ASSIGNMENT # 3
Submitted By
M. Aleem Nasir Registration #
Khurram Nasir
Hafiz Mubasil
M. Waqas
Submitted to
Miss Amna Ali
THE UNIVERSITY OF LAHORE
LAHORE BUSINESS SCHOOL
Fall-2020
What are some of the similarities and differences between face to
face and virtual teams that a manager should know about when
managing teams?
1. Get the team together physically early-on. It may seem paradoxical
to say in a post on virtual teams, but face-to-face communication is still
better than virtual when it comes to building relationships and fostering
trust, an essential foundation for effective team work. If you can’t do it, it’s
not the end of the world (focus on doing some virtual team building). But if
you can get the team together, use the time to help team members get to
know each other better, personally and professionally, as well to create a
shared vision and a set of guiding principles for how the team will work.
Schedule the in-person meeting early on, and reconnect regularly (semi-
annually or annually) if possible.
2. Clarify tasks and processes, not just goals and roles. All new
leaders need to align their team on goals, roles and responsibilities in the
first 90 days. With virtual teams, however, coordination is inherently more
of a challenge because people are not co-located. So it’s important to focus
more attention on the details of task design and the processes that will be
used to complete them. Simplify the work to the greatest extent possible,
ideally so tasks are assigned to sub-groups of two or three team members.
And make sure that there is clarity about work process, with specifics about
who does what and when. Then periodically do “after-action reviews” to
evaluate how things are going and identify process adjustments and
training needs.
3. Commit to a communication charter. Communication on virtual
teams is often less frequent, and always is less rich than face-to-face
interaction, which provides more contextual cues and information about
emotional states such as engagement or lack thereof. The only way to
avoid the pitfalls is to be extremely clear and disciplined about how the
team will communicate. Create a charter that establishes norms of
behavior when participating in virtual meetings, such as limiting
background noise and side conversations, talking clearly and at a
reasonable pace, listening attentively and not dominating the conversation,
and so on. The charter also should include guidelines on which
communication modes to use in which circumstances, for example when to
reply via email versus picking up the phone versus taking the time to
create and share a document.
4. Build a team with rhythm. When some or all the members of a team
are working separately, it’s all-too-easy to get disconnected from the
normal rhythms of work life. One antidote is to be disciplined in creating
and enforcing rhythms in virtual team work. This means, for example,
having regular meetings, ideally same day and time each week. It also
means establishing and sharing meeting agenda in advance, having clear
agreements on communication protocols, and starting and finishing on
time. If you have team members working in different time zones, don’t
place all the time-zone burden on some team members; rather, establish a
regular rotation of meeting times to spread the load equitably.
5. Foster shared leadership. Defining deliverables and tracking
commitments provides “push” to keep team members focused and
productive; shared leadership provides crucial “pull.” Find ways to involve
others in leading the team. Examples include: assigning responsibility for
special projects, such as identifying and sharing best practices; or getting
members to coach others in their areas of expertise; or assigning them as
mentors to help on-board new team members; or asking them to run a
virtual team-building exercise. By sharing leadership, you will not only
increase engagement, but will also take some of the burden off your
shoulders.
6. Don’t forget the 1:1s. Leaders’ one-to-one performance management
and coaching interactions with their team members are a fundamental part
of making any team work. Make these interactions a regular part of the
virtual team rhythm, using them not only to check status and provide
feedback, but to keep members connected to the vision and to highlight
their part of “the story” of what you are doing together.
Finally, if you are inheriting a team, take the time to understand how your
predecessor led it. It’s essential that newly appointed leaders do this,
whether their teams are virtual or not. Because, as Confucius put it, you
must “study the past if you would define the future.” It’s even more
important to do this homework when you inherit a virtual team, because
the structures and processes used to manage communication and
coordinate work have such an inordinate impact on team performance. You
can use these ten principles as a checklist for diagnosing how the previous
leader ran the team, and help identify and prioritize what you need to do in
the first 90 days.