Precious few virtual teams have explicit team norms, even for aspects of teamwork where the absence of shared norms can really trip a team up. Excuses include: “When would we have time to talk this through?” “Everyone pretty much knows how we need to work.” “We’re too busy.” And my favorite: “It’s too late to go backwards.”
And yet, when I ask virtual teams about the toughest communication problems they wrestle with, pretty much all of them could be resolved, at least in part, with the creation of shared operating principles. Examples:
- Some people always join our team meetings late, and we waste a lot of time rehashing what we just covered
- It takes me forever to read through all of the emails I get, and more than half of them are totally irrelevant to my work
- My manager and teammates interrupt my work with a steady stream of IMs all day and get mad when I don’t reply right away
- It takes me forever to find the most current team documents
It’s true that all teams work better with clear operating principles. But virtual teams suffer much more without them. That’s because they have so few opportunities to identify, and then successfully address, miscues and missteps that inevitably result when people have different ideas about how they need to work together.
In this article, I provide 10 “best practices” norms that can do the most to save time, reduce frustration and boost productivity of virtual teams. Extracted from one of our Bridging the Distance Virtual Leadership workshop series, these examples include specific actions that can support each one. For this piece, I touch on virtual meetings, decision-making, the use of email, shared documents and scheduling, areas for which a lack of explicit norms can cause especially thorny problems for virtual teams.
1. Everyone participates fully in every team meeting they attend. This means that: Everyone stays off mute, so we can all hear what’s going on, and so people can jump in more easily. Desks, screens and minds are cleared to focus on the conversation at hand. Multitasking is not acceptable, except for “multitasking on task,” such as adding ideas to our virtual conference area or jotting down questions on a shared whiteboard. If you’re pulled by competing priorities and can’t participate fully, you may need to opt out of a given meeting and catch up on your own later on.
2. We design meetings to maximize active participation. This means that: We follow the 80/20 rule - our meetings are 80% active and 20% passive. We don’t bore meeting participants by showing slides or reviewing documents that can be sent and reviewed before the meeting. Instead, we create our agendas so people can converse on important topics, exchanging ideas, offering suggestions, or seeking guidance. We change activities every 5-7 minutes to keep people engaged, and constantly look for new ways to add vitality to each meeting.
3. We give equal regard to remote and co-located participants. This means that: We incorporate all participants equally into the conversation. We call on remote participants first when going around the table. Onsite participants maintain respectful etiquette, including no sidebar conversations, no putting the speakerphone on mute, no food or beverages near speakers, and saying names before speaking. Whenever possible, we create a truly level playing field by having all participants meet remotely, even when some are able to be onsite together.
4. Meetings begin and end on time. This means that: The meeting leader starts on time, even if several people are running late. If you arrive late, you are responsible for catching up on your own time; those who came on time are not responsible for repeating what you missed. Meeting leaders need to be realistic about what can reasonably be accomplished within the allotted time, which may mean holding more frequent meetings, longer meetings, have fewer invitees, rescope objectives, insist on more prework, or some combination of these things. Meeting leaders end on time, even if all objectives have not been achieved.
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