What: Psychology Today Blog article ‘How to Run a Con‘
Posts to which it is related: Leading in Face-to-face Versus Virtual Teams, Building Trust in Virtual Teams
Bottom line: The author of this article, a neuroeconomist, describes the neurological basis of a classic con known as the pigeon drop (see a video of this). According to the author, ‘The key to a con, is not that you trust the conman, but that he shows he trusts you. Conmen ply their trade by appearing fragile or needing help, by seeming vulnerable.’ The author adds that there is a powerful brain circuit called THOMAS (The Human Oxytocin Mediated Attachment System) that releases the neurochemical oxytocin when we are trusted and induces a desire to reciprocate the trust that someone (even a stranger) shows us. Because of THOMAS, we feel good when we help others and we are stimulated to act when someone explicitly or implicitly expresses “I need your help.” How can virtual team leaders take advantage of this knowledge to build trust within the team? First of all, they can appear vulnerable by clearly indicating how much they are dependent on the cooperation of the team in order to succeed as leaders.  Second, they should build small cooperative interdependence exercises in which team members depend on each other to complete their tasks. In the past, we have advocated that the leader spend time one-on-one with team members to learn about team members. Instead of carrying out this task herself/himself, the leader could ask every team member to obtain profile information on one or two dimensions (each member is assigned different dimensions) from every member of the team, thereby building cooperative interdependence within the team.

What: BusinessWeek article ‘The End of Instant Messaging (As We Know It)‘
Posts to which it is related: Freeing Yourself from Email
Bottom Line: According to this article, interest in standalone instant messaging (IM) tools is waning. IM is instead shifting towards the web and it is appearing in other applications such as email, games, and, social networking. Websites are offering IM toolbars (from companies such as Meebo) in order to increase community engagement and keep users on their sites longer. These toolbars will provide opportunities for targeted advertising. For instance, Flixster, a social network for film buffs, is likely to embed advertising and movie trailers inside the toolbar or the text conversations themselves. For virtual teams, the integration of IM with other applications is likely to increase its use as a collaborative tool.

What: MSNBC.com article ‘When You Don’t Want To Be Facebook Friends‘
Posts to which it is related: Fostering Ambient Awareness in Virtual Teams, Freeing Yourself from Email
Bottom Line: In the past, we have advocated the use of social networking tools for improving communication and social relationships in virtual teams. Many users struggle with the question of who they should include in their network. This article discusses this issue and talks about the awkwardness that results when someone whom you don’t know all that well invites you to be a friend. In some cases this may happen because the person inviting you is new to the social networking application and has invoked the feature to invite everyone in her/his address book without thinking too much about it. Different individuals have developed different protocols for “friending” others. Some accept almost all invitations because they are interested in the new information and perspectives that distant individuals (e.g., friends of friends) are likely to provide. Others limit their online friends to those they actually know because they post personal details that they would not like to share with everyone. Then there are those who segment their networks by using different applications for different types of individuals in their networks (e.g., LinkedIn for work associates and Facebook for close friends). Looks like it will be a while before we develop clear norms about whom to include in our online networks.