Communication within virtual teams, such as teleconferencing, creates the so called "illusion of transparency". It means that when we communicate with someone remotely we think that he behaves more in line with how we think than he actually does. Keith Ferrazzi writes about this in an interesting article on the Harvard Business Review website which is focused on misunderstandings arising in virtual communication.
According to Ferrazzi, we can get rid of the illusion by using greater empathy. Participants in virtual communication should try to look at things through the eyes of their colleagues as much as possible. Therefore, start by inviting all your virtual team members to introduce themselves e.g. on your corporate intranet. Then, take a camera and go through each department to show your virtual colleagues videos of your office and let them better imagine you. Then, follow these recommendations:
1. Find communication preferences of individual team members
Manager of a virtual team should find out what communication style suits the individual members best just at the beginning of a project. Personality tests such as MBTI may help.
2. Share important information via multiple channels
Don't rely only on the telephone to transmit essential information. Instead, summarize the information once again in an e-mail to avoid misunderstandings.
3. Watch the urgency
Realize that some media - such as SMS messages - evoke a sense of urgency. When you send a text message with a minor issue, others can understand it as a fundamental priority - just because you have used an inappropriate medium.
4. Respond quickly
Virtual communication assumes faster responses than using the same media in traditional teams. The speed of response to an e-mail or a voicemail message reflects the quality of your relationship.
5. Write clearly
Brevity is certainly required, but not at the expense of clarity. Written messages in a virtual team shouldn't contain incomplete sentences, confusing abbreviations and misspellings. You might think that you don't have time to write full sentences or full names, in the long run, however, you will save time to everyone, including himself, by doing it.
-kk-