Explore the 3 challenges inherent in leading and participating in virtual teams.

1. WELCOME TO
EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION
WITH VIRTUAL TEAMS
Created by Aly Anliker and Rachelle Jacover

2. Agenda
• Welcome and Introductions
• Virtual Teams Overview
• Challenges
• Solutions
• Wrap-Up

3. Objectives
At the end of this session you will:
• Identify your virtual team
challenges
• Implement a strategy for
conducting virtual meetings
• Use resources to explore next steps
for virtual communications

4. Virtual Team Definition
Individuals pulled together from various locations to serve
on a group to achieve some important, urgent and specific
objective such as:
• planning and/or launching event
• designing and/or running new program or initiative
• developing and/or testing new product
• running major campaign
• designing and/or implementing improved business
processes
• planning and/or executing change management
• regular team meetings

5. Virtual Team Characteristics
What are some of the
characteristics of virtual teams?
•
•
•
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6. Virtual Team Characteristics
• A collection of geographically distributed, functionally
and/or culturally diverse entities
• Linked by electronic forms of communication
• Assembled and disassembled according to need
• Different work shifts or time zones
• Collaborative network of people working together,
regardless of location or who "owns" them

7. Virtual Teams – Observations
• 41 million corporate employees worldwide work virtually one day
per week and are likely to be part of a virtual team – Gartner Group
• 36% of virtual team members have never met their team members
face to face
• 65% of virtual team members report they have never had an
effective team-building session
• Productivity drops over time - virtual teams operating 1- 3 years are
much less likely to be high performing teams compared to teams
that had been together 6 to 12 months.
• In general, management still has an “out-of-sight, out-of-mind”
mentality when it comes to paying attention to virtual teams and
giving them the support and resources they need to be successful.

8. Virtual Communication Challenges
• Leadership
• Team Development
• Technology

9. Leadership Challenges
• Underestimating impact leaders have on success of virtual
team
• Manage expectations by clearly establishing and
maintaining ground rules and assumptions
• Establishing and aligning team and corporate
goals/objectives
• Importance of using tools to communicate effectively in a
virtual meeting environment

10. Leadership Challenges
• Recruiting, introducing and including new members
• Assigning personnel with skills necessary to lead or
participate on virtual teams
• Recognizing the importance of preparing and training
people to be part of virtual teams
• Measuring, motivating and tracking progress of team
• Performance Evaluation - Developing performance
objectives and expectations for team members

11. Team Challenges - Stages of Teams
Tuckman (1965) discovered that
teams normally go through five
stages of growth:
•Forming
•Storming
•Norming
•Performing
•Adjourning

12. Team Challenges
• Retaining productivity, peak performance and
enthusiasm over time
• Establishing and developing a foundation for
collaboration and relationship building
• On-going team building
• Accountability issues where the team find it much easier
to break virtual commitments than verbal ones

13. Team Challenges
• Dealing with communication issues like culture,
language, learning styles
• Not being face to face creates unique challenges
and difficulties in managing the involvement,
commitment and trust building of a team

14. Technology Challenges
Rapidly accelerating business environment with the “do it
now” business culture
+
Complexities in Virtually Networked Teams (Virtual,
Network and Technology Factors)
=
Getting things done is all that more difficult

15. Technology Challenges
Learning how to use
technology to foster
collaboration and effective
meeting processes

16. Technology Challenges
• Introducing and using new technology –
making it work for the team – can be difficult
to adopt
• Accurately confirming and recording
meeting agreements, next steps and
ownership
• Technology problems can derail or distract
meetings

17. Leadership Solutions
• Conduct initial meetings to establish team process
• Learn about new team members, share their information
or ask them to share their background with team
• Virtual meeting to focus on how team work aligns with
corporate goals and objectives
• Onboarding employee to virtual environment – find
buddy or mentor
• Ask team members to lead a meeting or take a topic of
the meeting
• Share copies of presentation, agenda
• Decide on roles, note taker, time keeper, etc.

18. Team Solutions
• Set guidelinesmeeting protocols with teams participation
• Create team notes – disband with action items and persons
responsible, share with team
• Rules when team member can’t meet commitment, ask
“how can team help”
• Round Robin – Make sure you have heard from everyone
at least once during meeting
• May need to coach a member offline

19. Technology Solutions
• Provide different ways participants can use
tools, raise hand, type on slide, chat
• Initial meeting to teach tools and application.
Provide tutorial, training or mentor
• Ask team member with technical challenges
to just listen in. Troubleshoot later. Provide
a copy of the presentation beforehand
• ManagerFacilitator use tools, games, polls,
visuals
• Keep virtual meetings to an hour or less

20. Meeting Tools
• Webex
• Microsoft Live Meeting
• Elluminate
• Adobe Connect
• GoTo Meeting

21. Interactive Meetings
• Raise Hand Feature
• Chat Feature
• Use Annotation Tools
• Allow team to see
who is attending,
gives sense of team
• Participation is key!

22. Sample Team Meeting Guidelines
• Quick check in
• Contribute 1 idea per meeting
• Assume positive intent
• Identify problems and focus on
solutions
• Make sure objectives are realistic in
scope
• Keep to timelines
• Leave with next steps and task
assignments
• Expect work outside meeting via sub
groups and task forces

23. Summary
• Most teams are virtual in some way in our world today
• There are some similarities in team dynamics and
challenges between virtual and face to face teams
• Skills needed for virtual teaming are different than face to
face teams
• Focus on People first: Continue to “learn” about others and
how they learn
• Focus on Technology second: Continue to embrace
technology as a resource
• Focus on accountability and team engagement

24. Resources
• The Gartner Group
http://www.gartner.com/technology/home.jsp
• Quality Digest – Leading Virtual Teams
http://www.qualitydigest.com/sept00/html/tea
ms.html
• Information & Management Best Practices
Study on Virtual Teams – PDF
• Tuckman, Bruce (1965). Developmental
sequence in small groups
• Handbook of High Performance Virtual
Teams, Nemiro, et al

25. Thank You!
503-891-1108
Strategies for Success and Working Creatively