Establishing a virtual team is a key part of a team’s long term effectiveness. Setting up virtual teams can be a challenging process, especially for team members who have never participated in a virtual team before. Focusing on a number of core elements as discussed below, should help a virtual team leader to more quickly get a virtual team up and running.

1. Choose an experienced leader

The leader of a virtual team has a large impact on the set up and success of a virtual team. Virtual teams tend to rely more heavily on a virtual team leader as they have less direct interaction between team members. Often communication flow in a virtual team is between members and the leader, rather than between members themselves (which is more typical of co-located teams).

As such, a virtual team leader needs to be someone who is comfortable managing people remotely, who can use the technology to effectively provide task instructions and build relationships in the absence of face to face interaction. As there is much to learn for first time virtual team leaders, we suggest that a leader has at least had previous leadership experience so that they can then concentrate on the differences a virtual team has.  Read more about effective virtual team leaders.

2. Select members who are suited to working in virtual teams

Where virtual teams tend to fail, it is often a result of the lack of familiarity, physical distance and incompatible time zones of team members. One of the easiest ways to ensure the success of a virtual team is pick a few team members who already know each other. This way, trust (one of the more difficult aspects to develop virtually) may be established much faster. If it is not possible to find members who have worked together previously, try and arrange a face-to-face meeting at the start (as mentioned below) to develop trust swiftly.

Team members who are best suited to working in virtual teams tend to:

1. be self motivated and can work independently
2. experienced using different types of communication technologies
3. require less interaction with colleagues

Read more about who is suited to working in virtual teams.

3. Choose appropriate technology

One of the important aspects of creating a good virtual team is to carefully choose the tools that are employed for communication. Relying on communication technologies that offer limited ability to transfer rich content (such as non-verbal information) may lead to challenging situations. For instance, often emails can be misinterpreted and could damage relationships and trust in the team.

In the start up phase, it is especially important to focus on using technologies that support relationship formation. Technology such as video conferencing allows people to form relationships more easily and have higher trust towards one another as they can see each other and share non verbal information.

During the set up of a virtual team, creating a teamsite (e.g. with Microsoft Sharepoint or similar technology) where the entire virtual team can exchange ideas, collaborate and motivate each other can prove useful. Teams spread across multiple locations need to be aware of all the relevant updates to a project so no one team member feels out of the loop.

4. Start with a face-to-face teambuilding

If you can, it is recommended to start the process of virtual team formation by bringing members of the virtual team together face-to-face. Use this time wisely to set the ground rules for the team, have social activities to help build trust and clarify the responsibilities of the team going forward. All of these activities can be very difficult to achieve in a purely virtual environment, so a short (even 1 to 2 day) face-to-face teambuilding can really help establish a virtual team.

It is also important to note how frequently or in which situations you should meet face-to-face throughout the lifecycle of the virtual team. Read more about the golden ratio of virtual meetings to face-to-face.

5. Understand the phases of a virtual team

Virtual teams, like any team in a co-located environment, go through a number of phases. At each different stage of the virtual team’s lifecycle it is important to note which technology works most effectively. Furst, Reeves, Rosen, and Blackburn (2004) have described the different stages of a virtual team according to Tuckman’s stages of group development. We have then taking this further to suggest what technology is best for each stage of the virtual team’s lifecycle:

5 tips to establishing a successful virtual team

A number of authors have commented that it is very difficult to build and maintain effective working relations in a purely virtual environment. Having studied virtual teams in both academic contexts and having extensive experience working with virtual teams, I can see how some could come to this conclusion. However, I think such a black and white response that it is too difficult to build and maintain relationships in a  purely virtual environment is misleading.

Virtuality: how virtual teams differ

What I would prefer to focus on is the virtuality element of virtual teams. Virtuality refers to how to ‘virtual’ a virtual team in fact is. Not all virtual teams are the same. Many differ according to how distributed they are (e.g. geographically, by time zone etc), diversity (e.g. cultural diversity, organisational diversity, technologically diversity) and finally by the variation in the number of times they meet face to face compared to meeting purely virtually.

Lets take two different virtual teams to demonstrate this. ‘Virtual Team A’ is a software development team that develops web applications. They are comprised of members located across the whole globe (e.g. India, USA, Australia and Russia). This team has a clear project leader (based in the USA).They were put together by the project leader using freelance websites such as ODesk. The team requires both clear communication, knowledge sharing and task development across the team (e.g. programmer A is reliant on programmer B to finish tasks before starting).  This team has never met face-to-face. However, this project team is able to deliver according to the set time, quality and budget with high regularity.

If we then look at ‘Virtual Team B’ – they are legal professionals working on a multinational merger across three different cities (London, New York and Sydney). This is a very specific task with complex requirements. They have a clear team leader and have been brought together as they work for two different organisations that are merging (they are in-house legal counsel). They are distributed by time zone and require frequent communication. What this team does is use a combination of face-to-face versus virtual meetings. When starting the project, the virtual team leader brought all the members together several times to establish trust and build relationships. After they had achieved this result, then most meetings are conducted using video conference. Due to time zone differences, they spread the burden of out of hours meetings. The remaining meetings (especially when they have something critical in nature to discuss) they have face-to-face. This team was able to deliver very high results according to a tight time schedule.

The golden ratio of face-to-face versus virtual meetings

The above example demonstrates how different many virtual teams are. I would say that you can have successful virtual teams and build relationships without face-to-face meetings. However, for some teams you might require face-to-face meetings. So what then is the golden ratio of how many face-to-face team meetings you should have compared to the number of virtual meetings (e.g. phone or video meetings)?

If I was to generalise, and this number is without academic qualification but more based on anecdotal evidence from my experiences, I would say you should have at least one face-to-face meeting for every 5 virtual meetings that you have.

“The golden ratio of the number of face-to-face meetings to virtual meetings is 1 to 5″

However, I would also say that the number of face-to-face meetings to virtual meetings depends a lot on:

• The type of work that is being undertaken: Regular work or work that is performed independently (e.g. programming) may be easier to undertake without many face-to-face meetings. Highly complex work and that which requires a lot of interaction with other team members may require a higher number of face-to-face meetings.
• The type of people in the team: The greater the diversity of the team (e.g. cultural diversity, gender, age, organisational diversity etc.) may require having a higher number of face-to-face meetings (especially in the early stages of the team formation) in order to build a common norms and trust between team members. Once this is established, a smaller number of face-to-face meetings could be used.

In summary, it is very important to pay attention to the number of face-to-face meetings versus the number of virtual meetings a team has. By having some regular (even if infrequent) face-to-face meetings, a virtual team is likely to be more effective as a result of increased trust and relationships within the team. This may be especially important in the start up phases of the team. Even so, a virtual team can still be effective for some types of tasks without ever meeting face-to-face. The main thing is to examine the virtuality of your virtual team and adopt a strategy which best suits it.

Written by Dr. Al Jury.

The golden ratio of virtual meetings to face-to-face

The underlying idea of setting up a virtual team is to bring together a group of people who can work interdependently and share the same purpose across time, space and organizational boundaries using various technology and communications tools to collaborate and accomplish various organizational tasks. Working as a member of virtual team requires different considerations than working face-to-face. As there in minimal or no face-to-face interaction, it is important to choose members of virtual teams who have a high degree of independence irrespective of the lack of monitoring and supervision.

Ideally, virtual teams are best suited to those who:

• have the focus and drive to work without distractions and disturbances
• are self motivated and can independently meet deadlines, targets and deliver an end product with minimal support from their leader
• are comfortable using technology
• require little social interaction and can work from home
• do not require a lot of professional interaction when it comes to discussing and solving all their problems or discussing their concerns

Virtual team members who can follow a well-defined set of instructions (often given in email or on the phone) and who respect team norms and protocols are also well suited to working in virtual teams. Those working in virtual teams with little use of video conferencing find that the absence of non-verbal cues can sometime be an impediment to building relationships and trust with other team members.

Finally, those who have excellent written and verbal communication skills often find being a part of a virtual team the easiest as they have the ability to express themselves in a clear and precise manner through emails. In cross-functional and global teams, this ability becomes all the more important as time zone differences often mean the main form of communication is email.

While not all potential members of virtual teams will possess the type of profile listed above, it can also be a good idea to train those who are unfamiliar with working in virtual teams. Prior to participating in a virtual team, members could take part in virtual simulations mirroring a virtual team environment and be provided with feedback from a trained virtual team leader in how to act according to different situations faced in a virtual team.

Who is suited to working in virtual teams?

Virtual presence refers to the perceptions of how available and present a leader of a virtual team is, even though they might not physically be present. Members of virtual teams, who feel their leader is more virtually present, are:

• more likely to feel engaged and committed to the team,
• they are more likely to be high performing and able to seek clarification more easily
• and they are less likely to socially loaf because they are aware their leader is much more attentive to their contributions

So virtual presence is important for most virtual teams, irrespective of the industry in which they operate. However, virtual presence might be even more important for different types of tasks. For example, for tasks which require close hands on management, virtual presence should be very high. Leaders of virtual teams operating with these types of tasks should focus on having frequent contact with team members. For virtual team leaders of teams working with tasks requiring less hands on management, then a reduced amount of frequent virtual presence might be sufficient. However, virtual team members will still need to ensure that they are constantly in the loop and always aware of the ongoing developments, important updates, milestone changes etc. In order to develop more virtual presence, a virtual team leader can consider the following:

1. Choose the right technology

Many companies these days have access to a wide variety of technology that helps build virtual presence. For instance, ‘media rich’ technology such as video conferencing is far more effective at building virtual presence than less ‘rich’ technology such as email. The main reason for this is that media rich technologies such as video conferencing offers far greater transfer of non verbal body language and is synchronous so that you can receive instant answers. In comparison, email which is low in media richness can be miss-interpreted or take much longer to convey messages and answers as it is asynchronous.

Today, many companies providing video conference technology have been focusing on creating as lifelike video meetings as possible. For instance, Tandberg and Cisco use extremely high bandwidth, to create a high quality experience of connectivity and virtual presence. The configuration of the rooms is also very important, and you can set up a room so that you feel you are sitting opposite someone on a table, even though they are on video. In particular, when setting up a video conference, focus on the ability to have eye contact as much as possible with the other members as by looking into the video camera, you are not looking directly into the eyes of the other members. Eye contact is very important in establishing virtual presence.

Finally, these days leaders have a wide variety of social media tools to keep in touch with their team members. Whether that is using SMS, twitter or facebook to send messages, or internal facebook applications like what SharePoint 2010 offers, you can inform team members in a very timely manner as to recent activities so they feel connected to the team.

2. Have frequent ‘check-ins’ with your virtual team members

It is also important that the leaders make impromptu calls to check how the team is doing or how their week has been. It is up to the leaders to make it a point to keep themselves abreast of all the news, related information, key topics, and other developments, even if they do not work in the same physical location. There are a number of ways and mechanisms to offer informal feedback, as and when required. To carry out all the tasks associated with performance management and explaining new business strategy to all the members of the team when there are clients and stakeholders also involved needs good communication, crystal-clear clarity and focus.

3. Create opportunities for social interaction

Often virtual team work over video conference or phone limits your ability for social interaction. For example, in co-located (face-to-face) teams, a team starting a meeting will naturally spend a few minutes with just asking how everyone is and what things have been happening in their personal lives. This if often limited in virtual team work as virtual team meetings on phone or video tend to be very task focused. It is therefore important to ask how each virtual team member if going, how the weather is where they are located and other small talk which increases your social dimensions. This can greatly increase the perceptions of virtual leader presence.

In summary, by following the above tips and creating virtual presence, you are more likely to have higher performing and engaged virtual teams.

3 tips on how to be a ‘Virtually Present’ leader

I am often asked the question – are virtual teams more effective than face to face (co-located) teams?

It is a very important question and I believe that the answer with the evidence that has been collected to date is a definitive YES! For example:

Volvo: A study by the Corporate Executive Board found that Volvo decreased their travel costs by 50% by implementing virtual teams. In addition, 75% of workers believed they increased their value to the company by using virtual teams.

BT: Claims that their 9,000-plus home workers are 20 per cent more productive than their office-based colleagues and spend less time off sick.

ICP: A study by the Institute for Corporate Productivity found that 80% of companies surveyed with over 10,000 employees belive that virtual teams will become very important for businesses.

I believe that virtual teams offer significant benefits over co-located teams, for instance:

A) Ability to source human capability from the globe - find the best global talent in a worldwide talent pool – why restrict yourself to your local area. Virtual teams allow companies to build teams to suit their exact needs, whether that means composing a team for experience, specialization etc

B) Decreased costs – reduce your real estate expenses, travel costs and mobility expenses – real estate costs (hiring offices) forms a large part of company expenses. I often walk around my office and see many desks empty as people are in meetings, travelling or working from home. Virtual teams can help reduce real estate costs considerably. In addition, global corporations, spend a lot of time and money relocating knowledge workers around the globe. With virtual teams, these knowledge workers can start contributing productively and instantly from wherever they are. Finally, if you use video conferencing and collaboration tools, you can very quickly reduce your travel expenses related to meeting travel. Why fly everyone in to one location at great time and cost when you can hold successful meetings on video?

C) Flexibility – virtual teams offer a ‘just-in-time’ workforce. Companies go through peak periods and rather than have an inflated workforce to cope with those peak periods, keep a lean workforce and bring in outside consultants to handle peak work loads and short-term job assignments as required. Sites like Odesk, V Worker and Mechanical Turk offer a huge range of skilled workers available at short term notice at hourly rates.

D) Increased employee work-life balance – people are a company’s best asset and we must do what we can to keep our best talent. For many, this means designing a more flexible and balanced career and personal life. In many cases, this can be achieved by allowing working from home or in the location they desire. For instance, say an exceptional geophysicist lives in the USA but an oil company needs that person to work on projects in the Middle East. Using technology like video conferencing and collaboration tools, much of the work can be done remotely and allow that person to remain in the USA, close to friends and family. This flexibility greatly reduces employee turnover and need for recruitment and training of new employees. In addition, this also allows for greater cultural diversity within teams – leading to alternative approaches and increased strategic outputs through different perspectives and relevant local experience and insight.

E) A 24/7 workforce –  Virtual teams can be strategically located around the globe allowing companies to implement a “follow-the-sun” approach to product and service development. For example, a sales presentation for a client could be started in Sydney, then worked on by the London team and finally handed over to the USA team. This could have the impact of significantly shortening the development time significantly.

So, as is evident from the discussion above, companies cannot afford to ignore the benefits of virtual teams. What is important is that they do not implement virtual teams without appropriate analysis and understanding of the differences between virtual teams and face to face teams.

How effective are virtual teams?

I have a very decentralised team and find that due to the busy nature of our work, days can go by without me having close interaction with many in my team. As a result, I find that it is a very useful exercise to schedule time into your calendar each week to pick up the phone or communicator (we use Microsoft Communicator in my company, a great tool) and call each of your team.

Spend a few minutes to just ‘check in’ with each other and see how their week is going and latest news. Don’t have a fixed agenda but keep it a nice formal chat. This allows you both to share key information, keep up to date on key topics and provide any informal feedback to your team members.

Informal feedback is one of the most important mechanisms for managing performance. Regular informal feedback is the most effective performance management strategy available to a manager. In addition, it allows the virtual team manager to ‘adjust the course’ if required on activities. One of the most important ways managers can impact performance is by helping their team members find timely and concrete solutions to specific work issues that might arise.

I find these ‘check ins’ on phone work best when:

• They are at irregular schedules – if team members know you will call at 12:00 each Friday then it might become a chore and feel like it is their weekly ‘report’ to their manager – instead have them at different times so that team members feel it is a genuine effort to check in on them
• You keep them short, sharp and focused. Focus on how they are and how their tasks are going. I like to keep these chats limited to 5-10 minutes.
• If you have the time, remember to build in the small talk and enquire how they are, what they are doing on the weekend, how their kids are etc. It is these little information sharing ‘nuggets’ that really help build relationships between you and your team members over time
• Focus on all your people, not just the ones who ‘scream’ loudest – make sure you equally divide your time between your people. Some people need more attention than others, but it is important not to neglect the more quiet ones

All in all, regular phone check ins with your people when you are managing virtual teams is a very powerful tool for keeping in regular contact and monitoring how your people are and checking in on performance. Don’t get too caught up in your weekly tasks to find this time.

Virtual management by phone

When interviewing many leaders of virtual teams for my PhD research and through my own experience leading virtual teams, I have come across an interesting challenge for leading these teams.  The challenge relates to performance management and performance appraisal in teams which are distributed or global, particularly in relation to fairness and equity.  Team members who work in a different physical location from their manager (who undertakes the performance appraisal) may receive different appraisals from their colleagues who physically sit close to the team leader.  For example, a distributed team member might be working hard at their deliveries, but unless they are particularly good at informing their manager about their activities or the manager is very good at remote monitoring it might make it very difficult to assess that person’s performance on the task.

However, this conclusion above has been gathered from interviews and should form the basis of a scientific study to see whether or not this is accurate. It could be the case where teams members working virtually might think they are discriminated against in performance appraisals but it might not be actually so.

Even so, there are some focus areas for virtual team leaders in relation to ensuring their fairly rate performance of virtual team members as they would for those located physically close to them:

1. Ensure role clarity with SMARTER goals

As for face-to-face teams, a team leaders should ensure they have clear goals and expectations for their team members. This is even more important in virtual teams than in face-to-face teams. Goals should be set to suitable frameworks, such as SMARTER goals:
S – Specific
M – Measurable
A – Achievable
R – Relevant
T – Time-bound
E – Evaluate
R – Reevaluate

2. Monitor employees closely

Use both traditional methods and innovative methods to monitor employees work performance closely.

Traditional methods can include:

a) Submitting daily/weekly progress reports.
b) Closely checking quality of reports
c) Allow time for informal feedback on progress – feedback is very important to an employee’s performance. So schedule time so they can contact you or allow free time where they can contact you as required.
d) It is good to have regular contact with remote workers in any case as it can be quite lonely for some. By contacting them you can also check informally how progress has been. When contacting employees in this way, make sure you use the phone or video conference option rather than relying on email. Email can be very impersonal  and you aren’t able to judge the non verbals as well using other more media rich technology.

Innovative methods:

a) Monitor web activity/computer usage (e.g. software used, key strokes, livemeeting, page capture software etc)
b) Ask an employee to have a desktop video camera on all the time, so you can check in as needed and see where they are
c) Monitor email activity (e.g. emails sent, who to etc)

Note that many of these might depend on your company’s  culture, how much trust you want to demonstrate to your employees (see below) or privacy policies for monitoring employees. If you do monitor employee activity, the best policy is to be as open as possible with employees and accept their feedback on this matter.

3. Trust your team members:

Whether or not you decide to monitor employees it is important that you can trust employees to work virtually. The main thing to ensure they are effective working virtualy is to provide:

a) Suitable training to allow them to know how to work remotely. It is very different from working in a closely monitored physical environment.
b) Clear expectations for virtual work and deliverables
c) A work environment that allows them to feel comfortable. For example, if they are working from home, ensure they have a fast internet connection, good lighting and regular breaks. Their environment at home should reflect the environment they would have in an office location.

It is also wise to be respectful of flexible work times. Some employees might work less during a day and more in the night time to balance work and life preferences. So understand a team members work preferences.

4. Involve in activities

Socialization and networking are very important requirements in being able to execute in a role. As a leader of a virtual team, you should facilitate this by organizing suitable events to provide the ability for team embers to form bonds with each other. You can do this in a virtual way (e.g. informal chat rooms where topics are not related to work tasks but just allow for informal discussions) or in a face-to-face environment. Even if an employee works in a remote location, it is good to occasionally bring them into the main location to build relationships.

5. Telling truths from lies

In a virtual environment, it can be very difficult to tell truths from lies, particularly when media is used that is low in ‘richness’, e.g. email. I had an example of a leader who managed a number of people remotely. One of his employees called in sick one day and used email to inform him they were ill. The manager did not believe this individual and went to take disciplinary action. However, it turned out this person was genuinely sick. So, as a manager of remote workers ensure that you use the right technology for the right context and verify information. It is a lot more difficult to gauge this over email, so use phone or video conferencing where appropriate to provide you with more non verbal information.

In summary, managing and monitoring performance in virtual teams can be very difficult. By following the tips above, you should find this assists in both improving performance of remote works as well as your ability to be aware of what a virtual team worker is undertaking in their day to fay activities.

Performance management and appraisal in virtual teams

Role clarity is absolutely crucial in ensuring the success of virtual teams. Role clarity refers to an individual’s understanding of their role (expectations, work objectives, responsibilities and authority are clearly defined). Virtual team leaders need to spend more time than conventional team counterparts being explicit about expectations, because the dynamics of interaction are unfamiliar. Even in information rich virtual teams using video conferencing, it is hard to replicate the rapid exchange of information and cues available in face-to-face discussions. Coupled with traditional time pressures of teams and the slower rate of information transfer in virtual teams, important information may not be delivered resulting in lower role clarity.

In face-to-face teams, team members can often gain a greater understanding of what is required in their role through direct observation of other team members even if this has not been adequately conveyed by their team leader. However, virtual team members rarely have this ability, which places a greater responsibility on a virtual team leader to properly clarify role requirements. While certain leadership styles (e.g. transactional leadership) can help aid role clarity, the leader may not be physically present which can make it much more difficult to make certain a team member has clear expectation for tasks. Consequently, it is important that virtual team leaders are aware of the importance of role clarity and encouraged to implement procedures for increasing role clarity. In order to develop role clarity within virtual teams, leaders should focus on developing:

1. clear objectives and goals for tasks;
2. comprehensive milestones for deliverables; and
3. communication channels for seeking feedback on unclear role guidance.

It is further suggested that leaders should develop routines based on habits, such as operating procedures or checklists to increase role clarity.

In addition, virtual team leaders should choose the most appropriate technology in order to assist the development of role clarity.  Technology choice when operating a virtual team should be based on task complexity. Less complex tasks require minimal communication and typically asynchronous communication media, such as e-mail, will be sufficient. As tasks become more complex, it is necessary for virtual team members to adopt synchronous communication media, such as videoconferencing or groupware, in order to develop greater role clarity.

While technology choice is important for the development of role clarity, virtual team leaders should be aware that information overload may result in situations when a leader has provided too much information to a team member. Information overload is generally defined as a belief that one has too much information, which uses up too much time in sorting through the information for the important messages. Some of the consequences of information overload include:

1. anxiety due to worry over whether an important piece of information was missed in the mass of material requiring processing; and
2. team members’ performance may have reduced performance due to confusion, which affects their ability to set priorities as well as making  prior information received harder to recall.

While there is generally a lack of research examining what can help facilitate role clarity within virtual teams (signifying a need for future research in virtual teams to examine this), some suggestions for reducing information overload include:

1. restricting emails to pertinent information, providing summaries of email content at the start of an email, restricting the use of carbon copying emails to all members of a team when information is not necessarily relevant to all, as well as highlighting important messages or sections within an email;
2. scheduling specific times for video conferencing or text-based online chatting as opposed to ad-hoc discussions; and
3. training employees in efficient sorting of information and skim reading, as well as implementing intelligent filtering technology.

Improving role clarity and reducing information overload in virtual teams

1. Prepare:

Send out an agenda earlier, explain that it will be on video and ensure there are ground rules established for conduct during the video conference. Allow enough time in the agenda to connect all participants at the start. If you will show presentations during the meeting and participants on the phone will not be able to see these, ensure you send these presentations out prior to the meeting.

2. Get there early:

In my experience it can take anywhere from 1 to 10 minutes to connect everyone to the meeting. Often there are technical challenges, delays in everyone connecting in etc. Use this time while waiting to connect everyone to be ‘social’ with all participants. Chat about what they are up to, how the weather is in there location, what their plans are for the weekend etc. Often being on a video or a telephone connection means that meetings become very task focused and factual. It is important to have some relationship building during these meetings as well so you can build team cohesion and a shared vision.

3. Use seating for telepresence:

Try and seat people so they feel they are around a normal table in a face-to-face meeting. If the majority of participants are in only two locations, try and use two ‘U’ shaped configurations with the screens and cameras at the end. The aim is to create as much telepresence. This way, participants might more feel they are seated around the same tables. Also try and use the zoom feature on cameras so that the size of participant’s faces are more lifelike (try and focus on the top third of the body so that faces are in view). There is nothing more frustrating than starring at a small dot on the screen or even giant faces.

4. Introduce all team members:

Encourage all team members to introduce themselves. Let them explain where they are located so that all participants get a feel for what it is like where they are and can empathise more with them. This is particularly important in global teams with many locations and time zones. Try also and get them to ‘break the ice’ by telling something interesting about themselves. Most will become more comfortable with the situation when there is some humour involved. You can also set up a teamsite prior to a meeting with some background information about each person, a profile picture so participants can read about each other prior to coming to the meeting.

5. Go around the table to ask all for their opinion:

Participants in the room with the meeting facilitator/organiser are often favoured to have their opinion heard as it is much more difficult to interrupt a naturally following conversation for virtual participants. It is important to allow all participants equal chance to make their opinion heard. I find that it is useful to one by one go around and ask if people would like to add anything. In addition, ensure in your meeting ground rules that you encourage participants on video to raise their hand or otherwise make it known they wish to say something.

6. Be careful ordering food during the meeting:

In meetings where food is ordered it can be very disruptive to meetings. Most video meeting rooms have very sensitive microphones which pick up lots of noise from cutlery etc which can be very disruptive to meetings. I have also been in meetings where the majority of participants are in one location and only food is ordered for that location. So participants often have to sit through the meeting hungrily looking on at all the others eating their lunches. This doesn’t help feelings of inclusiveness. So either have food ordered for all participants irrespective of their locations or none at all.

7. Monitor noise and lighting:

Make sure that background noises and lighting do not interfere with the quality of the meeting. Outside building works, mobile phones close to microphones, coffee and food consumed in the meetings, distant microphones and poor connections can make it very hard for participants to follow the conversations. So do a quick sound check with all participants prior to commencing the meeting and make sure they speak up during the meeting if they cannot hear properly. Also ask all participants that when they speak they do so in a clear manner without shouting. Looking up and keeping fingers away from the mouth can help voice clarity. Likewise, poor lighting can make it difficult to make out non verbal signals on participant faces, so check that the lighting is adequate in the room.

Seven habits for successful video meetings

Below is the abstract for my PhD thesis submitted in July 2008 at the University of Queensland, Australia. My supervisors were Dr. Simon Lloyd D. Restubog and Professor Cindy Gallois.

Abstract:

Organisational work teams are increasingly becoming composed of geographically dispersed members communicating through a wide variety of communication technologies. Named virtual teams, these new organisational structures are growing at a fast rate. Due to the technologically mediated environment of virtual teams, numerous researchers have suggested that the psychological processes underlying communication and relationships within virtual teams differ from traditional face-to-face teams. However, there is little empirical examination to date of the socio-psychological mechanisms which lead to the success of virtual teams. In particular, there is a need for a greater understanding of the role that leadership has within creating effective virtual teams. To this end, this thesis examined the influence of transformational and transactional leadership behaviours on job performance and job satisfaction within virtual teams.

This research program used a combination of research methodologies across four separate studies. In Study 1, in-depth interviews were conducted with 15 experienced virtual team leaders to identify psychological determinants of job performance and job satisfaction. While numerous issues were identified, study 1 acknowledged five themes surrounding leadership effectiveness within virtual teams, namely: (a) communication, (b) technology, (c) trust, (d) leadership style and (e) virtuality. These five themes allowed for the development of a theoretical model of leadership effectiveness, which was empirically tested in Studies 2, 3 and 4.

Study 2 examined the effects of transformational and transactional leadership on role clarity and leader presence using a survey methodology with a sample of 157 employees from two organisations. Results showed that the relationship between transactional leadership and role clarity is more strongly related to role clarity than the relationship between transformational leadership and role clarity. Furthermore, it was identified that transformational leadership is more strongly related to leader presence than transactional leadership.

Study 3 extended the findings of Study 2 and examined the influence of transformational and transactional leadership on follower job satisfaction. A sample of 122 employees from a public sector organisation participated in an anonymous survey. Study 3 identified that follower job satisfaction was able to be developed in a virtual environment by transformational and transactional leaders. Study 3 highlighted the central importance of role clarity in mediating the relationship between transactional leadership and follower job satisfaction and the importance of leader presence in mediating the relationship between transformational leadership and job satisfaction.

Study 4 replicated and extended the findings of Studies 1, 2, and 3 by testing the mediating roles of role clarity, follower trust and leader presence on both job satisfaction and performance. Study 4 demonstrated that role clarity mediates the relationship between transformational and transactional leadership on job performance. Transactional leaders were able to directly increase follower role clarity. In contrast, transformational leaders were able to develop increased follower role clarity only when the leader was considered by followers to be virtually present and had developed greater follower trust. Both role clarity and leader presence increased follower job satisfaction. Follower trust was also shown to increase job performance. In addition, Study 4 examined the moderating role of virtuality and identified that increased cultural diversity within virtual teams impacted on the relationship between transformational leadership and follower trust as well as between transactional leadership and role clarity. While virtual team leaders with high levels of transformational leadership were able to develop higher follower trust with both low and high culturally diverse teams, those with low levels of transformational leadership experienced greater difficulty in developing high follower trust in teams with lower cultural diversity. In regards to transactional leadership, leaders exhibiting low levels of transactional leadership behaviours had greater difficulty facilitating follower role clarity than did leaders with higher levels of transactional leadership behaviours. Furthermore, in teams with higher cultural diversity, leaders with low levels of transactional leadership had greater difficulty in developing follower role clarity than when cultural diversity was low. This was in contrast to leaders with higher levels of transactional leadership behaviours who were able to develop follower role clarity, irrespective of the levels of cultural diversity within the team.

This thesis makes several contributions to our understanding of leadership within virtual teams. First, it demonstrates the importance of both transformational and transactional leadership in developing follower job performance and satisfaction within virtual teams. This is in contrast to many leadership studies examining face-to-face teams, which typically disregard the importance of transactional leadership. Second, it demonstrates the importance of considering mediators such as role clarity, follower trust and leader presence. Third, all four studies utilised samples from existing virtual teams, increasing the external validity of the findings. The limited previous research on leadership within virtual teams has relied on ad hoc groups, limited to student samples. Fourth, this thesis demonstrates the importance of virtuality within virtual teams and in particular, ensuring that not all virtual teams are classified alike in future empirical studies. In doing so, to the best of my knowledge, Study 4 is the first empirical examination of the cultural diversity dimension of virtuality within existing virtual teams. Overall, the four studies provide collective evidence that the dynamics of virtual teams differ from co-located face-to-face teams.

The thesis demonstrates to leaders the importance of three central mediators in developing follower job performance and satisfaction. Theoretical implications in reference to leadership research in organisations and practical implications for facilitating virtual team effectiveness are discussed.

Download the abstract at: http://espace.library.uq.edu.au/view/UQ:152005

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Leadership Effectiveness within Virtual Teams