Collaboration technology Archives - Leading Virtually

Social Media is a Matter of the Heart

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 02 Jul 2013 15:48:18 +0000

Many in my generation question the value of social media — the kind in which people engage in social chit-chat. A father, whose 31 year old daughter married recently, was no different. It was at his daughter’s wedding that he learned about the usefulness of social media for staying connected on a human level and enriching one’s life. His earlier thinking was that social media took time away from one’s career, family, and deep relationships. Over the years, however, he lost touch with his friends because they had all moved away from each other and began to focus on their careers and families.

His daughter, unlike him, did not lose touch with her friends. He finds out during her wedding that people in her generation don’t choose between work and friendships. They choose both. With the help of seemingly mundane exchanges via social media, they maintain their friendships while also pursuing their ambitions. Inspired by what he saw in his daughter’s case, he begins using social media with greater vigor and posts pictures and videos from his daughter’s wedding. Soon, his old friends reconnected with him. Their comments and “likes” piled up. He sent friend requests to his daughter’s friends, which were quickly accepted. Though these were small gestures, he found them to be intimate and nourishing.

This whole experience affected the father deeply enough to prompt him to write about it in a touching article at NYTimes. I strongly suggest that you read it. His concluding paragraph, in which he refers to his daughter Kate, gives us a sense of the true meaning of social media.

I see now how much I’ve given up over the years by keeping my work focus so central and my circle so narrow. I understand more viscerally why Kate and her friends spend so much time keeping up on social media. It’s nearly a week since the wedding, the “likes” keep coming, and my heart still feels wide open.

Social media is a matter of the heart. If you’re not touching someone’s heart or if others are not touching yours, then you’re probably not using it right. Unlike most other things which lessen when used, our heart only gets bigger when we give place in it to others.

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No Email Reply? Don’t Let an Unanswered Email Get the Better of You

Surinder Kahai — Fri, 28 Jun 2013 17:03:58 +0000

Technology is meant to connect us. Instead, it often creates feelings of isolation. Such as when there’s no reply to our emails. We don’t care as much when our email to a company’s customer service is unanswered but when we send it to someone we know or an individual we are trying to establish contact with, not receiving a reply leaves us unsettled.

Why?

Don’t we encounter silence in a face-to-face situation too? Why doesn’t that unsettle us?

Silence in a face-to-face situation can be awkward too. But it can be resolved quickly by reading the other person’s body language or by simply asking a question. If the question is unanswered, we may still be able to make sense of the silence by using the greetings and the small talk we exchanged (or their lack) that day with the other person.

In the absence of such possibilities in a virtual situation, silence no longer remains as such.

It produces thunder!

We begin to think of all possible reasons behind the silence. In a world where people have constant access to email, we find it very strange and shocking that the receiver has not responded. Distress, feelings of isolation and loss of control, frustration, anger, negative self-appraisal, bad mood, and a host of related effects occur as a consequence of email silence. Damage to one’s relationship with the unresponsive individual is usually not far behind.

Often, these reactions are unjustified. Why? Because it may not be as bad as you think.

Quite often, the other person is very busy or immersed in something else due to which our message is put away for a response later. But then the receiver gets caught up in the daily routine and our message remains unanswered despite good intentions. And we may erroneously conclude that the receiver doesn’t care about us or our email. In a NY Times article about unanswered emails, someone mentioned that she sometimes doesn’t have the time to give a careful response and puts off responding till later. Eventually, time goes by and after some time she feels that she has waited too long and is embarrassed. What does she do? She does not respond! So, you see, you may have not received a response because someone cared too much and not less!

Sure, there are times when things are really wrong because of which there is no response. In a research study, Catherine Cramton found that the US members of a virtual team misjudged the silence of their Portuguese partners after an electronic vote as consent when, in fact, the latter were expressing their disagreement with the chosen idea. You may have someone playing games with you by not responding — that individual may simply be trying to get an upper hand in the relationship with you. Then there are occasions when we are expecting some favor from the receiver of our email and the receiver wants to turn down our request but, instead of embarrassing us, does not respond.

So, there are times when email silence isn’t bad and there are other times when it is. Did someone say that email silence can be confusing?

Can we do something about it?

In virtual teams, we can reduce email silence considerably by drawing up a team compact in which we outline the rules of engagement. These rules of engagement typically cover expectations about email communication, including acceptable delay in responding to emails.

But we experience many situations outside of virtual teams in which our emails go unanswered. How do we deal with such situations?

For that we first need to look at some research. Research by Yoram Kalman and Sheizaf Rafaeli on response latency in electronic communication indicates that about 80% of responses get posted within the average response time and 97% of the responses get posted within 10 times the average response time. This is true for responses in various kinds of computer-mediated communication systems, including email and group discussion forums. Using the Enron email dataset, the authors found that the average time to respond to an email was about 29 hours. If we assume that this figure applies elsewhere too, then there’s a 80% chance that your email will get responded to within 29 hrs. Even if it does not get responded to within this time, there’s still about a 17% chance that your email gets will get responded to within another 11 days. After that, assume that the silence is for good.

Thus, research suggests that we wait for about 12 days before taking action for lack of response to our email. Of course, to the extent our email is time sensitive, we would need to act before that. Also, we need to be sensitive to individual differences. For some individuals, the average response latency may be more or less than the 29 hours we have assumed. To the extent we know enough about someone’s email behavior, we would need to adjust for that too. One recourse when we encounter silence might be to resend the email if we believe that the receiver may have simply forgotten. When we are uncertain, research suggests that a more effective action might be to make our request via another medium, such as the phone. For very critical emails, I have found it to be effective to let the recipient know that I would be following up by a certain date to see if there is any part of my email or request that needs additional clarification. If I don’t get a response by the follow up date, I call (or, if possible, stop by the persons office) to check if there are any questions or issues I can address. If there are any bad news, they come out during that call (or visit).

If none of the above actions work, don’t let the silence get the better of you. If you are seeking something very critical from the unresponsive person, figure out another way to get it. Else, it may be time to move on. If a response comes out of the blue in the future, as it sometimes does, count it as a blessing!

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Can Using Facebook Within Your Organization Add Value?

Surinder Kahai — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 14:35:54 +0000

I often hear from business leaders that while they see some value in using Facebook for business-to-customer interactions, they see little value in using it internally. They argue that the use of Facebook to engage in social chit-chat will distract employees from their work and make them unproductive. I believe that these business leaders are not seeing the value of the social interaction that is facilitated by a tool such as Facebook. Research tells us that social interaction is very useful for facilitating knowledge transfer and innovation in organizations. It is, therefore, not surprising that some companies are reporting significant benefits from the internal use of Facebook or a similar tool.

The value of social interactions

W. Tsai and his colleagues have published findings that demonstrate the value of social interaction within a company. In one of their studies, the authors found that social interaction across business units led to the exchange and combination of resources (e.g., knowledge, service, products) by individuals within those business units. This effect occurred both directly and via the facilitation of trust among individuals. The exchange and combination of resources, in turn, was related to product innovation in the organization. In another study, Tsai and his colleagues found that when members of different business units interacted socially, they also transferred more knowledge. Additionally, this effect of social interaction on knowledge transfer became stronger the more the business units competed with each other for market share. The logic behind this effect is similar to that behind the adage ‘keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’ Essentially, when your unit is competing with another, there is greater incentive to learn what those units are up to so that you can benchmark yourself and compete more effectively. Since the competing unit shares the same resource constraints and market situation as your unit, there are also greater opportunities for synergistic activities.

Research from Gallup provides additional support for why social interactions might be useful. Using data from its employee engagement questionnaire, Gallup has found that people with best friends at work are also more engaged in their work. Greater employee engagement, in turn, has been found to lead to greater profitability, customer engagement, and employee retention. Where do social interactions figure in here? Gallup’s research did not focus on social interactions but I think it is reasonable to think that social interactions at workplace are an important precursor to having a best friend at work.

Companies using social networking tools internally

Perhaps it is due to the potential of social interaction to lead to favorable business outcomes that some companies have adopted Facebook or tools like it for internal use. Serena Software, a company of about 800 employees with average age close to 50, adopted Facebook to improve the quality of workplace interaction (see related article). According to the company, the Facebook initiative has yielded tactical and strategic benefits. With over 95% penetration of Facebook within the company, the company’s culture has changed. The social networking tool has led to relationships that would not have existed otherwise.

A Canadian manufacturer of construction goods, Canam Group, decided to use Facebook for various aspects of its 2008 leadership conference (see related article). About 200 attendees, who were 50 years old on average, were offered the use of Facebook to create and share their profiles, register for the conference, and take part in the opening ceremony, elections, quizzes, and photo contests. The use of Facebook was a huge success, with a 99% participation rate. After the conference, Canam Group decided to set up a Facebook group that is available to its employees and retirees to create a more collaborative culture within the company.

IBM has set up a Facebook-like social networking tool, called Beehive, to facilitate personal and professional connections within the company. Like Facebook, Beehive provides an employee who is joining the network a profile page. On this page, employees can use the status message field and the ‘About Me’ section to update others about where they are, what they are doing, and what they are thinking. Users can also post photos, create lists to share their thoughts, and organize events. Beehive has been reported to facilitate connections at a social or human level between people working remotely. It has also led to opportunities for collaboration that would not have arisen in the absence of information about who else share’s one’s interest and expertise.

Summary

The use of social networking tools internally can add value by facilitating social interactions. Social networking tools can facilitate cultural change and friendships within your organization. They can help your employees discover who shares their interests and expertise and open up opportunities for knowledge sharing and collaboration. Distributed workers who have been assigned to a common project can use such tools to learn more about each other and break the ice. If you are not comfortable using Facebook internally because of its public nature, alternatives that can be deployed within your firewall (e.g., Lotus Connection, Socialtext) are available. A new tool, called as Convofy, will also be available as an alternative in the near future.

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Free productivity tools to be thankful for

Surinder Kahai — Mon, 29 Nov 2010 03:54:30 +0000

Among the many things to be thankful for this Thanksgiving was a set of free tools that I have been using for years now. Many of my students find the tools useful when I share the tools with them. I thought I should share these with my readers who might also find them useful. Several of the tools I have shared below would benefit virtual team workers because of their collaboration focus. The others would benefit them by helping them manage and access their documents or Internet resources more easily.

Google desktop for search. I have been using this for over two years now. I collect a lot of articles, some scholarly and others from popular press, for my research and teaching. Most of them are in pdf format. I find Google desktop for search to be invaluable for quickly locating the documents or Outlook emails I need at any time. On my Windows laptop, I press the Ctrl key twice and in the dialog box that shows up I enter a few keywords. When I am looking for a document and I know that it is in pdf format, I enter filetype:pdf along with the keywords. Or when I am looking for a PowerPoint file, I enter filetype:ppt along with the keywords. Google’s search algorithm goes to work for me and shows relevant documents quickly in a drop down that appears below the dialog box. With an additional click, I am able to open and use the document. In January, my university shifted to Gmail (we call it Bmail for Binghamton mail). But my old emails are still in Outlook. Google desktop is very helpful in searching through my old Outlook emails as well.

PrimoPDF. I save many web pages and popular press articles on my computer as pdfs. I use PrimoPDF, a free tool for Windows, to make pdfs. PrimoPDF installs itself as a printer by the same name. To make the pdf of a web page or an article I am reading online, I proceed to print the article. When prompted for a printer, I select PrimoPDF. I then proceed to indicate the name with which I wish to save the file as well as its location. It is as simple as that.

Google docs. I collaborate extensively for my research. I also share my class notes with my students. I find Google docs to be very useful for collaborating on research papers and for sharing my class notes with students. With Google docs, my collaborators and I work at our own pace and we don’t have to wait for someone to finish her/his part on a paper and email the paper to us before adding our own contributions. When I share my class notes with my students, they are able to add to the notes when I say something that is not on the notes. Different students adding different parts and the whole class ends up benefiting from comprehensive notes. With the addition of new features on a regular basis, Google docs is only getting better.

Zotero. A good bibliography management tool can be a great lifesaver for an academic like me. If the tool is free and makes it easy to add items to my bibliography and cite them in my research, it is even better. Zotero is one such tool. Zotero is a Firefox extension that requires just a few clicks to add an item from Google Scholar, New York Times, or elsewhere to one’s bibliography. Once an item is added, you can just drag and drop it into your list of references in a Word document or a Google doc. Zotero even allows you to share your bibliography with someone else.

Firefox. I switched to Firefox as my browser more than five years ago. I like it because of the several extensions that make my life easier. Zotero is one of those extensions. Another reason I continue to use Firefox is that it lets me create ‘smart’ keywords for sites I visit frequently and search for information there. For instance, I use Google Scholar almost daily. I have created the keyword ‘s’ for search on this site. To initiate a search on this site (say, on virtual teams) when I might be elsewhere (e.g., I might be working on a google doc), I just press Ctrl-L on my Windows keyboard (to take me to the URL box in the browser; if you are on a Mac, use Cmd-L) and type in ‘s virtual teams’ and hit Enter. The next thing I see is the Google Scholar page with results for ‘virtual teams’. I have set up similar, easy to remember keywords for other sites where I conduct search frequently (e.g., g for Google, n for Google News, y for Yahoo, t for thesaurus.com, d for dictionary.com, bd for Binghamton University Directory, a for Amazon, and so on).

Avast anti-virus. I got tired of the bloated anti-virus software from Norton or McAfee. I would get free versions with a new computer but then I would be prompted to pay for a new version after a year or so. I would also find myself dealing with software I did not want and which took over my computer and made me less productive. After some research for free anti-virus software, I settled on the free version of Avast’s anti-virus software and have been very satisfied with it. It is currently installed on all of my Windows PCs.

Skype. I use Skype extensively to collaborate with my co-authors. I also use Skype to conduct interviews for my research. If I am in a Skype call with just one person, I also use Skype’s screen sharing feature to show the work I am doing on my PC with the other person. In case I on a Skype call with more than one person and I wish to share my screen with them, then I use a separate screen sharing tool. Until recently, I used Dimdim for screen sharing. Recently, I began using join.me and I am very happy with that.

Join.me. Unlike the other tools I have listed in this post, this is a new tool that was released about a month ago. I have had a chance to use it on four or five occasions since its release. Join.me is a free screen sharing tool that allows you to share your screen with up to 250 people. It is very easy to use. Just visit join.me and click on the button for sharing your desktop. A small program is downloaded on your computer. To begin sharing your desktop, click on the downloaded program and a link shows up on your screen. Share the link with your collaborators via email or other means (e.g., instant messaging) and they are sharing your desktop within seconds. I find it to be extremely useful when I am on a conference call with remote collaborators and I need to show them the work I am doing on my PC (e.g., data analysis or a presentation). By the way, you can do more than screen sharing with join.me. You can chat, transfer files, and even take over your collaborator’s desktop.

These tools have certainly made life easier for me and I am thankful to their creators for making them available free of charge. What tools are you thankful for?

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How to Put the “Social” Back into Social Media

Jonathan Guerrera — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:09:48 +0000

Social media isn’t what it used to be — there is a lot more content but the interaction is missing. As more and more companies are creating social media accounts and encouraging people to interact with them through these channels, it becomes increasingly more important to follow social media best practices to avoid unintentionally pushing away those who wish to interact with you. After all, it’s only a matter of clicks before your customer becomes interested in a competitor’s offerings on Facebook, Twitter, or other Web 2.0 channels.

Having had the opportunity to work with a local news station and construct a viable social media strategy for them, I have become very familiar with one of the more important concepts for proper social media usage: the signal-to-noise ratio. This ratio is a measure used in science and engineering to quantify how much a signal has been corrupted by noise. But for social media purposes, the signal-to-noise ratio is a measure to quantify how much interesting, interaction-worthy content has been crowded out by excessive links, product pitches, and re-tweets that companies will oftentimes use to create the appearance of an “active social media presence.”

In optimizing your signal-to-noise ratio, your goal is to either increase your signal (aka – engaging content) and/or reduce your noise as much as possible. To do this properly, it is important to first go back to the basics of social media.

When distilled down to its simplest form, social media is about interacting with other people. Marketing strategy, customer relationship management, and other opportunities found within social media cannot flourish without this important bedrock of interaction with your customers and/or fan base. Businesses and thought leaders that do nothing but re-tweet other people’s content and advertise their sites/products are nothing more than information aggregators. Acting as an aggregator is not always a bad thing, but just realize that aggregation is not interaction, but rather pushing links and advertisements onto someone’s Twitter feed. Reducing the amount of advertising and re-tweets that aren’t directly relevant to your followers will reduce the noise. This is a step in the right direction.

However, working with a news station was an interesting challenge because people EXPECT news stations to act as news aggregators on social media. Therefore, all of the engaging content that could result in an interaction between the news staff and viewers, such as a “question of the day”, was drowned out by the constant tweeting of news articles throughout the day. People were accidentally skipping over the engaging content as they were skimming through the daily news on their feed.

In this type of situation, a good rule of thumb is: when you cannot remove the noise, separate it as much as possible. If people expect news aggregation or any sort of aggregation from your business, designate the company Twitter account as the dedicated news feed (example: Acme Co). People who are interested in this aggregation will now have an account to follow specifically for this purpose. Next, you need to make sure that customers are as comfortable as possible reaching out to your business. For customers on social media who are looking to discuss ideas, share comments, and express opinions, key employees within the company should create their own Twitter accounts (example: AcmeCo Jonathan). Dell, for instance, has more than 20 official Twitter accounts, each managed by an individual, not a faceless business unit. It is in such “individual” accounts where the interaction between followers and customers can take place, distinctly separate from the aggregation. Small amounts of re-tweeting can occur between the company Twitter account and the employee accounts if employees feel that a certain piece of aggregated content would be valuable for their followers. By allowing Twitter users to choose what they want showing up on their news feed, the result will be significantly less noise.

Now that the noise level has been reduced, it’s time to boost the signal. Boosting the signal is basically increasing the relevance and prevalence of your content. To increase relevance, it is necessary to experiment with different ideas to see what your followers respond most to. Sometimes a simple: “I’d love to hear your comments about X product or Y service” can be enough to get your followers interacting. Perhaps hypothetical questions about a future product or service may pique the attention of your followers. Personal news, especially good news, works too. Experimentation and taking note of response levels is very important. However, prevalence must be taken into account as well. If you’re posting extremely relevant content at 3 am, it’s very likely that your followers won’t see the content because it’s so far down on their feed by the time they check Twitter the following afternoon. Experimenting with posting at different times throughout the day is a good practice. It is also acceptable to re-post certain Tweets a few times throughout the day to target people who check Twitter at different points in the day. By playing around with relevance and prevalence, you will begin to increase the signal in your signal-to-noise ratio.

These strategies aren’t difficult to implement. It just requires that someone care about the interaction that occurs on social media. Rather than seeing it as another marketing platform that can achieve a certain ROI, social media should be viewed as a valuable opportunity to directly connect and engage with your potential and current customers. When viewed in this light, it can be noted that there are a lot of similarities between a face-to-face interaction and social media interaction. When talking to someone in person or over the phone, it is usually wise to avoid babbling on and on about topics that person probably doesn’t care about (reduce your noise). Instead, identify what this person is interested in and leverage that as much as possible (increase your signal). And if someone ever reached out to you by walking over to you and extending their hand, choosing to ignore them would be considered incredibly rude. So why do so many companies feel that this is appropriate conduct on social media? It’s as if quantity is mistaken as more important than the quality of your social media presence. By keeping the fundamentals of social media in mind at all times, you be in the right place to develop a powerful social media presence that consumers will appreciate, recognize, and want to be a part of.

Have you had a notable experience with a business through social media lately? If so, share your experience in the comments below.

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Yes, Leadership Changes in a Web 2.0 World

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 11 May 2010 23:16:50 +0000

A recent Harvard Business Review blog post by James Champy argues leadership does not change in a Web 2.0 World. Mr. Champy’s core points are that (a) leadership requires relationships and personal engagement and (b) technology does nothing to alter this requirement in leaders. Based on his points, Mr. Champy seems to suggest that the most appropriate way forward for a leader in a Web 2.0 world to is engage her/his followers face-to-face. While Mr. Champy’s core points are accurate, they rest on a very simple picture of leadership. It is only when one sees the more complex picture of leadership offered by leadership scholars, one can begin to see that the requirements for leadership are expanding in a Web 2.0 world. If all we say to leaders is that they need to keep focusing on building relationships and enabling personal engagement in a Web 2.0 world, we would be giving them advice that would be technically correct but of limited practical value.

A more comprehensive view of leadership

Francis Yammarino, Fred Dansereau, and Christina Kennedy offer a comprehensive picture of leadership by identifying five areas that have been important to scholars of leadership. The first area, fundamental human processes, covers psychological and related processes that enable the formation of relationships that people think of as leadership. These processes serve as basic foundations without which leadership would not be possible. These processes cover cognitive and emotional processes, attraction between individuals, the norms, values, and culture of collectives, and, finally, communication. The second area, leadership core processes, are behaviors or qualities displayed by a leader to exercise leadership. They include charisma, transformational leadership, empowerment, providing task and relationship functions to groups, and supervision and management. The third area, leadership outcomes (hereafter referred to as leadership tactics), covers the ways in which a leader puts together core processes. Examples of such tactics include team building, delegation, and participation in decision-making. The fourth area, second-level leadership outcomes, refers to the immediate outcomes of leadership core processes and includes variables such as performance, satisfaction, absenteeism, engagement of followers, and leader-follower relationships. Note that it is just this area that Mr. Champy seems to be focusing on. The last area, substitutes for leadership, covers leadership enhancers, neutralizers, and replacements.

To show how leaders will need to adapt in a Web 2.0 world, it is sufficient if we just focus on the first three areas.

Web 2.0 and fundamental leadership-related human processes

Technology is changing the fundamental human processes that serve as basic foundations for leadership. Leaders need to understand that when we use technology, the mental processes that are triggered are not the same due to the absence of non-verbal cues and lack of social presence. We bring different information and emotions to bear on a situation when communicating via electronic media. For instance, email has been shown to trigger egocentrism. It may also make receivers perceive messages to be more negative than they actually are. Attraction between individuals is also altered by technology. While individuals interacting via technology tend to have low attraction towards one another, this reverses under certain conditions; we are all aware of someone who has fallen in love online.

In a Web 2.0 world, our norms and expectations about effective leadership are changing. With proliferation of technology-mediated virtual teams, there is greater need and expectation for leaders to provide us with an inspiring purpose and structure that hold the team together and propel it forward despite the numerous challenges of working virtually. Our values and cultures may be changing such that we seek different qualities in a leader. Our younger generation, which is growing up in an open, tell-all culture, is likely to seek similar information-sharing qualities in its leaders. Additionally, the communication processes that enable leaders to instill their leadership philosophy in others are changing due to technology. The effectiveness of these tools and consequently, the leader-follower relationship that develops, varies with the presence or absence of a variety of technology-related or technology-induced factors. My previous post about the effectiveness of video conferencing illustrates this point.

In sum, several of the processes that affect the formation of leader-follower relationships are changing in a Web 2.0 world, thereby changing who is seen as a leader and what makes a leader successful. Therefore, to emerge as a leader and to become successful, one will have to be aware of how technology may alter the fundamental human processes that affect leader-follower relationships. Armed with this knowledge, one can dial down actions or steps that damage leader-follower relationships and focus on actions that promote strong leader-follower relationships.

Web 2.0 and leadership core processes

The “appropriate” fundamental human process just don’t happen. A leader has to exhibit appropriate behaviors to enable appropriate fundamental processes to occur.

Web 2.0 can be a double-edged sword for charisma and transformational leadership. While on one hand, Web 2.0 can help spread the word about a leader’s admirable qualities and behaviors far and wide and enable the development of charisma among distant followers, it can also puncture this “ideal” picture about the leader by readily making the followers more aware of the leader’s missteps. In a Web 2.0 world, leaders need to be careful every step of the way because they are tracked like never before. Thus, to help them form meaningful and strong relationships with their followers, they have to monitor their behavior and tread carefully even when they are not with their followers.

Electronic media can make it challenging for a leader to convey emotions and be transformational. However, electronic media have also been shown to help a leader when they are utilized properly. Specifically, the absence or relative lack of nonverbal cues in electronic media can remove focus on inter-personal differences. A smart leader can take advantage of this and transform the followers by making them focus on the commonality among them and a higher purpose that binds them together (read about this research).

In a Web 2.0 world, a leader cannot hope to supervise and manage in the same way as in a non-Web 2.0 environment. With delayed information from remote followers, a leader cannot expect to be very effective at direct supervision and management. Proper and more elaborate structures will have to be set in place beforehand. For situations where prior structures are not sufficient, the intent or purpose behind follower’s work will have to be clarified and followers will have to be trained and empowered to deal with unexpected situations themselves. Hiring, too, will be impacted in a Web 2.0 world. Leaders will have to be careful and choose those who are self-motivated and can discipline themselves.

Web 2.0 and leadership tactics

A Web 2.0 world offers greater opportunities for organizations to take advantage of the innovation and leadership capabilities of their workers. Research suggests that in organizations that seek to benefit from IT investments that enable grassroots participation, leaders would need to delegate more and they would need to focus more on team building and goal alignment (e.g., through inspirational leadership). Moreover, in a Web 2.0 world, organizations have the opportunity to tap into the creative and leadership capabilities of their external stakeholders, such as their customers. Here too, letting go of control while providing inspiration and a guiding hand for collaboration are likely to be vital for a leader.

What does Web 2.0 mean for leadership?

To be sure, the focus on building relationships and personal engagement in leadership will not change in a Web 2.0 world, as pointed out by Mr. Champy, but how a leader achieves these goals will have to change. With increasing globalization and cost pressures, it would not be optimum for leaders to travel and meet their followers face-to-face, despite the efficacy of face-to-face meetings for relationship building and personal engagement. Moreover, they would be unable to tap into the expertise and creativity of external stakeholders if they attempt to rely on face-to-face meetings with them. Future leaders will have to rely more on technology. Effective leaders will need to figure out both the opportunities and perils of electronic communication and take steps to maximize the benefits and minimize the downsides in a Web 2.0 world.

What leaders have under their control are their mental processes and their behaviors and tactics. It is these that play a role in determining the relationships and personal engagement that result. It is these that make up leadership. Leaders need to be cognizant of how technology can change their mental processes and behaviors and adjust themselves appropriately. They also need to be aware of how the relevance and requirement of certain behaviors and tactics changes with technology so that they can change their behaviors accordingly. With so many things changing for a leader in a Web 2.0 world, how can leadership remain the same?

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Is Video Conferencing a Good Substitute for Face-to-face Meetings?

Surinder Kahai — Thu, 06 May 2010 10:53:21 +0000

When air travel to and from several European cities was curtailed due to volcanic ash, people adopted Skype and other video conferencing tools in lieu of travel. Unlike email or telephone, video conferencing is thought to be like face-to-face communication but only somewhat leaner because one is not in the same place as the person one is communicating with. In other words, video conferencing is thought to vary in degree rather than in nature.

Research on video conferencing, however, paints a different picture. It argues that video-conferencing gives rise to a different kind of information processing than what takes place during face-to-face meetings. A case in point is a study by Carlos Ferran and Stephanie Watts, published in September 2008 in Management Science.

According to the researchers, communicators using video conferencing face a higher cognitive load than face-to-face communicators because of a variety of challenges, including those of identifying who is speaking, detecting movement, coordinating eye-contact, turn-taking, and conversation pacing. Video conferencing also consumes greater cognitive attention due to heightened self-awareness. Faced with a higher cognitive load, users of video conferencing may economize when evaluating the information presented the speaker. They may economize by using heuristics, such as how likeable they perceive the speaker to be, rather than the quality of the arguments presented by the speaker when judging whether or not they will adopt or use the information presented by the speaker. On the other hand, in face-to-face meetings, the communication medium does not impose as much cognitive burden, thereby leaving the receiver of any communication with adequate cognitive resources to focus on the quality of information while making judgment about whether or not it will be adopted and used.

Ferran and Watts report results from a field study in which they found support for their model of how video conferencing may differ from face-to-face communication. In a study of medical professionals, they found that participants attending a seminar via video conference were more influenced by the speaker’s likeability than by the quality of the speaker’s arguments, whereas the opposite pattern was true for participants who attended in person. The likeability of a person was based on the extent to what that person was perceived as charismatic, appealing, interesting, and friendly. The researchers also confirmed that differences in cognitive load explained these effects. Based on these findings, the authors argued that video conferencing does not simply approach face-to-face interaction — it changes what we attend to. Essentially, we end up attending more to peripheral cues in the form of a person’s likeability than to systematic or rigorous cues to judge the information we are receiving from that person via video conferencing. A word of caution should be noted about Ferran and Watts’ findngs: they apply to the use of video conferencing in seminar-like settings where participants have not had prior interaction with the presenter.

What do the results from Ferran and Watts mean for a leader? When the leader is having a tough time convincing others about the merits of a proposal but is a likeable person, s/he should use video-conferencing rather than a face-to-face meeting to make her/his case. A leader may also recruit a likeable person to present the proposal. Or, if a virtual team is using video-conferencing and the leader would like participants to be more systematic in their processing, the leader should minimize the cognitive burden of using video conferencing. This can be done by giving the users enough training on the use of video conferencing. Moreover, the users should do a dry run with each other so that they become more familiar with each other’s turn-taking pauses, pacing gestures, and other ways of regulating the communication.

Another thing a virtual team leader who can do to increase the attention to logical aspects of the information being presented is to make it easy for participants to focus on logical aspects. Having another window (in addition to the one showing a video of the presenter) that allows users to see a running slide presentation, with arguments laid out very clearly, might be helpful.

In summary, the evidence presented by Ferran and Watts suggests that video conferencing may not be comparable to face-to-face meetings because it changes the nature of information processing by its users. In that sense, it does not substitute for face-to-face meetings. Consequently, simply thinking that video conferencing can be made to approach face-to-face meetings by improving the picture quality may not suffice. One needs to focus on reducing the cognitive burden imposed by video conferencing in order to make it approach face-to-face meetings.

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Volcanic Eruption in Europe Boosts Video Calling

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 02:08:53 +0000

Both AFP and Reuters are reporting a spike in video calling as air travel is halted in Europe due to volcanic eruption. According to Cisco, there has been a huge surge in demand for its telepresence facilities in Europe. Skype, too, is seeing an increase in video-calling during the past few days. Some executives who have been prevented from getting back to Europe are running their companies via Skype, according to reports. A couple about to wed in Great Britain but stuck in Dubai went ahead and got married in Dubai — the couple included guests via Skype video.

I believe the reported spike in video calling is showing both increasing accessibility of video conferencing and how comfortable people are becoming with it. We are going to see a further boost in video conferencing as front-facing cameras become a common feature in smartphones. Even the future iPhone, whose pictures leaked out during the weekend, is expected to have a front-facing camera to facilitate video calls.

Do you have an interesting story about how you or someone else used technology to overcome the problem of not being able to fly into Europe? We would love to hear that.

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Becoming a Better Leader Through Blogging

Peg Breen — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:02:02 +0000

The blockbuster film Avatar showed us how easy it is to move from one reality into another environment where the rules are different. Where a person can be reborn into a 10 foot tall, blue, non-English speaking, dragon-creature-flying, environment-protecting militiaman. So is it all that hard to fathom that leadership inside the four walls of an organization morphs into something different in the virtual world? I wondered about that and so experimented by creating a blog titled: Peg Breen’s Blog: In Search of Meaningful Work. (http://pegbreen.wordpress.com)

Like millions of other people, and thousands of other executives, I was without employment and in search of not only a new job, but one that I could be passionate about and that allowed me to use my talents. Since I was one of a close knit group who exited my organization at the same time, I decided to use the opportunity to demonstrate my leadership through this blog. I wrote about the stress of this kind of transition, the reactions that people have when you go through job loss, and what it was like to surface leads, network and stay positive despite the fact that, yes, you are “blue”. Not because you are on the fictional planet Pandora, but because of the emotions this circumstance creates. I set out to be a positive, inspiring, humorous motivator to my colleagues, and may have helped my own psyche as much or more than any of my readers.

I discovered that the intimacy and anonymity of blogs helps people let their hair down. They can release their emotions much easier, there are no titles or power broker relationships, just virtual-equals sharing their perspective. This is valuable inside organizations. Why? Because perceiving that you have a voice and that you’ll be heard, not censored is very empowering. Real organizations should do this more often. I also found that when I met my colleagues for dinner or breakfast, there was an even closer trust relationship. It seems that the blog enhanced our ability to show compassion, and to trust and collaborate on strategies related to our individual job searches. Finally, the blog gave me something that is a rare gift. The time to reflect. How many of us put in our 60 hour week, respond to 100 emails a day and barely get in our run at the fitness club? Through this written, intimate venue, I momentarily turned into the psychologist from the sitcom “Frazier” and in doing so was able to be everything a leader should be for myself and for friends I’ll value for a lifetime.

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How Blogging Affected a Business Leader

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 02:00:20 +0000

In my last post, I mentioned that the best way for business leaders to understand Twitter or other social media is to begin using them. I recently saw how experimenting with social media can help business leaders appreciate its power. I had an opportunity to advise a business leader, Ms. Peg Breen, about blogging. Peg was without employment like thousands of other executives and was looking for a meaningful position. She blogged about the stress of this kind of transition, the reactions that people have they you go through job loss, and what it was like to surface leads, network and stay positive. Peg gained a lot from this experience and I asked her to write about her experience and share it with the readers of Leading Virtually. She graciously agreed and shares her experience with us in the following post.

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