Uncovering the Implicit Message

Every summer, I spend a week teaching a class on global virtual teams at the Summer Institute for Intercultural Communication in Portland, Oregon. Working through some papers recently for the 2009 session, I came across the results of an exercise I did in 2008. The exercise aimed to demonstrate challenges when explicit and implicit communication styles encountered one another.

In the exercise, I took a blank piece of paper and at the top I (Person 1) wrote an explicit statement ("Don't do that!"). I then passed the piece of paper to the person on my right (Person 2). Her task was to look at my statement and write the same meaning, but in an implicit way. She then folded the top of the paper over my original statement, and passed it over to the person on her right (Person 3). He/she would look at the statement passed over by Person 2 and write the same meaning, but in an explicit way. Person 3 would fold the paper over Person 2's statement, and so the paper would go around the group with people writing explicit or implicit statements.

Here are the results (explicit statements are in bold):

Don't do that!
Would you mind not to do that
Don't do that!
Could you please find something else to do
Stop doing that
If you wouldn't mind focusing on something else
Look over there
When you get a chance, glance over in that direction
Look over there
If you look in that direction, you may find what you need

Things went well until the 6th person shifted from the word 'do' to the much more indirect phrase 'focusing on something else'. 'Focusing' implied something visual, and so the meaning shifted away from stopping a certain action to looking in a certain direction.

These types of exercise are always fascinating because they demonstrate just how fragile human communication can be.

Global virtual teams are often working across high context (indirect)and low context (explicit) cultures, as well as through communication media that restrict the social cues we use to interpret meaning. The chances for miscommunication increase exponentially on global virtual teans.

What's to be done? I said in Where in the World is My Team? that we must work hard to make the implicit, explicit. If we don't, we sow the seeds of confusion and conflict. Being explicit, of course, is easier for those who come from low context cultures (at least in terms of language; their actions and thinking can still be hidden from view). As a global virtual team leader, it would be my responsibility to create the conditions in which greater explicitness and transparency is the norm. How?

Create greater awareness on the team of the different styles (explicit and implicit)
Demonstrate the potential impact of the differences on team communications
Talk with the team about the challenges of working virtually, and of the need for everyone to adapt and be alert for actual or potential misunderstandings
Raise awareness of - and examine - the assumptions people have about the different styles, e.g., explicit is rude and aggressive while implicit is noncomittal and even deceptive
Provide opportunities for the team to use rich communication media so that people can see and hear more of the communication context, e.g., facial expressions, tone of voice
Establish the principle of what I will call "sitting in the audience seats" - am I saying or writing something that the audience could find vague, confusing, or worse?
Encourage team members to talk and to ask open-ended questions of one another so that misunderstandings come more easily to the surface
Role model and encourgae a style of communication that is straightforward, transparent and friendly

What's Up Doc?

I'm not much of a Twitterer myself, but I can see the value for members of virtual teams who want to feel more connected. There are, of course, multiple uses for such a tool, including learning. I just came across this piece from ABC News about the use of Tweeting during surgery. It opens your eyes to the potential of this microblogging service.

Don't be alarmed! I'm sure the patient survives.

See Why Doctors Are Tweeting here!

Making a Business Case

Annoying executives want to know WHY? When making decisions about introducing new ways of working (among other things)they're usually not satisfied with what, where, when, who and how? Tell me, WHY?

Here is something to tell them:

British Telecom is saving itself $355m a year through efficient use of conferencing. That figure is worth repeating - $355m or 238m British pounds! Whatever way you look at it, that's a lot of money. This figure comes from BT's Agile Working Practice, and was reported by economist.com (thanks to my TMA World colleague, Steve Pritchard for pointing it out to me).

In 2007, BT's 107,000 employees held some 751,000 audio, web, and video conferences with an average of 12 participants in each one. Conferencing is part of a holistic approach to thinking about how work gets done - making better use of company property, reducing CO2 emissions, flexible working and improvement of work-life balance, and reducing business travel. In the last 12 months,BT has reduced its expenditures on air travel and accomodation by around 70 percent.

So, there is something to say when you're asked "WHY?"

You Got Virtual Rhythm?

A recent research report (Synchrony and Cooperation, Psychological Science, Volume 20-Number 1)) by Scott Wiltermuth and Chip Heath of Stanford University reinforces the view that human beings - along with much else in the natural world - are built to synchronize - coordinate their actions. Cultures abound in rhythmic rituals like group dancing and chanting (e.g., football fan singing)that have the appeal of enabling us to perform together in time. Synchrony appears to be built into our brains in the form of mirror neurons - imitation has been key to the emergence of cultures and human survival.

The researchers wanted to find out if collective movement triggered a more cooperative spirit, and to do this they devised some experiments. In one experiment, To quote from a Scientific American article about the study, "Relative to students in a control condition, who had simply ambled about, the students who had walked in lockstep around the campus were more cooperative in subsequent economic games, felt more connected to each other and trusted each other more . . . Participants were willing to incur direct costs to themselves to cooperate with the students with whom they had synchronized."

In both of the experiments, the participants were physically together. How do we support the 'urge to merge' in a virtual environment and build the cooperative spirit. Rhythm is the key, creating that sense of marching, dancing or singing together - finding the heart beat of the team. Rhythm created in team rituals, communications, meetings, and processes. Without rhythm, a virtual team loses any sense of cohesion.

The New World Of Work

Interesting facts, interesting music. Check out this video from e3unlimited on what's going on in the global workplace.

Here!

Do You Know Wordle?

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Something to play with in the virtual playground.

'Rules' For The Virtual Playground

As I said in an interview for a magazine recently, I'm not the kind of person who takes one idea and stretches it over two hundred pages in a business book. I tend to come up with many ideas and see where they take me. Some of the ideas will not be fully formed when they get to the page. I tend not to see ideas as objects, but as organisms that grow and evolve and yes, even die. I remember someone once telling me that my drive to tweek and change was my greatest weakness. So be it. I value the creative process and learning above any idea fixed in time.

In Where in the World is My Team? I proposed a set of ten rules that should guide members of virtual teams. Looking at them again recently, I slashed the number in half to make them more user friendly (but without losing substance). And here they are:

Be Present
Be Aligned
Be Transparent
Be Thoughtful
Be Accountable

And, if you like acronyms - PATTA.

Be Present: Use all the tools at your disposal to stay connected with the team as much as possible. Let people know 'you're there' and whether or not this is a good time to contact you. Do what you can to create a 'one team room' feel. Being Present is not just about building and maintaining relationships, it's also about staying aligned.

Be Aligned: Distance can create havoc on virtual teams because it is so easy for members to lose touch, become distracted, lose sight of what the team is trying to accomplish. To maintain focus and direction continuous information flow and feedback is critical, and this requires deep presence.

Be Transparent: Also, how can alignment be strong if a member's presence lacks transparency. All the presence in the world won't support alignment if there are hidden agendas,a lack of sharing, or vague communications.

Be Thoughtful: When working across distances via technologies team members must never lose sight of the fact that people are at the other end of the cable or satellite signal. Showing consideration for what others need in the virtual space is part of being transparent, but also provides the emotional threads that minimize distance.

Be Accountable: None of the above rules can contribute their full power if personal accountability on the team is weak. Distance can dilute the feeling of accountability and give rise to highly dysfunctional behaviors like freeloading - not keeping promises and relying on others to carry the workload of the team.

I would recommend that when virtual teams are forming they work together to embed these five interdependent rules into their way of working together. The rules don't need to be called rules, and each one doesn't need to be analyzed to death in terms of specific behaviors. Sometimes in our desire to be value-added we over-engineer. Give a team the 'rules' of the virtual playground and let them play.