In today’s world, people can be polarized on subjects such as political, religious, and philosophical beliefs. These polarizations can creep into the workplace and lead to conflict, destroy teamwork, waste valuable time/resources and cause unnecessary stress. When teams are fighting, communication suffers, production goes down, and deadlines are missed.
While leaders can never totally eliminate conflict, they can take steps to FIGHT unhealthy conflict in virtual teams. Here are five steps to get a diverse virtual team to set aside their differences and work together more effectively:
FOCUS – Focus the virtual team on the overall goal for the project, team, or organization. Make sure everyone has a clear understanding of their role, timelines, and deliverables.
INITIATE – Initiate regularly scheduled virtual team meetings to review the status of deliverables, bring questions into the open and clarify matters. Give each person the time to report on areas they may need help on from the rest of the virtual team. If possible, have everyone on camera when talking (or all the time) to create more connection within team members.
GIVE – Give your virtual team members the necessary authority and resources to do their job and succeed. Individuals work better when they can act and do not have to wait or fight for resources. If they encounter roadblocks such as policies, practices, or tools that prevent them from doing the job, leaders should clear the path so the virtual team member can move forward and complete deliverables.
HELP – Help the virtual team to express different points of view. Set rules for virtual meetings that include respecting other people’s opinions, not interrupting others on the team when they are talking, and not multitasking while others are talking. A diverse team with different points of view can create a more effective and dynamic team.
TIMEOUT – Take timeout to allow the team to get to know each person on the virtual team. Highlight a different person at each virtual meeting giving them 5 minutes to talk about themselves. People like to talk about their families, hobbies, and ambitions. Pick 2 or 3 appropriate questions that they can answer as a guideline (i.e., What is your favorite hobby/activity to do in your free time and why?). This allows rapport to build and people work more effectively with people they like and trust.
Virtual Teams that set aside differences and FIGHT together to accomplish team goals will enhance communication, increase production, and defeat any competitor.
Interested in learning more, join us for a complimentary 1-hour webinar, Understanding Diversity & Inclusion, on February 17, 2021, at 9:00 AM.