There is a mistaken perception that a team is either virtual or co-located. The assumption is that once networking tools are in place, there is no need for a virtual team to come together or conversely, team members need to be co-located.
Neither is adequate to meet current workplace needs! Clearly, virtual teams offer great benefits; for example, they reduce overhead and relocation cost. They provide greater team autonomy and enable an organization to maximize their functional expertise by utilizing professionals that are geographically dispersed. Great advantages! On the downside, virtual team members collaborate less fully and experience lower levels of engagement. 40% of virtual team members experience loneliness and are concerned that they are “out of sight, out of mind.” Not so good!
Being co-located takes care of some of those negatives. For example, team members have greater visibility to management, so fewer worries about being forgotten. They have opportunities to observe each other’s skills and integrity, both of which are prerequisites for trust and collaboration. They also experience the third ingredient necessary for trust, opportunities to learn about each other on a personal level, e.g. families, health, hobbies, and concerns. In Humble Leadership, Schein & Schein describe this as Level 2 relationship which is particularly critical for millennials. Google’s Project Aristotle found personalized relationships were the most salient characteristic of its highest performing teams. Co-location makes all this possible, although not inevitable! However, co-located teams have their share of negatives. The most obvious is the cost of building space, not to mention the environmental cost of commuting and the related reduction in family time workers have. And of course, managers are unable to make use of their most experienced and skilled employees that are in other locations.
Thankfully there is an alternative, Hybrid teams. Hybrid teams are a skillful blend of the best of face-to-face and remote work.
A Hybrid team is one in which team members work virtually and come together periodically for in-person meetings. But that’s only part of the story, #Hybrid teams are also intentional about engaging in interpersonal as well as transactional interactions during the periods in which they are apart. Let’s explore both of those issues.
Hybrid teams meet face-to-face periodically to deal with tasks that require collective sensemaking, for example, strategic alignment, reviewing what the team is learning from their on-going experience and addressing complex problems. Those meetings, often lasting from three to seven days, ensure time for relationships to develop during breaks, over dinner, late-night drinks and hallway chats. Meeting periodically can mean once a year or quarterly, as some teams do. But full group meetings are not the only way for team members to meet in person. It is also possible, and less costly, for pairs or trios of team members to meet for a few days to work on joint projects or to problem solve. These smaller meetings may last from a few days to a couple of weeks with no expensive meeting spaces required. Such meetings develop close personal connections that can increase collaboration for months after the meetings. It is well known that dyads are the most fundamental unit of interpersonal interaction and as such, are the basis for group cohesion.
Dyads allow team members to learn in-depth about the others’ expertise and to build the trust that promotes open and honest communication. When small pairings are made, in different configurations, over time, the full group becomes more connected. Although these paired meetings cannot replace full group meetings, which are necessary for strategic alignment, they are a highly effective way to increase collaboration and engagement.
The second way #Hybrid teams reduce the relationship deficit is to increase interpersonal interaction during online meetings. Hybrid online team meetings, which are also visual, start and end with time set aside to “catch up” on family, hobbies and concerns. The more transactional parts of Hybrid meetings are also interactive - no PowerPoint or lengthy lectures. Information necessary for the meeting is sent ahead in a short video or memo. That allows online time to be spent in small group conversation addressing the issue of the meeting and in full group discussion to come to agreement for moving forward. Highly interactive, online Hybrid meetings curtail the bane of virtual meetings, multi-tasking. Rather than holding a long two-hour meeting, Hybrid teams have shorter and more frequent online meetings. Borrowing tactics from Agile, teams might check in daily for 15 minutes to hear what each member is working on or meet weekly at a set time for 30 minutes to update each other on an on-going problem.
Hybrid teams which 1) meet face to face periodically, 2) meet in dyads when appropriate, and 3) are intentional about engaging in interpersonal as well as transactional interactions during online meetings, eliminate many of the deficits of virtual teams. They build the relationships and trust necessary to increase collaboration, engagement and knowledge sharing.