E131 – Virtual Team (W Billy Kramer)

and here we are again with another episode of a world of work podcast. What are we speaking about today? Jane and who are we speaking

to? Well, it couldn't be more topical. We are talking about the subject of virtual teams with the quite brilliant Brilli Kramer, who is an assistant professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of Nebraska, Omaha. Brilliant.

Well, let's get into that virtual conversation, which is what we're doing. So here we are on the main body of today's podcast conversation, and we've got a great guest lined up. We're speaking to Billy Cramer, who's an assistant professor at the University of Nebraska in Omaha, and we're going to be speaking all about virtual teams. We're going to try and explore a little bit about what makes virtual teams tick, what makes them work, as well as what leaders and managers can do to improve the experiences of individuals in virtual teams and improve the performance of those teams as well. Before we get into that, though, could you introduce yourself to the audience and say a bit about yourself and your background and the things that you're working on?

Yeah, absolutely. So my name is Billy Kramer, and as you mentioned, I'm assistant professor at University of Nebraska, Omaha. I am in my third year here, so I have just gotten used to all of the wonderful people, and absolutely loving the job here, absolutely loving everything I do here. But one of the big things that I like to study, and one of the big things that defines my path as a researcher, is looking at teams in specific contexts, and specifically, in this case, looking at virtual teams. So along the way in my career, I had a very long, strange path to IO, but with basically starting in my master's program in University of Central Florida, I worked with Eduardo Salas, who is one of the biggest teams researchers in IO. And while I wasn't originally interested in teams working in his lab, it really just, you know, naturally made me interested in it. So that was the start of, oh, teams are interesting. Teams are cool. I'm going to start looking into these. I'm going to see what makes them tick. And then from there, I ended up going to Clemson to get my PhD, and I worked with Dr Marissa Scheffler, who started to look a lot at teams in unique context, teams in high stress situations. So I've had experience as a graduate student, which is absolutely wonderful with interviewing astronauts and talking about what they do on the International Space Station and how they make quick decisions and things like that. And from there, I decided, well, I'm really interested in this idea of what teams do, how they react to different contexts. So I took virtual teams, and I knew there was an existing base of research, and I was like, I really want to focus in on this. And I made that kind of my area, my specialty. And you mentioned having something about what I am currently doing, right? Is that? What you said, Yeah, please, what you're focused about now? That'd be great. So interestingly enough, when everything hit with a pandemic in 2020, we I was working with a colleague, Joe Allen, over at University of Utah health to do some research into what is the difference between face to face and virtual meetings. So we started doing some research there, where we had collected some data pre pandemic, basically getting people's perspectives as to how virtual meetings work. What are some positive things, negative things about it? And then we had, essentially the pandemic fall into our lap. So we ended up doing a bit of a What did ver What did virtual meetings look like before the pandemic, and then now, what do they look like afterwards, because we re surveyed those people, and then what did it look like a few months into the pandemic? So a lot of my research shifted a little bit from teams and looking more at a meetings context, even though that is more of a, you know, it's a social still a social setting, where people are talking to one another, and it's very teamwork. Related. It was a little bit of a shift, but it was very interesting that that just kind of fell into our labs. And I'm very happy that it did, because it's very difficult to do, like Team lab studies when you can't get people in the same room together. So I've had a little bit of a shift there, in terms of what I've been studying immediately, in terms of, like, as of late, but I am very much looking forward to going back to Team studies this fall.

Cool. That's really helpful. And you know what? We've, um, we've done a podcast with Joe Allen recently that I think will be, Oh really, yeah, out a couple weeks before this one was just cool. I loved your description of having taken a long, strange path to IO as well. That you know, that experience that different people bring always makes it, makes it really fun. And the piece about space is fascinating as well. That's an area that I'm interested in learning more about. I've had some initial contacts with somebody who's working for SpaceX looking at how they think about, you know, the effects of attempted colonization on the psychology of teams. And so that's on my sort of back burner of people to pick up on, so I might pick your brains about that better. Oh, absolutely, that sounds wonderful. It sounds cool, doesn't it? So I guess if we're going to jump into virtual teams as a starting point, could you maybe start by explaining what is a virtual team? What makes a virtual team? I know it's an open kind of a big question, but what is a virtual team? So

there are, I mean, there's a few different ways to conceptualize a virtual team. One of the biggest ways is, if you are on a team and you are using any sort of virtual device to communicate with one another, to hold meetings, you can be considered somewhat, to some degree, a virtual team, because you are using a virtual device. And then, if you think about it, on a spectrum, that might be a team that meets face to face, typically, and they just end up communicating virtually on certain days, maybe only if there's like certain events where they need to immediately communicate with one another. Then they might be on the low end of low end of the spectrum for how virtual they are. But then there are also virtual teams, where everything they do has this layer of virtuality on top of it, so teams where you might not see one another face to face ever you might be working in different areas of the world, and just overlaying all of these complexities on top of things, there is this bit of like, you know, there are naturally problems that come into play there when you have so many things layered on top of one another. So when I think of virtual teams, I think of a bit of a spectrum where it might naturally be that all teams have some degree of virtuality. Because, I mean, we email one another, we could argue that that, in and of itself is a virtual tool that we are using to communicate to one another. But does that truly make the team, quote, unquote, virtual, versus a team that has everything they do filtered through this, filtered through technology, essentially. So I think of it on a spectrum. I think of it as your team could have a high level of virtuality, low level of virtuality, and it also depends on the tools you use. So in certain teams, you might avoid email, and you might try to only use things like that mimic face to face communication, like video conferencing and whatnot. So in those types of teams, you could say that you know you're doing a better job having a proxy for face to face, because you can see one another, because you can pick up on those non verbal, important social cues that we need to communicate to one another to understand what people are trying to get across to you. Does that answer your question? Yeah, no,

that's interesting. And bringing in that sliding scale of virtuality is really interesting. And as you said, with so much email and other use of technology embedded into what we do, it does feel as if pretty much any sort of knowledge work team out there might be considered virtual in some aspect, though, whether they're fully virtual is a different it's a different aspect. I guess, for purposes of today, a lot of the area that I kind of like to explore is where there's maybe a little bit more about virtuality, so not just using email, but using a range of tools, and maybe locating in different places and things like that. I think that could be interesting to think about. And I guess reason I'd like to sort of anchor things in there a little bit is to ask the question, if we have a team that is more virtual like that, maybe remotely located and geographically spread and things like that, what will some of the different challenges that a team that is like that face compared to a more traditional team that is either co located in a single place, and making much less use of that technology?

Sure. So this is a, I mean, big question, and there's a lot of pieces to it, but the first one that I will the first thing I'll bring up, and the first thing I'll address, is just the very basic. Sick one, I think, in terms of when we think about what happens when we're meeting virtually, and it's tied back to the idea of people wanting to belong to in groups. So there's a theory called social identity theory, which essentially says that we want to feel like we're part of an in group when we are in social settings. We want to look out to others, and we want to basically say, Hey, I fit in with these people. These people have some sort of a shared understanding or shared belief structure that I can jive with, that I actually understand, and I want to work with them. So when we're working virtually, it's really difficult to picture yourself as part of the in group, because you aren't getting as many social cues. It might not necessarily in terms of, just like when you're sitting down in a in a face to face, or, excuse me, a video conferencing meeting, if you're in a video conferencing meeting, you'll pick up on those social cues. But then what happens when you shut it off and you go about your separate ways to do your work. In those cases, what ends up happening is what we largely rely on in terms of picking up on how others are doing, who they are as individuals is largely reliant on the work they're doing. And we look and we go, okay, so this person is engaging in the tasks they said they were going to engage in I have trust when it comes to that, but as a person, I might have no idea as to who they are, and in that sense, I might identify with them as a co worker, but not necessarily identify with them as a person, which kind of, kind of adds this layer of there is some sort of literally a virtual barrier between me and that person, where I am not seeing them holistically as I would if I was face to face, working with them in an organization. So this idea that it's really difficult to pick up on the social intricacies that naturally come across in these virtual settings really is one of the biggest barriers I think, that virtual teams face. And a lot of the research that you see on virtual teams directly tied to this are related to things called they're essentially called Demo they're called demographic fault lines, and I need to explain what that is. That's why I'm pausing here. A fault line is essentially, sorry, a fault line is essentially a an observable or unobservable difference across individuals based on individual difference characteristics. So better way of doing this is, let's say I have a team of five people, there are three males or two females, there is a natural fault line in between the group, in that there are different numbers of males versus females. So at any point during the group's tasking, something could emerge where that that difference becomes salient, and when that difference becomes salient, we tend to have a little bit of conflict around that. So it goes from being something called a dormant fault line to an activated fault line within the team. And in this sense, when those things become activated, they tend to become a little bit problematic. They tend to cause conflict within the teams. And worst case scenario, they lead to relationship conflict. And relationship conflict tends to emerge when you don't have these social saliencies. You can't recognize that the other person, potentially, is just having a really bad day, and if you got into a bit of conflict with them, then you know, you could attribute it to that. If you were face to face, and they just sat there and they were like, Hey, I'm really sorry, versus they're sitting at home on their computer. They have kids screaming in the next room. They're stressed out, and they don't express that information because, you know, it's just their natural working environment. And off you go to the races. In terms of, I'm going to attribute this person's actions to them as a person, to them as a colleague, versus to the situation that they're put in.

Fascinating. There's so much great stuff in there. The social identity theory piece, and the Us and Them is so demonstrably brought to life, and the way you described that, with the activation of those fault lines. And one of the things that it reminded me of is you hear about road rage all the time, and that physical separation and that sort of barrier of it exists between us and our car and all of them outside, suddenly we dehumanize the others. And as you said, this isn't their context. This is them and them as a bad person, you know, meriting our wrath or something like that. So really interesting.

Yes, absolutely. And another thing I'll add to that is just the fact that thinking about just what people have dealt with over the past year as well is something that it's really hard to do once you are put in front of a video screen. So like when I meet with my colleagues, I meet with them, and I assume we are going to have a task related meeting, and I don't also think about. All the things that have been going on in their life, which related to the pandemic, related to them being at home with their children for 24 hours a day, all of those things which are potentially adding to stress, adding to you know, whether or not things are getting done, whether or not people are even generally having positive affect within the teams, within the meeting. So thinking about it from another person's perspective, and trying to understand what's going on within your team is vastly important when it comes to making sure you see people as humans, and making sure you basically are taking perspective. So

I've got a question on that, that ability to see other people as humans, and maybe, I guess, invest for time in the social bonding, small talk, or whatever else it is that we can do virtually. Would I be right to assume that doing those things is harder when there are active fault lines and when we as individuals are under stress? So yes, yeah, yes,

you are absolutely correct in assuming that. So there's, there tends to be when it comes to activated fault lines, the worst ones tend to be the fault lines that are activated directly centered around characteristics that we are, basically if we are at odds with one another, about our own per about Our personalities, or about what who we are as individuals, versus if we're centered around the task. So thinking about task versus relationship conflict, if we have relationship conflict in team, that's a really bad thing. That's something that could potentially tear a team apart and essentially create a rift and division subgroups within the team, which is basically the death knell for a team. It's something that it's really hard to come back from when you've created those subgroups versus task conflict, if we're arguing about how we approach the task, and we take the person out of it, and we acknowledge that the argument, the task related discussion, is directly related to us doing better as a team and us making our lives easier in the future, then we might actually see something positive come from that. There's conflicting research when it comes to task conflict and what teams it matters for the most. But if in your if you're in let's say a creative team, task conflict is important because you need to have a discussion about, how can we make this, whatever our end product is, more creative? How can we make it cutting edge? And if you were to take the first idea, that's not necessarily going to be the most creative, best idea. So in certain teams, that type of thing really matters. And in virtual teams, you tend to see that again, relationship conflict, it could rip the team apart, but task conflict, it's pretty natural thing to have, especially when people are distributed.

Yeah, brilliant. And as you said, a bit of actual benefit to conflict, in some ways, provided that it's the right type of conflict, one of the areas that sometimes we explore, but that I think is quite interesting, is not something that we'll delve into today, but involves sort of political polarization. And some of the great things that I've read say that, you know, you can have a community that is Riven, right, and all that identity stuff is there, but at the same time, for example, everybody will agree that you should fix for lap posts, so the specific actions that should be taken in a location are easily agreed upon, but the community can't be cohesive if there are, you know, underlying demographic fault lines, essentially in that community, if, if we think about trying to get a virtual team to be engaged in high performing I think you've alluded to some of the stuff here. What are some of the I guess, for bedrock key factors that we need to get right if we're going to help one of these more virtual teams be engaged and cohesive and able to function. Well, sure.

So, um, I think I think a good way of approaching this is by telling you essentially what I tell my students, what I tell undergraduates who are trying to work together for the first time on a virtual project, because a lot of the things that I tell them are very, very translatable to the workplace, and it's grounded in science, or else I wouldn't be telling them that. So the first is that it's really easy to become disconnected as teammates. It's really easy to fall into this. I'm doing my work. You're doing your work. We don't necessarily need to do our work together, and that's fine. It's it's pretty much human nature to say that there's no face to face social presence, therefore we're going to do our own thing. But that's something that we need to try and mitigate, because as soon as you become disconnected, you lose that interpersonal you lose that relationship that you could otherwise be building with your teammates, you start to lose some of that positive. Positive conflict that could emerge. So typically, what I say there is first try not to become disconnected from one another. If you haven't pinged one another recently to talk about the project, talk to one another about the project, because it's really important to keep tabs and make sure that everyone knows what everyone's specific task is how progress is going towards a project and whatnot. And then also, when you're meeting, make sure you have your videos on, because, again, you want to have some sort of a social presence within your team, so that people can, you know, again, attribute to you as an individual, you as a human, versus you as a name on a screen. So vastly different things. There. Another thing I tend to tell them is that you should acknowledge that people are naturally going to be more or less comfortable in a virtual environment. So there are certain things that come into play here when it comes to individual differences. Like some people who are more extroverted tend to talk more in virtual environments, so that's a positive thing for them. People who play video games, who are more comfortable using computers, tend to talk more in virtual environments, so it's a positive for them. But there are others who might not have had experience doing virtual work, who might have not had experience in these contexts, in these situations, that might not be as comfortable. And what you end up what ends up happening here is, if these people aren't speaking up, especially if we're talking about a creative team again, if these people aren't speaking up, you're missing perspectives in the room. And missing perspectives in the room could potentially cause you to come up with a lesser product than you could have if everyone had a full discussion. So this idea of understanding that people have natural differences and making sure that if a person hasn't spoken, you create an environment essentially, where it's comfortable for them to speak up, or you might ask them, Hey, do you have anything you want to add? If they don't, then you can keep moving on. But providing that opportunity is extremely important because, again, it's this idea that once you become disconnected, bad things happen, and it's very easy to become disconnected when you aren't comfortable in that setting, when you aren't comfortable in that environment. So we want to try and make sure that doesn't actually happen. Does that make sense?

Yeah, that makes that makes absolutely total sense. And I guess what you've outlined, there is a really interesting additional challenge that might be faced by, you know, the leader or manager of the team, and it kind of makes me wonder, what, what other differences are there in the roles or the or the responsibility of the leader or manager in a virtual team? Because we saw last year like 1000s and 1000s of managers who had never experienced sort of leading in that context before, suddenly be thrown into it. What's the role? Is it different? Do they have to do different things? Do they do they have a different responsibility when it's virtual?

it's interesting. So the So, the answer to that question broadly, is it depends on the team. It depends on the task that the team should be doing. It's a very big it depends question, but I can speak broadly from research and say that I actually think it's a meta analysis that came out within the past year or two, which looked at leadership roles in virtual teams. And they found that within virtual teams, it's very important that the leader essentially walks a line of promoting people talking to one another, building a relationship amongst the teammates, with also dealing with the task in general. So thinking of leadership, you have this idea that a leader needs to take care of the task. They need to make sure it gets done, but they also have the responsibility of making sure that people have some sort of a relationship with one another and also with the leader themselves. So there's a very thin line here that the leader needs to walk, where they need to basically promote those two things, while at the same time they need to also understand that they aren't always going to be as in touch as they want to be, essentially with the team. So they need to relinquish a little bit of control and say, Okay, I'm going to open this up to you guys, and I'm going to essentially share some of the leadership responsibilities. Because once we shut off this video, once we go our separate ways, I can't necessarily tell that you are doing what I need you to do. So let's set roles. Let's make sure that everyone knows what it is they're supposed to be doing, and essentially provide a framework, a structure around what needs to be done within the team itself. So again, it's this line of walking between relationship and task and trying to balance those two. Things. And largely what you see in terms of past research on virtual teams is that leaders focus in on the task side, and they tend to forget about the relationship side. Teammates do that too, because, again, it's this disconnect between me and the individuals who are on my team because of this virtual presence. So this disconnect makes us think that you know relationship doesn't matter as much, but in teams, what you see is especially in very heavily interdependent teams, teams that need to work together very closely. If we don't have that relationship component from a leader, the team is setting itself up to fail. Does that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely,

although it quite rightly, provokes a whole load more. And I guess I was just thinking like we clearly there are prior to the pandemic, a number of industries or sectors or job types that seem to have gravitated more, I guess, certainly seem to be more prevalent in having virtual teams, if not more effective. And I wondered, it kind of makes me question, are there industries or sectors that are better at this, that are more effective at virtual workers, or are there some certain types of jobs that lend themselves to forming these kinds of teams better? Well, I'll tell you what. I don't think it's

academia. So as a, as a person who you know, over the past year, has been trying to, trying to deal with virtual work and Virtual Teaching. It's, it's, it's a heck of a thing that, you know, I wasn't necessarily prepared for, and it's something that was just kind of thrown at us, and we had to force adapt, right? So I think that's the my real answer to the question is that I don't think it's necessarily the industry, or though you could argue that certain people are attracted to certain industries, but it might also fall back on the individual who is in the industry as well. So it might be the case that if you look out to the tech sector, people who have comfort working in settings where they naturally have some sort of virtual work, naturally some sort of virtual engagement with their colleagues in those settings, individuals just tend to be more comfortable, and they naturally end up thriving in This environment, or at the very least, there's a bit of less of a learning curve for getting used to the new environment, versus us academics, where we were told, hey, guess what? You need to take all of your content that you typically teach face to face, all of the activities you've created for an in class context. Now you need to turn them virtual, and you need to do it literally tomorrow. It was much more ambiguous. It was much more difficult for us to get used to that. And you could see the growing pains. You could see the learning issues that we were having, the adaptation issues that we were having when it came to the classes, when it came to trying to figure out how to get students engaged, because, again, it is so difficult to try and create that social component without actually being face to face, potentially calling people directly, talking to them, engaging in, like a discourse with a person that you know has other people pop up. So there's a lot of things here that you know, I think it relies on at the individuals involved versus the industries in general. Again, like I said, certain people are attracted more to certain industries, so it might naturally correlate with one another. But I do think that even in the tech sector, even in even in environments where we use virtual tools all the time or a lot of the time, there are still probably people who are uncomfortable with that shift, not necessarily even due to the fact that we now move virtual but now we've moved home, and because we've moved home, there might be things like, it's not my issue with tech, it's not my issue With this environment, it's now my issue with the fact that I have kids in the next room, and I might hear them screaming. I might basically have a have no more layer in between my work and my home, which means that I have two separate brains running at any given moment where I'm thinking about both at once. And in that case, I think that across the board, it was difficult for everyone. But again, I think that certain people fared better than others.

Yeah, I can understand that. And I guess that thing about some people faring better than others is it's been quite we've talked about it quite a lot, because one of the things we were discussing during the pandemic was, for example, when people live alone and you're not in a physical space with them as a team, you're you're less able to read where sort of warning signs of where people might be struggling a little bit, or where they sort of distance, because you talked about disconnect, where they're distancing themselves a little bit for the team, because, for whatever reason, and I guess. I was just interested to know, is there, what is that? Is that actually an additional risk? Are there additional risks to virtual teams versus face to face teams or more traditional setup teams? What like when things go wrong? What? What are the big things that go wrong? And is, are they common, or is it, is it, you know, different, just like it is with traditional teams. So

I think the biggest pieces that end up going wrong in virtual teams are largely due to, this is a very big statement, so I won't say largely due to but have a lot to do with miscommunication. Have a lot to do with a really good example that I'll give you is my old advisor, Ed Salas. I love the man to death, but when he sent emails or when he wrote comments on a paper, the comment that I would get would typically and three times out of four would be, see me dot, dot, dot. And that alone, if you think about that in terms of interpreting that as a student, I see that and I go, Oh no, what did I do wrong? It's that dot, dot, dot, which adds the ambiguity of, I'm not happy. I'm frustrated. So as a student who is like thinking to myself, Oh no, something is very clearly wrong, I dread going to see him, so I go see him, and then he says, Oh, I just want to do to add a model to this paper. So to him, not a big deal at all. To him, it's literally just, you know, I want to see you so that I can tell you to add a model to this paper, but to me, it's the end of the world. And if you take this, you translate it over into just general miscommunication, because we don't have the person in front of us, a person might use ellipses, and another person might interpret them. And that disconnecting communication, that one person thinking one thing, the other person thinking another. Could end up causing the one person who thinks, this is it, this is the end of the world, to start pushing that other person away, not necessarily want to talk to them, figure out what's going on. And that, in and of itself, starts to naturally create subgroups, because you start to have one miscommunication, one misinterpretation leading into this disconnect between teammates and a lot of the question here comes down to, can we learn how others work in this setting where we don't have these social cues, and that is a really difficult thing to try and do. So one of the big things that you tend to see in terms of just trying to solve that, trying to understand how other people work, is specifically when it comes to virtual teams who have worked together for a decent amount of time, is being consistent in how you work and explaining early on. This is how I work. This is what I do. If you see this type of thing, it's okay. So there tends to be some research centered around like Team charters, how we should talk to one another at the very beginning of a team project, to lay out the rules and guidelines of this is how I work. This is how other people work. And you basically are setting like you're setting a system that you're setting a natural culture that everyone is going to ascribe to and understand one another a bit better than they would if we just started working together and have no idea how one another communicates, how one another works together. Does that answer your question?

Yeah, I think that was really helpful. And things like Team charters are things that we explore in other conversations, when we speak to people, when, when you're, you know, doing your research or speaking to individuals who are leading teams, what sense of awareness Do you think exists naturally or in these teams about the importance of being clear on our prepared ways of working, and getting some sort of structured consensus around those ways of working. And I guess, at the same time, what what levels of self awareness do you see in teams about how they really work? You know, when people describe the ways that they work, do you think those are accurate?

I'm hearing a few different I'm hearing a few different things here. So first I'm gonna, I'm gonna break this into into looking at formal like leadership within a team, and then also looking at no formal leader and shared leadership within a team. Because I think that there's both here that are coming up. So first in this idea of formal leadership, I do think that, well, I think that it's it's very easy for us to fall into a natural comfort level with assuming that we know what's going. Going on within our team, and assuming that people are getting on together well, and people are naturally like they're working together because they are giving me, they're giving me the product that I'm expecting to see, right? So again, as a formal leader, we tend to see those task related outcomes. We tend to see those things that are directly related to how the team itself is performing on the task. I do feel like there might be some disconnect from the relationship side of things with leaders, because they tend to see that less, especially if the if the team itself is having outside meetings without the leader involved, and they're discussing how things need to get done, they might be de stressing a bit. Maybe the leader isn't invited to, you know, the Friday night, the Friday night get together that the team is having, something like that. There might be that level of disconnect there. I think that a leader is pretty solid when it comes to knowing how the team is doing with the task itself. And then the question becomes, if the leader sees that the team is having issues with the task, is that related to something that I need to give them a experience or basically, like a learning point on how to actually achieve the task, or how to actually approach the task, versus, can I figure out whether or not is relationship oriented, whether or not there might be some sort of a rift within this team that I need to go in and solve. So across the board, when I'm working with virtual teams, I tend to see that leaders are very in touch with the task, and it's hit or miss when it comes to relationship. And I think it really largely comes down to how much interaction, face to face, interaction they have with their team. And basically it's does a leader. So two of the things that a leader needs to do, essentially, when you're talking about working in teams, is they need to influence others in their teams, and they need to give each individual their own consideration for their own individual needs. So they need to think about the team as a whole, but they also need to think about the individuals on the team. If a leader is thinking taking both of those things into consideration, then you tend to see that they have a solid pulse on how things are going within the team. But if they're lacking when it comes to how individuals on the team are like, how they're doing, if they're feel like they're actually getting what they want to out of the team, or others on the team, then you might start lacking a bit on that. So I think there's a delicate balance there in terms of, like, it might be perfectly fine when you look at the task alone, but then truly trying to manage individuals and really trying to understand what's going on within the team as a whole. But then within every follower on the team is much more difficult. And then the other thing I was gonna say directly tied to the idea of having no formal leader, what you tend to see here is within these teams where we're talking about, let's just say, like project teams, and they're put together to work on a to work on a project for a short period of time. There's no formal leader. They're just given a task. In these types of teams, you tend to see that certain people tend to emerge as leaders early on. Those people tend to be more conscientious. Because people who get are more conscientious tend to have more structure around the task. They tend to ascribe basically, this is what you should be doing. This is what I should be doing. We're going to use our strengths to this degree. And also, people who are agreeable tend to come out more as leaders, because they are more understanding of those around you. So naturally there, what you end up seeing is conscientious people tend to be the more task driven side of things. They they fulfill some of the roles of the task leader, or, excuse me, the task leadership, and the agreeable people tend to fill some of the roles of the relationship leadership. So within those types of teams, what you end up seeing is that if you have a person or people who are handling both sides, then the team itself should have a solid understanding as to how everyone is doing. But if you are only focused on the task, you're only focused on relationship, you tend to see that it's not necessarily going to get you bring the team to its fullest potential. So a good example of this is thinking about extraversion as a personality variable. So with extraversion, what you tend to see is that there is a curvilinear relationship with extraversion. So at low levels of extraversion in the team, you don't see people emerging as leaders. With high levels of extraversion, you see people emerging as leaders, but there are too many people emerging as leaders, and it ends up actually hurting the team's performance. So a lot of things end up happening here, where it becomes a much more complex scenario within leaderless teams, because you're trying to naturally figure out who's best at what. Who's going to be doing what? And then how are we going to eventually put this full thing together at the end, and then over time, understanding that you might have to give up some of your power. You might have to give up some of your leadership authority, when we've hit a part of the project where another person might be better than you are. So a lot of things go on here, across the board, and I think that answers your question, but I'm not entirely sure.

Yeah, I think it absolutely does, although, like everything we talking about, it then makes you go, Oh yes, that's the case then. And I just want to move along a little bit about we've, we're seeing organizations now, certainly here in the UK, beginning to make plans for the future and taking some of the some of their teams sort of virtual full time. So there's going to be people moving into jobs where they're going to be managing virtually for the first time, and they might be, you know, relatively confident and competent in a traditional sense of management. And I guess I'd be really interested to know, like, what, what are the basics that someone new to this could be building within their own skill set to be able to manage or lead a virtual team for the first time? Well, sure. So

I think that this comes down to a there's there's a few pieces that should be taken into consideration. But I think one of the biggest things is that it takes buy in across the board in order for it to even work from the onset. So in other words, if I am a leader of a team who doesn't want to be working virtually. I'm naturally shot in the foot, and I need to try and figure out how to make these people work together. So in those situations you end up with, you end up with the challenge of essentially creating a internal culture to the team where you have to break down everyone's perspective of, no, this is actually for the best, not what you think in terms of, like, this is not what I want to be doing. So in those situations, you need to build a culture around this is why virtual work is going to help us. This is why your team was specifically put together in the way it was, and basically start to build that buy in amongst your teammates, into understanding why it's important to be working virtually and basically, essentially just getting everyone to mold together from the onset, versus feeling conflicted at the beginning. If you don't have that situation, and you're you have a group of people who are perfectly comfortable, like with the idea of working virtually, then what you need to do, essentially, from the onset, is understand that the primary challenges the team is going to face is directly tied to the communication side of things. So a few of the big picture, like best practices. I would call them for for a person trying to ascribe to a team. This is what you should do. Is one is just be tell your team teammates, or tell your subordinates, whoever is on the team, to be consistent with one another. One of the big things that happens is trust is very related to performance within virtual teams, and it's very hard to build trust because, again, we don't have the social connections. So what we tend to do is we tend to build trust based on whether or not a person is doing what they're saying they're going to do, whether or not they're acting in a fashion that is expected, that is consistent. So if people on the virtual team say they're going to do something, it's important for a leader to make sure that they stay on track and they actually hit those goals. Because if they don't, others on the team are going to stop and go, Well, did they not hit that goal? Because they don't care about our team, or did they not hit that goal because they had something come up in their life? And again, due to the fact that we have that social presence decreased, it's less likely to be that second option. It's more likely to be, well, clearly, they don't care, and they're putting their time elsewhere where it shouldn't be, so trying to mitigate that, and then also from the communication perspective, like we talked about before, it's really easy to have those miscommunications. I think it's really important to build a culture around where it's open and valuable to ask questions and to actually be fully transparent with one another and say I don't necessarily know what you mean by this. Can you please elaborate before I give you feedback, before I essentially, you know, make my decision as to what it is you mean by this. So building a flexible culture, building a culture where individuals are. Consistent in their own work, and then building a culture around trust, around where people essentially have a sense of psychological safety. They can bring up ideas that run counter to the group. They can bring up those creative ideas. They can thrive in that environment. By doing that, I think you could hit a lot of the big issues with communication, a lot of the big issues with relationship, disconnect and whatnot.

Yeah, I think, I think you're right. It feels like if you get that bit right, you buy yourself so much more space amongst the team to trust each other and and when things aren't quite perfect. People cut each other some slack, right? Because there, there's that underlying trust that, okay, we're all on this. We're on the same page in terms of what and how we're we're approaching it, which I guess unsurprisingly, leads me on to another question, which is, is there, and I absolutely understand there might not be, but is there any evidence, or anything that, even in your own reflections about how a good team finds the balance between how much time they spend on the tasks and the doing versus how much time they spend on the relationship building, trust building, sort of team dynamics. Part is there, is there, like a is there some kind of minimum that they should be doing, or is there, is there anything that tells us, like, how do we find the right balance of that as a team? Very

good question. I think I will, I will say that what you the answer to this question in my head is that it isn't necessarily a question of balance between the two at all given times. It's more a question of what stage is the team currently in? So if we're talking about a newly formed team, it's really important to build the relationship side of things. It's really important to understand with everyone that you know, especially if we're talking about a team that is interdependent with one another and going to be working with one another for a long period of time. It's very important that they get that relationship piece right at the onset. And if they get it right at the onset, if we go we have like a team charter built. We also do like a full non task related meeting at the onset, where we talk about our lives. We talk about who we are, we talk about where we stand within the organization, things like that. Again, we build a social structure around who we are and who the team is. Then you tend to see that there might be less of it might become less important over time to focus in on those relationship things, because we have a solid grounding that we built from the onset until you see something that pops up like, let's say that you notice that a task conflict has slowly walked into the lane of maybe we're now looking at relationship conflict. Maybe these two people aren't necessarily getting along. That's when you need to stop. You need to reflect on it. You need to say, Okay, do we need to go back to this whole like looking at our relationships as a team and basically do some maintenance. So I think it's a question of when so in the beginning relationship, relationship maintenance is very important, and just building that, building that culture, building that, like social cohesion within the team, over time, it might be less important, especially if we're talking about those heavy task related periods. So you tend to see the people who are in the middle of their time frame in terms of, like getting a project done, they tend to be working the most during that midpoint. And then you tend to see during those sessions, there isn't a whole lot of relationship stuff that comes up. So during that, you might not need to worry about relationship, but if it becomes an issue, then we need to worry about it again. So I think it's more of a longitudinal question versus a balance question at all any given time, without a doubt. I think that across the board, no matter what, you should keep your pulse on things you should understand whether or not, if you, as a person, you feel uncomfortable saying something within a team that is a solid sign that there might be something going on. So again, keeping your finger on the pulse of what is going on with others, how they're feeling, and also how you feel when you're communicating with your team. I think that is very important for just maintenance, for just keeping track of how things are going.

That's very helpful. I like that. That description in my mind, as you were speaking, it feels like, at the start of working together virtually, it feels like one should, or a team should, invest heavily and build up, you know, like the relationship capital that exists in that team, or that connection, and then if that sort of depletes over time, then it's a case of identifying it and patching it up and building it up and maintaining that threshold above which you can have performance, and then just watching out for those cracks that appear in those bridges of connection, I guess. Yeah, so. Lovely. Well, I thought that was excellent. I'm in the interest of time, I'm going to wrap us up, just because we've had a great conversation here already, just before we go though, could you let us know how people could find out a bit more about you and about the things that you're working on, or connect on social media or anything else like that that would be suitable for you, sure?

So you can always email me. I am always at my email tied to it, as most academics are, my email is wramer at U N omaha.edu, and also on the University of Nebraska, Omaha website, you can find a bunch of information about what I'm currently working on, in terms of the papers that I have recently published, also some of the topics I'm interested in, and also you can find me on LinkedIn, wherever, if you have that. So any of those outlets are a wonderful way to reach me, and I would be happy to get in touch with anyone brilliant.

Okay, well, that was fantastic, Billy. So just a huge thank you for me. That was really fun. So thank you very much. Oh, thank you. I had a wonderful

time. Okay, so you are back in the room with Jen and myself. That was our conversation with Billy Kramer from University of Nebraska in Omaha, where we were speaking all about virtual teams. Jane, wide ranging conversation, loads of great stuff in there. Was there anything that you particularly wanted to reflect on?

Yeah, well, I guess one thing I wanted to do was share something I didn't ask, which I kicking myself for? Because I think it's an interesting question, and then also something that I think was, I think, a really valid point. So the first is, I really regret not asking him like he was talking about what I asked him about, what do you do when you're starting off with a new team? And he was where he talked through some of that stuff, like, what do you need to have in place? And one of the points he made was, you need to start early. But the thing I didn't ask was, what happens when someone new joins a team that's already been through that process. How do you bring them having missed that sort of startup conversation and culture building? How do you make sure that they slip in? And I really regret because I think it's something I think about quite a lot. But the thing I wanted to reflect on that he talked about, that I feel is really, really important, is he started talking about some of the ways in which leaders have to lead differently. You know, he talks about maybe giving up, you know, some of your leader leanness, way where there's other people more clearly, that's better fitting with some of the tools and skills that fit a virtual team. But I think I feel like there's still so much more to understand about, whether there's, like, a whole new toolkit for people leading virtually and in a hybrid world now that there are so many more people doing it, and it's going to be a lot less just for the people who have chosen remote and have really Joy's chosen organizations that do remote as well. Yeah, I

think there's some really interesting stuff in there. I would think that virtual leadership, or management of virtual teams, feels like it should be embedded into the training and development that people go through as they progress their careers, and hopefully people will start to learn from effective virtual leaders and managers as well. But it feels like a little bit of training and development in that space is helpful. I guess there's probably no surprises to you, Jane, and probably not to listeners as well, around what I'm going to pick up, which is the point around social identity theory. I love that stuff, and I think understanding that fundamentally we're such social beings is such an important part for so many aspects of our work. And it's great to see it come up as a concept here as well when we're talking about virtual teams, and I love that language around the sort of demographic fault lines that can become active and divide us, and the importance of maintaining that set of social connections, and then to keep our team within the US, and not let us divide into the us and them, because it's when we get into that us and them. But we really have some struggles. So you know, some of those questions about, How do we create opportunities to strengthen those connections, to build more of that sense of us within the team, and to really maintain that sort of social capital that holds us together? I think, I think was really helpful. So, yeah, so that's it for me. I thought that was a great conversation. So I guess it's just time to say goodbye until next time. Yeah, and it's a goodbye from me. Have a great week, guys. Thanks