Trust and Relationship Building in Successful Virtual Teams

[samvara]

My first essay in over seven years... grade was 80% and represents more planning and a structured approach to writing that I never achieved in my undergraduate degrees. *g* I corrected one reference before posting this - should have got that right :p

This is very much a retrospective look at things we did during the year and seeing them in the context of the literature I've been reviewing and the MBA coursework. A lot of what we did wasn't nearly as planned as it sounds now - it was very much based on things I wanted to achieve that weren't nearly as clearly defined at the time.

I knew we needed to start using the wiki more, that we needed better documentation and that Basecamp wasn't meeting our needs, that we needed to integrate and form a team (new people! new roles!), that we needed to move further towards a supportive culture of open communication, that if I was chairing, we had to build relationships I felt comfortable working in, and that we had a HUGE amount of work to do which meant we had to find ways of making that understandable, accessible, and doable.

Trust and Relationship Building in Successful Virtual Teams

The success of building and maintaining a virtual team is dependent on many factors including the level of trust shared within the team. Low trust levels are associated with decreased productivity and communication, and less effective problem solving. This essay aims to examine this antecedent in the context of a specific virtual team: Accessibility, Design, & Technology (AD&T) a committee of the Organization for Transformative Works (OTW). In particular this essay examines how to develop trust in virtual teams despite the limitations of communications technology. It looks at how ‘swift trust’ can accelerate this process and examines AD&T practices with reference to a model for describing trust in terms of three ‘platforms’: Calculus-based trust, Knowledge-based trust and Identification-based trust.

A virtual team is a team working ‘across space, time and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technologies’ (Bergiel et al., 2008). Virtual teams experience specific challenges due to their lack of physical interaction and dependence on information technology tools to achieve their goals; in particular, it can be difficult to establish good levels of trust. (McShane and Travaglione, 2007, p 301).

Trust is an essential component of a functioning virtual team. Trust increases productivity as members feel they can rely on each other to perform and can concentrate more fully on their own tasks. Team members who are comfortable with each other form closer interpersonal relationships which in turn promote the open exchange of information. It increases confidence and the likelihood that team members will bring up issues in an effort to resolve them (Furumo, 2009, p 67).

McShane and Travaglione argue that,’ Trust is a psychological state comprising the intention to accept vulnerability based on positive expectations of the intent of behaviour of another person.’ (McShane and Travaglione, 2007, p 332). In a virtual team where there is no face-to-face interaction, many of the cues people rely on to determine the trustworthiness of co-workers are unavailable; body language, eye contact and verbal ‘tone’ are no longer there to convey extra information. The richness of face-to-face communication has other advantages; as well as nonverbal information, there is immediate feedback and it allows the participants to quickly tailor their interaction to the needs of the situation (McShane and Travaglione, 2007).

Media Richness theory describes the need to match the requirements of the situation to the capacity of the communication channel (face-to-face is ‘rich’, email is ‘lean’) and suggests that rich media is better than lean media, especially when the situation is complex and involves ambiguity. This is a serious disadvantage for virtual teams who may never come into physical proximity. However it is argued that trust ‘is [still] possible with the skillful [sic] and thoughtful application of virtual communication channels to facilitate a completely virtual team’ (Pauleen and Yoong, 2001) through taking advantage of ‘swift trust’ and further developing it over time. Pauleen and Yoong propose that the use of effective communication strategies, encouraging collaboration and building relationships are methods for maintaining a high enough level of trust for the team to function successfully.

The idea of ‘swift trust’ ‘was originally developed to describe high-risk and high-stake temporary groups such as film crews or cockpit crews’ (Coppola et al., 2004) and attempts to explain the phenomenon of high trust in newly-formed temporary teams with a specific and finite purpose. This particular type of trust arises from co-workers assuming mutual competence and shared goals within the team. It is correspondingly fragile as is it is not based on experiential evidence and reduces quickly when expectations are not met (McShane and Travaglione, 2007, p 306). Swift trust is nevertheless important to virtual teams as a foundation for longer-term trust and cooperation.

Another theory analyses the various types of trust and identifies three trust ‘platforms’ known as:

• Calculus-based trust – where fear of punishment leads us to believe our co-workers will perform because if they don’t they will suffer.
• Knowledge-based trust – where competence and reliability in co-workers leads us to believe they will continue to perform in the same way.
• Identification-based trust – where shared values, mutual understanding and relationships lead us to believe our co-workers will perform in desirable ways (McShane and Travaglione, 2007, pp 304-5).

Let us now move to specific examples of trust building behaviour. Henttonen and Blomqvist summarise these as ‘reputation, social similarity, joint goals, commitment, personal conversations, [and] care and concern for the well-being of others’ (Henttonen and Blomqvist, 2005, pp 109-110) and confirm that virtual trust building behaviour is similar to that of non-virtual teams. Meyerson (cited in Henttonen and Blomqvist, 2005, p 110) further argues that trust can be sustained by a ‘highly active, proactive, enthusiastic and a generative style of action’. These antecedents are particularly relevant to virtual teams where ‘[f]ragmentation and isolation are a real risk.’ (Denton, 2006, p 254)

AD&T is an open source software development team entirely staffed by volunteers; the members are scattered throughout the world (for example North America, the United Kingdom, Europe and Australia) and never actually meet face-to-face. AD&T members were initially recruited through social networking when the project was proposed in 2007 and the team continues to grow through volunteers attracted to the project, offering their enthusiasm and skills.

The project involves developing an ‘open-source software package, OTW-Archive, which will allow fans to host their own robust, full-featured archives’(Organization for Transformative Works, 2008) and is expected to release all core features in 2010. AD&T manages the project and the related subcommittees Design, Code, Test, Support and Wranglers.

The AD&T Committee dissolves at the end of the calendar year and re-forms in the New Year around a person chosen to act as chair. This allows old members to retire and ongoing members to re-negotiate their roles, makes way for new members, and provides a way to gracefully resolve potential relationship stresses. In 2009 the newly-formed committee went through a process of trust and relationship building which involved a number of steps. The goal behind these exercises was to establish trust, create relationships, model expected communication, identify shared goals and encourage people to become familiar with AD&T and the main communication tools.

• Introducing the various members of the team and sharing, history, interests and previous involvement with the OTW. This involved each member writing a brief ‘biography’. The chair went first and spoke about her nicknames, history with the OTW and her work life. She mentioned she was new to the role of chair and invited feedback on how to ‘make things work well for all of us’. The biographies were presented either in a synchronous chat during the initial start-up meetings or to the AD&T email group

Exercise 1 was designed to create relationships and identification-based trust through information sharing, with the additional goal of introducing people to the AD&T email list. It was an opportunity for personal communication and an exchange of cultural information. Participants spoke of their project-related skills but also shared personal history and interests. (Gatlin-Watts et al., 2007) performed similar activities while building virtual student teams and concluded that in forming a new team it is important to ‘[e]mphasize relationship building.’

• Affirming the goals of the committee, its purpose and role. This involved discussing what the committee intended to achieve in 2009, clarifying the role of the committee and discussing central processes. One task was producing a document and a diagram that described how AD&T and its subcommittees communicated and how AD&T communicated to its main stakeholders. This was then added to the internal documentation wiki and reviewed by the committee.

Exercise 2 was designed to create a team identity by placing the committee into context within the organization, and to engage the team in discussion about its purpose and role.. This is a form of identification-based trust building as the committee worked together to affirm shared goals. It introduced an element of knowledge-based trust development as participants started to get a sense of each others work styles. Team members gained increased knowledge of the OTW, the project and the various relationships within AD&T and the OTW. It further introduced team members to the wiki and its use as a communication tool, an exercise designed to build essential effective collaboration skills (Peters and Manz, 2007, p 117).

• Clarifying individual roles, associated tasks and expectations through relating them to the committee’s purpose and role (for example inducting a new designer, explaining how the design team functions, how it communicates and inviting discussion from the team on how to improve the process). This was held in a chat room.

Exercise 3 was designed to create a feeling of safety, a feeling of ownership and a sense of ‘I know what my job is’. The AD&T project team frequently deals with complex and ambiguous tasks and one way to provide structure and minimise uncertainty is to create a strong connection to the purpose and role of the committee. According to (Brake, 2006), ‘Virtual teams are highly susceptible to "focus drift" and fragmentation. [It is important to e]xamine the team's purpose and strategies on a regular basis to create/reinforce shared understanding and direction.’ This exercise attempted to strengthen identification-based trust and create a working environment where team members felt comfortable taking ownership of ways to understand and improve existing practices.

• Discussing expectations of team members in terms of task execution. When tasks are first allocated, the chair advises recipients to report back on a weekly basis and to ask for help as needed. It is emphasised that enjoying the work and communicating well are important, and that no individual is expected to work miracles by themselves. This was accomplished through a weekly cycle of meetings in a chat room and reinforced by publishing meeting minutes on the wiki, which were then distributed by email.

Exercise 4 was accomplished indirectly as the team started generating tasks and deadlines. This was a process of describing the tasks, clarifying the ‘who’, ‘what’ and ‘when’ and emphasising the need to keep the rest of the team informed of progress whether good or bad. The OTW is sustained by a volunteer community so it was very important to emphasise that AD&T understand and value balancing commitment to the project with maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Dyer, Nevis, Schein and Senge et al (cited in Holten, 2001, p 38) maintain that ‘[c]ollaboration is born in the ability of a group to dialogue with sufficient depth and opportunity to establish trust and open communication’ and the ability to communicate openly about tasks and their progress is essential to establish in a virtual team – especially a volunteer group.

• Establishing a ‘mushy culture’ through modelling caring behaviour, showing interest in others, enthusiasm for the project and sharing personal stories. This was accomplished in a chat room, over email and (occasionally) through instant messenger.

Exercise 5 is an ongoing process of maintaining identification-based trust by demonstrating appropriate behaviour. As chair, it meant being quick to respond (either by email, instant messenger, or chat) available frequently for team members to engage in either task, social or personal dialogue, making a point of sharing personal information where appropriate and showing interest and care for other team members well-being.

The success of AD&T as a virtual team can be demonstrated by the fact it achieves goals it has set, maintains frequent (almost daily) non-task related social contact and has several members who have chosen to cross-skill in order to learn/contribute more. AD&T has a proactive approach to problem solving and often forms small sub-teams to investigate and resolve potential challenges. A further indicator of trust in AD&T is the way individuals have approached the chair to discuss interpersonal issues (chat ‘bullying’, lack of respect, lack of recognition) allowing them to be addressed and resolved.

In conclusion, trust is an important factor to the success of developing and maintaining a high-performing virtual team. The benefits of a team with high trust are many, including increased effectiveness, good communication, strong relationships and proactive problem solving. Despite the challenges involved in the formation of a virtual team, a high level of trust may be created by drawing on team members’ willingness to believe in mutual competence and shared goals but this trust must then be sustained through good management practices.

The success of this strategy in the real world is demonstrated by AD&T’s success in developing and maintaining trust through a series of relationship-building activities designed to introduce members to each other and to the organisation. This is further developed by creating a culture of open communication, participation and shared responsibility for team goals. As a further trust-building activity, AD&T engages in caring talk in order to maintain and strengthen relationships between its members.

References

Organization for Transformative Works 2008, Archive of Our Own [22 September 2009]
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