The success of any team depends on good communication. In the case of a virtual team with members
often in different places and different time zones, sometimes with different working styles
and cultures, effective communication is essential. This can be a challenge. It means everyone
on the team must be able to use appropriate tools and strategies to stay connected with
each other. There are proven methods that help virtual teams communicate effectively.
The first is to create a social meeting point. This means ensuring that there's a forum to
talk, share information, ask questions, and get to know the other people on the team.
This could be a chat-based application such as Slack, or another team communication tool.
The point is to enlist a platform that gives team members a way to bond with one another,
share relevant information, and communicate informally.
When you can't see your colleagues face to face and have the social interactions that
build relationships and rapport, it can be difficult to establish trust. If it isn't
managed correctly, this lack of trust can undermine everything that the virtual team
is trying to achieve. Having and regularly using a social meeting platform helps to facilitate
open communications and maintain that important level of trust among team members.
Further, it's important to strengthen team communication by ensuring digital communication
can't be misunderstood. It's estimated that in face-to-face interactions, body language
and facial expression convey up to 55% of the information that people receive. On the
phone and in emails these visual queues are missing, so it's easier to misinterpret the
meaning.
Virtual teams, therefore, require taking extra steps to ensure each message they send is
clear. Written and verbal messages must be unambiguous, straightforward, and only as
detailed as necessary to make the meaning clear. Reliable communication builds trust,
minimizes conflict between team members, and ensures everyone is on the same page.
A third way to ensure effective communication is to use the three levels of communication
to your best advantage. The levels are impersonal communication, personal communication, and
group communication.
Impersonal communication, as the name implies, is simple and formal and follows the established
procedures for the given team or project. These are things that involve minimal interaction,
like delegating tasks, providing team status updates, and sharing general information.
Email or posting to a shared server generally suffices for this type of communication.
Personal communication, or one-on-one dialogue, helps build relationships. This is just as
important on a virtual team as it is in a traditional office. On a virtual team, it's
likely you'll need to communicate personally with colleagues at various levels in a project
hierarchy, your peers, the team leader, a manager, and so on. Personal communication
cuts down on misunderstandings and conflicts and is best suited for times when there is
no need to involve the whole team, like one-on-one catch-ups with teammates over the phone or
internal messaging.
Group communication is helpful when all members of the team need to get on the same page,
brainstorm, or have a live discussion, such as strategy meetings. These are virtual meetings
using tools such as WebEx or Skype for webinars or video conferencing where the entire team
can be present. They allow for easier distribution of information and open discussion among team
members.
The key is to make sure that you are an active participant in all forms of communication
and information sharing, and that there is a healthy balance of the three types. As a
virtual team member, you may work remotely, but communication with others is still integral
to your role. Teams are more than simply collections of individuals.
Working together through effective communication is how a team becomes more than the sum of
its parts.