How to reduce the ‘Distance’ in a Virtual Team

Written by Nadine Castle, The Culture Group

We know working remotely works for individuals (and for individual productivity) but what about individuals working collectively as a team?

We have seen the rise of the virtual workplace as a result of this global pandemic. Working from home was swiftly enacted with make-shift offices constructed in bedrooms, living rooms and the like. Adoption of new technologies (for some) such as Zoom, Trello and Slack have become part of our working infrastructure and over the past 3 months the world of work has gone virtual.

There are many benefits to remote working. Stanford University’ conducted a two-year remote work productivity study. Researchers followed 500 employees dividing them into “remote” and “traditional” working groups. The remote working group results not only showed a work productivity boost equal to a full day’s work, but also fewer sick days and a 50 percent decrease in employee turnover.

We know working remotely works for individuals (and for individual productivity) but what about individuals working collectively as a team? The power of teams is a differentiator within successful organisations. How do you harness the power of collaboration and collective problem solving of teams in a virtual environment?

One answer is …reduce the barrier of ‘Distance’.

What do we mean by Distance? Based on thinking from Harvard Business Review, we have three main kinds of ‘Distance’: physical distance, operational distance, and emotional distance.

1. Physical Distance is a very tangible outcome of remote working and by its nature is difficult to reduce. When you delve deeper you then consider the impact of communication. Face-to-face interaction is rich with information where voice, body language, proximity, eye contact, and touch give deeper meaning to the art of communication. Emails, texts and typing are great ‘leaner’ mediums for quick check-ins, social workplace chatting, sharing straightforward messages and information. For more complicated, emotional or collective problem solving the ‘deeper’ your communication needs to be. Video conferencing is the best option.
   Tip: As a team create your new communication protocols, mix your communication mediums and establish your non-negotiables eg: video’s must be on for team collaboration conversations
2. Operational Distance. How we work, the size of our team and range of skill level can create ‘distance’ within virtual teams. Recent research has found that “virtual teammates are 2.5 times more likely to perceive incompetence, broken commitments, and bad decision making with virtual team mates than those who are co-located.” This distance can quickly widen, create frustration and impact team cohesiveness if not directly addressed. Creating virtual teaming practices around ownership and accountability and continue to build skills capability and leverage strengths of your team members will help bridge the gap. If you have a large team, adopt agile ways of working protocols such as ‘sprint teams’ (zoom breakout rooms is a great resource) to foster cross collaboration in small group sizes.
   Tip: Develop new ways of working and align to your operational plans. Create sprint teams to work on specific problems or innovations. Ensure training and development remains on the agenda.
3. Emotional Distance. Building a level of intimacy and emotional connection are key elements of a connected team whose culture is based on aligned values, trust and an interdependency on each other. When these elements are missing the emotional distance will make establishing strong virtual bonds, deeper team connections and collaboration more difficult. As a team discuss how values can be bought to life when working remotely, the importance of transparency, demonstrating genuine care for each other and authentic conversations (not just work related). Trust is core value driver for us all and when trust is eroded the impact on culture and performance is immense. Communication breaks down, teams start to fragment, engagement is lower and collaboration. Understand what creates, holds and erodes trust in a virtual teaming environment is a critical ‘authentic’ conversation to have.
   Tip: Genuinely care about each other’s wellbeing and take time at the start of each virtual meeting to check in as a team to see how you are doing. Make culture a strategy and bring it life with dedicated initiatives and projects.

Understanding each of these three elements, minimising the barriers of distance and creating new workplace norms will create a virtual environment that will foster team collaboration and collective problem solving.