Virtual teams — improving performance
Covid-19 has seemingly turned the world on its head, with many U.S. companies either shutting down or requiring their employees to work from home. Given the recent fear of layoffs, stock market volatility, and social distancing, we should consider how our teams are affected, and the stress in which we all have suddenly found ourselves.
If you are responsible for a suddenly-distributed — or virtual — team, it can feel overwhelming. Even for those that work with one or two remote employees, the unexpected shift to being completely secluded still brings challenges.
Even during prosperous and healthy times, remote teams can require special care to keep team members engaged and productive. Motivation helps us get through tough times and allows us to envision a better future — perhaps even one without a global pandemic.
What are some of the things we can do to help our teams stay motivated, engaged, and supportive?
Even during prosperous and healthy times, remote teams can require special care to keep team members engaged and productive.
VIST — A guide for motivation
In 2006, Susanne Geister, Udo Konradt, and Guido Hertel published a paper that took a look at how feedback and interaction affect virtual teams. Luckily, they did the homework pre-coronavirus and left behind a helpful guide.
They started with the VIST model of motivation — Valence, Instrumentality, Self-efficacy, and Trust — which is considered essential for distributed teams.
- Valence describes how much an individual’s goals align with their team’s goals. The higher an individual’s valence, the higher their motivation.
- Instrumentality is the perception that a team member’s contributions are indispensable.
- Self-efficacy pertains to one’s perception that they have all of the tools to complete a job successfully.
- Trust is the ability to rely on one’s teammates and available information.
Communication and feedback permeate the four components of the VIST model of motivation for virtual teams. When we are transparent with our teams, establish clear goals, and give useful feedback, we provide our team members with the opportunity to align themselves with the team’s needs and bond with one another. The results of Susanne’s team’s paper underscore the importance of building trust.
Social connection and engagement
In 2008, Chad Lin, Craig Standing, and Ying-Chieh Liu studied remote teams and discovered that taking a relationship-building approach proved to be a better predictor of a virtual team’s success than focusing on task-based factors. They highlight that team cohesion outweighs creating and managing processes in terms of improving a team’s performance.
While we certainly want to understand and define how work transfers from one person to the next, having strong relationships with our teammates allows us to reach out and collaborate to fill the gaps where the process falls short. Much like the VIST model, the work of Chad, Craig, and Ying-Chieh stresses the importance of trust — an inherently social quality of the team.
Slacking off and Teams
Both of the papers — from Susanne’s team, and Chad’s team — discuss that when virtual teams improve communication, they tend to work more effectively together. They both note that electronic forms of communication are abysmal because we often rob one another of social cues and non-verbal information. Spending more time on Slack and Teams is likely not the answer. Instead, using as much video communication as possible is essential.
Kindness, Empathy, and Compassion
For those of us who tend to show up in the office every day alongside our coworkers, maybe we should use this as an opportunity to understand our regularly–remote friends better. They likely struggle with these sorts of issues on a day–to–day basis. We can also use this time as an opportunity to experiment and find what works best for us beyond just today — an exercise in compassion.
While the threat of Covid-19 is real, and we should take it seriously, let’s use it as a moment to build kindness, empathy, and compassion with our teams and community. Remember to take care of one another — we are better together.
