Culture Archives - Leading Virtually

Should you care that someone’s not reciprocating your friendship?

Surinder Kahai — Fri, 26 Aug 2016 13:22:48 +0000

If I think of you as a friend, then there’s about 50% likelihood that you don’t think of me likewise.

That’s disturbing, isn’t it?

Well, it should be. Good friendship is vital to our physical and emotional health. A Harvard study that spanned more than 75 years concluded that the single most important determinant of our well-being, including financial, is the quality of our relationships, which certainly include our friendships. Even in the workplace, friendship can be a source of happiness and improve our work performance by leading to trusting relationships in which those involved have each other’s back.

What really prompted me to write this article is a recent study that examined reciprocity in friendships and the effect it has on the influence one has over another. Its finding about the existence of reciprocity was quite consistent with what previous studies have also found. Essentially, when those you identify as friends are asked to identify who their friends are, studies indicate that there is only a 34 to 53 percent chance that they would identify you as their friend.

Of course, lack of reciprocity in friendship is not really good news for developing high quality relationships. In the workplace, the lack of reciprocity in friendships can be damaging in a variety of ways. Among those is the limiting of our ability to influence others, which then affects our ability to engage others in collective action and collaborate with them — something that organizations expect us to do more of today.

The lack of reciprocity in friendships may simply be due to the fact that it is not humanly possible to be friends with everyone. Robin Dunbar, a social psychologist, has proposed a limit to the number of stable social relationships one can have: 150. The basis for Dunbar’s number is human cognitive limitations. Technology, with all its information processing prowess, may help us push beyond the limits imposed by our cognitive apparatus but, apparently, not by much. While technology may help us broadcast our life happenings to others and help us stay acquainted with others, research is reasonably clear that technology does little to strengthen our close relationships — those which can be a source of comfort and emotional support as well as amplification of our happiness. We are generally limited to only about 5 such relationships, with our spouse or significant other occupying the most premier position for many of us.

In the office, the lack of reciprocity in friendships may simply be a reflection of what Adam Grant notes to be a trend among Americans to de-emphasize workplace friendships. He attributes this to a variety of reasons including the disappearance of long-term employment with a single employer, the use of flex work hours and remote work, the availability of technology that allows us to be in constant touch with our friends outside work, Protestant beliefs that may encourage greater focus on work, and the more current generations looking at work as means to leisure time after work.

While research suggests that it may be best for you to develop a reciprocated friendship with someone since the influence you have on each other is likely to be the strongest, it is not entirely a lost cause if you see someone as a friend but your friendship is not reciprocated. A study suggests that when the goals or rewards you seek are dependent on the performance of someone who does not reciprocate your friendship, you may still be able to influence that person. Your sense of dependence on someone you see as a friend may make you communicate in a way that ends up influencing that person. For example, you may communicate with kindness and consideration that moves the other person.

So, go ahead and be friendly towards others irrespective of whether your friendship is reciprocated. Be sure to see yourself as dependent on them in some way. This will increase the level of influence you have on them and, at the very least, make you look like a leader in their eyes.

Acknowledgment: I wish to thank Theresa Sigillito Hollema for her helpful comments on an earlier draft of this post.

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The Human Behind Humans of New York

Surinder Kahai — Wed, 21 Oct 2015 16:31:40 +0000

A little over a month ago, I had the opportunity to attend a talk at Cornell University by Brandon Stanton, the author of Humans of New York (HONY). A very eloquent speaker, Mr. Stanton kept his audience engaged with his stories of how he has interviewed thousands of people not only in New York City but across the world. What I took away was the importance of the human element when leading via technology. Technology is helping us spread our word far and wide but a human heart is what gives it the voice that others can connect with.

Behind the social media powering HONY is a human who has overcome the fear of rejection on his way to amassing a worldwide following but still feeling vulnerable like the rest of us. When asked about his biggest fear, he replied that he sees himself as someone who is not a good person but is now entrusted with a job that is noble. He is afraid that the things that he did during his younger years might be exposed on the Internet and sully his image. I felt that his fear, paradoxically, was also his strength; it showed the vulnerability he perceived. A leader who feels powerful and invincible cannot connect with others. Humility and a feeling of vulnerability are needed to empathize with others and connect with them.

The importance of the human element in connecting with others was also highlighted in Mr. Stanton’s experience traveling abroad during the last two summers. Mr. Stanton mentioned the engagement of his social media followers fell during his Summer 2014 travels but stayed normal during his most recent travels. He attributed this shift to the choices of his interpreters. His 2014 linguists were skillful at translating accurately but they failed to connect on a human level with those he interviewed. This year, he changed his strategy to choose interpreters who were ‘people’ oriented and found that they made all the difference in bringing out impactful stories.

Another story Mr. Stanton shared highlighted the importance of creating a culture of humanness. Some have criticized Mr. Stanton’s work for not following journalistic standards. He half-jokingly remarked that, indeed, he does not fact check if someone is narrating from personal experience. He went on to illustrate that what he hears from someone is indeed a story in their head and that it is significant even if it is distorted.

The example he gave was of someone who claimed to be a Navy Seal and said that his father served in the military. After this person’s story was posted on HONY, former acquaintances of his commented on the post and painted him as a chronic liar who had made up all that he claimed. Mr. Stanton took down the post but a month after that he received an email from the individual’s mother asking him if she could get a copy of the picture he had posted of her son. Her son, she wrote in the email, had committed suicide. Social media technology, because of the way it reaches and touches different people far and wide, has the tendency to bring out the truth. As this example shows, this truth can sometimes be uncontainable and hurt badly.

There is no way a leader can withhold the truth from coming to fruition. Nor should one try to do that. A leader also cannot be in a position to judge what is a lie and what is the truth. Indeed, Mr. Stanton noted that there is a fine line between what is a story of someone’s life and a falsehood. My suggestion to leaders is to foster a culture of compassion and forgiveness. Forgiveness is a virtue that helps us live in the present and look forward to an engaging future instead of clinging onto a painful past. While the above example alone solidifies the significance of forgiveness to a life, emerging research (see 1, 2) is suggesting that creating a culture of forgiveness may bring physical, mental, and organizational benefits.

I am glad I got to attend Mr. Stanton’s presentation. It offered a different perspective than what I get to see when I read HONY. It reinforced the continued importance of the human element in a world where our interactions are increasingly mediated by technology.

Continue to stay human, Mr. Stanton. You’ll do fine.

Acknowledgment: I would like to thank Arina Zanin for providing valuable feedback on an earlier draft of this post.

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How Important Is It To Manage Temporal Diversity in Virtual Teams?

Surinder Kahai — Tue, 09 Aug 2011 18:44:34 +0000

During the last weekend, I had a chance to observe a couple of workers who were installing new backsplash in my kitchen. One of them was setting the tiles as quickly as he could. It was clear that he wanted to finish his task and get out as quickly as possible. The other went about his work patiently. He took measurements for tiles to be set at the edges, cut the tiles according to measurement, and finally set those tiles. When setting the tiles he had cut, he would look over the work of the first worker and tweak the tiles on the wall in case they were not aligned properly. Occasionally, the first worker would question him about what he was up to and he explained that the alignment of the tiles was not proper and he was fixing it. I remember the first worker telling the second one that it wasn’t a big deal if the tiles were not perfectly aligned. The second worker responded that he felt uneasy if the alignment wasn’t proper. “The quality of what we produce is important to me,” he added.

What I saw in action were two individuals, one who emphasized speed and the other who emphasized quality, somehow balancing their differences in a way that helped them perform effectively as a team. I wondered if this is what happens in a team when team members differ in terms of their emphasis on speed, quality, and other performance goals. Does such diversity help a team address different and, oftentimes, competing team performance expectations that are typical for many teams? Or does it create conflict among workers and hinder team performance? Are there any ways in which this diversity can be managed so that it benefits rather than hinders team performance? Interestingly, these questions were quite similar to those that motivated a recent study reported by Susan Mohammed and Sucheta Nadkarni in the Academy of Management Journal. The authors examined how team temporal diversity can be effectively managed to maximize team performance. Certainly, there is more to diversity within a team than just temporal diversity but what Mohammed and Nadkarni found helped me get closer to the answers I was seeking.

Dimensions of temporal diversity
Mohammed and Nadkarni defined temporal diversity as variations in members’ time urgency, pacing style, and time perspective.

Time urgency is a personality trait that reflects how concerned someone is about conserving time. Time urgent individuals feel that time needs to be conserved. They feel chronically hurried and are continuously focused on how much time is remaining for an activity. On the other hand, those who are not time urgent don’t feel highly constrained by time. They feel less hurried and are not concerned with the passage of time.

Pacing style refers to how individuals pace their effort when working towards deadlines. People vary from those who begin working on their tasks right away (early action individuals) to those who start working close to the deadline (deadline action individuals). In between, you find steady action individuals who spread out their work evenly.

Time perspective reflects the importance given by an individual to past, present, and future time frames. Those with present time perspective tend to focus on immediate pleasure, take more risks, and plan only for the near future whereas those with future time perspective tend to be highly goal-oriented, consider future consequences, and plan beyond the near future.

Temporal diversity can help but you need temporal leadership
Mohammed and Nadkarni viewed temporal diversity as helping a team perform better provided it is managed appropriately. They suggested that one way in which temporal diversity could be managed is via temporal leadership. They defined temporal leadership as the extent to which team leaders scheduled deadlines, synchronized team member behaviors, and allocated temporal resources. According to the authors, strong temporal leadership helps the team reduce the problems associated with temporal diversity and put it to work to meet diverse performance expectations, thereby helping team performance. On the other hand, weak temporal leadership, the authors contended, hinders team performance by failing to curb the problems arising from temporal diversity and being unable to put it to good use.

The results from the study that Mohammed and Nadkarni conducted using 71 teams from a process outsourcing provider firm in India supported the authors’ contention that temporal diversity can help a team perform better if temporal leadership is strong. They found that time urgency and pacing style diversity were more positively related to team performance when temporal leadership was stronger. In other words, teams can benefit from having a mix of high and low time urgency members as well as a mix of those who differ on how they pace their assignments. But to get this benefit, team leaders must set milestones, prioritize tasks, remind members of important deadlines, build time for contingencies, pace the team members, and coordinate team members’ efforts to help the team meet its deadlines. If they don’t, then diversity may harm rather than benefit team performance. Mohammed and Nadkarni did not find diversity in future orientation as playing any role in influencing team performance.

Mohammed and Nadkarni found another interesting result: strong temporal leadership improved team performance, irrespective of whether temporal diversity in the team was high or low.

What does this mean for virtual teams?
Virtual teams, or teams engaged in remote work, often consist of individuals from different cultures. Individuals from different cultures tend to have different visions of time. Americans, for instance, possess a clock vision of time and see time as a scarce commodity which must be conserved. Those belonging to the Hindu or Buddhist culture, on the other hand, adopt a timeless vision of time. They view the world as engaged in simultaneous destruction and creation. In such a view, the passage of time is not important because whatever goes, comes back again. Whatever is happening today will happen again in the future. Such differences among team members are likely to introduce temporal diversity within the team and create an opportunity for enhancing team performance with the help of temporal leadership.

Leaders of teams engaged in remote work can create temporal leadership within a team by helping it develop a team compact and regularly conduct after action reviews (AARs). The development of a team compact helps a virtual team set milestones and prioritize tasks. It helps the virtual team coordinate its efforts — the team assigns clear tasks to its members and creates a schedule for the work due from the members. The team also creates a timetable for team meetings and conducting AARs. During the development of a team compact, members of a virtual team also agree to how soon they will respond to messages from each other. When a virtual team conducts AARs, it gets an opportunity to revisit the team compact and review how it is faring in terms of following its schedule and meeting its milestones and deadlines. During the AARs, the team may also change its schedule or create a contingency plan for the remainder of the project if necessary.The development of the team compact and conducting regular AARs, therefore, give the whole team the opportunity to engage in temporal leadership and manage the temporal diversity that may exist in the team. By letting the whole team engage in temporal leadership rather than imposing a set of task assignments and a delivery schedule on them (as it happens in the case of team charters), team leaders increase the likelihood of team members responding effectively to temporal leadership and working together to improve team performance.

Even though team compact and AARs are useful tools for a team engaged in remote work, they are not always embraced enthusiastically. Mohammed and Nadkarni’s results have provided me with a strong justification for recommending the team compact and AARs to virtual teams. I often get quizzical looks when I recommend these tools to the virtual teams that I supervise. Team members see the development of a team compact and conducting AARs as trivial exercises with little value. They sometimes argue that they are professionals and they don’t need to be reminded regularly that they have to complete their work. What I see missing in these individuals is the realization that they are working in a team and that there are bound to be differences in how each individual approaches the work assigned to that individual. As the study by Mohammed and Nadkarni demonstrates, team members may differ on the basis of time urgency and pacing style. While each team member may approach their individual work professionally, because they have to work with each other, they need to manage their individual differences related to time urgency and pacing style. In fact, by managing their individual differences, they may be able to harness their different traits or styles to benefit team performance. Even if there is no temporal diversity in the virtual team, creating a team compact and conducting regular AARs provide opportunities to the team to engage in temporal leadership and improve team performance.

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How Harmful is Facebook to Reputations and Relationships?

Rebecca Jestice — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 15:38:00 +0000

I recently deactivated my Facebook account. Although it had been a handy tool for reconnecting with old friends, keeping up with some colleagues, and socializing with family & other loved ones, in the past few months, I began to experience a downside to the social networking site. This eventually led to the deactivation of my account. Although social networking can be a useful tool, I came to the conclusion that, for me, Facebook took things too far, to the point that it became too much work to maintain my account appropriately, I began to worry about my online reputation, and I began to feel that I lived in a self-created, all-too-public bubble with serious negative consequences on some important relationships.

The beginning of my concern over Facebook came when Facebook began making default settings on accounts so that everyone could have access to your postings. I was spending too much time making sure that what I wanted to stay private was in fact private or shared with only certain people, and that I didn’t see all the extraneous junk that I didn’t want to see from my friends. I admit that I enjoyed interaction with some of my friends over games like Mafia Wars, but I didn’t want my business colleagues to know that I was becoming increasingly respected in my online “crime family” — it’s not appropriate — and I didn’t think that anyone else truly cared. The privacy settings were time consuming and not always as easy to use as I thought they should be. Canada has even brought serious concerns to the social networking site—citing that Facebook does not comply with their national privacy laws because of the company’s policy of keeping your account information indefinitely (notice in the beginning I said I ‘deactivated’ and not ‘deleted’ my Facebook account).

The ACLU has also recently brought attention to Facebook and the lack of measures in place to protect users’ privacy. The organization has recently created a Facebook quiz with the sole intention of showing you the access that quiz creators have to your information when you or a friend takes part in one of the numerous, often silly, Facebook quizzes. The quiz emphasizes that Facebook has inadequate safeguards to ensure that any information collected is legitimately for and used only for the operation of the Facebook application. In other words, quiz developers can potentially take whatever information they want and do whatever they want with it. Perhaps most startling is that there is no kind of screening in place to even know or verify who the developers are. You can see the quiz questions and answers.

Setting your security settings to maximum and keeping a bare minimum profile may not be enough to protect your privacy on sites like Facebook. MIT students were recently able to create pretty accurate software that could guess whether or not a man was gay based on basic profile information and friends lists—even if the man did not identify himself as gay on his Facebook page. Another group was able to accurately guess social security numbers based on publicly available data and information such as birth date and birth place—both things which many people have on their Facebook profiles in the form of birthday and hometown. That’s enough to begin identity theft. This raises questions about what else can be gleaned from even basic social networking pages.

Beyond privacy issues, there are real potential relationship consequences from using Facebook—for both professional and personal relationships. A recent article on PC World warned of the digital tattoo that one leaves behind on social networking sites that could potentially be seen by the wrong person. Even if you think your social networking pages are totally private, remnants of this digital tattoo could potentially be found through search engine sites such as Google or Yahoo by potential employers, colleagues, family members or those without good intentions. It doesn’t take too much imagination to see how things you may have posted 10 years ago on the Internet or talked about some time ago on a social networking site could come back to haunt you in work or personal relationships now. If you’d like a bit of insight into your digital tattoo, go to Yasni.com and search for your name. It will give a tag cloud of terms and people associated to you as well as a list of links related to you—all just a click away from more information. My tag cloud included my colleagues on Leading Virtually as well as things related to Japan, where I lived 10 years ago, a bookstore I managed more than 5 years ago, a conference I attended earlier this year, and a few acquaintances that I haven’t been in contact with for almost a decade.

Another recent article in the Wall Street Journal accurately described perhaps the biggest potential problem with the extent that Facebook is being used in our lives today—the ruining of friendships and relationships. Some pitfalls contributed to the use of the medium in our important relationships include the feelings of jealousy or resentment when friends or colleagues tell us that they are too busy to write or call, yet they are updating their Facebook status every hour and obviously spending a lot of time on the site taking quizzes or “conversing” with others online. Other issues that can cause rifts in relationships is the posting of boring or inane information that one would never really announce in face-to-face interactions, seeing previously unknown sides of someone’s personality, and the boldness that comes from interacting online that might encourage someone to say something that they might not say face-to-face—all of which is taking place in a completely public forum and can lead to embarrassment, and of course, more of a digital tattoo.

Ultimately, I decided two things: 1) I need to invest time and care into the relationships – personal and professional – that are important to me. I cannot rely on Facebook to be the basis of our communication if the relationship is to be a healthy, growing one. 2) It’s not necessarily wise to mingle personal and professional relationships. Before social networking sites, our circles of friends and colleagues were often very separate. Before I deactivated my account, I had a list of almost 200 “friends” from every facet of my life—my family, students, my advisor, friends from high school, former professors, former employers, my college roommate, and friends from other towns I had lived in. Each group serves a different purpose in my life and they aren’t necessarily meant to mingle. It lead to the feeling that suddenly all aspects of my life were colliding and open to people that maybe the door should be closed to sometimes for my protection and theirs.

I am not suggesting that the answer to protecting yourself and your relationships is to deactivate your Facebook or all your social networking accounts. That’s not really reasonable. However, as leaders, professionals, and friends, I advocate spending some time thinking about how we use social networking tools and to what end, as well as what the future consequences of our actions in the online social world could be. I’m sure I’ll return to Facebook eventually but with a strict set of personal guidelines for how I use the account.

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Virtual Worlds: A Potential Tool for Cross-Cultural Training

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 13:37:46 +0000

Previously, Surinder wrote a blog post on his observations about different cultural expectations and implicit communication patterns. He discussed some ways that virtual team leaders could help limit cultural snafus in teams. As more companies are working with partners around the world and multicultural teams occur more and more often, understanding of cultural differences is important for team members and leaders — for both face-to-face and virtual teams. Companies are purchasing seminars to help educate expatriates and those working in varying cultural contexts. (See this NY Times article about cross-cultural training effectiveness). However, companies are also trying to cut down on costs for training and other “extras”, and some intercultural training methods, such as one-time seminars, can be of limited effectiveness. For these reasons, intercultural training may be an excellent candidate for transfer to virtual world environments.

In this post I discuss social learning theory and how it could be applied to cross-cultural training in virtual worlds. The discussion of social learning theory is based on an article from the Academy of Management Review by J. Stewart Black and Mark Mendenhall.

Social Learning Theory
Social learning theory is the basis for the design of many business trainings used today. It describes how people learn new behaviors through not only their own experiences and the results of those experiences, but also through observing the behaviors and consequences of others. In other words, people can learn behavior modifications from the modeled behaviors of others. In fact, learning through observation of others can be of critical import for socialization and assimilation into new cultures. One study found that people entering a new organization relied most on observing others for learning about their role and the organizational culture and that observation was the most useful method for gathering the appropriate knowledge. Examples of modeled behavior currently used in trainings include watching films or role-plays from which trainees gather information on behaviors and the consequences of those behaviors. Lectures can even serve as a sort of behavioral modeling if connections are drawn between actions and consequences. Social learning theory describes 4 elements necessary for learning:

Attention
The trainee has to pay attention to and notice the behavior that is being modeled. Some factors that influence whether or not the trainee pays attention and how much attention is paid include: the status of the model; the attractiveness of the model; the similarity of the model to the trainee; and the repeated availability of the model.
Retention
The information has to be stored in memory and understood.
Reproduction
The trainee has to be able to reproduce the behavior and check his/her performance against the modeled behavior.
Motivation
There must be some sort of internal or external motivation for the trainee to change his/her behavior, such as the belief that the behavior will lead to better job performance or ease stress in new situations.

Using Virtual Worlds for Cross-Cultural Training
Cross-cultural training in virtual worlds could aid in attention and retention through features that aid immersion. Reproduction can take place multiple times in virtual worlds without the need for trainees to visit a specific place. And motivation could be enhanced through a fun or game-like atmosphere. For example, 3-D immersive spaces can be designed that represent the target culture and avatars that wear clothing worn in the target culture (for example, the Virtual Forbidden City is an immersive replica of the Forbidden City in Beijing, and all the avatars wear clothing historically appropriate to the Forbidden City). Gestures and animations could be used to give appropriate non-verbal communication cues. The use of avatars also allows users to practice appropriate interpersonal distances. Voice communication capabilities would allow for communication in the target language. The training environment could be developed so that multiple users interact in a space at once or “non-playing characters” could be developed to interact with users and help simulate real world encounters.

Based on elements of social learning theory, Black and Mendenhall have offered several propositions for making cross-cultural training effective. Three of these propositions should transfer very well to utilizing virtual worlds and their features for effective training.

The first proposition is that using models similar to the trainee will result in greater attention to the modeled behavior and more effective training. The malleability of identity available through the creation of avatars in virtual worlds should help trainers create avatars that look, and possibly act, similar to the trainee. Or, as suggested by the Proteus Effect, the trainee’s own avatar could be used to show the desired behavior and reinforce it. The Proteus Effect occurs when experiences that take place via an avatar translate into transformed behavior, such as people who watch their avatar exercise are more likely to exercise themselves. Viewing their own avatar should enhance attention to the behavioral modeling and reinforce it through direct experience at the same time.

The second proposition is that modeled behavior that is similar to already familiar behavior is easier to retain and reproduce. Although in cross-cultural training situations, trainees may be learning behaviors that are not readily similar to their own everyday ways of behaving, virtual worlds could help assimilate the new behaviors into more familiar situations that help create mental connections in trainees’ minds. For example, the environment in which the behavior is modeled could be made to resemble a familiar place that brings some level of familiarity to the trainee. After the behavior is modeled in the familiar environment, the environment could then be changed again to one that the trainee is likely to face in the future.

The third proposition is that successive modeling aids retention of the target behavior. Training areas could be set up in a virtual world that allow for multiple interactions over time without the need to travel to a special training area. Behaviors could be practiced with other trainees in different stages and over several times so that the behaviors become gradually more intuitive and reproducible. As mentioned above, this could also be done through the creation of non-playing characters that the trainee interacts with over time. One group at the University of Texas is doing this in order to teach people about Afghani culture. Variations in the characters that are brought to the world each time it is played allow for many iterations and varying circumstances that trainees can learn from. (Article information on this project can be seen here.) The company Alelo is also using this premise to provide cross-cultural and foreign language training for educational organizations and for military organizations.

Cross-cultural training is one promising area for using virtual worlds to deliver efficient training as well as cut costs and resource commitments from organizations. We may see over time that some of the features available in virtual worlds may actually increase the effectiveness of training over traditional seminars. Does anyone have any experience with or know of any other instances of virtual worlds for cross-cultural training? I would love to hear about them.

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Is Virtual Etiquette Different from Real World Etiquette?

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:23:01 +0000

I had an interesting experience recently that reminded me of Surinder’s post on what he sees as some negative trends in email communication, only this experience happened in Second Life. I was visiting an area dedicated to online learning when I ran into another avatar–I’ll call him Mike–who began speaking with me. Mike immediately told me that he was demonstrating Second Life to a class of about 25 students, who were not there in avatar form but I can assume were watching our interaction on a screen. I texted “hi” to the class and informed them that I conduct research on virtual worlds and their use for collaboration and training. Mike proceeded to ask me questions about Second Life and how it is and isn’t useful for student learning. He also asked me about any potential legal or other types of issues that I anticipate or might have already encountered with students. I gave answers from my point of view and current knowledge in hopes of contributing something worthwhile to Mike’s demonstration of Second Life. After about 10 minutes Mike said, “well, we need to move on,” and left.

This situation left me a little disconcerted, and led me to think about what constitutes etiquette in professional or semi-professional interactions between strangers in Second Life or other virtual worlds, or if there is such a thing. Mainly I am left with questions, not answers. I am hoping that others in the leading virtually community will have input regarding how these types of random interactions might be made beneficial to all involved. In this post I will cover:

How much should be disclosed about one’s real situation?
What opportunities for feedback should exist?
Is “thank you” necessary?
Should the rules of engagement from the real world be carried over to the virtual?

I said that the experience left me a little disconcerted because I had spent some of my time and energy to assist Mike in his class demonstration and to give answers to his questions that were as thoughtful as possible though off-the-cuff. Afterward I found that I didn’t feel very satisfied by the experience, however. It was not like meeting a person at a conference and discussing pros and cons of virtual worlds face-to-face and it was not like being invited as a guest speaker into someone’s classroom. I had no verbal or non-verbal feedback. I didn’t even know who I was talking to! I was left wondering what Mike or the students’ reactions were to my answers. Did they agree or disagree? Was I telling them things they already believed or knew, challenging their assumptions, or talking about concepts that they had no interest in? Deliberation over the incident led me to the three questions above regarding virtual world etiquette and norms.

How much should be disclosed about one’s real situation?
In this situation Mike immediately informed me that he was demonstrating Second Life to a class. Therefore I knew immediately that there were other people observing our interaction although I could not see them. He could just have easily begun asking me questions he was interested in without informing me of the presence of the others or his purpose. Had I not known that others were “listening in” would I have felt better about our conversation in the end and assumed it was just a conversation with another person interested in the same subjects?

On the other hand, I was not informed of the type of students that were being given the demonstration and the purpose behind the demonstration. This didn’t give me a chance to tailor my answers to the appropriateness of the situation or the audience. For example, if I had known that the students were masters level students already using Second Life, I could have given answers as a higher level, or had I known it was a demonstration wanting to show the ultimate “uselessness” of Second Life, I could have highlighted ways in which Second Life is beneficial to people. This feeling of uncertainty led me to my next question.

What opportunities for feedback should exist?
My communication with the unknown students was completely mediated by the avatar Mike. I had no way of knowing if the questions were coming directly from Mike or from the students via Mike. I also had no way of knowing if the students found my answers helpful, nonsensical, or somewhere in between. But since I was blind to the reactions of the others, I think that Mike should have shared either critical or supportive feedback from the class regarding the discussion since I had agreed to be an impromptu speaker for the class. Such feedback doesn’t have to be detailed but could be as simple as “they are nodding their heads” or “they disagree with that idea.” This type of feedback shows that the speaker (me) is being listened to and also engages the me in the dialogue as an active participant.

Is “thank you” necessary?
Lastly, my conversation with Mike’s class ended with a “we need to move on,” rather than a “thanks for your time.” This brought me back to Surinder’s post regarding the trend in a lack of a showing of appreciation for work accomplished. This would have been an opportunity to say that the outside insight was beneficial, even if they didn’t agree with me or that they appreciated the effort I took to engage with them. I’m sure that Mike was busy running his class, and I know it can be difficult to run a demonstration of Second Life while also engaging your class, but I know that this type of dismissal wouldn’t happen in a non-virtual environment with a classroom guest.

Should the rules of engagement from the real world carry over to the virtual?
Finally, I’m left with the question of whether we should be conducting ourselves in the virtual world as if we are in the real world when asking others to contribute to our projects, presentations, or inviting speakers in-world to address our teams. My personal opinion is that we need some of these real world social norms to persist in the virtual world in order to maintain positive relationships and reputations. What do you think? I’d love to hear other experiences and opinions.

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What President Obama Teaches Us For Leading Virtually

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 20:02:02 +0000

I watched in awe from early this morning as the world got ready for the inauguration of Barack Obama as President. I felt joy and hope as I read my dad’s email this morning saying that he was so excited to see the moment that he had dreamed of, but thought might never come in his country. And I was inspired by Obama’s speech–a mixture of the stark reality of our time and determination for a bright future. This was truly an historical moment and it was amazing to see the first African-American president take office in the US.

Obama is an historical president in other aspects, too. Obama ran the first campaign in history that fully embraced technology in order to reach constituents and his transition is being touted as one of the most transparent (see this NY Times article for an interesting look at campaigning with Web 2.0). That’s in part because many of the technologies that gave Obama’s campaign momentum and transition visibility, such as YouTube or Facebook, were not available or well-known in previous elections. Obama seems to not only have surrounded himself with people who know how to leverage current technology to reach supporters and constituents, but he also has a good understanding of the potential benefits and drawbacks of that technology. Obama’s use of technology offers some insights and lessons to leading virtually, both in teams and organizations. Although most virtual leaders are not undertaking a task as huge as running for President or running the country, some of Obama’s use of technology can be adapted to the needs of other leaders.

1. Reach Out
Obama’s campaign was masterful in reaching out to millions of Americans to garner support and funding. He was able to raise record amounts of funding through millions of small donations through reaching out over web sites and email and encouraging people to leverage their personal networks to support his campaign. After the election, Obama continued to use the Internet to reach out to Americans on the change.gov website to gather opinions and concerns of citizens. The new whitehouse.gov site, launched almost at the instant Obama was sworn in, has already posted a blog relating the administrations intentions to use the site to stay connected to Americans. The insight here is that people outside of the team or organization can be reached, and in many cases are willing to help. Tools such as blogs, wikis, or Web sites can help teams and organizations reach out to others and gather ideas for creative solutions or problem solving. Blogs can be a place to start conversations with people interested in the same topic which can stimulate team member thinking.

2. Mix it Up
Obama’s campaign used a mix of media and technologies effectively to reach as many people as possible. He raised a majority of his money online and used it to buy airtime on network television for his final infomercial. The insight for virtual leaders is that the appropriate technology to reach and work with people may differ depending on the individuals involved and the context. Betsy’s post, Freeing Yourself from E-mail and Surinder’s post on emergent collaboration offer some good advice on when certain technologies might be useful and in what context.

3. Personalize the Message
During his campaign, Obama sent out a text message to supporters when he decided who his running mate would be. Many receivers of the message, who learned the news before most of the rest of the country, took the text as a personalized message, strengthening a sense of connection with the candidate. The Obama team plans to use the email addresses it collected during the days of the campaign to stay in touch with citizens and rally them to support Obama’s initiatives. Virtual leaders could take a cue from this and the importance of personalizing messages, even when addressing a group of people. Adding personal touches or proactively contacting team members to clarify information or send encouragement can help strengthen interpersonal relationships necessary for working effectively together.

4. Keep Boundaries
Obama is refusing to give up his Blackberry despite security and legal concerns. He is determined to find a way to keep it during his tenure at the White House. He sees the Blackberry as a way to escape from the Presidential bubble and to maintain some contact with the ‘outside world’, helping him keep perspective and get information from people other than those directly related to the White House. Keeping boundaries and separate spaces for work and personal communication may be harder to do in the days of instant access to everyone, but Obama’s point is well-taken. It’s not a bad idea to have separate business and personal email accounts and pay attention to those privacy settings on social networking sites.

5. Expect the Unexpected
Obama is aware that with the freedom of new media, comes some unexpected results. Rather than shy away from the technology, he seems to understand the results and takes them into consideration. For instance he has mentioned that he is aware that anything that he writes in a text message could end up on the Internet so he is careful to check before he presses send. This is a key point for anyone working and communicating with technology. With almost equal access to technology and adding information on outlets like the Web, virtual leaders and team members should remember that, along with the benefit of a record of events and project progress, comes the possibility of that record becoming public. On the other hand, the unexpected can lead to delightful results as the trend of re-mixing, re-using, mashups and viral video grows. For example, the spontaneous community that sprang up around an Obama campaign sign or the Super Obama World online video game are things that could not have happened without the connectivity and reach of the Internet.

Conclusion
Obama’s use of technology, however, would not have been as successful had his message and vision not resonated with people. After all, John McCain had a web site and a video game, too, but the impact was little compared to Obama’s. Effective use of technology is not enough. A leader’s desire and ability to connect to people and welcome new possibilities is important. When these qualities are present, along with integrity and sincerity, then technology will be useful.

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Are You Okay If I’m Okay?

Rebecca Jestice — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 18:42:03 +0000

In Second Life my name is Abi. I am taller than average, wear high-heeled Mary Janes, black pants covered in zippers and a t-shirt with a dragon on it. I have bright pink hair. In real life I am short, never wear high heels, and have light brown hair. The only features my avatar and I have in common are blue eyes and freckles. Yet, I consider my avatar an extension of myself when I am in Second Life. While I know some people who change their avatar regularly, the fact is, I like Abi. I like how she looks and how I feel when I’m walking around Second Life in her “skin.” I’ve tried changing my avatar before and I always go right back to the original Abi. My connection to my Abi avatar has led me to some questions lately as I read about possible cross-virtual world avatar compatibility, the increasing use of virtual worlds for collaboration, and the setting of dress codes or guidelines for company employees in virtual worlds. My main questions are would I use Abi as my avatar for business meetings or collaborating with colleagues? And, should I?

Games Become a Business Tool

Although Second Life allows online space for collaboration, it was not originally designed to be specifically for virtual business meetings. Linden Lab envisioned a world built entirely by its inhabitants, whatever their vision happened to be. Developers were surprised when the first Second Life inhabitant built a beanstalk to the sky rather than a house or a car or some other real world object. That act was indicative of the desire of many Second Life residents to be freed from the day-to-day offline world and to have an online space where anything is possible. So, although Second Life offers a space for collaboration over distances and differs from massive multi-player online games in that there are no objectives, quests or leveling, there is still very much a sense of fun and play that is important to its residents. This often extends to residents’ avatars. Abi is a form of play for me because she gets to wear clothes that I would never wear in real life, she can fly, and she can have pink hair everyday without worrying about getting a job or being taken seriously. Occasionally she can even transform into a blue and green dragon and sit in the tree tops. These are all obviously things that are not possible for me in the real world.

What happens when the game becomes a business tool, as has happened with Second Life? Often fun and gaming are not seen as important to business strategy, perhaps they are even viewed as detrimental. So it seems inevitable that businesses desiring to use virtual worlds will need to find ways to work with or around the game aspect of virtual worlds to ensure that serious work is taking place. Businesses also have to worry about issues of security regardless of where work is being done. These issues have led some businesses to adopt guidelines for business avatars in virtual worlds. For example, Cisco licensed business attire for employees’ avatars. This helps ensure that employees are dressed appropriately for business meetings. Cisco has also arranged for all employee avatars to have the same last name so that they are easily identifiable to each other and to help keep non-employees from taking part in private conversations. IBM has also created guidelines that tell employees that appearance should be “appropriate” for a business setting especially when meeting clients. There is even some caution against changing avatars too frequently in order to build reputation and trust among others.

When I read about these guidelines, the business side of me says that all makes sense. The side of me that loves virtual worlds, the Abi side, feels infringed upon.

Distractions

In his latest book “Exodus to the Virtual World”, Castranova discusses research around the human brain, motivation and media. Some research has shown that the human brain reacts to media in the same way that it reacts to real events. When we are watching media such as a movie our brain reacts to the media as if it were real, unless we are motivated to remind ourselves that what we are seeing is not real. So when I watch a scary movie, which I don’t like, I am motivated to remind myself that it’s not real. But if I watch a comedy, which I do like, I don’t remind myself of this because the experience is pleasurable for me. The second scenario is effortless for me. The first scenario requires me to use up cognitive resources to remind myself that what I’m seeing is not real.

What does that mean for people in the virtual world? It can mean different things depending on the person and the situation. For someone like me, who has spent some time in various virtual worlds and likes them, it means that when I am in Second Life it is a pleasurable and fun experience. I do not feel the need to remind myself constantly that things are not real. My interactions with people in Second Life feel very real and comfortable for me regardless of how someone’s avatar looks. I have spoken with Jack Skellington and a dwarf with equal success in communication. It also is real for me to see Abi walking or flying across the landscape. For someone who is not a regular inhabitant of a virtual world, it all may be an annoying distraction that gets in the way of communication. I have a friend who visited Second Life with me once and was, in her own words, “creeped out.” For her it was not fun and her visit was spent reminding herself that this was not “real.”

This can have big implications for the effectiveness of meeting others in the virtual world. If I’m there to have a business meeting and the person I’m meeting with is spending her entire time thinking about my pink hair and wondering if this is what I really look like in real life, or if I’m even who I say I am, communication can definitely suffer. Trust can potentially suffer as well. Would you trust a giant cat in a real world meeting? What about in the virtual world? The director of IT innovation at Price Waterhouse and Coopers says he changed his avatar’s appearance from a muscled, tall man with a Mohawk to an avatar that more resembled his real life appearance and wore a business suit. He did this because others were distracted by his original avatar’s appearance.

Some organizations may try to work around this issue by taking meetings out of virtual worlds like Second Life that can be classified as games and use in-house virtual worlds specifically designed for business, such as Wonderland. That might be a reasonable idea for now, but not one that will work permanently in my opinion.

The Changing Nature of Work

The premise of Castranova’s book that I mentioned above is that the workforce, among other things, will be changing. As more and more people opt to spend hours in virtual environments, the in-person hours taken out of society will have big impacts on the way we interact with others and live our daily lives. Castranova predicts that this exodus to virtual worlds will have society wide impacts including on our expectations of work. So for now I might be willing to trade Abi for an avatar that looks more like the real me in order to conduct a meeting or give a presentation in a virtual world, but that might not always be the case.

Castranova argues that eventually people will expect the real world to mirror many of the options available in the virtual world. Work will have to be fun, too. Giving up Abi, an identity that I spent a lot of time creating and being, does not sound like fun to me. The promise of being able to take my Abi avatar to multiple virtual worlds, technology that is currently being worked on, makes it sound even less fun. Just as casual Friday has crept more and more into the work week, eventually workers might demand that they be able to dress however and as whomever they please in virtual worlds. The potential to have a malleable identity is one reason people are drawn to virtual worlds in the first place. If I have to look like myself in the virtual world, why wouldn’t I rather just have a video conference instead? What would having to forego my favored identity mean to my satisfaction and effectiveness in interacting with others?

Businesses are already contemplating these issues and some are issuing avatar guidelines for employees–others aren’t. I think assuming that real world rules and guidelines should transfer to the virtual world might be an over simplistic point of view. I still am wondering about how okay it would be for me to use my Abi avatar in a business setting–and relative to other avatars I’ve seen in Second Life, Abi is fairly conservative. Does it make a difference if I know the people I’m meeting in the off-line world? Does it matter if my communication partners are comfortable and familiar with virtual worlds already? Does it matter if my avatar is non-human or fantastical? Are others okay with my virtual identity?

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The Leading Virtually Digest, June 2, 2008

Betsy Carroll — Mon, 02 Jun 2008 15:38:25 +0000

What: Forbes.com article about doing business in geographically dispersed virtual teams (also see: accompanying slide show).
Posts to which it is related: Implicit Communication and Culture: What it means for leading virtual teams; Culture Matters in Virtual Teams.
Bottom Line: The author has a consulting business that helps companies manage IT-focused virtual teams that are globally dispersed. He points out that there is a lot of buzz about the benefits of virtual teams, but that those benefits might not be as easy to achieve as it sometimes seems. He points out that cross-cultural virtual team management requires skills not many people have learned or practiced.

What: A flurry of articles have come out recently about telecommuting (see an AFP article, an Entrepreneur.com daily update, a Reuters article, and a USA Today article)
Posts to which it is related: Improving Virtual Team Leadership Using Technology, Virtual Teams – Beneficial or Detrimental?
Bottom Line: With gas prices rising painfully, everyone seems to be talking about telecommuting as an increasingly strong possibility for many workers in the US. Telecommuting also might help to alleviate time wasted in traffic or on a commute. One important fact – only about 25% of the US workforce have a job that lends itself to telecommuting. Also important, several articles raise some of the potential problems with telecommuting, though it seems to be fashionable to suggest it as a solution to gas prices.

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Implicit Communication and Culture: What it Means for Leading Virtual Teams

Surinder Kahai — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 00:54:13 +0000

I came back from a short trip to India about two weeks ago. I made some observations during this trip which might be relevant to leaders of virtual teams. Many virtual team leaders are leading work that is accomplished partly or fully in India due to outsourcing or offshoring arrangements. I have heard from such leaders about the challenges that they have faced in leading their virtual team, including communication problems and getting the work accomplished.

Both this trip and the previous one (about 2 years ago) have helped me see the Indian culture in an interesting way. I was born and raised in India but have lived in the US since 1984. Though I am now in many ways typically American, I have also retained many of the typical characteristics of an Indian. Having some elements of the Indian culture in me and being different at the same time has made the Indian culture more salient to me. Indian culture stands out very clearly for me because it is different from what I see in the American context, but I am able to recognize elements of that culture because it is familiar to me.

My few days in India reminded me of “implicit communication,” which occurs much more frequently in India than in the US. During one incident, someone sent a special breakfast for me with his assistant. The assistant and I were to meet at a location where I had an important meeting. Unfortunately, due to traffic problems, the assistant did not arrive until 10.30 am. Instead of offering me the breakfast, he kept the breakfast in his vehicle because he assumed that since it was past the normal breakfast time, I must have already eaten my breakfast. He did not even talk about it during the day. Only later during the evening when the person who had sent the breakfast asked me how it was, did we realize what had happened. The timing of the assistant’s arrival communicated to him that I must have eaten my breakfast. I was expected to understand from his impending late arrival that I had to make alternate arrangements for my breakfast. In other words, the context (i.e., arrival time) itself carried different messages for the assistant and me.

Implicit communication occurs more often in what the anthropologist Edward Hall referred to as high-context cultures. In such cultures, people leave many things unsaid. The context, made up of the environment, the situation, and the parties involved, itself carries messages that complement the spoken word and make up for the things that are left unsaid. Indian culture is a high-context culture, as are the cultures of many Asian and Arab nations. In low-context cultures, such as the US and much of Europe, communication is more explicit. Expectations, relationships, and knowledge are typically made more explicit in such cultures. There is less that is assumed to have been communicated in low-context cultures. Thus, an inverse relationship exists between the level of context and the level of verbalized communication.

How does implicit communication affect multi-cultural virtual teams consisting of members from both high-context and low-context cultures? Often virtual teams have less direct communication than face to face teams. And, using electronic communication, virtual teams also lose some cues available to face-to-face teams, such as body language. This means members of a team from cultures that are high and low context may experience particular kinds of misunderstandings or differences in how they approach issues arising withing the team. Here are some examples:

Saying “yes” to a request might have vastly differing meanings from one type of culture to another. To a member of a low-context, explicit communication culture, the expectation may be that the request will be carried out no matter what. To a member of a high-context, implicit communication culture, the expectation may be that all parties understand that “yes” is qualified by the context in which that member is situated (the article “Culture Notes: Never Say No” provides very good examples of what “yes” or expressions of agreement may actually mean).
The communication styles of one type of culture might also translate poorly into the other. Members of low-context cultures often try to reach explicit agreements about how team members will perform their work. To members of high-context cultures, this often comes across not only as unnecessary and puzzling, but even as rude. Neither group is inherently right or wrong; the judgment is based on underlying assumptions about how people work together. This point is illustrated in the article “India-US Nuclear deal – The diplomacy-cultural context,” which discusses the bafflement among the Indians as the US kept adding conditions to the India-US nuclear agreement reached by the Indian Prime Minister and the US President against a high-context backdrop.
In their book, “Cultural Intelligence: Individual Interactions Across Cultures,” Christopher Earley and Soon Ang indicate that high- and low-context cultures influence how conflict is resolved. While individuals from low-context cultures are more able to separate the conflict issue from the persons involved, individuals from high-context cultures often are not. The latter generally think that the individuals involved with the conflict issue should show sensitivity towards one another and not try to confront each other; confronting someone is seen as an insult. On the other hand, individuals from low-context cultures think that conflict should be handled through an open discussion of the issues involved. This is a direct result of how individuals from different cultures see communication. Members of high-context cultures see communication more holistically. Communication is seen as being inextricably tied to the context, which includes the issue being discussed as well as the individuals involved and their feelings.

How do we avoid situations, such as those illustrated above, that arise in teams consisting of members from both high-context and low-context cultures? Here are some ideas for a virtual team leader to consider:

Make all members of your team aware of this cultural difference. Indicate to your team that research for virtual teams shows that, because of the challenges inherent in virtual work, being a little more explicit in communication is probably necessary. This may mean more of a challenge to high-context team members who are used to implicit communication. To help them feel more comfortable with being explicit, frame virtual work as a totally new way of doing things with a lot of learning to be done along the way. This will make them less hesitant to step out of their normal way of communicating. If possible, work one-on-one with high-context teams members and help them practice being more explicit by asking them to speak up. Talk to low-context team members to make sure that they don’t bowl implicit members over and to help them learn how to listen for subtle cues.
As team leader, make sure to communicate often with both sides, particularly less explicit members. Learn to ask the right questions in the right way so members are not put off by this somewhat explicit approach. Also, use the richest medium possible – perhaps you will want to schedule more face-to-face time than in a homogeneous group.
Build some objective measures or indicators into the collaboration system so that updates and results are not always dependent upon a human report. This should help alleviate uncomfortable situations, conflict, and uncertainty. For instance, a shared document that includes a report being worked on by a virtual team’s members can indicate status of the work accomplished by the different members. Note that the constant availability of information about what others in the team have contributed (or, more importantly, not contributed) can lead to a breakdown of trust if not managed properly. This may be alleviated to some extent through a shared calendar in which members provide information about when they plan to make their contributions. After Action Reviews are likely to be particularly useful in preventing a breakdown of trust when done properly (i.e., by keeping their focus on learning what happened and why it happened while minimizing the focus on individual members).
Help the team make a team compact. As part of this process, team members will create rules of engagement which make explicit the what, when, who, and how of decision-making and communication within the team. Among the things covered by the rules of engagement are the nature and frequency of communication, communication media to be used, the values that the team will live by, the response times for messages, how conflict will be resolved, and how the decisions will be made, including who makes what decisions. This may be somewhat uncomfortable for team members who are unaccustomed to explicit communication, so give plenty of time to the process, make sure all members’ voices are heard, and focus on positive, encouraging verbage from all members. The goal is to work out some explicit guidelines for the team’s work while making sure no one is put off, intimidated, or uncertain about the process. Make use of After Action Reviews to reinforce the team compact.

Don’t wait for problems to arise due to cultural differences in your virtual team. If you are proactive, you are likely to produce a team that is able to take advantage of the diversity of perspectives within itself rather than being bogged down by misunderstandings and conflict, which unfortunately are a common occurrence in multi-cultural teams.

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