Virtual Team Tips List of TipsICPT Follow-Up Virtual Team Tips List of Tips
11. BE PERSONAL. Try to call people by their names (or at least write 'hello' at the beginning...) and write your name and some (nice) greetings always at the end of an email.(Heidi Voser)
12. BE INCLUDING. Don’t forget: virtual team members normally just have the 'written words', all the information they get is what you write... (Heidi Voser)
13. Indicate in the subject line whether the email is sent to inform, to get an opinion or decision, or to ask the recipient do something. (Eva Nell)
14. Keep emails short enough so that the full body of text can be displayed on the screen without having to scroll down. (Eva Nell)
15. Set a date by which you request a response. (Eva Nell)
16. Follow up mails with phone calls and vice versa to clarify and confirm understanding. (Eva Nell)
17. Show an interest in what is happening at your colleagues locations, ask what is going on in the Singapore / Tokyo / New York /London / Frankfurt office. Consider whether these circumstances will impact the virtual team. Refer any arising issues to the virtual team and work out a shared solution. (Eva Nell)
18. A virtual team, more than any other type of team, needs to have a clear idea and sharing of its goals. (Vijay Jain)
19. There should be a list of CVs of team members with their interests, social background, holidays, working hours, birthday, etc posted on a virtual blackboard to enable the virtual team members to interact with each other on non-task issues. (Vijay Jain)
20. A virtual “coffee machine” could be set up so that members may drop by and exchange a few words with each other. (Vijay Jain)
21. Use capital letters only when necessary. It can be perceived as e-yelling. WHAT DO YOU MEAN BY E-YELLING? ... See what I mean? (Nancy Bragard)
22. On conference calls, call "time" on occasion to ensure that everyone is onboard, on the same page, has expressed reservations, has been able to add their two bits, etc. Give it a catchy name, like "virtual reality check" and have someone on the team responsible for calling it every half-hour or so. (Nancy Bragard)
23. Don't bother to file sent mail... Time consuming and unnecessary. You can always find a sent mail by sorting by date, by receiver, by subject. Files with 3250 emails are also manageable! (Nancy Bragard)
24. Remember that the recipient of your e-mail is a person - and even perhaps a potential friend. Be polite. (Roberta Berg)
25. REWARDS AND RECOGNITION. Some cultures crave and thrive on public recognition, competiton, and winning. Examples includes US Americans, salespeople, and members of the Nintendo generation. Other cultures are embarrassed by public recognition. So be careful about automatically and mindlessly providing public praise (for example on the teams' Website). Check with individual team members for their preference.
26. Close your e-mails with an appropriate word or phrase. (Roberta Berg)
27. Remind yourself at regular intervals that what at first glance appears to be a stupid idea to you may simply represent thinking different from yours and may truly be an ingenious idea. (Roberta Berg)
28. Remind yourself at regular intervals that what at first glance appears to be a stupid idea to you may represent lack of thinking and actually be a stupid idea. (Roberta Berg)
29. Learn to use the CC & BCC function - This takes a while to get used to, especially for those from cultures that avoid "grandstanding". "Too-much" is better than "not-enough". Copy colleagues, bosses and subordinates on information they might find useful or need to know. In cases where the main recipient would be confused by the CC inclusion, use the BCC function. Establish an environment of inclusion among the team that it is OK to include others on emails often. (Mark Evans)
30. Make sure that you know who is on your team! (Meaning to say: Who is on our virtual team? Who is on the panel? :-) (Erika Jacobi)
31. Make sure that your team mates know who you are. (Erika Jacobi)
32. Keep everybody involved right from the beginning. (Samuel van den Bergh)
33. Break routine ways of communicating. Start with an e-mail activity, for example. (Samuel van den Bergh)
34. Facilitate the process of getting to know each other. By doing that you neutralize “mis-“ and “dis” factors, surface differences, establish trust, and help the team to find their common ground. (Samuel van den Bergh)
35. Develop a feeling for which themes can easily be discussed in an e-mail and which may require a telephone call. (Erika Jacobi)
36. Try to get to know your team-mates well enough to know who prefers which communication device. (Erika Jacobi)
37. Make sure to answer all e-mails that you receive from your team-mates. In replying make sure to point out that you appreciate the contact and the given information. (Erika Jacobi)
38. If appropriate spice your e-mails up with a personal note. (Erika Jacobi)
39. If you get into a conflict with some of your team members “sleep through” your anger and respond to his/her e-mail the next day, once the negative emotions are not that strong and a more balanced, considerate and content related message have a chance to be created. (Betina Szkudlarek)
40. If you write down several aspects which need to be taken care of, list them rather in bullet points instead of including a long message where the tasks will be difficult to separate. (Betina Szkudlarek)
41. If you use e-mail lists to communicate with all your team members, and if you plan to send a message which concerns only one or a few of them, write their names in the title of the message. In this way other team members won’t have to read all of the messages immediately, but they will always have a chance to look at the e-mails later and see what their team mates are doing. (Betina Szkudlarek)
42. Send to your team members a traditional postcard to show them how happy you are to have them in your team. (Betina Szkudlarek)
43. Be aware that e-mail takes all of a non-verbal communication away. Learn how to read between the lines. (Betina Szkudlarek)
44. As a team leader, make sure to personally call each team member to get to know them and give them the opportunity to ask questions about what the job/project is, the expectations etc. (Kathrina Seelhofer)
45. Spend time to let people get acquainted, for example use short bios and photographs that can be sent to all and let people talk about their experience, their expectations and whatever they want to share about their personal life. (Kathrina Seelhofer)
46. Make sure that you have regular planned contact (telephone conferences) where all team members meet. Consider time zones. (Kathrina Seelhofer)
47. Use an "icebreaker" at every meeting, for example "tell us about your favorite movie and what makes this your favorite movie". (Kathrina Seelhofer)
48. Distribute the tasks so that whenever possible people of the same time zones can work in pairs on a given subject. (Kathrina Seelhofer)
49. Celebrate success for example by having a virtual party. This could be done so that every teammember gets an item (food, dress etc.)from the country of another teammember and shares with the team how they managed to find it, why they think this is typical of that country. (Kathrina Seelhofer)
50. Answer in an appropriate channel(s). If, for example, you receive an e-mail which reveals that the sender has misunderstood you or is angry, in some cases it might be best to answer by phone. (Roberta Berg)
51. Be wary of making assumptions and drawing conclusions based on little data. Ask questions to check your understanding. (Roberta Berg)
52. Remind yourself that no one (at least not many of us) are counter-productive (or even evil) on purpose. Given our own understanding of a situation, 99.9% of us have good intentions. (Roberta Berg)
53. Take the initiative and ask others to challenge your thinking. (Roberta Berg)
54. Attempt to discover how you and the other parties involved may all have contributed to producing results which nobody likes. (Roberta Berg)
55. Remind yourself to stay open when you receive an e-mail that sounds hurtful or disrespectful to you. Try to think about what other interpretations of the content are possible. When you feel you can cope with the situation try to find an oportunity to ask the person who sent the mail what he or she actually meant to say. Don´t forget to share how you received the message at the beginning. (Erika Jacobi)
56. Make sure that the original e-mail can always be found below your response. Answers like "SURE!" are prettydifficult to understand if you don´t have a clue any longer what it was referring to. (Erika Jacobi)
57. As the leader of a virtual team try to be in touch with all of your team-mates on a very regular basis. Try to get everybody equally involved in the team-work. Also make sure to have an individual face-to-face meeting with your team-mates once in a while. (Erika Jacobi)
58. If you can feel that you are starting to develop an anthipathy against one of your team-mates, don´t follow your first intuition to contact her or him less frequently. Go out of your way to contact this person in particular. (Erika Jacobi)
59. A SENSE OF URGENCY. Virtual teams (like any other team, but more so) work more efficient when they operate in a crisis mode. Example: If a team of five members have to produce an online newsletter before Wednesday next week, we will work faster and better. (Thiagi)
60. VERY BAD AND VERY GOOD. When I review the literature on virtual teams, I am reminded of Sam’s normal distribution curve that graphically illustrates multicultural teams producing exceptionally bad and exceptionally good results. This is also true of virtual teams. Virtual tools help good teams become better. Unfortunately, they also make dysfunctional teams perform more poorly. (Thiagi)
61. SEND IT TO YOURSELF. If you are sending the same email note to several people, send it to yourself. Then list the email addresses on a BCC line. This will avoid an unnecessarily long list at the beginning of your note. (Thiagi)
62. THINK THREE TIMES BEFORE YOU HIT REPLY. First, make sure you are not sending the reply to all members of a group when it is of interest to only one person. Second, change the subject line to make it more meaningful. Third, don’t include the original letter (or letters), especially if they are lengthy. Instead, summarize the relevant aspects of the original letter in a few sentences. (Thiagi)
63. If you are part of an international virtual team in which people are not speaking their mother tongue remember to be tolerant and give them the benefit of the doubt if the language appears inappropriate. Put yourself in their shoes. How good are you at their language? (Sheila Young)
64. Write an e-mail message that can make the other members laugh a big virtual laugh as a punchline in a joke text so that its group's cohesion is enhanced. Once it is glued to you as a leader they are with you all the time. (Goh Abe)
65. Create a team's hierarchical virtual chart so that a leader can grasp its dynamics and the rest can know how to communicate with each other (Goh Abe)
66. Communicate about what you are doing and make your team members aware when you are available and when you are not (due to meetings, business travel, holidays, etc.). This will help managing expectations about when to expect an answer and, preventing misperceptions about how much you are contributing to the team effort (it is difficult to see what you are doing and how busy you are when team members are working independently, far away from each other). (Aniko Kis)
67. Agree with the team about what should be considered as an "urgent" e-mail and how fast the answer is expected. (Aniko Kis)
68. If giving an answer/resolving an issue takes some time, let the other party know that there is "work in progress". (Aniko Kis)
69. Explore what channels of communication team members prefer and consider individual preferences as much as possible, e. g. call someone who clearly prefers a personal discussion (to build the relationship, avoid misunderstandings, etc.) and write to those who prefer to write (to be explicit, have details documented, etc.). Communicate about your own preferences to the team. (Aniko Kis)
70. Look upon ideas more as clay to be shaped by the team rather than products to be bought or sold. (Roberta Berg)
71. Remember that each member of the team will probably see things that other team members miss. (Roberta Berg)
72. Remember that each team member has a right and a responsibility to explore all views. (Roberta Berg)
73. Remind yourself that team members, yourself included, may be unaware that they are producing negative consequences. (Roberta Berg)
74. Remind yourself that we all make mistakes, and that we have a right and a responsibility to learn from our mistakes. (Roberta Berg)
75. Disagreement should be a source of learning. (Roberta Berg)
76. If trust shall grow, remember "small is beautiful". (Samuel van den Bergh)
77. Shared common knowledge is the key for growth in the 21st century. Virtual teams are the lock for the key. (Samuel van den Bergh)
78. Trust among team members helps to avoid jamming and reduces friction. (Samuel van den Bergh)
79. A picture of the teammates helps to reduce fantasies. (Samuel van den Bergh)
80. A leader should be a kind of an airplane captain and a flight engineer at the same time to show that a task-oriented flight is going to its destination on a flight chart so that the rest of the team as passengers in a cabin can go with him.(Goh Abe)
81. So in this manner, the rest of the team would be graded based upon his/her contribution to be seated on 1st class or C-class or Y-class for further motivating its member. (Goh Abe)
82. As a team-leader try to make sure that words of praise sound natural and are meant honestly. Nobody needs fake acknowledgement. (Erika Jacobi)
83. As a team-leader try to be there for your team mates when things go wrong. Then it might be way more important to support everybody than when things go right. (Erika Jacobi)
84. BEYOND EMAIL. Although most virtual teams use email as a primary mode of communication, they are not the most effective mode of communication (especially these days when in-baskets are filled with spam). Even when we use all of the tips presented in this activity, emails get deleted or lost. More effective approaches for communication among team members include web-based discussion boards and archived files. (Thiagi)
85. WE ARE NOT A TEAM. Participants in this email game constitute a virtual community rather than a virtual team. Although we have a common goal (come up with 101 tips), not everybody is involved. All members of a virtual team are interdependent and indispensable. Everybody will be contributing (even though in different roles). (Thiagi)
86. In the e-communication keep in mind the KISS rule – Keep it Short and Simple! (Betina Szkudlarek)
87. Take minutes of all your online meetings and send them to all the team members. (Betina Szkudlarek)
88. In the very beginning of your cooperation establish with your team the ground rules of your cooperation. (Betina Szkudlarek)
89. In the beginning of your communication create a glossary of all the crucial terms which meaning might not be that clear to all of the team members (especially relevant while communicating within international teams). (Betina Szkudlarek)
90. Take a copy of this “List of tips” and rehearse its content every now and then! (Betina Szkudlarek)
91. Discuss with teammates what we mean by "only when necessary" as in "Use capital letters only when necessary." (Hi, Nancy! :-). I saw what you meant in your demonstration - Tip #21; it did come across like yelling. I cringed because I'd just used capitals in my introduction of myself. I didn't intend to yell, however just to emphasize the word. Did the capitalized word in my introduction come across as yelling to you? (Roberta Berg)
92. Perhaps use italics instead of capitals to emphasize words. (How did it work in my first tip?) (Roberta Berg)
93. Discuss what teammates think about symbols like :-) . I have a sneaking suspicion that some people hate them, but until now, at least, I've considered them to be a surrogate smile - a way of expressing goodwill. What do my teammates think? (Roberta Berg)
94. Perhaps explain a bit more the reasoning behind the tips we make. (Roberta Berg)
95. Perhaps ask for examples when we don't understand the reasoning behind tips given. (Roberta Berg)
96. Introduce the topic of trust as an important element in teamwork. (Roberta Berg)
97. Arrange for appropriate amounts of interaction among team members before the work actually begins. (Roberta Berg)
98. Use team-building activities and instruments appropriate to the cultural backgrounds of the team members. (Roberta Berg)
99. Ask all team members to tell the team something about the way their culture functions and how this may be adapted in the team's work. (Roberta Berg)
100. Use groupware functions, such as anonymity, for discussions or votes so that team members from collective or high-power distance cultures feel more comfortable. (Roberta Berg)
101. Perhaps "remote" is more accurate than "virtual" to refer to these teams. They are, in fact, REAL (yes, I meant to e-yell there) they're just not physically together! (Nancy Bragard)
102. When you receive an attachment you want to keep, file it right off. It's much easier to find a document on the C drive than to remember where it is in the mailbox. (Nancy Bragard)
103. Remote teams need to "relax" and bond and build trust and address other than just operational issues too... Have an occasional dialogue (I mean in the Peter Senge sense of the term) or some activity that is about the people on the team, relationships, issues, etc. without "slipping" into the work issues. (Nancy Bragard)
104. For conference calls, visios, etc., establish upstream a list of "guidelines" with everyone contributing. These can include turn-taking, having each person give their name before talking, interruption management, etc. If the guidelines are in place, it neutralizes things, no one is "picking" on anyone in calling them on transgressions, you're all just respecting your own set of rules. (Nancy Bragard)
105. Talk upfront about silence and what it implies for team members. Silence doesn't necessarily imply lack of commitment or preparation or that people aren't onboard. If members have shared their use of and perception of silence, there's less likelihood of ill-founded assumptions. (Nancy Bragard)
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Workshops by Thiagi, Inc. All rights reserved
URL: http://www.thiagi.com/ICPT-Follow-Up/listOfTips.html
Revised: May 23, 2005