Virtual teams - getting it right (and what it means)

This is is the group that brings together people with the interest in what makes virtual teams '"tick". The idea of setting up such a group was proposed at the "Leading and managing virtual team" training programme in 2020 (delivered by GLAD in partnership with "Global Integration" training provider.

The core of the group is made of the alumni of the training programme, however, we welcome new members, so please spread the word.

We got together for our first meeting on 07 April 2021, and this is what we discussed, agreed and proposed.

1) Terms of reference

Role and purpose of the group

The role of the alumni group is to be a community of practice, i.e. to provide safe and professional space for like-minded professionals united by the commonality of purpose and values:

To identify problem areas of virtual team functioning
Bring our experiences and expertise to work together on possible solutions
To test possible solutions and learn from that
To learn from each other’s experience of how to work effectively in a virtual team
To distil examples of good practice (i.e., something that is proven to be an effective solution and can be applied successfully in a variety of settings)
To share such examples with wider community contributing to the creation of culture of effective virtual working.
To become a virtual social space for members to meet and interact in the informal and collegial way

Membership

The group membership is open to all (with the interest in the subject) and not restricted to the alumni of the “Leading and working in a virtual team” training programme, although the alumni form the core of the group.

Roles and responsibilities

The members of the group, by the mere fact of joining the group, agree to the following:

To treat each other’s views with respect acknowledging and valuing the diversity of experience, skills, backgrounds and perspectives of each member.

To accept that some subjects may appear sensitive and confidential, and if so such matters will be treated in this way.

To share and disseminate the content of “lessons learnt”/ideas/solutions if deemed of benefit for wider teams.

To contribute/share any resources (articles, books, web references) as way to share common interest and promote further thinking and discussion.

Types of activities

Our get together meeting
Sharing interesting resources
Inviting experts and interest people that we can learn from

Meetings and communication

Frequency of (virtual) meetings: TBC

Duration of meetings: 1 hr

Chairperson rotation: The members of the group may take turns in chairing meetings.

Records and agendas

Members of the group are welcome to contribute/add/amend notes of the meeting using this wiki page.

All members of the group are welcome to contribute to the agenda items/themes in planning for subsequent meetings.

Communication:

Email

2) Karim shared his impressions of the free trial session of the 'Productivity and the virtual team" delivered by the Global Integration on 26/03/21

This new learning module that GI developed following the feedback they received in 2020 from organisation that took part in their training programmes.

The module explores different levels of productivity

Running meeting to complete collaborative tasks

Managing boundaries in terms of space and time (geographically dispersed teams)

Multi-tasking

This module is featured the programme that they offer this year - you are welcome to check out.

3) In the meantime - all group members are invited to proposed the topic(s) that the group will focus on.

This is what has been proposed so far:

Proposed by: (optional)	I propose to focus on ...	Further comments/reasons/clarification	Action
	Productivity in remote working environment
	Effective collaboration (what it is and how to achieve it) remotely
	How to achieve and sustain adequate levels of engagement (virtual teams) ("team energy")
	Impact of remote working on our use of time, i.e. less time to commute - more time to have things done?
Alan Lewis	Hybrid teams - how to run them? The implications of hybrid ways of working	Hybrid working should be greater than the sum of its parts - i.e. local and remote work techniques and strategies. Effective Hybrid work is likely to require a re-designing of the team and work activity to be maximally effective and to address such issues as differential treatment, proximity bias and task allocation. (Thank you, Alan) and to add to the reflections on the subject of Hybrid working - I have come across this very recent research (30,000 people in 31 countries) by the Learning and Performance Institute in UK. Research has some interesting insights, e.g. "Comparing collaboration trends in Microsoft 365 between February 2020 and February 2021, the research shows that the average meeting is 10 minutes longer, increasing from 35 to 45 minutes, and that the average Teams user is sending 45% more chats per week and 42% more chats per person after hours. Workers are grappling with more information and more ad hoc communication, with 62% of calls and meetings unscheduled". And "The research shows that younger workers are struggling more than older workers in various aspects of their work, including being able to bring new ideas to the table, getting a word in during conference calls and feeling engaged or excited about work. And pandemic isolation has shrunk work networks with workers becoming more siloed than they were before the pandemic. On a more positive note, compared to one year ago, 39% of people say they’re more likely to be their full, authentic selves at work and 31% are less likely to feel embarrassed or ashamed when their home life shows up at work".	A new activity is under way to improve and evolve the product lifecycle management process. This will be supported by a distributed team, within in once he pandemic has waned some groups will be locally collocated. Design a workplan and approach for such a setting, taking account of issues with existing working practices and suggesting improvements.
	Balancing work roles and responsibilities, i.e. "local" vs "external" (dual lines of reporting)
Alan Lewis	Trust - how, what? What is our experience has been so far? What do we know? What do we want to know?	Trust is a fundamental baseline for effective collaboration. Personal contact helps to cement trust and in a distributed environment of project operational centres establishing trust can become more challenging and impact on working practices and individuals. In a hybrid setting with smaller localised groupings (down to the individual level) and less frequent contact this can be even more challenging. What is the best way to establish rust in a hybrid setting? What approaches can lead to maximising the effectiveness of the overall endeavor? How is trust best maintained in a hybrid setting?	Initially summarise experiences so far within my current context. There may be an opportunity to look at trust establishment when joining a new group already containing individuals familiar with both remote and localised working
	Onboarding for virtual teams