Asynchronous meetings are virtual meetings in which the attendees are not present at the same time. Traditionally, these have not been considered to be meetings at all. But when we analyze them we can see that they should be facilitated, have an agenda, explore the agenda items, make decisions, and plan actions.
To treat asynchronous communication as virtual meetings, the team applies a disciplined approach to address issues and come to effective decisions without having to meet synchronously. Facilitation is needed to have the right people attend and participate with common objectives, staying on topic with the right level of detail, and ensuring closure within a finite time. Blogs, e-mail streams, and discussion forums are the main media for asynchronous meetings.
There are advantages to both synchronous and asynchronous meetings. Synchronous meetings streamline communications, condense the timeline, and enable efficient discussion of complex issues.
Asynchronous meetings require writing, and writing promotes greater precision and accuracy. An audit trail is produced, documenting decisions and their rationale. Asynchronous meetings make scheduling across time zones manageable. The virtual team must decide when to work synchronously and when to work asynchronously. Generally, we try to minimize the number of synchronous meetings by limiting them to complex and interpersonal issues and using them as a kickoff, checkpoint, or wrap-up for asynchronous communications.
Whether asynchronous communications are through e-mail or a topical forum, there is a need for some discipline. Left to themselves, some team members write e-mails with no subject, or subjects that do not relate to content. Some go on and on for pages. Others write too many and copy everyone they could think of, while others didn't copy people with a need to know. The volume and manageability of the asynchronous communications can get so bad that it takes more time to read the day's e-mail than one has.
Establish guidelines that address subject naming, limited distribution, response, length, use of attachments, document naming and document management. E-mail chains, Web logs, and discussion boards need to be facilitated. For example, who monitors whether people are staying on subject or are unconsciously morphing from subject to subject?
How formal should facilitation be? Who will facilitate? How much authority will they have? People from every continent are working together on projects. Migration and the increasing global scope result in cultural diversity. Natural cultures and organizational cultures come together and effect the way individuals and teams communicate and perform.
Everyone has a unique personality. Everyone is conditioned by their culture and their personality. The virtual team must address diversity through a code of conduct that articulates the team's culture and values.
No human being can escape from using value standards all the time. Successful intercultural encounters presuppose that the partners believe in their own values. If not they have become alienated persons, lacking a sense of security from which one can encounter other cultures with an open mind p. We want to work with open minds to identify a common set of values to achieve high performance; however we define it as a team, group, or enterprise. Cultural differences include the pace of work; how people of different genders relate; allowance for dietary, dress and holiday observances; the way decisions are made; what people mean when they say yes or no; authority; ambiguity tolerance; confrontation; and truthfulness, among others.
Here we will use pace as an example. All differences must be addressed to promote team health. Values vary regarding time, cost and productivity. Consider a slow-moving environment, such as a company run by an artist who has sufficient funds and is in no particular hurry to finish his projects. Sometimes he can take days to respond to an e-mail or phone message.
Sometimes he just decides to take a day or two to go to the beach or hike in the woods. Consider a fast-moving environment, where communication is moment to moment, target dates are deadlines, time is money. What happens when the two have to work together to reach some common goal? There can be conflict and frustration that could impact relationships. The high-performance team must acknowledge and address differences like the turnaround for requests, schedule compliance, availability for synchronous ad-hoc communication, and so forth.
As a team, the members can consciously engineer a new culture to fit the needs of the situation and to achieve common goals. In the project context, team members aware of their own conditioning and the fact that others are conditioned differently can negotiate common values based on behavioral norms.
Team members with a common goal, who are open to communication and adaptable, can come to consensus regarding their codes of conduct. If some contributors are not open, then those who are can choose to work around and accept differences. For example, if someone is chronically missing deadlines and is unwilling or unable to change others on the team can recognize the situation and adapt by buffering the rest of the project from the impact of late delivery.
Of course, late delivery of poor quality output or no delivery would require a stronger approach. The code of conduct and the team's procedures and policies reflect agreements among team members as to how they will operate.
Periodically review the process to improve the way the team works together. Nature and nurture combine to create personality. Personality drives behavior. Behavior can be consciously adjusted, overcoming personality traits that get in one's way. A healthy team brings cultural and personality diversity to the surface and addresses them as part of the team's development and planning.
Interpersonal issues are conflicts arising out of emotional reactions ranging from angry aggression to withdrawal. They exist in every environment to some degree. Handling interpersonal issues is always a challenge but more so in the virtual environment, with its different values around accountability, confrontation, psychology and emotional expression, communicating in writing, lack of face-to-face contact, lack of time to get to know one another, faux pas caused by lack of intercultural or interpersonal sensitivity, and so forth.
Many of the interpersonal issues that arise have their roots in a lack of diversity awareness and unmet, often unstated, expectations. Adding to these may be issues of uncertainty avoidance, fear of loss of authority or security, emotional reactions to the behavior of others, among other causes.
Project managers are not psychologists, but they and everyone on the team profit from an understanding of the nature of personality and the concept of emotional intelligence. A high emotional intelligence means less reactive behavior, which translates into less interpersonal strife.
Issues will arise. If they are brought to the surface, as appropriate, given the needs of the group and its members, they can be addressed to achieve common goals amicably. When necessary, escalation and intervention are needed.
Interpersonal issues are natural. As with any risk, open discussion of interpersonal issues and how to handle them before they arise — a method for managing them — can be established to address them when and if they arise.
Recognition that everyone has feelings and their own conditioning translates into objectivity, which makes reactive behavior less likely. High performance teams root out reactive behavior. The communication and reporting in a virtual team can be far less complex than the cultural and interpersonal issues. Yet in complex systems, there is some interrelationship between operational and behavioral such as culture, personality, interpersonal factors.
Visibility and transparency may raise personality and cultural issues. Transparency means accountability, potential scrutiny by others, and loss of autonomy. There may be power struggles. If there is resistance to candid, regular, accurate, up-to-date information, look to the behavioral factors and address them while creating a communication plan that addresses the information needs of the stakeholders. Regular status and progress reporting is a principle means for keeping the project visible.
In the virtual team, as in any environment, there is need to have a clear plan for:. The high-performance team wants to minimize effort and maximize visibility and information availability to those who have a need to know. We need the right mix of technology and procedures to achieve this goal. In the virtual team, regularly posted progress information — such as the task or deliverables completed, actual effort, and cost data — should be enabled through the use of a common Web-based tool, with necessary policies, procedures, and training.
If the project is small, with a small number of team members, much of the communications can be informal. For example, in a global consulting project, team members were distributed across three countries, two firms, and multiple roles and departments in each firm.
From Pitagorsky :. We relied on open informal communications. We [agreed] from the very beginning, that within the core team nothing should be held back, that we needed to feel comfortable to raise even uncomfortable issues regarding relationships, criticism, etc.
We engineered our highly interactive work sessions so that they could be attended comfortably by the participants. We utilized a web based conferencing tool that enabled us to share applications and do writing and design work including the development of graphics simultaneously so that everyone could see what was happening and give feedback as though we were in the same room.
We felt comfortable that when someone said that they were going to do something they would actually do it either in the time that they said they were going to do it or let everybody know as soon as possible if there was going to be a delay or any kind of difference between expectations and results.
Realistic estimates and candid and realistic progress assessments are necessary. Some formal process is needed. Daily oral reporting or informal e-mails work for the core team, particularly if there are short daily team meetings, but managers and clients, among others, want to be informed regarding project performance and forecast to completion. Progress communication can be active pushed to the recipient or passive recipient retrieves. Active communication includes e-mails generated upon completion of critical tasks to inform project managers and interested task managers, status reports, formal progress presentations, and so forth.
Passive reporting means posting status and progress information on a common Web site or project room. Dashboards, automatically updated based on data entered by project performers, are ideal for virtual team reporting. Interested parties can access information as needed.
Strike the right balance between sending out information and expecting people to access it from a common location, given the nature and needs of the stakeholders. Virtual team identity is enhanced when there are regular progress updates. Make sure that all team members are updated, not just clients and sponsors. Kickoff sessions are forums for making sure that everyone understands the team's objectives and approach, including the way intercultural, interpersonal, and content issues will be addressed, how meetings will be run, how decisions will be made, when and how to escalate, what terminology will be used, standards for communication, and behavioral and performance expectations.
Periodic follow-up sessions are needed to refine the process. Kick-of sessions need not be physically face to face but, if possible, should be synchronous. Being too busy is not a good reason for avoiding an interactive, synchronous kickoff session. Having half the team up at 4 a. The kickoff meeting is an opportunity for the team to bond.
Bonding can take place asynchronously, but it takes much longer and may not occur at all. Options are videoconference, Web meeting, teleconference or live, physical collocation.
Budgets, technology limitations, and personal schedules of team members are the deciding factors for choosing the right venue, be it virtual or physical. To manage a complex virtual team there is need for well-thought-out processes and a supporting toolset. Minimally, everyone should have access to e-mail and telephone, with the ability to easily call and conference across regions, countries, and continents, given the team's geographical distribution.
A common document management procedure and a central repository are needed. A shared electronic team space e-project room for posting and retrieving status information, maintaining a common calendar, issues, changes, risk register, and documents further supports high performance. In a large complex environment or where there are multiple small projects, a knowledge management tool that enables common, just-in-time access to templates, policies, procedures, and best practice guidelines adds value.
A server or Web-based project management tool with integrated data capture and reporting is needed to make a comprehensive master project plan available, and to enable streamlined reporting at multiple levels of detail.
Among the unique challenges of working in virtual teams with global span is managing across multiple time zones. The most obvious issue is arranging synchronous meetings when some team members must be available at inconvenient hours. There is a Address any language or time barriers directly. And provide tips on how to effectively communicate in spite of them.
For instance, if not everyone is a native English speaker, you might suggest that employees avoid using slang or colloquialisms.
If possible, make a point to get the whole team together in person once or twice a year. Meeting face-to-face as a group is an ideal way to team-build. It allows remote employees the chance to get to know each other beyond their job roles.
Technology is what makes virtual teams possible. Not every tool is going to be a good fit for your team. Consider trial periods or task someone with researching all the options to determine which suit your needs best. Provide training for your staff on the tools you select to ensure everyone is using them consistently and to the fullest benefit. Developing communication strategies that resonate across your entire organization, including in-person and virtual teams, can be challenging.
Some of our professional development programs are designed specifically to help leaders deliver clear, concise messaging to their teams. Trust is key in any relationship. A shared mission, collaborative spirit, and strategic team building can help instill trust in remote and onsite workers alike. Ideally, this should speak to the greater good of humanity, but obviously related to your industry somehow. Nontraditional workers especially millennials value mission-driven organizations because they want to feel their time is being used for something worthwhile.
State your mission clearly and embed it in everything you do. Demonstrate your dedication to the cause by donating to charity, holding volunteer days or incentives, or partnering with nonprofits that share your mission. First, it helps to have clearly defined teams. This sets the expectation that people should be working collaboratively, even from a distance.
It may seem like a no-brainer, but startups and small businesses sometimes undermine collaboration by failing to form teams within the company. This can lead to confusion and low cooperation among employees. Encourage teams to meet regularly via video conference, as these virtual face-to-face meetings can help build a sense of community and familiarity. You might have one goal, or you might have several. Regardless, it is vitally important that your team has a shared goal or goals and a common understanding of how progress will be measured.
These goals will likely be dictated by broader business goals, or it may be up to you and your team to establish your goals. This is a great opportunity to meet in person if at all possible, get to know each other better as colleagues, and work through a strategic planning process. Low productivity is an obvious risk when employees work outside of a traditional office.
In an environment without day-to-day oversight, some team members may not use their time wisely. On the other hand, certain employees risk burnout when working remotely due to a lack of boundaries. By seeing how long it takes to complete certain jobs, you are able to set baseline expectations that are useful for both current and future roles.
Be sure to pay attention to your best performers as much as you do the rest of your team. These may be the people at risk of overworking themselves. Without the clear boundaries that office life provides, the go-getters on your team may have workdays that never end, setting themselves up for exhaustion and resentment toward the company.
Encourage your staff to keep regular business hours and take advantage of their paid time off. Check in if you suspect someone is burning the midnight oil. Erratic or moody behavior, emails sent at odd times, and a drop in work quality are all signs that a remote worker needs to take a breather. Conduct regular one-one-ones with each team member to not only hold them accountable for performance, but also to check in on workload and support needed.
Many teams may find daily stand-ups—a. Having an informal group check-in each day keeps the team on the same page and holds everyone accountable for their daily tasks and ongoing projects. In addition to group check-ins, make it a rule for managers to set up one-to-one time with their direct reports every month or quarter.
This takes the stress out of a sudden request for a meeting, and gives employees a designated time to talk about their progress or any issues they might be having at work. The challenges and solutions discussed in this post are complex, so approach any changes methodically and seek outside counsel if needed. Discussion of artificial intelligence AI should be rooted in reality.
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