{"id":21302,"date":"2017-08-21T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2017-08-21T00:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/global2020prd.wpengine.com\/insights\/maybe-technology-isnt-the-problem\/"},"modified":"2020-05-11T09:59:54","modified_gmt":"2020-05-11T09:59:54","slug":"maybe-technology-isnt-the-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.global-integration.com\/insights\/maybe-technology-isnt-the-problem\/","title":{"rendered":"Maybe technology isn&#8217;t the problem"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>On a workshop this week with a global IT consultancy I was running an exercise which has been part of our virtual team training for 20 years. In it, a small group of managers have a task which has to be executed involving a group of remote workers.\u00a0We give the managers a 10 minute \u2018travel budget\u2019, which they can use as they see fit to connect with their virtual team.<\/p>\n<p>This particular group of managers immediately created a group messaging link to their virtual team using groupme (a business version of WhatsApp). They sent their virtual workers a copy of the task instructions from the start and used their \u2018travel budget\u2019 time to check understanding and build trust with the virtual team.\u00a0 As a result they completed the task 10 minutes early.<\/p>\n<p>Now, what was interesting about this, you might say \u2013 we know these new apps enable information to be shared much more easily than ever before. \u00a0 However there are two things to think about:<\/p>\n<p>Firstly, there have been technologies around for the last 50 years that enable the sharing of information. \u00a0Whilst the use of groupme was a first, managers have always had the technology to share information with their virtual teams if they chose to do so. The technology was not the key to success; rather it was the behavior of the manager.\u00a0 Often in this exercise and in real-life, managers keep information back as they (consciously or unconsciously) see it as a source of their power and feel that sharing knowledge will lessen this power.\u00a0 However in this instance the managers chose to engage with their virtual team early, shared the information and so built trust.<\/p>\n<p>The significance of this is explained by science.\u00a0 <a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1037\/apl0000113\"><u>A review of 52 studies<\/u><\/a> covering 12,615 individuals in 1,850 teams found that the relationship between team trust and team performance was stronger in virtual teams as compared to face-to-face teams.<\/p>\n<p>Yet when we work with people remotely, or they\u2019re from different cultures, different parts of the business or even different companies \u2013 we tend to treat them as resources &#8211; to be contacted only when we need something.\u00a0 When we\u2019re co-located and from the same department, we treat them as people (and as a result tend to trust each other much more).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1037\/a0028958\"><u>Further research with 40 global virtual teams<\/u><\/a> demonstrated the importance of a strong one-to-one relationship between a manager and virtual team members. Their findings showed that where this relationship was strong and the leader communicated frequently, the virtual team member was more likely to contribute to team decision making, which in turn had a positive effect on team innovation. The importance of this increased as team members became more dispersed.<\/p>\n<p>The second point to make is that the exercise was running in parallel with another manager and worker group. The workers were located in the same room and yet none of the learning was shared or transferred.<\/p>\n<p>We are often quick to blame a lack of communication as the problem. \u00a0This experience highlighted the best and worst of people&#8217;s behavior as enablers and inhibitors to virtual team success.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On a workshop this week with a global IT consultancy I was running an exercise which has been part of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":21303,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-21302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","type-blog","training-virtual-teams"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v27.6 (Yoast SEO v27.6) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-premium-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Maybe technology isn&#039;t the problem - Global Integration<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"On a workshop this week with a global IT consultancy I was running an exercise which has been part of our virtual team training for 20 years. 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