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How to Supercharge Collaboration: Get Big Things Done with Remote Teams, with Erica Dhawan, Collaboration Consultant and Co-Author, Get Big Things Done
We are not just connected on virtual teams today, but we are over-connected. The average employees spend 16 hours a week managing their email inbox. We’re only 27% of those emails are relevant to day to day work. $30 billion in salary costs is wasted and unproductive virtual meetings. While we have this ability to connect virtually from anywhere, we’re also facing a major collaboration overload, and we need to build a new set of skills to lead our virtual teams into the future. Research has shown that virtual teams can outperform co-located teams, but there are specific skills that you need to build to really transform your virtual team from a complex team, with lots of meetings and emails and inefficient trust to an agile team that gets big things done on a regular basis.
Reduce affinity distance
It’s important to understand there are three types of distances we face on a virtual team. The first type of distance is physical distance. It’s basic geographical distance. We all know that that distance creates challenges for us not being in a room with one another, not being able to read body language and tone. And the traditional informalities that we often say is, are up to 80% of communication today. The second type of distance is operational distance. Operational distance is really about the team size, the bandwidth, the technology that we use that makes or breaks some of those efficiencies or inefficiencies on a virtual team. And the third type of distance is affinity. Distance affinity. Distance is about the rapport trust and empathy among the virtual team that really matters to focus on not just the physical or the operational distance, because oftentimes hard to reduce those. But the key factor that will make or break the success of your virtual team is about reducing the affinity distance. And what’s really unique about today’s world is that there are many really fun and different ways you can amplify and reduce that affinity distance on your virtual team. You can create virtual team-building opportunities, creating virtual celebrations, finding a ways for your virtual team to tell stories or have quick interaction, touchpoints with each other in a day that allows them to create that trust over time.
Strengthen communication
Three are specific actions that are critical for your virtual team to be successful in to reduce that affinity distance. The first key action you must take is to always make sure that you’re not confusing a brief email communication with a clear communication. Brevity creates confusion on virtual teams. We often think that we’re being smart by sending the one-liner or sending the okay period, but oftentimes that can create a sense of disarray confusion, a loss of morale on teams without clarity of what does that really mean? And executives are often some of the biggest culprits of this sending confusing emails that are often too brief to really understand. Did we build trust? Do we have alignment? What is the next step? And if you’re a manager always ask yourself, am I being truly clear with my communications virtually? And how might I make sure that other people fully understand what needs to get done?
The second key action you must take is to check your digital volume. What’s really unique about our virtual teams is that because we’re not meeting face-to-face all the time we can interrupt. We can nudge people. We can bombard people with messages on an immense array of channels. We could send them an email, a text, and I am all at the same time. It can also lead to a lot of interruptions, confusion, and a lack of focus on virtual teams. We’d actually think that virtual teams would lead to more focus, but sometimes we can bombard our teams too much as well. So if you’re managing a virtual team, think about what is our digital volume? Do we have set norms that allow us to make sure that we’re creating space of deep thinking and then creating space where we’re always on and always plugged in and always emailing and IMing one another.
One example of this is from Virgin a few years ago. Virgin created meeting free Wednesday mornings. So it was uninterrupted time where people could just focus and get work done. And then by the afternoon, everyone virtually was connected and talking because they had time to really think and engage in meaningful ways. And the third key action I recommend you to take on your virtual team is to establish clear communication norms. How, and when will you communicate certain types of information? Is there an email process you may use one company Merck actually created a set of acronyms that reduce the confusion of virtual communications.
One example of an acronym they use is NNTTR, which means no need to respond and that simple use of NNTR. When you send an email allowed someone to not receive 15, thank you, emails or 15, okay emails, instead of just this overwhelming feeling that everyone has to respond all the time.
Another example of this is an acronym called four H, which means I need this in four hours. So people are really able to prioritize certain types of communications through subject lines, instead of feeling that they constantly have to be reading every single thing and not being able to prioritize when it really matters. And once you do this, you’ll see dramatic effects on your team. Not only will it save you hours of meetings and email overload, but it will also allow your team to create that open space, to build trust, to have candor, to have the time to share stories and success, and enable that celebration that is needed just as much on a virtual team as a co-located team.