Earlier this week, I had the chance to sit face-to-face with fifty people who work, for the most part, virtually. Their purpose in coming together was to learn some adaptive behaviors when at least one and, in some cases, entire factions of their colleagues are continents apart.
About an hour into the day's session, the leader asked the group to list their challenges in working virtually. Suddenly, a quiet room virtually (!) erupted:
- We don't really know one another; it's hard to build true personal relationships
- We're unaware of people's real skills
- We struggle to understand people with different accents
- Our "real-time window" is very small--when we're working, they're sleeping
- I feel isolated because I'm the only one on my team who works in a different location
- We mean different things when we use technical terms
- It's hard to get first-hand information
The list, twice as long as what I'm posting here, points to the central challenge of working virtually: It's not what we see on the screen but what reflects back to us in the mirror. In our view, the key to making virtual teams work is our own ability to connect and communicate maturely, perhaps the biggest challenge of all.