Building Trust in Virtual Teams
One of the great benefits of the digital revolution is the opportunity to leverage the capabilities and creativity of geographically-dispersed teams.
But that opportunity has a corollary challenge: how to get those far-flung teams to operate smoothly and productively, as if they were high-performing on-site teams.
The challenge stems from our reliance on virtual communications: e-mail, Skype, WebEx and the like are efficient and cost-effective, but they can rob our interactions of important nuances like tone of voice, facial expression, and body language.
This makes it more difficult to build collaboration and establish genuine trust, particularly across geographical, cultural and linguistic boundaries.
Recognising this increasingly-common leadership challenge, here are four practical tips to help facilitate trust and collaboration in distributed teams:
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· Encourage face-to-face meetings to kick off a virtual relationship. It is usually helpful to establish a personal rapport before relying solely on digital communications.
· Connect personally with virtual colleagues when opportunities arise, such as meetings or training programs that put you in the same location. Taking the time to share a coffee or have lunch together can lower barriers and strengthen the relationship.
· Take an interest in your virtual colleagues. Learn their names, note the time zones they live in, and remember the holidays they celebrate. This will personalise your virtual relationship and help to build trust.
· Finally, it is important that you as the team leader model these behaviours: it isn’t enough to simply expect your team to follow these steps. You need to set the example.
Building trust and collaboration in virtual teams is an important and growing challenge in today’s digital environment. Click on the link below to learn more about leading productive virtual teams.
Mark Brown is a leadership educator and author based in Lisbon, Portugal. He likes to swim and play the piano, but not at the same time.
Contact Mark at www.time4clarity.com.
