TEAM+BUILDING

** People are made up of 99% emotion and 1% reason. Take care of their hearts and their heads will follow. Joy Madison ** “People no longer must be in the same building—never mind on the same continent—to work together. They belong to //virtual teams// that transcend distance, time zones, and organizational boundaries (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p. 4). The goal then is to become as global and as virtual as possible taking advantage of all of the different skills, talents and approaches while remaining focused on the project and developing the trust required to work together in an effective manner. While the gifts brought to us through diversity are many, we must also learn to coordinate and align ourselves so that our project is successful. “One of the major reasons why many virtual teams fail is because they overlook the implications of the obvious differences in their working environments. People do not make accommodation for how //different// it really is when they and their colleagues no longer work face-to-face (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p.19). “Since we all perceive how to do tasks differently, some convergence in our perceived strategies must occur for us to do them effectively together. We must become more similar to one another in at least those perceptions about how to do the task for at least as long as it takes us to do it” (Fontaine, 2006b, p. 41 One way to see a team is “as a group of people working together. They have social relations with other people and with the organization. The functioning [of a team] is dependent on these relations” (Trompenaars, 1998, p.17).

In reviewing the literature every publication indicates that for teams to be successful trust must be established and maintained. There is an irony in knowing that the most important element of a successful team is the most difficult to deal with in a virtual environment. Lipnack and Stamps (2000) are very focused on the elements that need to be in place for a virtual team to be successful. Creating trust when individuals are from different cultural environments and even different organizations requires time and attention both before and during a project. “For best results, time together is planned, prepared for, and followed up on” (p. 64). “People work together because they trust one another. They make deals, undertake projects, set goals, and lend one another resources. Teams with trust converge more easily, organize their work more quickly, and manage themselves better. Trust builds with the recognition of the contribution that everyone makes (p. 69-70).


 * A new team requires trust to begin
 * It’s the all-purpose grease for the ongoing hard work of the team
 * When it’s done, a team leaves trust (or its lack) behind (p. 70).

“Mistrust is expensive. Informal communication goes down and formality goes up; endless forms and legalisms, time and effort spent checking other people’s work, drawn-out negotiations, political games and backstabbing…When trust diminishes, price goes up (p. 79).

Research also indicates that virtual teams that meet face-to-face for team building perform better than those that don’t (Dempster, 2005). How will you arrange that as you begin your assignment is often a challenge because attention to time, location and budget are prime points to be considered. “It is most typically a ‘local’ process in that participants interact face-to-face (Fontaine, 2006a, p. 1214).

A synergy is created between the various team members when there is time spent in trust building exercises and time allocated to just having fun together. Communication, the means of connection that provides pathways for human relationships, is inherently a shared activity (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p. 56). Taking the time to create bonds has a huge pay back in terms of successful project completion. What is being actually being created is referred to as “A Microculture (MC) is not frequently institutionalized, formalized, or even recorded. It is a culture shared primarily only among the task participants (Fontaine, 2006b, p. 42). It is the formulation of this culture that ultimately makes the team successful.

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In working on a long term important cross-cultural project, even with time spent on face to face team building “the initial getting-to-know-one-another frenzy [lasts] for about three months before things began to settle down into scientific and business conversations” (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p. 50). After that time periodic phone calls keeps the teams connected once trust has been established.

Another recommended strategy for maintaining that sense of communication, trust and play in a virtual environment is establishing a place for “idle chit chat”. Casual conversation between team members can maintain the sense of trust and play that were established in the face-to-face initial meeting.

Moran and Harris (2007) present the following items as representative of what team building members learn:.

· Tolerance of ambiguity, uncertainty, and seeming, lack of structure. · To take interest in each member’s achievement, as well as the group’s. · The ability to give and accept feedback in a non-defensive manner. · Openness to change, innovation, group consensus, team decision making, and creative problem solving. · To create a team atmosphere that is informal, relaxed, comfortable, and nonjudgmental. · The capacity to establish intense, short-term member relations, and to disconnect for the next project. · To keep group communication on target and schedule, while permitting disagreement and valuing effective listening. · To urge a spirit of constructive criticism, and authentic, nonevaluative feedback. · To encourage members to express feelings and to be concerned about group morale/maintenance. · To clarify roles, relationships, assignments, and responsibilities. · To share leadership functions within a group and to use total member resources. · To pause periodically from task pursuits to reexamine and reevaluate team progress and communications. · To foster trust, confidence, and commitment within the group. · To foster a norm that members will be supportive and respectful of one another, and realistic in their expectations of each other. · To promote an approach that is goal-directed, seeks group participation, divides the labor fairly, and synchronizes effort. · To set high performance standards for the group. · To cultivate listening skills (Moran, Harris, Moran, 2007 p. 245-46).

While leadership will be more fully explored in another section an important part of virtual team building is establishing a rotating leadership based on the expertise required for any given task that supports the over all goal of the group. Strict hierarchal leadership is destined to fail in a virtual environment.

When each individual acts as the leader in the area of their giftedness greater probabilities of success for achieving the overall purpose is assured. The response a leader makes may ‘separate the novice from the sophisticated’. Often the response may be based on tacit knowledge, i.e., knowledge that is not openly expressed and may not be explicitly provided in training, but that differentiates experts from novices” (Fontaine, 2006a, p. 48). We may or may not have the skills to get our job done effectively in this new ecology (p. 50).