Where in the World is My Team?

Making a Success of Your Virtual Global Workplace

Terence Brake

• Publisher: Jossey-Bass
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780470714294
• eBook ISBN: 9780470687451
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Organisational Behaviour
• Index: Business

As the economy becomes increasingly global, businesses need employees who can work in teams that cross borders and transcend physical spaces. In Where in the World Is My Team, fictional character Will Williams shares entertaining anecdotes and practical advice to accustom readers to the challenges of a global, virtual workplace. This easy-to-follow guide, ideal for managers and those interested in succeeding in a global economy, introduces new technologies but focuses especially on the six Key Performance Zones for global team collaboration with briefing report summaries to emphasize key points.

BRIEFING REPORT: GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAM ESSENTIALS

1. To: Sheila Hetherington-Etheridge
2. From: Will Williams
3. Purpose
4. This report summarizes my findings on the new workplace.

SECTION 1: THE NEW WORKPLACE

Two key characteristics of the new workplace are that it is:

1. Virtual: people are working together via technologies, in virtual spaces rather than face-to-face.
2. Global: colleagues and partners are often working from many different parts of the world.

Why is this new workplace evolving now?

Key drivers:

• Globalization, reducing the influence of commercial and labour borders.
• New communications and computing technologies, enabling a global workplace.

Resulting in:

• Increased levels of complexity, uncertainty, ambiguity, and paradox.

That can only be managed by:

• Intensive and extensive collaboration across internal and external borders.

Meaning:

• Competitive advantage is increasingly tied to collaborative advantage developed in virtual space.

SECTION 2: CHALLENGES, COUNTERMEASURES, AND TEAM PERFORMANCE ZONES

Three major challenges of virtual collaboration are:

1. Isolation: as a result of reduced contact, restricted social cues, difficulty of trust-building, reduced sense of team identity, and the out-of-sight/out-of-mind syndrome.
2. Fragmentation: as a result of unclear purpose, fuzzy roles and responsibilities, local pressures and priorities, uncertainties around decision making, neglect of finding common ground.
3. Confusion: as a result of too much or too little communication, imprecise communication, lack of shared contextual understanding, conflicting assumptions, activities hidden from one another by distance.

These challenges can have an impact on face-to-face teams also, but distance and reduced contact tend to magnify them. To counteract these challenges, a virtual team needs to generate high levels of:

1. Engagement: emotional involvement and commitment to the work of the team.
2. Cohesion: working together as a unified, coordinated whole.
3. Clarity: shared understandings across the team.
4. How will the team generate high levels in these three areas? It needs to focus attention on six team performance zones:
5. Cooperation: ability to develop and maintain trusting relationships across geographies, time zones, and cultures.
6. Convergence: ability to maintain a clear purpose, direction, and shared set of priorities.
7. Coordination: ability to align work through clearly defined roles and responsibilities, shared tools, processes, and methods.
8. Capability: ability to leverage knowledge, skills, and experiences of all members, and increase the capabilities of the team as a whole.
9. Communication: ability to generate shared verbal and written understandings across distances via technology.
10. Cultural Intelligence: ability to develop and maintain a global virtual workplace inclusive of value and style differences.

Collaboration Controller.

SECTION 3: COOPERATION

Virtual Trust

What is the need?

To develop the confidence that team colleagues who work with you primarily via technology can be trusted and relied upon (despite challenges such as distances, different time zones, and cultures), to meet or exceed expectations in working towards shared goals.

Why is it important?

Leaders of distributed virtual teams cannot hope to be effective through command and control mechanisms. They can set a strategic direction and negotiate guidelines and expectations, but effective performance relies heavily on trust and communication.

Pathways to Virtual Trust

Several factors help contribute to developing trust on the team: Having the Right Mindset; Understanding the Context; Paying Attention to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Table of Contents
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• CAST OF CHARACTERS
• WELCOME MAT
• LET THE GAMES BEGIN
• COOPERATION
• CONVERGENCE
• COORDINATION
• CAPABILITY
• COMMUNICATION
• CULTURAL INTELLIGENCE
• SHOWTIME: ALL TOGETHER NOW!
• BRIEFING REPORT: GLOBAL VIRTUAL TEAM ESSENTIALS
• USEFUL TERMS
• End User License Agreement