receipt is specifically acknowledged.
Communication failures can lead to uneven distribution of information among team members. Individuals might be excluded from an important team email by mistake, for instance, leaving them unwittingly in the dark.
The lack of frequent in-person contact can create an out-of-sight, out-of-mind effect in which team members become distracted by local demands and emergencies and forget to keep their distant teammates informed. When one team member goes silent, the others are left guessing. Without accurate information, people often assume the worst.
You can overcome these challenges by prioritising keeping everyone in the loop. Maintain regular communication with team members, and avoid lengthy silences. Proactively share information about your local situation, including unexpected emergencies, time demands, and priorities. Acknowledge receipt of important messages, even if immediate action isn’t possible. And give people the benefit of the doubt. Seek clarification to better understand others’ behaviours or intentions before jumping to conclusions. For instance, check in with your teammate who hasn’t responded to your time-sensitive message — maybe it hasn’t been received, or perhaps something urgent came up.
4. Be responsive and supportive.
The paradox is that trust is more critical for effective functioning in a virtual workplace — but also more difficult to build. The virtual workplace can leave team members feeling like they’re operating in isolation rather than functioning as part of a team. Since they’re not able to see what co-workers are doing most of the time, it’s easy to forget everyone is wrapped up in their own tasks and can’t be expected to drop everything at a moment’s notice.
Trust between co-workers in the same workspace is influenced to a large extent by familiarity and liking; however, in virtual teams, people must signal their trustworthiness by how they work with others on a task. To help develop trust on a virtual team, encourage everyone to respond promptly to requests from their co-workers, take the time to provide substantive feedback, proactively suggest solutions to problems the team is facing, and maintain a positive and supportive tone in communications.
“When the trust account is high, communication is easy, instant and effective” – Stephen Covey
In an in-person workplace, it’s usually obvious when a question or request would interrupt someone’s work. But working virtually requires co-workers to be more aware of each other’s availability and workload. After all, some members might be working in different patterns due to childcare etc, making coordination even more difficult. If you don’t respect your co-workers’ time and space, it will be difficult for them to develop trust in you.
5. Be open and inclusive.
Virtual communication sometimes discourages team members from speaking up, making it challenging to capitalise on the diversity of experience and points of views within the team. Virtual tools reduce the social cues that help co-workers bond, which can diminish motivation to share ideas and information. People may also hold back when they can’t directly observe reactions to their contributions.
To reap the benefits of your virtual team’s diversity, focus on communicating as openly and inclusively as possible. Involve the whole team in important communications and decisions. Actively solicit perspectives and viewpoints from all team members, to demonstrate openness to different ideas and approaches to a task. And when working to resolve differences of opinion, seek to integrate the best of the team’s ideas. To do that the reason for communicating has to be to listen.
“Most people do not listen with the intent to understand; they listen with the intent to reply.” – Stephen Covey
6. Build relationships with social time.
Just because you’re working virtually doesn’t mean you have to be strangers! In fact, one of the biggest challenges with virtual teams is cultivating the social bonds that make everyone feel like they’re a part of something special. A close knit team is more invested in seeing each member succeed, which creates a sense of camaraderie that makes the team much more effective.
In fact, NOT having those connections between team members can be quite detrimental to an organisation. Survey research has shown that lack of interaction with co-workers is a leading reason for job dissatisfaction among fully remote workers, resulting in declining productivity, engagement, and retention rates.
However, this kind of social interaction doesn’t always happen naturally, especially with virtual teams where the members might rarely see one another. Top performing virtual teams often schedule events like virtual coffee chats or brownbag lunches to promote social interaction and strengthen relationships. If these prove difficult to organise, simply taking a few minutes before a video meeting and encouraging the sharing of something about themselves can go a long way toward creating powerful emotional bonds that will hold the team together in the face of challenges.
7. Ask More Questions
One of the advantages of working in a traditional office is being able to ask for clarification and assistance at any time. Despite having a wide range of communication options at our disposal, we can easily fall into a pattern of working in isolation and keeping problems or questions to ourselves. This can have terrible long-term consequences for productivity and morale.
If anything, virtual teams should be communicating more deliberately than in-person teams. We often don’t consider how many questions people ask in day-to-day conversation, ranging from minor clarifications to filling in sizable knowledge gaps. Virtual leaders in particular need to be tuned in to questions their team members might have, but are sometimes hesitant to reach out.
Don’t hold back from asking frequent questions to ensure you feel informed and to stay abreast of any developments that might affect your team. With the wide variety of communication channels being deployed, it’s easy for an important detail or two to go unnoticed by some members. Maybe someone wasn’t part of a group chat about a particular priority or decision, or couldn’t view a screen share. Asking short, specific, and frequent questions can keep team members informed and productive.
8. Communicate Progress on Goals
Since virtual teams don’t have much day-to-day interaction, it can sometimes be difficult for members to get a sense of what everyone is working on at any given time. Working remotely in the current times, people are often working different schedules to fit around childcare etc and may choose to approach their tasks differently than their co-workers. Given these work pattern variations, it’s crucial that communications focus on measurable accomplishments rather than less easily quantified activity.
Framing communication around quantifiable goals helps virtual teams stay on task and get a sense of their progress. If objectives are measurable, there’s less room for the kind of ambiguity that creates dysfunction in a virtual work environment. They also provides a common context for team members, allowing them to focus their conversations and interactions on what the team needs to accomplish to achieve success.
9. Consider creating a communication charter.
The only way to avoid many of the pitfalls is to be extremely clear and disciplined about how your team will communicate. Consider creating a charter that establishes norms of behaviour when participating in virtual meetings, such as limiting background noise and side conversations, talking clearly and at a reasonable pace, listening attentively and not dominating the conversation, and so on. The charter also should include guidelines on which communication modes to use in which circumstances, for example when to reply via email versus picking up the phone versus taking the time to create and share a document.
10. Clarify and track commitments.
When teams work remotely, it’s inherently more difficult to retain the clarity around who’s holding the pen on a piece of work or who took what actions from which meeting, because there is no easy way to observe engagement and productivity. It can really help to be explicit in getting team members to commit to define actions and track their progress. Nominating someone in the meeting to take notes, using the in-meeting notes section or chat section to note down decisions and actions, or creating a team “deliverables dashboard” that is visible to all team members on what work is in progress. If you do create this, though, take care not to end up practicing virtual micro-management. There is a fine line between appropriate tracking of commitments and overbearing (and demotivating) oversight.
All teams are different, and each needs to find their own way to approaching this challenge. But it all starts with feeling able and confident enough to speak up and ask for what you need, or as a leader to ask your team what they need.
“Communication works, for those who work at it” – John Powell
Until next time…
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