Good virtual team culture

People used to be skeptical about home-office working model and its implications on a good team culture. Although maybe the implementation of a safe IT system along with the right cybersecurity was considered the main reason that kept companies from realizing a more remote-kind of workforce. For a longer period of time people in many companies were hesitant to introduce the model. As things have changed beginning of this year, it was made possible and actually works quite well. Now, as the holidays’ approaching, people are getting tired of social distancing and discuss the effects on team culture. But looking at all the virtual after-work cocktail or Christmas parties and virtual fireside talks posted on social media, virtual team culture seems to work pretty well after all.

 

Overall, many companies with almost fulltime remote working with a large number of employees working from home are successful, innovative and have a great team culture. These teams don’t just adopt the corporate office-based work procedures to their home-office scenario but consciously adapt their procedures to their situation. It seems we just need to tackle a few things really consciously. 

 

This is mainly about knowledge work here hence you have noticed the term office appears many times. This is an area that requires some soft skills in communication, empathy, and persuasion. But it is a different type of work than the people business of gastronomy, or care-taking for that matter where physical presence or contact is rather vital. 

 

This gives rise to the question: “how important are physical meetings for a good team culture and continuous team building processes for striving performance in professions that do not require physical contact?” Obviously, as mentioned earlier, teams working virtually do not hinder success, innovation or team work, but improve it for the benefit of regional entities. Some companies that were new to this type of work, really got excited about the freedom they gained. People have understood that virtual teams in many ways do work similarly as physical ones. And they can be rather effective. There is a project based feel to virtual meetings, everything is systematically documented, meetings are clearly structured, what may appear extensive in the beginnig. But all of this actually makes virtual teams more on point of their game. They share information more deliberately during meetings and in virtual folders for members who will join the conversation later and like to bring themselves up to date. And as people can turn their cameras on and off during a meeting as they feel, anyones’ quick frown will hardly be noticed or easily smiled off. It’s mostly just an enjoyable experience with a clear target and positive outcomes.

 

Let me place just a quick word on culture here. Everyone has a personality just as every team and organization has a culture. Sometimes it’s not obvious and people cannot name exactly what it is, but they can say why they like to work with their team mates and their company. Those are the effects of team culture and that’s what matters in the end. 

How you interact as people, how you exchange information, what you do with that information. People get to know each other with their specific advantages and flaws and tune-in to each other. That’s sometimes easier done when you meet in person on a regular basis. But is meeting in person vital for an outstanding team culture and performance?

 

It can be of vital importance. To make my point, think of UN meetings. Most of the diplomats who were interviewed on the new virtual meeting scenarios said they are missing physical meetings because one could further discuss a topic with a peer by a cup of tea in between sessions. This can be highly important because this way people can continue their cognitive solution finding process and come up with suggestions more easily than just all by themselves and then they can bring those suggestions into a next session. Also, there is an aspect of interpersonal information flowing during personal conversations on the level of body language and intuition that cannot be addressed in the same way during a virtual call without the risk of someone feeling exposed.

 

I just remember the first meetings after lockdown, we had this impulse to go towards each other with the intent to shake hands and be social. Then stopped each other by saying that we still have to keep distance and verbalised how we felt about the situation and this need of being friendly and how happy we were to be able to meet in person again. It’s an interesting thing as it seems this impulse starts to fade over a longer period of time, as shaking hands is part of our culture, while the need for positive and enjoyable or even profitable social interaction remains. Verbalizing shaking hands during our greeting actually made us process and experience the sensations we missed on a cognitive level. Clearly, we can access all potential and create a good virtual team culture by being vary of essential needs and giving the opportunity and safe space to participants to express them even in virtual meetings.