A few weeks back, Surinder posted quick tips that virtual team leaders could use to deal with pressures to make their virtual teams more productive. I believe that sponsors and leaders of virtual team projects ought to also focus on another thing: training. While the times are challenging because of pressures to cut down costs, we strongly believe that the returns on training investment will be significant — our belief is based on the ability of training to overcome the common lapses that we have observed in a large number of virtual teams.

Moreover, Benson Rosen, Stacie Furst, and Richard Blackburn suggest in a research article about whether virtual teams are receiving effective training that many team leaders and members who are experienced in a traditional context are struggling to maintain effectiveness in a virtual context.  Results of a study of 440 training and development professionals reported by the authors show that virtual teams are generally not getting the right kind of training to help them work in a virtual context.  A third of the respondents said their organizations provided virtual team training for members and leaders.  And yet 70% of the respondents rated their organization’s training as slightly effective or not at all effective.  It seems that organizations are trying to provide training to reap the benefits of virtual work, but that their efforts are not paying off.  Why is that?

The remainder of this post will discuss:

• Why your experience in the traditional context doesn’t work in a virtual setting,
• Top training topics for leaders and team members, as recommended by the article, and
• The biggest takeaway for virtual team leaders and members from this article.

Why your experience isn’t working in a virtual setting

As the article demonstrates, organizations have the knowledge and experience to train people for leadership and teamwork in a traditional context, but have yet to figure out how to adapt that to a virtual context.  This is demonstrated in the list of topics that respondents to the survey said were most important – they include:

• training on how to lead a virtual team meeting,
• leader training on how to coach and mentor team members virtually,
• training on how to monitor team progress, diagnose team problems, and take corrective actions, and
• training to use communication technologies.

These top of the list items, i.e., running a meeting, coaching and mentoring, monitoring the team and taking corrective action, and communicating, are some of the most basic aspects of leadership and teamwork.  The fact that respondents are calling for training in these basic areas demonstrates that they are probably quite savvy at these things in a traditional context, but struggling to master them in a virtual context.  If this is hard to understand, imagine you are an expert at archaeology.  What would happen if you participated in an underwater archaeology project?  The basic concepts of archaeology would still apply.  But how to accomplish those principles would be completely different, since the actual excavating would happen in water instead of air.

Training topics for leaders and team members

So what do the authors of the study recommend?  Based on the input they got from business professionals, they created a prototype of what virtual team training should look like.  Here are the key training topics.

1. For team leaders:

• Choosing technology appropriate for the task at hand.
• Setting expectations, measuring and rewarding team contributions in a virtual context.
• Coaching and mentoring team members in a virtual context.
• Modeling behaviors that are most desired and necessary in a virtual team context (responsiveness, sharing information, use of groupware technology, etc).
• Managing external relations and obligations.

2. For both team leaders and members:

• Face-to-face team building session before working on the project itself.
• Mastering the technology that will be utilized for the project.
• Communicating in a virtual context (etiquette, cultural awareness, brainstorming, and decision making are still crucial, but not exactly the same as in a traditional context).
• Basic team management (logistics of a virtual meeting, defining roles, conflict resolution, meeting milestones, evaluation of team process) within a virtual team context requires special training.

The biggest takeaway

This list, based on the perspectives of hundreds of business professionals, is undoubtedly useful for setting priorities for any organization or group utilizing virtual teamwork.  But the most crucial message of the study is that what you think you know about teamwork and leadership doesn’t exactly apply to virtual teamwork.  The basics that need to be done – those basic principles of leadership and teamwork – still are the principles in a virtual setting.  But how they are accomplished might be totally different depending on your project and the exact details of your virtual situation.  This means that your instincts for leadership and teamwork, developed from experience in a traditional setting, might not serve you well in a virtual context.  The message here is to embrace that you have to go back to basics and learn to do teamwork in a whole new way.  This shift in mindset can mean the difference between constant struggle and real progress for your virtual team.