Questions asked of others are great … although you can control a conversation by asking a whole list of questions (and if you’re not careful, you can get a bad reputation for being so controlling), you also can learn a lot by doing the same. Bring the latter […]
Working in virtual teams removes almost all of the social cues that we rely on when interacting with others. We can’t see them. We can’t hear what they’re up to unless we explicitly call or reach out. We don’t know whether they are being silent because of travel, […]
When people are involved in a team from many different places and thus different time zones, you have two choices. Either everyone has to state any meeting times in their own time zone and then rely on everyone else to do the conversion to their time zone (which […]
Silence can mean many things, and that’s a problem in virtual teams. When you can see someone, you can go over and ask why they’re being silent. When you work with others that you can’t easily see or visit, it’s much harder to know what’s going on. Are […]
Teams working on a task outcome are embedded in a social and business environment; they have their own work to complete, and in addition they have others to keep informed about how things are going. Perhaps it’s the manager of a division, and he or she has sponsored […]
With virtual teams spread across the world, different backgrounds, cultures, work styles, approaches to formality, and methods of communication makes effective team work more difficult. Sometimes it is really helpful to have an external facilitator join a conference call or video conference to help with the process of […]
When work is undertaken in virtual teams, you often can’t see the other people that you’re working with (they are invisible to you) and your communication is mediated by technology (email, IM, the phone, a shared workspace, Twitter, etc.). If others choose not to respond to email or […]
Every team needs to have a driving reason for being, for existing, for working as a team (“being a team” isn’t good enough). It’s the thing that pulls people together, that enables them to see beyond the major conflicts, the petty disagreements, the slog and the hard times […]
When you work with others, there is all of the task work that has to get done, and that takes time and effort … and there is also the coordination of the task work, and that takes time and effort as well. For novice teams—those that haven’t worked […]
The March 17, 2008 edition of FORTUNE magazine includes an interview with Steve Jobs of Apple. I really liked his thoughts on focus: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying […]
Michael Sampson 
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