10-9 (say again)
I began my career as a dispatcher for a state law enforcement agency. This is was my first exposure to a virtual team. While I did have to go into the dispatcher center everyday to work and was therefore surrounded by other dispatchers, I still considered my environment virtual. This was because of the other voice on the radio. While those voices were not exactly virtual, the experience was the same in that I rarely got to meet that voice face to face therefore it was very similar to me as communicating through cyberspace because you cannot read facial expressions. It was several years into my career when I learned to value of becoming more personal with the officers that I dispatched for. I had the opportunity to go on a “ride along” with one of the officers. I remember sitting in the patrol car in the middle of winter late at night and watching him have to stand out in the freezing cold and blowing snow to investigate a motor vehicle accident. After the night was over, we went and had coffee. We chatted about work for a while and then the conversation turned to a more personal note. We talked mostly about our families and he showed me pictures of his wife and kids. The next time I had the opportunity to dispatch for that particular officer during a snowstorm, my patience level was 10 fold because I got to know him on a personal level and he was no longer just a voice with a call sign on the radio. I remember being very busy and multiple officers were calling at the same time and information needed to be repeated over and over because of the chaos caused by the snowstorm. I remember reflecting on the day once it was done and I remember that I was very annoyed with many of the officers because I had to keep repeating myself. Then I remember thinking that I was not at all bothered by the officer that I rode with a few days back. I came to the realization that once you can personalize a virtual team member, your trust level and patience level significantly increases – it’s hard to bad mouth someone once you’ve had coffee with them and seen pictures of their beautiful children. From that point on in my dispatching career, I made it a point to spend more time conversing on a personal level with the officers rather it by via telephone or if I went to their troop office for a visit. Over the next several years, my job got significantly easier and my stress level decreased significantly all because of being able to personalize the voice on the radio.
I’m the boss now
My next job after working as a dispatcher was as a Project Manager for a software development company, hence, I’m the boss now. Only in this career, my team is more virtual than my law enforcement team was because we all live in various parts of the country and most of our interaction is through email or conference calls. I no longer have the opportunity to drive down to their office to meet them like I did the officers. After a few very busy months, I started noticing some stress amongst my team members. There was some bickering and complaining across several of the departments. I did however, learn my lesson from my days as a dispatcher – it’s much harder to get angry or frustrated with someone once you can start to view them as a real person rather than just some random human sending you an email that you disagree with. I reflected on this and brainstormed on how I would rectify this situation. Luckily, every year my company hosts a user conference for our customers. While we usually spend the week entertaining our customers, I saw this as my golden opportunity to get all the teams together. The goal: DO NOT talk about work, just mingle with your co-workers and get to know them! Things were much improved after we all had a chance to meet face to face. Now, anytime there is a disagreement, we can learn to not take it so personally. I guess this is an odd lesson, personalize your co-workers in a virtual team so that you don’t take disagreements so personal! Kinda strange, I know, but, it really does work.
While we do take the opportunity to meet our virtual co-workers at company sponsored events, the reality is, they are only once a year and there are times that due to budget constraints, not everyone gets to go. With the ever increasing popularity of social networking sites, we all have the opportunity to put a face to the emails that we receive. I have made it a point to “friend” all of my co-workers on Facebook. I take the time to read their posts and look at their pictures and learn something interesting about them. It’s amazing how quickly you can defuse a hot temper or disagreement with someone on the phone when you say, “Hey, how was your grandson Charlie’s soccer game yesterday? Did his team win?” I have done this several times with many of my co-workers that I have never actually met and it works miracles! They recognize the fact that even though you are the boss and sometimes you have to tell them difficult things or sometimes even discipline them, they see that you are a person too and that you’ve taken the time to learn about them. So, in conclusion, virtual teams; they can be wonderful if you just take the time to build trust and personal relationships with one another. Of course every team, whether virtual or not, must go through Tuckman’s team building model of forming, storming, norming, performing, and mourning, (Staggers, Garcia, & Nagelhout, 2008, p. 477) building a solid foundation from the start through personalization can help you get to the performing phase quicker and with less stress and maybe even a few new friends.
References
Kuo, F. & Yu, C. (2009, July 1). An Exploratory Study of Trust Dynamics in Work-Oriented Virtual Teams [Journal]. Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication, 823-854.
Staggers, J., Garcia, S., & Nagelhout, E. (2008). Teamwork through team builder: Face to face to online. Business Communication Quarterly, 472-487.
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