I witnessed three rather extraordinary events, or should I say, modern phenomena, recently.

1. While leaving my gym, I watched two cars approach a street from the opposite directions of an alley. Both drivers were looking to turn southward onto the street. Both drivers glanced only in the northward direction. Both drivers were on their cell phones, apparently texting. Both cars proceeded to turn entirely into one another in a slow and pathetic fashion, nonetheless causing several thousand dollars in damages. What was additionally fascinating was how long it took the drivers to realize what was going on and how what could have merely ended with a bump, should the text messages not have been so utterly consuming, turned into a metal crunching debacle.

2. My wife and I popped into a local Thai restaurant for an early evening curry — kids in tow. Next to us was a young couple, 20’s, seemingly on a date. My wife and I looked at one another nostalgic of the time when a Saturday evening date was even a remote possibility. The young couple ordered, then pulled out their cell phones and began texting and cruising the internet, and didn’t actually talk to one another the entire time. The only time I saw the couple interact was when the boy showed the girl the photo of his pad thai that he’d just posted to his Facebook page. Under the photo, he wrote, “On date, eating pad thai.” It should have said, On Facebook while I should be on date and eating pad thai.

3. I was at a coffee shop between meetings and couldn’t help but let my eye and ear eavesdrop this little nugget. Two coworkers, business professionals, seated nearby paused in their work-oriented conversation for a personal moment. Coworker A seemed despondent. He was a new dad and was distraught over working such long hours and the lack of time he got to spend with his young child. Coworker B was a few years older, and seemed to have been down the kids-work-guilt conundrum road before. Coworker A clearly needed to vent and was looking off to mask the fact that his eyes were growing misty with tears. When he looked back to his colleague for a supportive glance or word, he realized that his colleague was on his phone texting and not really present at all.

According to Sherry Turkle during her TED lecture, this kind of behavior is prevalent and has a devastating impact upon our emotional well being. Technology, it seems, provides us the opportunity to stay continuously connected without fostering any physical, face-to-face connections. With texting (SMS) and email, and ubiquitous social media and virtual communities, you don’t have to deal with yourself or any one else for that matter in a true and spontaneous way, but rather the edited and image-cultivated façade you and they wish to put forth. How many times have we seen people craft an email, text and social media persona that is so different than their actual way of being that you actually prefer the online façade to the real thing? How many business meetings and business ventures have fallen apart because the preliminary social media persona that someone created is so drastically different from the flesh and blood person that you are unable to reconcile the difference, or vice versa?

Even worse, states Turkle, the virtual world we’re so often living in is making us less capable of dealing with each other in the messy and often complex ways that real, face-to-face relationships demand. I know this is a problem in the US, both in personal and professional lives. I’m wondering how much technology seems to be affecting relationships and business in other countries, particularly cultures that place a high value on personal relationships. Do texts, emails and the internet undermine the extended lunch with family and friends in Latin American countries? Are Germans and Austrians, with a keen sense of privacy, equally engaged with social media and constantly updating Facebook? And what’s it like for an expat living and working abroad? Has it become harder to make connections with co-workers and colleagues now that technology and social media occupies so much of one’s focus and time?

What say you, global business maven? Chime in.

Adam
RW3 CultureWizard

INSEAD recently started a new program for executives called “Managing Global Virtual Teams” and is focused on teaching managers how to manage distributed, global and virtual teams (there are many terms to refer to teams that are not co-located, or distributed across a number of locations physically distant from one another). Erin Meyer, director of the new program, wrote the following for Forbes:

In my own research, I’ve found that one of the most difficult tasks for leaders of global teams is to recognize that their styles of decision making may be deeply rooted in the cultures that they come from. Global teams therefore need very explicit descriptions of how decisions will be made, and the best global team leader is one who is willing to try out different kinds of decision-making processes at different points in a project.

RW3 CultureWizard’s survey report, The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams, found that…

…Virtual teams need to establish specific work rules (i.e., rules for respectful interaction) that are assumed in co-located teams. They also need to pay greater attention to team structure than co-located teams do. In addition, virtual teams must carefully monitor and adhere to the work rules they have created. Finally, they need to be aware of the influence of culture on work styles and to develop procedures to assure intercultural effectiveness.

This mirrors what INSEAD research has found.

Cristina Escallon, another faculty member in our new Managing Global Virtual Teams program, teaches that leaders of virtual teams need to concentrate on creating a highly defined process where team members deliver specific results in a repeated sequence. Reliability, aka trust, is thus firmly established after two or three cycles. Because of that, face-to face meetings can be limited to once a year or so.

How much do we take for granted that management, communication and collaboration in a virtual environment works the same as it does when in traditional, co-located teams?

Charlene

RW3 CultureWizard

Click here to read an article in ASTD’s Training + Development magazine about RW3 CultureWizard’s Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010—The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams.

Learn about the shortcomings of virtual work, and how to support virtual teams with the training they need to succeed despite the lack of context face-to-face interaction provides.

RW3 CultureWizard

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

RW3 Survey Finds 40% of Virtual Teams Underperform

New Survey Identifies Areas that Impair Effectiveness of Virtual Work

NEW YORK, NY – May 24, 2010 – According to a study released today, 80% of corporate managers work virtually at least part of the time and 63% are members of global virtual teams. The key factors that impair productivity are: cultural differences, communication styles, time-zone differences, language and a lack of face-to-face contact, according to the Virtual Teams Survey Report 2010 – The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams, conducted by RW3 CultureWizard, an intercultural training consultancy specializing in online intercultural training for global business managers.

Michael S. Schell, CEO of RW3 CultureWizard, said “We were stunned to learn that only 60% of participants on virtual teams considered them to be as successful as they could be. We can’t imagine that this degree of satisfaction would be acceptable in any business endeavor. Inasmuch as virtual teams are such a fast-growing component of business, and global collaboration is critical to success, the organizations with the most effective teams will be most successful. Making virtual work more effective must be top-of-mind for every business leader.”

The survey identifies three challenging areas: time zone and language difficulties, communication styles and cultural differences.

1. Time Zones and Languages: 81% indicated time zones presented the greatest general hurdle to virtual teams, followed by 64% who found language (accents and dialects) to be a barrier.

2. Communication style: 94% said the inability to read non-verbal cues is very challenging, and 90% stated the absence of face-to-face contact interfered with the ability to build a relationship (which is perceived as a challenge facing virtual teams). In addition, 81% said being virtual made it more difficult to establish trust and rapport.

3. Cultural differences: 80% said that virtual teams slowed down decision making, 77% were hampered by different leadership styles and 76% felt the method of decision-making was a challenge.

“Apparently, collaborative technology has outpaced the ability of global virtual team members to work effectively across cultures,” says Charlene Solomon, executive vice president of RW3 Culture Wizard. “Companies need to be aware of the influence of culture on work styles and to develop procedures to assure intercultural effectiveness. They need to establish specific rules for respectful interaction that are already assumed to exist among members of more conventional, co-located teams where all of the participants are all from the same culture. They also need to pay greater attention to team structure and must carefully monitor and adhere to the work rules they have created,” she added.

“The good news is that there is training available to make virtual teams more effective,” concludes Schell. He explained that the new study was prompted, in part, by the growing number of collaborative software options that facilitate virtual work and make it commonplace for teams of people from around the world to work together – often without ever meeting in person. According to Schell, RW3 CultureWizard is using the findings of the survey report to develop and fine tune the components of its Virtual Team Tool – a training initiative to help organizations improve communication skills among virtual team members.

RW3 CultureWizard has made a copy of The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams available online. Please click on the link above.

About RW3 CultureWizard
RW3 CultureWizard is an intercultural training consultancy that specializes in creating online and e-learning facilities to develop global collaboration within its client organizations. Founded in 2001, with offices in New York, Los Angeles and London, RW3 CultureWizard blends 30 years of experience with technological capabilities into a comprehensive cultural e-university, which provides tailored learning platforms. These include cross-cultural training courses, global and virtual team collaboration, international assignee support, and country-specific information.

NOTE TO EDITORS: For additional information, visit RW3′s website.

Everyone seems to be working. You get the feeling that no one is lounging around and there is an energy, evidence of the abundant opportunity in this city. It seems to me that the work ethic is grounded in Hinduism, by that I mean the work ethic feels like “this is what we do; this is what we need to do; and we’re grateful to have the opportunity to do it.” I sense that from everyone, no matter how I come in contact with them. Really a different sensibility that’s very strong and committed to doing a good job, no matter what that job is. And a very deep-seated politeness.

I was so struck today by a remark a delegate voiced in one of our training sessions. We were talking about time zones and how complicated it is to arrange conference calls between the US and India because of the time difference. Some people said it was hard to work until 7pm and then get home (after braving the traffic) and have a call with colleagues in the US at 8pm. One fellow raised his hand and said, “It’s very difficult when you stay awake til midnight and then most of the team on the other end doesn’t even dial in.”

I know that time zone differences are among the most challenging aspects of virtual teams, and the idea has always been to “be fair” and rotate the pain. But it became so strongly personal as I listened to this manager, thinking of him staying awake until midnight only to have many of his colleagues on the other end not show up. Can you imagine how enormously frustrating and demoralizing that would be? What would that do to his morale?

Charlene