Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap: Overcoming Challenges and Building Effective Virtual Teams, Study notes of Communication

Download Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap: Overcoming Challenges and Building Effective Virtual Teams and more Study notes Communication in PDF only on Docsity! Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Uncover the challenges faced by virtual teams and learn three strategies for developing an effective virtual team culture. The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Organisations had been inching closer to an embrace of remote and flexible work arrangements—that is, until the COVID-19 pandemic forced an overnight conversion to virtual work. Remote work is highly prevalent now, with nearly 42% of workers in the U.S. fully remotei. And it’s here to stay: 90% of human resources leaders expect work to remain semi-flexible beyond the pandemicii. This sudden upheaval has demanded a tremendous shift in the way we work, and especially the way we “team.” Effective teamwork will be one significant factor in determining which organisations thrive in the new normal and which struggle to survive. To understand how teams have adapted to the remote workforce, Wiley Workplace Learning Solutions surveyed over 4,000 individualsiii between December 2020 and January 2021. Our results reveal a widespread gap in teamwork skills plaguing virtual teams across the country. That gap—between the teamwork skills employees have and what they need to be effective— accounts for some of the key challenges they face. And those challenges strike at the core of what it means to be an effective team. Employees that lack effective virtual teamwork skills threaten both the trajectory of their organisation’s recovery and the success of long- term remote and flexible work. Already, half of respondents tell us they’re concerned about the prospect of continuing to work virtually. And as we know, teams are comprised of individuals, each of whom needs the skills to make effective teamwork a success. That’s why it’s so critical for everyone to have a clear picture of what individuals and teams are experiencing—and why every leader must foster a culture of effective teamwork in their organisation. In what follows, you’ll discover the challenges affecting teams in the remote workplace and learn three strategies to close the virtual teamwork skills gap in your organisation. 1 The virtual workplace has upended the way teams work together. To thrive in the new normal, organisations need to assess what they are doing to build a culture of effective teamwork. The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Challenges connecting and communicating hinder effective teamwork and carry significant implications for teams and organisations. 4 The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap When we don’t feel connected to our colleagues or experience team togetherness, we begin to lose a sense of cohesion. Now that we can’t have the same casual conversations we once did across desks or in the staff room, it has become much harder to develop and maintain meaningful personal connections with our colleagues. Consequently, our work becomes a bit less personal and a bit more transactional. We prioritise efficiency at the expense of effectiveness, so wrapping up a meeting with 5 minutes to spare becomes more important than fully engaging in and aligning on a topic—no matter how long it takes. Critically, the small, seemingly trivial moments we once had at our desks or over lunch are the interpersonal interactions that, when compounded over time, build relationships and a foundation of trust in one another. That foundation of trust—the first, most consequential step in creating effective teams—means we know our colleagues as more than just the people we work with. And we care about them as more than just the people who help us get work done. We see them as human—just like ourselves— so we’re open to sharing how we feel and what we think, knowing that our colleagues always have our best interests in mind. 5 Great teams do not hold back with one another. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal. –Patrick Lencioni The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Those interpersonal interactions, of course, once unfolded more easily in-person and encompassed a wider swath of employees across an organisation (just think of how many people you’d run into in the staff room or at lunch). Now, with little to no basis of in-person interactions on which to build and develop relationships, new employees and members of the new teams that emerge continuously across organsations face considerable difficulty generating trust in one another. When we lack that interpersonal foundation of trust to stand on, we find it more difficult to do the hard, but necessary, work of being an effective team member. And this starts with each of us embracing the behaviours that foster effective communication and collaboration. These behaviours don’t necessarily already exist in every one of us— especially when we’ve been working alone at our kitchen tables for over a year!—but they are skills we can learn. 6 The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Building effective teamwork skills requires self-discovery. Each of us approaches teamwork in a unique way, and those differences in perspective and personality, after all, are part of what helps teams thrive. They allow us to debate and discuss concepts and ideas and to uncover one another’s blind spots. So when each employee develops their self-awareness around their own personalities and behaviours, they become empowered to “team” in a way that feels meaningful—and thus memorable—to them. As each team member becomes more self-aware, they can share these learnings and develop a deeper understanding of others as well, which unlocks greater appreciation for how their teammates like to work. This shared understanding is a foundational element to building stronger teams. 9 The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Like any skill, practice makes perfect (or close to it!) Employees are empowered to apply their skills on a day- to-day basis when tied to a simple, memorable, and actionable framework and through a common language. When employees at all levels are equipped with the essential skills of effective teamwork, they can move seamlessly from team to team—knowing what it takes to build an effective one—and immediately begin contributing to collective results. And if they face challenges—say, not everyone has committed to an idea—they have a framework for working through it. By asking certain questions arising from the model (“Why is that so?” “Did we not fully listen to and debate each other’s ideas?”), the team can quickly get back on track. 10 The Five Behaviors® | Closing the Virtual Teamwork Skills Gap Effective teamwork begins with trust. In his best-selling book, The Five Dysfunctions of a Team, Patrick Lencioni introduces a powerful and approachable model for effective teamwork and collaboration, with five key behaviours a team must practice: Trust, Conflict, Commitment, Accountability, and a focus on Results. Each behaviour is important on its own, but also in laying the foundation upon which the next behaviour is built. At the same time, the absence of any one of these five critical behaviours can cripple teams and organisations. That’s why trust—specifically vulnerability-based trust—is so crucial: by acknowledging our own human failures and foibles while appreciating the strengths of our colleagues, we unlock the other behaviours that lead to successful teams. 11