Virtual Teams: Run like Google, Skype and Shutterstock
// BySimone Janson

Many German companies still have a presentivism culture, but collaboration in virtual teams is on the rise and companies like Google, Facebook or Shutterstock have been successful. How is leadership at a distance?

Virtual Management: Lead decentralized teams

For large and small companies, especially in the IT industry, the management of decentralized teams is becoming more and more important: not infrequently the employees of a project sit hundreds of kilometers apart or even on different continents. A study by the consulting firm RW3 CultureWizard under 30.000 employees shows that digital work across locations and national borders is already part of everyday life. 87% of the management and 50% of employees of multinational corporations perform their work at least partially virtually.

But virtual collaboration challenges employees and management alike, as the RW3 study also shows: 75 percent of respondents said it is difficult to develop trust in virtual teams. 79 percent complained too little time for relationship building and 71 percent too little sympathy. At 33 percent, half of the team members did not live in their own country, so different time zones make communication difficult. And 70 percent are bothered by cultural differences in conflict management, especially since 41 percent never met their virtual colleagues in person.

Difficult to keep track of

These difficulties apparently affect even IT companies: While companies such as Microsoft or Coca Cola are now giving their employees the choice of when and where they want to work and communicating this splendidly, Yahoo did the opposite in March 2013: under the leadership of Marissa Mayer completely abolished the US group home office and teleworking. Steffen Hopf, Managing Director of Yahoo Germany, describes the consequences of this measure as entirely positive: “Teamwork in particular benefits from this: decisions can be made faster, the quality of the work is increased.”

And at Coca Cola, too, the employees are far from being as free as it appears at first glance. The HR Director of Coca-Cola Germany, Nadine Ziese, states: “Working from home is not the right thing for everyone: For example, working in a company also requires personal interaction with one another. You have to decide on a case-by-case basis whether a task can be done at home or whether agreements require presence in the office. ” A study published by CHRIS at the University of Bamberg together with the Monster job exchange confirms this: Of 7.040 participants, 43,8 percent of those surveyed in the home office have fewer social contacts with colleagues and are therefore at risk of being cut off from informal communication. And 24,3 percent fear even reduced career opportunities. So does digital collaboration not work in the end?

Onboarding: Technology is not everything

The answer is yes: digital collaboration can work if the management is right. For example, as a first step, leaders need to dispel exactly those concerns when they want to lead virtual teams to constructive collaboration. No easy task, all the more because they often face a momentous error, such as management consultant and executive coach Roswitha A. van der Markt, whose customers include HP or SAP, explains: “Managers often think that everything is done with the introduction and training of new technology. But that's just the beginning of digital collaboration. ”

Because virtual collaboration does not just mean transferring work processes to digital; Rather, the technology allows completely new forms of collaboration, like the consultant Dr. Anja C. Wagner, co-founder of the social learning platform UnuniTV, states: “We regularly work on projects in video conferences. Participants can record the dialogue in an Etherpad document - all together and in real time. ” This results in several prejudices: everyone knows what the other has contributed. And it saves time because you don't have to wait for others to edit it or you don't know exactly which version of a document is the latest. However, in order for digital collaboration to work smoothly, clear rules and common goals are required: “Great things can come about through digital collaboration - keyword collective intelligence. But it takes trust, then virtual teams are more creative, ”Wagner is convinced.

The management has to invest a lot of time

The management should therefore invest a lot of time especially in getting started with virtual collaboration: not just explaining the use of the tools, but also offering all team members long-term orientation and support. In particular, everyone must be informed about how knowledge, documents and results are stored in knowledge and project databases and how communication is maintained.

This means setting up precise rules as to which wording and response times are common and also how conflicts are communicated with each other. In addition, it helps to appoint mentors from leadership and colleagues who are available for questions.

From the employee to the team

Because for virtual collaboration to work, one thing must be above all else: Employees must understand each other as a team. Because if everyone does not pull together, every project will fail. The composition of the team and the traits and abilities of its individual members, however, play only a minor role, as revealed by an investigation by Google. For two years, the search engine giant has interviewed more than 200 employees and analyzed them through 180 teams. Success therefore depends on how employees interact with each other, how they structure their work and how each team member perceives their personal contribution to the company's success.

A key factor here is the psychological security: Employees must dare to ask questions, to admit mista