People in companies around the world think, act, work, learn and lead differently, based for the most part on their culture. Culture both consciously and unconsciously shapes values, perceptions and behaviors, as well as setting systematic guidelines for how we should conduct business.

Last week we took a look at how we can combine different components of culture to move virtual teams forward. This week we will explore how you can effectively manage cultural differences from a practical viewpoint that will allow everyone to benefit from cultural diversity.

By its very nature, the make-up of virtual teams is diverse. This is good – it allows you to maximize different perspectives and, hopefully, leverage the differences to gain new insights and fresh perspectives. However, there are factors that need to be managed if a virtual team is to not only survive, but thrive, within the complexities of a virtual team environment. Here are some common challenges you may have as a leader in creating synergy within your virtual team:

• Leveraging the differences in cultural norms of team members
• Understanding how different people manifest their cultural norms
• Influencing the different functional, professional and alternative subcultures
• Being empathetic to the functional and geographic dispersion of team members
• Managing the the perception of status differences within the team
• Leveraging culturally different leadership styles
• Controlling differing expectations regarding key processes and procedures

These challenges need to be managed throughout the lifecycle of the team. The sooner they are acknowledged and worked on, the more efficiently the team will be able to deliver results.

Despite these challenges, there are also unifying factors that can connect a virtual team with their diverse team members. Virtual integration can occur based on common agreement as to accepted principles and processes and mechanisms such as shared vision and values.

Here are some commitment points that may serve as a cohesive force for virtual teams:

• Service quality and continuous improvement:  Foster a team commitment to providing the best possible service and quality possible.
• Continuous learning:  Develop the idea that all members should be open to new ideas and learning from one another.
• Responsiveness and timeliness:  Emphasize the importance of responsiveness to the needs of team members, as well as both internal and external customers.
• Collaboration:  Promote a commitment to cooperation, rather than competition, as the team’s modus operandi.
• Cultural Sensitivity/Customization:   Advance the idea of developing a dedicated interest in other cultures relevant to the team. Encourage the team to understand how differing cultural perspectives can impact product/service development based on both global and local deployments.
• Global thinking:  Cultivate the team’s ability to actively search out global viewpoints and see possibilities from a broader perspective.

As a leader, if you are able to leverage the above rallying points to advance the team development of a global mindset, you have made significant progress toward virtual integration. Developing commonalities in these areas will create a team that is open to exchanging ideas across boundaries and borders and breaking down provincial ways of thinking. Your focus needs to be on creating virtual teams that can successfully operate cross-functionally, cross-divisionally and cross culturally around the world. Managing the “virtual” dynamic lies at the heart of creating, implementing and sustaining a successful virtual team.

Are you strategically managing the challenges and opportunities inherent in your virtual teams?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you manage the challenges and opportunities on your virtual teams. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week, when we will discuss how you can manage cultural differences in a way that will allow your virtual teams to benefit from cultural diversity.

Did you know that an estimated 70% of international ventures fail due to poor cross-cultural interactions?  When individuals from different cultural backgrounds or environments don’t understand each other, it will inevitably lead to failed projects and suboptimal results.  Culture forms the way we think and act – across all spectrums – often causing members of virtual teams to perceive reality very differently across boundaries and borders.

Although cultural diversity has high potential for negative outcomes, it also has enormous potential for growth and renewal that will facilitate extraordinary results. Always keep in the forefront of your mind that your virtual teams likely have more talent and potential than other types of teams by the sheer force of their diversity – the question is, will they be able to leverage that diversity for individual, team and corporate success?

The answer is a resounding YES… if you can leverage that diversity to create synergy. Synergy will create a sense of joint purpose fueled by the knowledge that everyone brings unique experience and perspective to the team that is essential for success. As a leader, it is critical that you have the tools and perseverance to tap into the diversity of your teams to create an environment that facilitates success.

Virtual teams have the capacity to generate significant power for the overall organization. The collective experience and knowledge of a team from various backgrounds and cultures promotes the emergence of new and different ideas and perspectives, enables the rapid development of new products and services, and ensures the balance between local and global… just to name a few of the many benefits. However, in order to actualize the power of virtual teams, you need to invest in cultural integration from 4 critical angles:

1.    Cross-Cultural Assessments

Cross-cultural assessments will provide insight as to how to best interact and leverage specific members of your dispersed team – but more importantly, it will provide each member of the team with insight as to their specific cultural norms and preferences and allow them to better identify other cross-cultural angles. Once individual assessments are done, you may want to consider a team assessment to allow the virtual team to discover how they can best leverage one another for mutual and organizational benefit.

2.    Cross-Cultural Principles and Theories

Cross-cultural principles and theories will provide team members with a mechanism to not only understand that we all see things differently, but also to understand that cultural values have an enormous impact on attitudes, beliefs and behaviors. It is not enough to simply tell your teams about culture, it is critical that they begin to gain a deeper understanding of why they are different from their colleagues.

3.    Cross-Cultural Orientations

Cross-cultural Orientations will provide your team members with a way to understand their own cultural norms and their colleagues’ cultural norms. Once they can begin to understand specific components of culture that they see differently than their colleagues, they will gain the ability to begin building bridges between cultures.

4.    Cross-Cultural Intelligence

Cross-cultural Intelligence will provide your virtual teams with a toolbox that contains a reliable method for evaluating almost any cultural situation – national, functional, or organizational – very quickly. They will obtain a reliable method to prepare for interactions with their colleagues and clients on the spot – or use the same toolbox to prepare in advance for almost any situation that has a cultural context.

One or another of these tools is not enough to equip your teams for their best chance at success. What few realize, is that these tools build upon one another to enable organizational success across boundaries and borders. An assessment may provide insight, but it will not tell you what to do with that insight…cross-cultural principles and theories may provide a foundation from which to go forward, but they will not help your team members begin to understand their colleagues… and while cultural orientations may provide inherent understanding of behaviors and perspectives, they will not provide a proven process from which to interact. Each step is necessary – and each step builds on the last. As you seek to deploy this process, identify a partner that has a very specific skill sets and experience in each of the four areas above in order to enable your teams for virtual success.

Give your virtual teams the advantage – equipped them with the four critical angles of cultural integration.

Has your organization strategically invested in cultural integration?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you achieve cultural integration. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week, when we will discuss how you can manage cultural differences in a way that will allow your virtual teams to benefit from cultural diversity.

 As I was observing (and serving) in the poorest country in the western hemisphere,  I began to think about how there are some leadership lessons inherent in the environment in Haiti that most of us could stand to think about more often. You may think to yourself, “what can I learn from a country that has 90% unemployment and a 70% illiteracy rate?” These statistics are correct… and there are some important reminders (lessons) that impact how we interact with people as leaders and how far people are willing to go to serve you. Here are just a few of the things that come to mind:

1. Understand, you can’t possibly understand…

Living and visiting third world countries on a regular basis throughout most of my life, I am more aware than most of cultural diversity and the impact it has within a single culture, much less a wider application. In Haiti, I was reminded that because I live within my own paradigms, I can never fully understand the plight of those outside of them. Despite seeing poverty in its most extreme, I have never been that poor….despite witnessing oppression at its worst, I have never really been oppressed…No matter how much, as global leaders we would like to think we understand, chances are we are just not equipped to comprehend the complexity and diversity that resides within our global organizations.  The myriad of cultural challenges our diverse global communities present, only serves to remind us that while we can certainly learn and understand general orientations and respect and value others worldviews, we can not fully understand individual people by observing from a physical or psychological level.  The diversity and complexity of those individuals is shaped not only by their culture, but by their life experiences and  the dozens of values, thousands of attitudes and tens of thousands of beliefs that continually evolve throughout a lifetime. As global leaders, where we can be effective is through active listening, understanding that there is more than one “best way”,  and having the capacity to facilitate the blending of the best of all cultural elements to make the whole more than the sum of the parts.

2.      One of the most important responsibilities of a leader is to understand what’s important.

It’s very easy to be caught up in the minutia of day to day poverty in Haiti. However, as the leaders we were responsible for making the biggest impact possible in a finite period of time – not so different from global business. It was absolutely vital, while managing the interactions and activities of the team, to ensure the larger mission was being accomplished. Global leadership is no different – as leaders, we are responsible for the day to day operations and ensuring basic responsibilities are being met. However, we should never lose sight of the fact that we are also responsible for moving the organization forward in such a way that we are making a making a real difference to our employees, clients, and the organization as a whole.

3.     Embody teamwork and sacrifice.

A woman with a malnutritioned, dying child in her arms shares the small amount of formula we brought her child in order to save another. Heartbreaking, you say, but what does that have to do with global leadership? A lot, actually – What are you willing to sacrifice for the greater good? What do you value that you are willing to sacrifice in order to achieve an impossible future? What are you so passionate about that you would be willing to transform not only your company, but yourself? I can assure you that saving her child seemed nearly impossible, yet that woman was willing to share everything she had so that another mother might also realize the impossible future of seeing her child grow up. What would happen if we, as global leaders, would adopt an attitude of teamwork and sacrifice in everything we do?

4.    The importance of Execution.

In Haiti, execution can often be the difference between life and death. While serving at an orphanage, a woman walked up – she was holding a 3 year old girl by the hand and she was carrying what seemed to be a lifeless baby. The woman had brought her children to the orphanage to give them away – her husband had died and she could no longer feed them, they were malnutritioned to near death. She clearly loved her children. Her choice –  keep them and watch them die or execute on a plan to give them life.  She chose their lives. If you fail to execute, what is the cost? A failed project? Missed numbers? Maybe a few million dollars? Worst case – your position or someone else’s?  The truth is, we may never really know the impact if we fail to execute. The repercussions could ricochet far beyond our own line of sight. As a global leader, a key element of your role is to ensure execution – for everyone’s benefit.

5.   Value and leverage the resources you have (and stop complaining about those you don’t)…Be creative and use what you have.

In Haiti nothing is disposed of just because it fulfilled its original purpose. As in most 3rd world countries, once something has been used for its original purpose, it is time to ask what its next purpose should be. The third world teaches people how to be resourceful and leverage what they have. We should all learn from those nations who have the least because they value and leverage everything they have. Most importantly, people in Haiti value and leverage one another. They know how to find and use their resources –  who has specific skills and where to go to learn or get help. If one person acquires anything at all, it is shared amongst the community. The Haitian people never complain and have rock-solid faith – they use everything they have to the very best of their ability. In these (relative) times of economic hardship, can you imagine the impact if we could have if we would adopt the Haitian sense of entrepreneurship – especially when considering our human resources?

6.    Unite to make the impossible possible.

We brought 25 people to Haiti who had little to nothing in common, with nothing more than a vision of exactly what were going to accomplish and a rock solid plan of how we were going to achieve our goals – we left as a team bonded by experience and a line of sight to that vision for a better future for the Haitian people. Everyone was involved in the right capacity – everyone had a role and knew exactly how important they were to the outcome. As a global leader it is your responsibility to unite your organization through a vision of a future worth striving for, to facilitate a game plan in which everyone knows and understands the value of their role, and ultimately to ensure execution – enabling a game-changing future for your organization and everyone in it.

Haiti is a place whose truths and shortcomings are different from those of your country or mine only in being more obvious – more difficult to look at. Anything that’s true of Haiti is true of global business, and the world, as a whole — that’s a truth that’s not complicated at all, only hard to swallow. Eight months after the earthquake that killed perhaps 300,000 people, life in Haiti seems to have evolved into a “new” normal. That doesn’t mean everything’s fine — it’s not. Even the new normal in Haiti is far from fine.

Most of us lead a privileged life, yet we often don’t appreciate how good (or how easy) life is for us. We may have a tough day at the office, spend innumerable hours on an airplane… one of our regions may not be delivering the results we would like, or perhaps we are having alignment issues within our global teams. Honestly, we should all  stop and appreciate that we are blessed enough to have these challenges. The people of Haiti struggle everyday just to feed their children. They have no hope of earning a living – the average wage for the 10% of the population that does have a paying job is less than $300 and has not increased in over 20 years – and they predominantly speak a language that is not spoken anywhere else in the world. Yet, somehow there are lessons to be learned…

I would love for you to engage the discussion and let us know how your unique experiences remind you of what good leadership is all about. Please feel free to contact me at  Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders.

On a traditional team, trust evolves as a function of demonstrated actions over time. However when working virtually, members typically do not have the opportunity to develop trust in the traditional gradual, cumulative way. The challenge for you, as a leader, becomes how to build trust rapidly across boundaries and borders.

The stark reality is that virtual team members do not usually have time to get to know each other. Typically, the team needs to focus quickly on critical tasks and has little time to build relationships. Despite this fact, virtual teams require a high level of trust in order to be successful.

You can’t compel team members to trust one another.  It’s asking a lot of people to protect the interests of their virtual team – initially total strangers with different ways of thinking and acting. Because of this, building trust and a cohesive team culture from a variety of national norms, values and traditions can be overwhelming. Without high levels of trust virtual team members quickly lose morale and motivation. You need to foster a sense of trust in each members’ competence and a commitment to team goals. Each member must believe that the entire team is doing their work conscientiously – with the team’s goals at the top of their priority list.

Building trust on virtual teams may not be easy, but it can be done. If the following guidelines are incorporated into attitudes and work practices, trust is likely to emerge:

1.    Orientation

With time and location differences are inherent in virtual teamwork, virtual teams have limited information from which to build trust upon. As a result, it’s not only necessary, but critical, that you invest in an initial orientation where members meet and have the opportunity to build relationships. Ignoring this step has serious repercussions – not the least of these being the lack of transformation from an “us”/ “them” environment to a “we” culture. The team should spend time face-to-face co-creating ground rules, a vision, the charter and mission statement, as well as team norms, roles and responsibilities. Build in significant time for  “bonding” – even if you need to extend the meetings a day to do so.

2.    Communication

Communication requires a conscious ongoing effort by everyone. Create a communication plan that facilitates people contacting one another to discuss and consult on various issues, promoting a collaborative culture within the virtual team. Create an environment where team members, despite their location, check on one another and offer assistance. Ongoing interactions will expedite virtual members coming to understand they are an important part of the team. Through regular communications, virtual team members will come to trust the team they are an integral part of.

On an administrative note, establish a policy for responsiveness – not only to clients and other functional areas, but to each other. Ensure all team communications reach all members at the same time – regardless of location. In a virtual environment, it is hard for members to discern whether they have been systematically excluded or just forgotten… having the potential to erode trust very quickly.

3.    Virtual Team Vision

Clarity of vision will enable a sense of trust that everyone is traveling in the same direction – keep the vision front and center. Initiate ongoing conversations around the vision, encouraging team members to bring new insights and perspectives to the table. Provide frequent feedback, facilitate virtual discussions and consistently validate consensus of common understanding around the vision – especially in multi-cultural environments. It is essential that members are constantly reminded that they are a part of a collaborative effort working toward a common vision – reinforcing the sense of virtual community and common purpose will facilitate trust.

4.    Cultural Sensitivity

Trust is not the same across cultures. Cultures differ in how they communicate, how they relate… and in how they show trust. As a result, virtual teams need to be aware, knowledgeable and respectful of cultural differences on the team. Members, at a minimum, should be familiar with some key cultural orientations that will help them to interpret team members actions and behaviors.  Some important focus areas are:

• Time Management: Scarce/Plentiful, Linear/Multi-tasking, Past/Present/Future
• Identity and Purpose: Individualism/Collectivism
• Organization: Hierarchy/Equality, Stability/Change, Competitive/Collaborative
• Power and Responsibility: Humility/Harmony/Control
• Territory and Boundaries: Protect/Share
• Communication Patterns: High/low Context, Direct/Indirect, Formal/Informal

In addition, all virtual team members should understand how and why culture influences the team.  By addressing cultural differences early on, miscommunication can be avoided – or at least put in context. The goal should be to develop virtual team relationships and ways of doing business that facilitate team success.

5.    Work Processes

For trust to emerge on a virtual team, work processes need to be consistent and everyone must be accountable to following the agreed upon processes. This doesn’t mean that the team can’t reevaluate its processes. It simply means that if a work process is to be altered, the change must be made clear to everyone… and everyone is bound by the change. At the end of the day, the implementation of disciplined work processes means that structure and process remain consistent and that every member of the team knows what to expect and is accountable to adhering to team norms, thus inherently fostering trust.

In direct relation to work process, timely follow through on commitments is critical to building trust. Failure to do so erodes trust very quickly.  This is more important for virtual teams than for traditional teams because dispersed teams have few cues from which to evaluate whether or not members are committed to the team’s success  - follow through is a key indicator of commitment. Have each member keep a log with agreed commitments, checking off each item when completed. If a team member cannot meet a commitment, establish the expectation that the lapse will be justified to the team.

The above guidelines for building rapid trust in virtual environments will enable the team to become a cohesive virtual unit. As the team is oriented… as they learn to communicate frequently and effectively… as they espouse a shared vision… as they understand and leverage their cultural diversity… and as they establish defined work processes, your virtual teams will develop a trust in each other that will ensure a cohesive, committed team that drives effective results across boundaries and borders.

Is building virtual team trust part of your strategy?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you build virtual team trust. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will continue to discuss the complexity of virtual teams.

While a vision develops a picture of where the team is going and creates a shared sense of going somewhere specific together, your team charter will help you to more effectively collaborate across boundaries and borders, set expectations, design performance management systems and provide a mechanism for evaluating your virtual teams. However, the charter is not the end of the process. The charter is the launch point for creating useful dialogue that will ultimately facilitate the team creating it’s mission statement – the coming together of the virtual team’s vision and charter.

The vision, charter and mission are critical for all teams, however when leading virtual teams they become vital to your success. Because you work with teams that do not work in a shared physical environment with cues acquired through daily interactions, it is critical that your charter provide explicit guidance on overall expectations.

The formation of a charter is the most effective when developed by the team, creating a joint focus and buy-in to the overall contents of the charter.  Work diligently with your virtual teams to develop each area of the charter. Similar to how the vision provides a desired destination in living color for your virtual teams, the charter will provide a clear road map to guide them toward that final destination. In addition, by working through the components of the charter together, the team will be focused on their joint objectives and common path. It provides a significant opportunity for you, as their leader, to help your dispersed teams come to a common purpose, ensuring everyone has a shared understanding of where they are going and how they will get there as a team.

The formation of the charter creates a graphic, detailed picture of the vision – clarifying roles, boundaries and communications processes.  The most important aspects of the charter are:

• Roles: Develop and assign roles centered on the teams purpose and how it will organize around it’s work. Cleary define and explain individual roles to virtual team members. Everyone on the team should understand the criticality of their own role (as well as that of each of their virtual teammates) to the overall purpose of the team and the organization as a whole. This is one of the most significant activities you can engage in with your virtual teams.

• Measurable Behavior Standards: Decide which 5 or 6 categories of performance are essential to both the short and long term success of the team. Describe specific, measurable behavior that constitutes high performing behaviors in each category. Define the boundaries of behavior for team members and specify how you will respond when an individual has not met the teams expectations, as well as the corrective action that will result.

• Expectations/ground rules: Set ground rules that are explicit, measurable and targeted at developing high-performance virtual teams. Address expectations such as attendance, timelines, notification, conduct, participation, role/task performance, preparation, etc.

• Policies and procedures: Develop explicit policies with your virtual teams that address key performance indicators, are enforceable and will facilitate your ability to lead effectively in a dispersed environment.  Establish specific processes that align to organizational procedures, but are tailored for your virtual teams. Think about how specific processes may need to be adjusted for virtual environments: procedures for submitting work products in a consistent, fair and timely manner; regular and ad hoc communication standards; how you expect virtual team members to handle procurement or expenses; how to address sales leads (where appropriate); global client escalations, etc. The team will need to specify how they will enforce the agreed policies and procedures.  In addition, make sure the team considers local, as well as global, impacts to changes in policy, process or procedure.

• Goals: Establish both task and process goals that are SMART (specific, measureable, attainable, relevant and time-bound). Be sure you emphasize those goals focused on the core purpose of the team and the goals related to how the team will organize around the specific tasks.

• Timelines and project plans: Divide the “project” into specific tasks with timelines and completion dates. Assign tasks to specific team members, agree specific process checks and checkpoints.

Once your virtual teams have worked through the charter, they will need to create a virtual team mission statement that will align with the organization’s mission, fulfill the requirements in the agreed upon charter and meet the expectations of various stakeholders – customers, organizational leadership, matrix managers, and the virtual team itself.

An effective mission statement will include: 1) The virtual team’s core purpose 2) the team’s distinct characteristics 3) what the team is to accomplish 4) products or services   5)  the team’s basic beliefs, values and aspirations and 6) it’s principle stakeholders.

The dialogue should start with the virtual vision, evolve through the team charter and solidify with the development of the Virtual Teams mission.  By combining these three aspects into your virtual team’s development process, you are creating a sustainable sense of shared identity that is often difficult to establish in virtual environments when teams are spread across time zones and cultures.  Your ability to strategically connect your virtual teams will have a direct impact on the team’s – and the organization’s – ability to succeed.

What is your plan to strategically connect your virtual team members to drive success?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you connect your virtual teams. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will continue to discuss the complexity of virtual teams.

The power of virtual teams to respond quickly to corporate challenges, pooling both broad and deep expertise, has become an important key to corporate success. However, to get the most from the vast experience, knowledge and perspective of dispersed team members, you need to use the strength of a vision to bring the team together, leveraging the opportunity to ensure that every person fully understands and embraces their purpose and the role they (as well as those of their team mates) play in organizational success.

In an environment where team members do not have the luxury of interacting face to face, creating a living, breathing shared vision is the solid foundation on which to build a sound structure.  A “virtual” vision serves several purposes:  1) It forces the team to collaborate to evaluate its fundamental attributes and characteristics as a dispersed unit 2) It establishes boundaries that guide strategy and 3) the vision establishes implicit expectations and standards of performance.

A vision for dispersed teams will also:

• Provide focus and energy for overcoming traditional corporate cultures that promote a “HQ is best” mentality
• Encourage people to shift from a nationalistic or functional culture to a global perspective
• Compel new ways of thinking and acting… as a global entity
• Provide a roadmap to keep the virtual team on course when tempted to regress toward old habits
• Create a powerful commitment to inspire team members to commit to accomplishing things that matter deeply to them – the vision becomes personal and creates a “third” culture.
• Facilitate change, promoting the acceptance of collaborative thinking.

When creating a vision for a virtual team, consider some key factors:

1. Vision must be built around a challenge that is uniquely positioned for your specific virtual teams
2. Vision should guide the virtual team to stay focused on those goals that lead toward their final destination
3. Vision should be directly tied to critical business results aligned to team member’s expertise, emphasizing both personal and team accountability
4. Vision should explicitly banish “silo” activities that threaten team success and erode trust

If you are challenged with designing and implementing a meaningful virtual team vision, here are some basic guidelines:

• Invest in an initial virtual team “visioning” meeting or retreat to facilitate the team getting to know each other as more than distant colleagues.  By creating the team vision through a collaborative process in a neutral setting, you are building a shared team identity that will allow the team to bond over mutual goals and objectives – developing a sense of belonging to something much wider and deeper than themselves
• As a team, identify the virtual team’s key strategic focus, linking it directly to the organizations strategic intent – use this as a basis for your vision
• As a team activity, translate the vision into long-term strategies, short term operational tactics… and then into goals, plans and tasks that everyone understands and agrees upon
• Depict the emerging vision in key words and simple graphics that are universally understood and accepted
• Institutionalize the virtual team’s purpose and create a sense of team identity by developing a virtual team charter and mission statement to support the team’s vision

Never forget that a vision, in and of itself, is useless.  However in a virtual environment, a vision without a driving force, shared understanding and purpose can be particularly toxic.  A lack of clarity or focus can cause cultural misunderstandings, fracture unity and destroy trust – especially in a multicultural, multifunctional virtual environment where visual cues are limited. For a vision to become a useful tool for driving success,  it must be both explicitly clear and challenging, as well as providing explicit meaning and importance to the activities of the people within the the team. A strong sense of who the team is  and what they stand for as a cohesive unit must be built into the formula for success.

The virtual vision should encourage and guide strategic thinking and planning, while also defining the values and norms that will guide virtual work.  The vision is necessary to provide direction and purpose – identifying a destination that will make a real difference – even moreso than with traditional teams. A powerful vision will not only guide and inspire, motivate and excite, but most of all it will provide common meaning and purpose to a team that does not acquire this knowledge through live interactions. It gives virtual team members a sense of who they are as a team, as well as a much needed connection to the wider organization. In a world where few commonalities may be apparent, creating a common vision for the virtual team to bond around has the capacity to create a team identity that can be a basis for building relationships and trust that will span boundaries and borders.

It is important to constantly remind yourself that members of virtual teams are real people - individuals who live within their various cultures. If they are to be effective on a virtual team, they will need to develop a sense of collective identity and fundamental purpose.  If you, as their leader, provide this through a shared vision, you will be better able to shape direction, as well as develop the structures, activities, and people necessary to drive success.

Are you leveraging vision to drive virtual team success?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you use vision to drive virtual team success. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will continue to discuss the complexity of virtual teams.

In order for virtual teams to succeed, organizational leadership must establish a culture that values teamwork, communication, learning and capitalizing on geographical and functional diversity. The key to developing an organizational culture that supports virtual teams is that everyone across the organization is encouraged and enabled to embrace change and be open to virtual teams right from the start.  This starts with senior leadership support and sponsorship – without it,  virtual teams are DOA (Dead on Arrival). It is critical that virtual teams are positioned at the highest levels as vital, value-add resources that provide sustainable competitive advantage for the corporation.

From an organizational perspective, you need to encourage four aspects of leadership that are known to positively impact virtual team performance:

1. Facilitating open communications
2. Establishing clear expectations
3. Allocating resources
4. Leveraging cultural diversity

Not so different from co-located teams, but considerably more complex in virtual environments. In order to be successful, you will need to enable virtual leaders with the autonomy to get things done and the authority to impact organizational change.

Not everyone can be a successful virtual team leader. It is a complicated role that involves managing learning and development, cross-cultural interactions and team dynamics (just a few of the intricacies involved in leading teams across boundaries and borders). There are very specific skills and competencies that are vital to engaging this level of complexity. Although there are many important components that impact the abilities of successful virtual team leaders – systems thinking, emotional intelligence and cultural intelligence… just to name a few – there are three qualities that are essential to virtual team leadership: courage, openness and empathy.

Courage:  Leaders of virtual teams must be willing to do what it takes to create the conditions for effectiveness, despite the obstacles. They must be willing to make people uncomfortable, sometimes mad, in order to establish and maintain effective team process. Are your virtual team leaders willing to:

• Challenge group norms?
• Disrupt established routines within the team and across the organization?
• Risk the wrath of colleagues and superiors to secure the resources required by the team?

Openness: This requires your virtual team leaders to possess the willingness to relinquish control to a certain extent, while also being willing to embody “cultural humility”.  To be effective they must be able to suspend their own values and beliefs, while simultaneously ensuring  they are respecting and leveraging the full measure of the value, background and experience across the team.  Do your virtual team leaders:

• Commit to leveraging cultural diversity to determine stronger “third ways” of doing things?
• Ensure individual and team development and promotion equally across the board?
• Have strong cross-functional, cross-cultural conflict resolution skills?
• Make information and documentation readily available in a timely, open manner?

Efficacy and Empathy: Virtual team leaders must be socially responsible and respectful of individual dignity, understanding cultural implications. Do your virtual team leaders have the capacity to:

• Maintain their ethical standing  as they deal with complex, emotionally-charged situations that arise from cultural misunderstandings?
• Be sensitive to team members biases, while still promoting cultural diversity?
• Take responsibility for how relationships evolve in the virtual environment?

In addition to qualities, there are critical competencies that must be present for a virtual leader to succeed. The inherent challenges of leading in a virtual environment requires the development of additional skills that compliment the competencies necessary when leading traditional teams:

• Managing performance and coaching employees remotely, without traditional forms of feedback
• Selecting, implementing and maintaining virtual communication and collaboration tools
• Leading across boundaries and borders
• Developing and transitioning team members from a distance
• Building and maintaining trust without significant face to face interactions
• Building networks in virtual environments – across hierarchical and organization boundaries
• Developing, adapting and maintaining both team and organizational processes to support virtual environments

Recognize that being a virtual team leader requires an almost superhuman effort.  Amongst other things, your leaders need to: be flexible; be willing to develop, support and maintain the virtual team process; instrumental in facilitating collaborative teamwork; understand, appreciate and reinforce cross-cultural attributes; have the ability to listen and communicate and collaborate effectively across functions and geographies. Most of all, leaders of geographically or functionally dispersed teams need to have both the capacity and the desire to navigate the complex challenges of virtual environments.

Are you equipping your virtual team leaders to lead well?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you equip your virtual team leaders to lead well. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will continue to discuss the complexity of virtual teams.

. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will continue to discuss the complexity of virtual teams.

Human Resource policies have a critical impact on virtual team success. They need to support geographically dispersed teams by integrating and aligning them to recognize, support and reward the people who lead and work in virtual environments. Here are a few ideas to think about when preparing to shift your organizational culture to support virtual teams:

Securing Systems Support

When a virtual team is formed, you, as a virtual leader, and HR (along with IT) need to partner to consider the technologies teams will need to be successful. Options must be assessed, justified, approved by HR and made available to all virtual team members. Coordinate with Human Resources to ensure training on how and when to use these communication technologies is provided to every team member.

One of the most important things you can do for your virtual teams is to ensure that they have the technical support they need for working remotely.  Never forget that IT should be supporting the business – not the other way around. HR policies should dictate that every team member has equal and immediate access to systems, technologies, training and support. As the leader of geographically dispersed teams, you need to partner with HR and IT to make sure formal standards are set for technology, ensuring everyone has the same access to hardware and software applications, as well as intranet and internet connections. If there are tools and technologies that your teams need to be successful, but HR policy doesn’t support what you need, inquire into the business justification for the omission. Build your business case and/or identify alternatives. Do the research to find out how to alter HR policies and initiate meetings with HR and IT to discuss how to get your teams what they need.

Once you have established what you need and have developed the formal standards and budgets necessary, make sure you negotiate the full support of your Information Systems Group. It is essential that they are fully prepared and equipped to support your teams as they work across boundaries and borders.

Career Development

It is critical to make sure that virtual team members do not feel as if they are losing opportunities because they work in a remote environment. You can demonstrate your support by working with HR to ensure that virtual team members are provided comparable career opportunities and assignments to traditional employees.

You will need to partner with HR to ensure that promotion and career development policies are applied equally to people who work in virtual settings to help reinforce the idea that working virtually is a positive career option. People who work virtually occasionally have fears (often grounded in reality) that they will be passed over for new opportunities because they are not physically present in the headquarters location or home office. As a leader, you not only need to reassure your geographically dispersed teams that this is not the case, but you also have to demonstrate that they actually do have the same career development opportunities as those who work on traditional teams – protect against the mentality that those who are not onsite are “out of sight, out of mind”.

Rewarding Results

Traditionally, rewards and recognition favor individual and functional contributions. Although this is often a valid way to facilitate recognition, it is not necessarily effective in virtual environments. Because virtual teams operate primarily in cross-functional (sometimes cross-organizational) environments, accommodations  need to be made in regards to how people are recognized and rewarded. As a leader driving results on virtual teams, make sure performance objectives are developed to focus on working successfully across boundaries and borders, as well as sharing of information that will support and enable virtual teamwork.

In a traditional corporate environment, it is fairly simple to reward people for both effort and results. In virtual environments, performance measures (and supporting policies) need to be adapted to focus more on results – effort is more difficult to discern from afar. A reward system that is based more on results than effort is likely to be a significant transition in most instances, but it is necessary in order to adequately reward performance on virtual teams.

As a leader operating in virtual environments, you can effectively use both formal and informal recognition by facilitating HR policies that promote “spot awards”, bonuses or other methods that reinforce the idea that working virtually is valued by the organization. Get approval to set up a webpage on the corporate intranet that posts best practices, customer wins and other virtual team successes so that your teams are publicly recognized and celebrated across the organization. When you have the opportunity to speak, present or have discussions with your management or other leaders, use examples from your virtual teams successes – it will get back to them.

At the end of the day, your people policies have the power to drive the perception of the value of working on virtual teams. If your company has not taken the time or made the effort to develop the systems, policies and procedures to ensure virtual team success, the perceived (lack of) value of working on such a team becomes evident very quickly. However, when preparing to establish virtual teams, you as a leader, have the capacity to drive adequate systems support, career development opportunities and reward and recognition through relevant Human Resource policies that demonstrate the value that the organization places on virtual teams.

Do your people policies help or hinder your virtual teams?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how your HR policies support virtual teams. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will discuss how training, education and support affect virtual teams.

Today, in many organizations, a significant amount of work is done virtually. Even in the most provincial and domestic firms, it is rare to find all team members in a single location. Companies frequently choose people from across various global locations to work virtually in an effort to save both time and money.

The business justification for you to create virtual teams is strong: they leverage expertise and vertical integration across the organization to make resources readily available, as well as increase the overall speed and agility of the organization. In addition, virtual teams draw talent quickly from various functions, locations and cultures. They reduce the disruption to people’s lives because travel becomes less of a necessity and team members can both broaden and deepen their perspectives (and their careers) by working across boundaries and borders on a variety of projects and tasks.

As a leader of virtual teams, your main goal should be to leverage your human capital to its utmost – as quickly as possible.  Beware: How you choose to manage this process may be the difference between success and failure.

Despite the potential advantages of creating virtual teams, a dispersed environment will fundamentally change how your teams operate and adds to the overall complexity of the environment. Virtual teams are more complex than traditional teams for two key reasons:

1. They cross boundaries related to time, distance (geography), culture and/or function
2. They communicate and collaborate using technology

Working across boundaries and borders complicates working relationships because differences in time zones, language, culture and access to technology can inhibit effective communication. In addition, integration of work methods, organizational or functional cultures, technologies and goals can also make communication and collaboration far more challenging than that of the traditional team.

Even though you may have the technological capability to work across boundaries and borders, the fact remains that in order to leverage virtual teams you will need different competencies and practices in order to be successful. Your success will depend heavily on developing competencies that facilitate working effectively virtually.

Understanding how to lead and/or work on a virtual team is a necessary competence in today’s global marketplace. While striving to develop teams that leverage technology to create competitive advantage, it is important for you to realize that it is not enough to understand that technology or national culture affects teamwork; you and your teams need tools, techniques and decision-making strategies that work in unique, dispersed environments.

As a leader in a virtual environment, you will need an additional level of support because you must be able to develop:

• Training, travel and technology budgets that enable virtual team success
• Virtual team processes and policies that support the unique, virtual environment your teams work in
• A knowledge management repository that eliminates duplicative efforts, thereby saving time and money
• Comprehensive communication plans that facilitate openness and trust across cultures and time zones
• Empowerment guidelines for team members to enable autonomy and personal accountability, while establishing boundaries
• Customer education packages to facilitate customer understanding and support for your virtual teams

These components of preparation for launching virtual teams are critical because your virtual teams need specific things to succeed, such as:

• CXO level support for virtual work environments
• Ability to receive the critical training, travel and technology necessary to develop and function as a successful dispersed team
• High levels of autonomy to do their jobs
• Standardized team initiation processes
• Structured communication plans
• Standardized electronic communication and collaboration technologies
• Empowerment guidelines
• Customer education plans

Creating competitive advantage in global environments means constantly reshaping your organization to maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. Virtual teams are an excellent way to do both – if the organization is committed to the cultural change and prepared to support the unique requirements of the virtual team. Over the next several weeks, we will explore the critical success factors that drive the probability of a virtual team’s success:

1. Human resource policies
2. Training, education and team development
3. Organizational culture
4. National culture
5. Standardized organizational and team processes
6. Technology
7. Leadership support
8. Leader and team member competencies

Is your organization committed to the cultural change necessary to support the unique requirements of virtual teams?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how your  organization supports virtual teams. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will discuss how and why human resource policies are important to virtual team success.

If you’re not appearing, you’re disappearing…

~ Art Blakey, Legendary Jazz Musician

 In order for you to increase your chances of success, people need to know about you and what you have to offer. They need to meet you, see you… hear from you. If you want people to talk about the remarkable things you do, then you need to give them the opportunity to experience you. This doesn’t need to be a sleazy car salesman pitch (no offense to any reputable car salesmen!), but it does mean you need to get out there and have the capability to produce  clearly choreographed 30, 60, and 90 second “elevator” speeches that will serve as an introduction to Brand YOU.

Once you know how you will introduce your brand, start attending networking meetings (both social and professional) and getting involved in external organizations in your field. However, one of the best (and least recognized) opportunities you have to communicate Brand YOU is to expand your involvement to organizations not in your industry or field of expertise. Some of your best contacts may come from quite unexpected places, but you will never know unless you get out there and share your brand.

In addition to physically sharing your brand at select events, there are many ways to capitalize on Brand YOU that will facilitate both the growth of your brand and your intellectual growth:

1. Become an expert in a specific field and make yourself available to media companies, corporations, and other organizations looking for expert commentators, public speakers, or consultants. Let people know through your social media connections, networking activities, and web site that you are available to speak or consult – for free or for a fee. Many experts initially speak for free to become known, but eventually command thousands of dollars for a single keynote address.
2. Develop a website or blog using your full name.
 A wide variety of sources use search engines to search for expert sources, connect with you and/or potentially either do business with you or interview you. By creating a website or a blog under your name, you are far more likely to generate the first result for your name on the main search engines. Once you establish your domain name, add your picture, a bio, your e-mail address and links to all of your online presence outlets (i.e. Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter) – and of course, clearly state your areas of expertise and how you can be of service. This will not only help people to reach you using their media of choice, but also to better understand Brand YOU and what you have to offer.
3. Make the effort to discover your audiences preferred media outlets – what they read and listen to, as well as what they watch. Research the content provided and locate specific gatekeepers you can pitch your expertise to. E-mail journalists, editors and producers in response to one of their articles or media content, with a note that you are available to comment on future articles. When you are contacted for an interview, respond straight away because they are typically on deadline. Answer questions thoroughly, while making sure that you communicate exactly what you need to. When you are interviewed, promote yourself and/or your company through your byline, which will help build brand on both accounts. Once the interview is complete, send a follow-up e-mail asking if they have any more questions, including your bio and your picture.
4. Leverage your social networks – Connect. Social networking is one of the best ways to become known. By forming online relationships with those within your target audience, you will develop the capacity to form long-term bonds.  Because networking is such a big aspect of communicating your brand, here are some rules of networking that you should keep in mind as you promote your brand:

No matter what, listen carefully to what people are saying in order to understand what they really think about Brand YOU. If your audience sees you from a different perspective than what you intend, you need to reassess your brand and analyze why the message you are trying to bring across is having a different effect than what you desire. If you can honestly evaluate yourself and understand where the miscommunication of your brand may have occurred, you can begin to close the gaps and revitalize Brand YOU.

The world wants to hear what you have to say. If you aren’t communicating your brand, all of your other branding efforts are in vain. If you want to succeed, develop your brand, package your brand… and communicate your brand!

How can you better communicate Brand YOU?

Please engage the discussion and let us know how you communicate your brand. Always feel free to contact me at Sheri.Mackey@LuminosityGlobal.com or by visiting our website at www.LuminosityGlobal.com. Check back next week for the next installment of Leadership Across Boundaries and Borders, when we will discuss how to communicate Brand YOU.