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Virtual teams have featured with increasing frequency over the past few years. The impact of globalisation, outsourcing and off shoring, rapid advances in technology (email, internet, video-conferencing) and economic constraints have enabled the shift from face-to-face to remote interaction.
It’s a cultural shift that, while providing many benefits has also raised a number of serious challenges that must be countered in order to ensure that the intended benefits actually do materialise.
Virtual Team DNA™ - 8 Critical Factors
Success as a virtual team demands more than simply knowing how to conduct a conference call (although that is a very necessary skill).
Team leaders have to understand the dynamics of creating an effective team, virtual or otherwise. But the skill in building a virtual team comes from the expert interplay of certain disciplines that face-to-face teams may already take for granted.
The building and maintaining of trust is a fine example. When people can observe behaviours, evaluate body language and build rapport by their presence, the team is off to a head start (though success is by no means guaranteed).
TPI have worked with teams from a wide range of industries all around the world and identified 8 criteria that are crucial to the success of any virtual team. This is the ‘Team DNA’, where the DNA is an acronym for Developing New Attitudes.
 Programme features
The programme’s entire content is based on a series of modules, tools and techniques that are designed to improve and develop the efficiency and success of virtual teams. It is a behaviour-oriented transitional approach to team and personal training that covers:
Behaviour
Understanding how and why people behave as they do is critical to building high performing teams. We use the TPI Behavioural Style Grid™ to show team members how to identify the temperament style of colleagues - even over long distance – and to formulate ‘Connection Strategies’ to ensure better overall collaboration when functioning as part of a virtual team.
Attitudes & Values
By showing team members how to view their world across six specific dimensions we build and strengthen team understanding and interplay. We create a “team attitudes and values matrix” that acts as a point of reference for how each member is likely to think and/or act in given situations. This knowledge is used to build positive interaction and becomes an instrumental feedback loop against which change and progress can be plotted.
Perceptual Preferences
We are all affected and influenced by a variety of stimuli - visual, auditory and kinaesthetic (feeling). Understanding how team colleagues use these stimuli is vital in the virtual situation. For example, knowing how to construct an email to achieve a better visual engagement, or picking up the phone to talk to an auditory colleague are just two practical applications of this knowledge.
Culture
Working with people of different origin is a fact of modern life. But each of us is a product of our experiences and our local culture. Our training teaches teams to be aware of cultural differences and shows them how to use this knowledge alongside other behavioural approaches to establish norms of behaviour based on mutual respect and deeper understanding.
Influence
Influencing skills are critical in virtual team situations. Lines of authority are often blurred, but the urgency to agree outcomes and work toward specific goals is an ever-present. Understanding how to purposefully deploy the 7 Aspects of Influence enables team members to position their point of view or achieve desired outcomes in highly effective ways.
Communication
“If only everyone would communicate then things would be fine!” It’s a cry of the heart that carries enormous truth. At TPI we use a facilitative approach to formulate a thorough team communication plan. It works by agreeing norms of communication behaviour and obtaining individual commitment.
Trust
Trust is measurable and by using the TPI Trustworthiness Quotient™ we work with teams to identify what a trusted job looks like. Through practice, simulation and awareness every team member is encouraged to understand how to demonstrate and repeat trusted behaviours.
Collaboration
Successful virtual teams know what a great collaborative job is and each player can measure their performance against specific collaborative goals. TPI uses its own collaborative model to measure the state of a team’s collaboration through a Collaborative Health Check™. In this way, you can identify what a team needs to do to improve commitment toward common goals, strengthen its unity of purpose, improve its motivation and develop broader and better overall team relationships.
Who should attend?
- Anyone who leads a virtual team.
- Anyone working remotely as part of a team.
- Teams that are newly formed for specific projects.
How your organisation benefits
Now working methodologies demand new skills and new techniques if they are to prove successful over the longer term. Success is rarely the product of chance. It is the direct derivative of the skilled application of knowledge and the constant re-evaluation of cause and effect.
The net result of this programme is to make your people:
- Better communicators.
- Skilled facilitators of business, self and team requirements.
- Focused team players.
- Easier to work with.
- Markedly more successful.
- More receptive to events and circumstances.
What is the delivery format?
The following graphic illustrates the workshop process that we adopt as well as the tools that we use to reinforce learning in the workplace. As with all of our solutions the final approach will be precisely tailored to your unique requirements.
 What previous participants have said…
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