Most organizations execute their work in groups they call teams. When they really are teams, they're very effective. An increasingly common structure is the "virtual team," which usually consists of people from different organizations, or people who reside at different geographical sites, or both.
Both of the qualities of being virtual and being distributed tend to make team formation more difficult, because they hinder the development of warm, trusting, personal relationships.
Although virtual teammates do coordinate their efforts, the personal dimension of their collaboration is sometimes so limited that we cannot truly call them teams. Sometimes, they know each other only through email, text, or telephone, and the telephone calls are often at odd hours. They are teams in name only — TINOs.
That's fine, but problems arise when we try to manage TINOs as if they were teams. If we expect members of TINOs to identify with the group, and if we expect team management techniques to work when we aren't actually dealing with teams, we're headed for trouble.
In a future article, we'll discuss management techniques for TINOs. But let's begin by examining the attributes of TINOs.
- Conflicting commitments
- The defining feature of a team is that its people work together so closely that they can anticipate each other's strides and stumbles. When needed, they step in to support each other, and their support is welcome. In TINOs, when almost everyone is working on multiple teams, it's hard to focus on teammates or what they might need.
- Limited sense of trust
- Although a TINO's people sometimes make commitments, their "honoring rate" can be low. It's not that they don't care — they're usually just overcommitted, or they don't really feel allegiance to the TINO. This leads to a low level of trust, which they replace with "monitoring." That is, they spend significant effort reporting to each other and to "those responsible" about how things are going. Trust is much cheaper than monitoring, but it's impossibly unreliable when people are so overcommitted.
- Weak interpersonal relationships
- Although a TINO's people
sometimes make commitments,
their "honoring rate"
can be low - In TINOs, many relationships between pairs of team members are weak, and limited to the task at hand. In fact, some pairs have never even met. To each other, many are just voices on the phone — they've never seen photos of each other, and never visit each other's offices. When the project gets into trouble, and they convene an Emergency Project Review, some team members meet for the very first time, even though they've been "working together" for months (or longer!).
Conflicting commitments, a limited sense of trust, and weak interpersonal relationships can have varying effects — think of them as possible indicators of risk. Almost anything you do to reduce split assignments, to create trust, and to strengthen personal relationships will help. What can you do today? Top Next Issue
Is your organization a participant in one or more global teams? Are you the owner/sponsor of a global team? Are you managing a global team? Is everything going well, or at least as well as any project goes? Probably not. Many of the troubles people encounter are traceable to the obstacles global teams face when building working professional relationships from afar. Read 303 Tips for Virtual and Global Teams to learn how to make your global and distributed teams sing. Order Now!
For more about Trust, see "Creating Trust," Point Lookout for January 21, 2009, "The High Cost of Low Trust: I," Point Lookout for April 19, 2006, and "Express Your Appreciation and Trust," Point Lookout for January 16, 2002.
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Related articles
More articles on Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness:
- Changing the Subject: II
- Sometimes, in conversation, we must change the subject, but we also do it to dominate, manipulate, or
assert power. Subject changing — and controlling its use — can be important political skills.
- Favors, Payback, and Thoughtlessness
- Someone at work who isn't particularly a friend or foe has asked you for a favor. What happens if you
say no? Do you grant the favor? How do you decide what to do?
- How to Foresee the Foreseeable: Focus on the Question
- When group decisions go awry, we sometimes feel that the failure could have been foreseen. Often, the
cause of the failure was foreseen, but because the seer was a dissenter within the group, the issue
was set aside. Improving how groups deal with dissent can enhance decision quality.
- Bottlenecks: I
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- Heart with Mind
- We say people have "heart" when they continue to pursue a goal despite obstacles that would
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See also Personal, Team, and Organizational Effectiveness, Effective Meetings, Project Management and Virtual and Global Teams for more related articles.
Forthcoming issues of Point Lookout
- Coming May 8: Antipatterns for Time-Constrained Communication: 3
- Recognizing just a few patterns that can lead to miscommunication can reduce the incidence of problems. Here is Part 3 of a collection of antipatterns that arise in technical communication under time pressure, emphasizing past experiences of participants. Available here and by RSS on May 8.
- And on May 15: Should I Write or Should I Call?
- After we recognize the need to contact a colleague or colleagues to work out a way to move forward, we next must decide how to make contact. Phone? Videoconference? Text message? There are some simple criteria that can help with such decisions. Available here and by RSS on May 15.
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