Top 8 tips for virtual collaboration and virtual teaming

1.  Team members are expected to adopt and adapt to new information technologies as necessary for rapid information processing and dissemination.

2. Team members must be “open” and “resilient” to a variety of changing assignments, tasks, and responsibilities that may require new learning.

3. Team members are required to have (or learn) superior collaboration skills (both cognitive* and functional**) in working with other team members regardless of location.

4. Team members are expected to operate both independently (with the least amount of management ) and interdependently (in cooperation and supporting other team members) in defining their roles,
planning and prioritizing their activities, and executing their responsibilities with a high level of effectiveness and efficiency.

5. Team members must learn and master the essential interpersonal skills of teamwork and collaboration—trust, respect, integrity, honesty, and sensitivity in working with others.

6. Team members must view their inherent differences as the source of breakthrough innovation, creativity, and competitive business advantage.

7. Team members must learn the practical skills of participating on and leading virtual teams, such as agenda preparation, expected outcomes, information dissemination, and follow up report and future
activities in specific time frames.

8. Team members must adapt to divergently different cultural workstyles, e.g., high or low context, polychronic or monochronic, and Eurocentric and non-Eurocentric.


* Cognitive skills refer to one’s mind-set with respect to responsibility, accountability, acceptance of others, collaboration, etc.
** Functional skills refer to one’s behaviors that follow from a proactive
mind-set, such as coaching, information sharing, planning
with others in mind, proactively changing

Is a recall the answer? A response to Yahoo's end of the telecommute

With CEO of Yahoo Marissa Mayer’s recent recall of all her telecommuting employees, the news has been buzzing about whether or not this was a wise decision. Critics of her decision are calling the action hypocritical as she builds a nursery next to her own office at Yahoo. They list the different burdens that this will place on telecommuting parents who don’t have the same privilege and call the action unreasonable. Those who support her decision argue that she is a CEO and her position requires difficult decision making; if she went to this sort of extreme there must be a good reason behind it. Water cooler conversations, brain-storming sessions, and team interactions don’t occur naturally in the virtual world.

As a company, Innovations has “virtually collaborated” for a number of years. In response to this recent news, Dr. Guillory has published a while paper entitled “Telecommuting and the Human Touch!” He argues that telecommuting is “obviously here to stay and will become a more comprehensive part of our day-to-day working arrangement.” The issue at hand is the fact that creativity is best sparked and realized through interpersonal human interactions.

So the question is, “How do we make it work virtually?”

There are four critical skills outlined by Dr. Guillory that are absolutely necessary for any employee to be able to work out of the office:

1. Personal responsibility and accountability,
2. High competency,
3. Continuous learning, and
4. Self-management.

You may not even realize it, but even in the traditional office, communications are virtual up to 90% of the time. With this in mind, planning a few in-depth, in-person meetings several times a year could be all the difference that you need to make with your telecommuting workforce.

Dr. Guillory has taken his 30 years of experience consulting Fortune 500 companies on performance management, and put together the “Golden Rules of Virtual Teaming and Collaboration”. Read them at the following link to his recent article: http://www.scribd.com/doc/137550451/Telecommuting-and-the-Human-Touch.

Do you agree or disagree? What are your thoughts on virtual teaming?

At Innovations, we are passionate about improving client performance, profitability, and people. If your organization could use a fresh perspective or a boost to your current objectives, please contact us. http://www.innovint.com/about_us/contact_us.php