Ridge Insights - January/February 2009
Virtual Teamwork
Ridge Insights A monthly e-brief from Ridge Training
Date: February 24, 2009
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WHAT WE'RE THINKING ABOUT: VIRTUAL TEAMWORK
"If listening is all it takes to overcome bad behavior--if listening is more powerful than meanness, sloth, or depression--it's like a trick from a children's story, a golden rule kind of lesson that seems way too after-school-special to possibly be true."
—Ira Glass, heard on his radio show, "This American Life," 12/19/08
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/Radio_Episode.aspx?sched=1275
Why is Ira Glass amazed at the power of listening? His quote came after he interviewed Will Felps, an Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior at Rotterdam School of Management who did an interesting piece of research.
Felps wanted to find out the effect that one "bad apple" can have on team productivity--as in, does one bad apple spoil the whole bunch? So Felps hired an actor to play different roles on teams comprised of college students. On one team the actor was a jerk who attacked and insulted others. On a second team the actor was lazy, a slacker who did as little as possible. On a third team, the actor was a depressive pessimist, who complained and projected team failure. In almost every case, the actor's negative behavior affected the teammates' behavior. People stopped sharing critical information. Laziness begot laziness; meanness begot meanness; pessimism begot pessimism. As you might expect, this hurt the team's results. Productivity on teams with the bad-apple actor was 30 to 40 percent lower than that of the teams without the bad apple. And if you want more bad news, it's this: the best predictor of team performance is how the worst, not the best, person performs.
But what amazed Ira Glass is that one team with a bad apple beat the odds and performed really well. This team had a strong leader; evidently the team leader's father was a diplomat. This team leader, when confronted with the negative behavior, asked questions and listened, which engaged the teammates and defused the conflicts that the actor was actively fostering. As Ira Glass muses, it seems too good to be true, and yet it is: "By listening to each other, by trying understanding each other, we can get to the point where nobody can ruin things for everyone else."
That's good news for all who work virtually as well as face-to-face. Communicating primarily through email and voicemail leaves a lot unsaid. But what's left unsaid can crop up unexpectedly in conference calls, one-on-ones, and rare face-to-face meetings. The people you work with are not like the actor in the study, actively plotting how to play the jerk, the slacker, and the pessimist. And yet many factors these days--fewer people to do the work after layoffs, economic uncertainty, financial and family stresses--can make people more abrasive, pessimistic and disengaged. Without the daily face-to-face relationships to build rapport, it's hard to know what to do when virtual team members and leaders act like the bad apple. What should you do when people seem to have nothing to say on the conference call? What should you do when you hear criticism and pessimism? You have two choices: ignore them, or find out what's going on. Based on the success of the only team whose bad apple didn't spoil the bunch, your best choice is to find out what's going on. Invite people to talk, paying attention with an open mind, and really listening to what they have to say.
For more tips on facilitating virtual teams, and a bibliography of books on the subject, please go to
http://www.ridge.com/downloads/FacilitatingVirtualTeams.pdf
For more information on Will Felps, click here.
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Copyright 2009 - Ridge Associates, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.
Copyright 2009 Ridge Associates, Inc. All Rights Reserved.