Facilitate Proceedings » Building Effective Teams

Why BP and Virtual Teams Need Clear Operating Principles

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 01:46:09 +0000

We may never know what sequence of events set off the greatest environmental catastrophe of our time. What we do know is that there seemed to be a difference of opinion among decision-makers when it came to making a crucial trade-off between safety and profit. Add to that, it seemed unclear as to who, precisely, had the authority to make the decision to stop the drilling when a concerned staffer alerted management of the impending danger.

Having agreed-upon operating principles up front might have helped the drilling team avert this unnecessary disaster, just as they can help any kind of team make well-informed decisions quickly.

Anatomy of a Great Virtual Collaborator

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:05:54 +0000

Most people I know love working remotely. They say they get more done, prize their freedom and flexibility and have better work/life balance. But there are others who really miss being with people and feel isolated and lonely much of the time. People often ask me what qualities are the most important predictors of a successful virtual collaborator. Here are seven that come to mind.

Social butterflies tend to thrive.
May seem ironic, but sociable people crave contact with others and are motivated to maintain connections, either virtually – through phone, email or social networking tools—or face-to-face, when they can. Introverts who find it painful to stop and chat with an officemate may find it harder to cultivate social connections in a virtual world. For someone who’s introverted, social bonds are almost impossible to create and keep up when working from afar.

Tips To Jumpstart Your New Virtual Team

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 19:58:03 +0000

One of my clients was just anointed as the project lead for a new virtual team of a very visible project. She confessed that she has very little experience as a manager of virtual teams, though she does know what it’s like being part of a poorly run team, and she does not want to replicate this experience for her new team members.

Here are a few tips I shared with her to help her get her new team off to a fast start:

1. Choose the right people.

When you can choose your team members, look for people with diverse perspectives with a blending of skills, knowledge and experience. Important competencies include tolerance for ambiguity; sensitivity to cultural differences; willingness to work independently; ability and openness to communicate using a variety of methods; and keen listening skills.

How Do Collaborative Meeting Systems Affect The Bottom Line?

Donna McAlister Kizzier — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:36:33 +0000

As technology advances and the global economy strains to stabilize, what is a leader who is increasingly pressed to produce bottom line results to do? Based on research being conducted at Morehead State University, part of the answer may be to run more effective global meetings using collaborative systems. This research indicates that collaborative systems can save time and travel-related expense while enhancing the quality of meeting outcomes.
For the past seven years, I have been conducting a long-term comprehensive study on the effectiveness of several meeting venues on scientifically validated group effectiveness factors. The ultimate goal of this project is to design meeting models that work effectively across time, space, and diverse cultures.

Research Briefs Reveal Gold Nuggets For Facilitators and Team Leaders

Danuta McCall — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 17:02:46 +0000

There is exciting research going on at universities across the globe focused on understanding the basic constructs that affect team productivity and well-being. It’s pretty clear why we should be interested in what this research is turning up. We work in a global and unstable economy where the rules are constantly changing. Our workforce is culturally diverse and often separated by barriers of time and distance. We have an overabundance of technologies to help us collaborate that work well when used appropriately.

In order to succeed in this challenging environment, managers and team leaders must understand the fundamentals of how groups communicate, innovate, and make decisions. Then we can create the right environment, norms and processes to help groups function optimally. If we don’t understand the core forces behind team effectiveness, we might make unfortunate choices in our communication systems (both technological and human) and management systems.

Here at Facilitate Proceedings, we’d like to help make the connection between this academic research and the community of practitioners who could benefit from it. So we have added a new category to our blog called Research Briefs.

Bridging Cultural Boundaries in Global Teams

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 22:11:45 +0000

In a recent post, I talked about the importance of helping your cross cultural teams develop cultural literacy, by which I mean an understanding of and sensitivity to values and beliefs that lie beneath the surface differences of language, cuisine and style.

Whether members of a cross-cultural team work in the same location or a couple of time zones away, everyone needs to learn how to navigate cultural differences successfully. In the absence of visual cues, these differences become much more challenging to interpret and address.

Here are some things to think about when you plan for team communication.

Develop Your Team’s Cultural Literacy

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 03:37:35 +0000

A client of mine, a manager of organizational effectiveness for a global services firm, recently posed this question: “Although our corporate HQ is here in the U.S., our company is run by teams of people located all over the world. Perhaps because many have limited experience working regularly with people of other cultures, most of the Americans—who are top performers here in the U.S.—seem to be struggling. I’ve been asked to coach a group of American managers to become more effective global collaborators. Any advice?”

In this post, I’ll share some advice for helping your team develop cultural literacy. Later, I’ll talk about how this translates into good behavior in team communications.

Uncovering Covert Barriers To Change

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Tue, 25 Aug 2009 17:31:58 +0000

I recently attended an excellent session at the Cape Cod Institute by Bob Marshak, who explored tips and techniques for overcoming the many covert barriers to organizational change. The examples used throughout the session were geared primarily to groups who worked side by side, when it’s tough enough to identify those hidden landmines and unspoken issues.

Six Management Practices That Don’t Cut It in a Virtual World

Nancy Settle-Murphy — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 07:19:52 +0000

Do you think that just because you’re a successful manager of traditional teams that you’ll automatically be a hotshot manager in the virtual world? Maybe not. In fact, it’s often those managers who assume their leadership skills are eminently transportable to a virtual team are those who struggle the most. Why? They haven’t taken the time to understand how vastly different virtual team dynamics can be for both leaders and team members, and thus, are less likely to find ways to accommodate those differences.

In this issue, I explore some of the “traditional” management tenets that are most likely to backfire in a virtual world, and offer some alternatives that will yield better results when leading teams who work remotely.

The Magic Number That Helps Teams Flourish

Danuta McCall — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:21:58 +0000

I was patrolling my corner of the blogosphere when I came upon a post that referenced research by psychologists Marcial Losada and Barbara Fredrickson about how positivity impacts team performance. Experiments have shown that positive affect (positive sentiments, attitudes and emotions) makes individuals, teams and organizations flourish – that is function optimally. People and teams who flourish are more flexible, resilient, creative and intuitive. On the opposite side, languishing teams exhibit narrow thinking, boredom, cynicism.

The Magic Number
Now, Losada and Fredrickson hypothesized that people or teams with a positivity ratio (ratio of pleasant feelings to unpleasant feelings) that meets or exceeds a specific threshold would be also characterized as flourishing. Losada studied a large group of business teams during their annual strategy meetings, tracking statements made in the meetings as positive, negative or neutral. He then measured the performance of these teams and determined that there is indeed a positivity ratio, and it’s (drum roll, please)…