virtual teams | Christine Martell

Reflections on culture and technology

Written by Christine Martell - 6 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

I find that the only way I really deepen my cultural competency is when I am immersed in a process with people who are in some way different than myself. I can read about diversity and inclusion, and benefit somewhat, but it’s only when I am challenged by being in-relationship with others that I reach those deeper places where resistance lives

I spent last week in a class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland, Oregon. This is my fifth year at SIIC, and like every other year, I learned a lot about my limitations and how much I don’t know. The classes range from a couple of hours to five days, with my favorite being the five days. It’s enough time to dig deep into a topic while taking advantage of the diversity in the room to experience walking up to my edge.

Terry Brake, of tmaworld, taught the 5-day class on Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace.

Lessons about Global Virtual Teams

Virginia Yonkers stopped by this blog each day with very helpful insights. She wrote a blog post, entitled Lessons Learned in Working with International Virtual Groups, which summarizes insights that she and her classes have gathered over the years about working with global teams. It’s a great resource list and very little is about the technology itself. Curiosity, resiliency, and patience seem to be at the center of the required skills.

I also had the pleasure of interviewing the faculty for the class, Terry Brake, for the ASTD-Cascadia podcast. We talk about his upcoming book, Where in the world is my team: Making a success of your virtual global workplace. I’m really looking forward to it, because we got a preview of the material in class. It has a lot to offer anyone who is building diverse teams.

Moving beyond the class

The class has a Facebook page where we plan to continue sharing resources. We have also chosen a delicious tag (siic2008cct) for collecting things that may help. If you are interested in the intersection between culture, technology, and communication join the Facebook page or tag some resources.

Reflections on my participation

Facilitation skills + technology skills + some cultural competency ≠ competent participation on virtual global teams.

I’ve been a facilitator for a long time. I know that the process is foundational, and must be operating smoothly for the content to be effective. Why then, did I jump right in with everybody else to focus on content/task/outcome. Did I leave my facilitation skills at home?

We kept hearing about continuous partial attention, the state many of us are in while we are managing multiple tasks. We would encounter a challenge in class, have to come up with a way to use technology, navigate the cultural differences, listen to very fluent but accented voices, and achieve some kind of outcome in a short amount of time. Not to mention checking email and answering inquiries from the office.

Kermit Pattison’s article, Worker, Interrupted: The Cost of Task Switching in Fast Company wonders about the impact of our behavior:

I argue that when people are switching contexts every 10 and half minutes they can’t possibly be thinking deeply. There’s no way people can achieve flow. When I write a research article, it takes me a couple of hours before I can even begin to think creatively. If I was switching every 10 and half minutes, there’s just no way I’d be able to think deeply about what I’m doing. This is really bad for innovation. When you’re on the treadmill like this, it’s just not possible to achieve flow.

I learned a lot in the class. Way more than I could have by reading about how to be successful. I don’t think our project output reflects the depth of the learning. I found myself taking shortcuts and aiming for “good enough”. Which is a much lower standard than I usually aim for.

The other thing I noticed is I did not get to meet many other people from the other classes at the Institute. It took all my focus to participate in the global teams’ class. There was so much audio processing from simulating conference calls, and having to listen very carefully to the variety of accents, I was totally exhausted by the end of the day. Usually I will attend the evening socials, which start at 9:30 PM. Not this time, I had to go home and go to bed. I have colleagues who were there who I did not even get a chance to talk to.

Blogging each day

This was a stretch for me. First because the days are long and I was really tired, but also because I am fairly reflective, and it’s hard for me to experience something new and then turn right around and write about it. I usually try to be clearer and spend more time on my posts, so it was new to throw unfinished ideas up on the blog.

Which technology?

I was surprised to see much of the class was about using conference calls, chat and email. It seems that these tools are what is still most common for many virtual teams. Certainly the people in the class who were working with organizations often had other web conferencing tools, but I saw way less social media tools than I expected. I realize that is still true in the larger whole, but I thought people who were involved in virtual teams would already be using the whole gamut of collaboration tools available. Instead, people were sharing tools and signing up in class for the ones they weren’t already using. It was also nice to see some of the older class members were using more of the tools than the younger members.

Photographs? Not under pressure

I’m not a snapshot photographer. It seldom occurs to me to take pictures unless I am specifically out on a photo shoot. So here I am in a visual company writing a blog without photographs again. I also realized I have a lot of things in my office to help me with the visuals like fancy software, digital tablets and a network drive full of photos. Away from the office on a strange laptop, suddenly everything seemed hard. So I just ignored it. The pressure to perform the tasks to get the assignments done superseded my need to illustrate my posts. I have a lot more empathy for people who don’t know where to start with photographs.

Take aways?

Building teams takes time. Over technology, it takes way more.

The process of how you will communicate, and even more how you will sense and respond when people are not communicating is really important. Dare I say, the most important?

The cost of not attending to all aspects of process is losing potential input that can be critical to move the outcome from good enough to high performance.

Cross cultural, technology, and communication skills separately will help you, but you have to learn all over again when you are combining them.

In order to work on a global virtual team regularly, I would need to come up with some way to have visual inputs. Shared visuals, and ways to draw on a whiteboard is really important to me, and central to the way I make meaning.

I’m left with a question posed by one of our class participants Miki Yamashita:

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Tips for Avoiding Problems on Virtual Teams

Written by Christine Martell - 8 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

This was a question explored by our virtual team in the Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

Tips for Avoiding Problems on Virtual Teams

In order to avoid challenges on teams, it is important that each team member has multiple ways in which to get in touch with other team members. For instance, do team members have contact information on email, skype, telephone, snail mail or other agreed upon technologies? Do team members have back-up contact information in case they haven’t heard from a teammate?

It is also important to set communication standards for the team. The team should have a shared understanding of what “silence” means. The leader should ask each person:

What does silence mean to you?
When you experience silence from other people, how do you respond?
When you are silent, how would you like other people to respond?
How much time (in general) would you like people to wait before contacting you?

Micheal Sampson suggests team leaders should be transparent and model for others how to act on the team. Individuals on the team should not stop talking to each other about:

what’s coming up
when they are going to be out of the office and out-of-touch
what they think is working and not working on the team
ideas they have for improving what’s being done

All team members must be willing to share their working conditions if they encounter non-understanding. This would include their physical environment, timezone, colleagues or any other factors affecting how you are able to work.

How we gathered information
We used a variety of inputs to create this listing of tips.

1. web research
2. tagging in delicious
3. class discussion including class members from respective cultures
4. input from faculty
5. input from comments on the week posts (thank you Virginia, Michele, and Ken!)
6. wisdom from our team members experience

While we had almost continuous technical challenges, we learned a lot. It’s not easy, but we realize this is where we are going in the future.

Collaborating over Google Docs

Written by Christine Martell - 17 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

We have resorted to using Google Docs for our virtual team project in the Culture, Technology, and Communication in the Global Workplace at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC) in Portland Oregon.

Great idea. We could all access it. We could all edit it.

And so we discovered another way we could get into trouble. We only had a couple of days of sitting in a class together. We thought we trusted each other. But simply editing brought us to a halt. We dumped all the information into the document and had a mess. Was it really OK to cut and reorder each others work? And what was each others work? There were no indicators.

The other thing I found difficult was there were some references sprinkled throughout. But I couldn’t tell which parts of the text was referenced, or by who, and which was the work of my colleagues. We talked about using my blog to put the final documents on, but since it is my business blog, I want to make sure anything we put on it is properly attributed. And I can’t tell.

We still can’t get the German Google chat to hook up with the US Google chat. We did get Skype working with our German member. But the other US member can’t install Skype on her work laptop. So I attempted to work in two chat windows and be the go between. I have also resorted to kicking my colleague under the table to get him to notice his chat. The other group in the room has given up and is simulating a conference call. Now we are distracted, in multiple chats, trying to edit a messy Google Doc together.

So we decide to go outside where we can talk. Smooth out the difference of opinion I was cutting and pasting between chat windows.

Exploring Culture and Technology

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 2

Exploring Culture and Technology: Day 3

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Exploring culture and technology: Day 4

Written by Christine Martell - 2 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

Another day, and another round of fully experiencing how hard communicating virtually across cultures can be. I guess my conclusion is that no matter what you choose to do, someone will potentially have problems with it. Best to use a variety of processes to at least allow people to be more comfortable some of the time.

Verbally directing a visual

In the first exercise of the day we sat back to back. One person described a visual, the other tried to draw it. None of the teams did very well. For the second round, the person who had the visual could stand behind the other and coach them as they were describing the visual to the drawing partner.

I drew in the second round. We finished first, and I came pretty close to reproducing the visual. However, I had huge advantages:

my partner was a US American
we both were native English speakers
we both used the same native units of measurement
I can draw (not totally necessary, but gives me confidence if nothing else)
the visual was an electric circuit, and I am married to an engineer so I am familiar with the type of visual we created

The other teams were working across native language difference and nationality.

Shared meaning is very important

Without shared meaning there is no understanding

need to probe for understanding
try to say it other ways
double the care when working cross-cultural

Assumptions of similarity is a big challenge. It can be tricky when native language is shared, but birth nation is not.

Simulated conference call

We sat in a circle with our backs turned. Each person received three cards with information about a culture and a monument built there. The task was to figure out which day the monument was completed, but sharing the bits of knowledge we had with each other.

One person was selected as the leader of the call. She was really good, and you could tell all the participants had been on a number of conference calls. We knew a lot about identifying ourselves, turn taking and the behaviors that help calls run well.

It was basically a math problem, with parts labeled in unfamiliar terms. We did accomplish the task in just over half and hour. However, It was exhausting for me. Even though I could take notes, getting all my input through audio was really hard. Especially listening through all the accents. Even though everyone is quite fluent in English. If I had a job where I had to be on conference calls all the time, I’m afraid I would have to quit. It would be like working with one hand tied behind my back all the time.

Building paper roller coasters

Our last task was to break into three teams. Each one is responsible for building a section of roller coaster from 10 sheets of paper, a length of tape, and some paper clips. Over technology. We were sent off to various place, and were only allowed one five minute conference call, and five – four minute other calls to teams. The goal is to come back face to face to put it together and be able to roll a chocolate covered coffee bean down the track.

Can we just say round one was a disaster? Even our faculty brought us back face to face to come up with a new strategy for tomorrow. Technical challenge for the day, getting Skype and iChat working on my laptop. Never mind the roller coaster.

I did get the interview with Terry Brake recorded. Sent if off for editing, so I should be able to share that with you soon.

Exploring culture and technology: Day 3

Written by Christine Martell - 8 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

It’s all about the people skills

Our class at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication was a half day today. Good thing, I think many of us needed the time to process all we are learning.

We started out talking about the most common challenges for global virtual teams.

difference in time orientation
difference in problem solving approach
difference in decision placement in org
who gets to participate?
differing degrees of formality
differing expectations of leadership behavior

The person who is key is the leader. But not just any leader. A leader with some tech skill certainly, but more important, one who has collaborative leadership skills. The competitive advantage is gained through collaborative advantage. How can we truly leverage the diversity on our teams?

Trust is a decision

We spent quite a bit of time talking about trust. How to gain it and lose it virtually, across cultures, and virtually across cultures. How can you help a team build both swift trust and deeper trust?

Virtual teams are totally dependent on trust, but technology doesn’t really support it. Research has shown these things build trust:
Swift trust

competence demonstrated
cooperation, mutual support— offers of help
open with each other about issues
reliability

Deepening trust

accessibility over time, have presence
compatibility
predictable
caring as individuals
safety ( I can say things and it won’t come back to haunt me, what is said in meeting, stays in meeting)
inclusion

Technical challenge of the day!

Now I’m pretty sure there is an inverse relationship between the amount of time you have to accomplish a task and the number of challenges that arise. I recorded a really great podcast interview with our class instructor Terry Brake. Only it was the first time I did it without my technical guru co-host. So I managed to record my questions, but none of Terry’s answers. Not so interesting! I’ll try again, now that I have determined what I was doing wrong. If Terry is willing and we can find the time.

Exploring culture and technology: Day 2

Written by Christine Martell - 10 Comments
Categories: Inclusion

As has happened every time I have attended the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication (SIIC), insights are emerging about my cultural edges. There is nothing like being immersed in an experience with people from around the world to surface opportunities for growth!

I can only begin to skim the surface of the learning. Cross-cultural dialogue unfolds over time for me. I understand on a simple level what I am learning today, but I know it will seep in and affect my behavior over a longer period of time.

Worldprism

We spend much of the day exploring cultural dimensions and how they might impact our communication over technology. Using the Worldprism™, each class member played the role of cultural informant for the country they were born in. We took our best guess about where the business culture fell on average in the different countries.

The conversations were very rich. We were not looking to identify simple lists of what to do in specific countries, but rather to look at the factors that might be influencing communication. To begin to understand the type of drivers which might be under particular responses, and to learn what in our own behavior over technology may be difficult for others. I’ll have to spend some time combing through the notes to organize our collective thoughts.

Identifying my people

I was on the USA team. At the end of the part where we were charting the USA, I commented that I felt like a deviant. While I recognized the pattern, I was also aware how I felt different. Then I saw the French Canadian from Quebec chart. My grandparents were French Canadian, and though I only knew one of them, I see now how their norms have passed through to me. I had never heard someone speak from this perspective before. I always wondered why descriptions of French and Canadian separately had never felt familiar to me.

There was part of me that felt very emotional, like I had found my people. Ok, so I realize that part is very US American. It takes many of us quite a while to discover and define our cultural identities. Many other aspects are very clear to me, but this national piece has been elusive.

Our first virtual team experiment

I’m on the technology in business team. We are working virtually (in theory) on a project to explore how to identify and intervene when things go poorly. We ended the day with an hour working on our project over Google Chat. Lets just say that we experienced a full range of the things that go wrong on virtual teams. I think we are doing action research. Just a few things we noticed:

What created challenges

hadn’t thought about process or content
got into trouble right away, but kept going anyway
were answering different questions
German Google was not working technically (no indication in US chat windows)
assumed universal chat vocabulary which wasn’t true
no one was responsible for checking in around technology
no common cohesive problem
no defined roles
no direction
no turn taking
no clear facilitator

And after an hour of struggling, we are resorting to email since we have a deliverable on Friday. I no longer wonder why business doesn’t adopt more technology! Oh did I mention we ended up in the hall talking face to face?