I recently read an article by Line Dube and Daniel Robey entitled “Surviving the paradoxes of virtual teamwork”.  The authors, through their research, determined five paradoxes that are prevalent in the realm of virtual teamwork.  They then made some suggestions for dealing with each paradox.

In the rest of this post I will:

• List the authors’ five paradoxes and their suggested solutions for each;
• Explore some issues underlying each of the paradoxes for virtual team leaders.

Dube and Robey found, through extensive interviews with virtual team leaders and members, that there are 5 pervasive paradoxes of virtual teamwork.  They also crafted solutions to help team leaders deal with these paradoxes.  Here is a list.

1) Virtual teams require physical presence.

This is perhaps not as paradoxical as it might seem.  We are discovering that new technologies are making it possible not only to stay in contact with those who are far away, but also to stay close to them.  The feeling of presence by virtual teams only seems to be a paradox because we are still breaking away from the set of assumptions we had based on older technologies (letter writing, phone calls, etc).  (For more, see our previous posts on ambient awareness and perceived proximity)  The biggest obstacle to presence when team members are distant is the mindset that it can’t happen.

The authors recommend four things to help dispersed virtual teams feel physically present:

• Hold a mandatory face-to-face kickoff meeting.
• Match media with task requirements.
• Maintain a rhythm using collaborative technologies and/or face-to-face meetings.
• Learn to develop relationships using information and communication technologies.

2) The flexibility of virtual teamwork is aided by structure.

This also is not necessarily that paradoxical.  A team project is immensely complex – think about how many decisions, actions, calculations, etc happen during the course of a project.  No leader can give structure to the point of telling team members what to do for every single action.  So in a way, wherever the structure leaves off, there is flexibility in how a team member acts.  This means that a virtual team leader strives to find a balance between the flexibility and structure in their team project.  This is also the case in co-located project teams, but we are less accustomed to doing business as dispersed project teams so it seems more notable.  I believe that good judgment in finding balance between structure and flexibility comes from experience.  Virtual team leaders with experience finding balance will find they only have to adapt their judgment somewhat to the new virtual context.

The authors of the article recommend four things to solve the paradox of flexibility versus structure:

• Define clear objectives and prepare detailed plans, but maintain flexibility.
• Maintain a shared team calendar using info and communication technologies.
• Standardize communication and documentation processes, but leave open the possibility of adapting them.
• Select team members carefully.

3) Interdependent work in virtual teams is accomplished by members’ independent contributions.

Here, I think the authors are talking about a paradox caused by logistical difficulties.  People often employ virtual teams to achieve synergy – to get more from the team as a whole than the sum of the parts.  And yet, our authors remind us that most teams struggle with the logistics of interdependent work.  Their research indicates that many virtual teams deal with this by assigning work in the least interdependent way possible.  Team leaders should remember that experience in virtual teamwork, especially the efficient use of technology, will improve the team’s ability to work interdependently.  In the meantime, there may be creative strategies to find a happy medium.  For example, it might be much easier for a sub-group of the team to work interdependently than for the whole team to do so.  But the goal should be to reach a point where the virtual team can work interdependently with efficient and synergistic results.

The authors suggest three things that might help solve this paradox:

• Hold face-to-face meetings for critical tasks.
• Use information and communication technologies to get all members’ input.
• Establish a collaborative culture.
  

4) Task-oriented virtual teamwork succeeds through social interaction.

The authors point out that virtual teams have a tendency to focus more on task than relationships during a project.  It might be natural for the work itself to be more on the minds of team members, or to seem like the crucial thing to commit resources to.  However, we know from years of research in teamwork that social aspects of the team can also greatly influence how well or how efficiently a team project is completed.  Perhaps the social interaction happens with less effort in face-to-face teams; this means that virtual team leaders must remember the social interaction of members needs attention too in a virtual team project.  Although it may seem counter-intuitive to very task-oriented individuals, social interaction and task completion both contribute to successful team projects.

The authors recommend two things that can help virtual teams balance task accomplishment and social interaction:

• Learn to develop relationships through information and communication technologies.
• Organize regular face-to-face meetings.

5) Distrust is instrumental to establishing trust among virtual team members.

This is another phenomenon that seems like a paradox because we’re new to virtual teamwork.  Many times virtual team members are not very well acquainted with one another when a project starts, so there’s an initial lack of trust.  On top of that, being dispersed means that trust grows more slowly than in face-to-face teams.  Other research has also demonstrated that trust is built by different means in virtual teams – it is based on reliability rather than liking.

The authors of the article recommend three things to help distrust turn into trust in virtual teams:

• Build trust based on culture, profession, position, and experience.
• Design team activities.
• Implement control mechanisms.
  

Conclusion

To me, paradoxes are intriguing because they represent a chance to figure something out.  A paradox seems to be a contradiction, until you figure out that other piece of information that must be taken into account, and then the contradiction disappears.  This represents a way of truly understanding a situation better.  I guess I’m a social scientist because I love to work on these kinds of puzzles.  But as the authors of this article demonstrated, and as I tried to emphasize in this post, there are everyday applications of this kind of thought exercise, too.  Virtual teams exist in a very new kind of context, resulting in a number of paradoxes.  If you want to learn how to better lead your virtual team, pay attention to those paradoxes.  When you figure out why there is no contradiction after all, you gain valuable insight about effectively leading a virtual team.