Hello All,
I feel rather late writing to the forum only after the online session, but to be honest, I am still stretching my legs out of the holiday and shaking the sand off my sandals…
On this theme of “working virtually or face-to-face”, I must say that I spend more time in the virtual world, which for me still feels like a giant experimental lab.
I work mostly with large virtual teams (20 plus), both in an international programme and in my teaching. My biggest challenge is to find a way to personalise the communication with the team to a level where a more informal exchange of ideas starts to happen. The difficulty on achieving this is that people feel comfortable at different levels of informality, with some taking longer to untie their shoes whilst others will just walk in bare feet from the first email exchange. The variety of cultural backgrounds within the group plays an important role here.
I have found that this “informality” comes naturally once trust is established. Then I go to Anni’s last slide: ”Do you trust someone you don’t see?” Yeh, yeh, yeh… I can already see some of you laughing now and saying that trust can be even harder to establish. Well, I think trust can be established once partners achieve something together – a shared success. This is not different in the virtual world. It can be something as simple as writing up an abstract together and being able to submit it by the deadline.
OK, I guess I just wanted to throw in my thoughts of how drops of informality can contribute to effective team communication – be it virtual or face-to-face. I am glad Pat mentioned the word “informal” and Anni the word “trust” during the online session.
Speak soon,
Lu ☺