Enabling Trust and Performance in Military Virtual Teams

By Eugene A. Pierce

With the increasing trend toward network-centric operations, military personnel are collaborating with operators and analysts around the world as part of disparate teams. While collaboration technologies enable remote operators to communicate, manage, and exchange information, these technologies only support certain aspects of the overall collaboration process. MITRE's research on collaboration technology and social dynamics, sponsored by the Air Force to bolster its Expeditionary Combat Support Systems (ECSS) initiative, offers to improve teamwork in military virtual teams.

Teams typically find that gaining alignment and commitment to their purpose is more challenging for virtual teams.

A geographically distributed or virtual team consists of people, their network of relationships, and external drivers. While many of the challenges associated with virtual teams are similar to those of collocated teams, the difficulties are complicated by the added dimensions of time and distance. Teams typically find that gaining alignment and commitment to their purpose is more challenging for virtual teams, especially those that are unable to meet face-to-face during the team's formation.

Moreover, in the absence of face-to- face communication and daily interactions, virtual team members may have less understanding of each other's individual, organizational, and cultural differences, potentially contributing to conflict. As a result, long-term productivity may suffer due to a lack of investment in building trust within the team through social relationship activity.

Swift Trust and Sustained Trust

Most likely, those teams where task and relationship building both are a focus from the beginning will result in a team developing a higher level of "Swift Trust" (a term coined by researchers D. Meyerson, K. E. Weick, and R. M. Kramer in 1996). Swift Trust is a concept relating to temporary teams whose existence is formed around a clear purpose and common task. It is the idea that members are willing to suspend doubt about whether "strangers" can be counted on to work on the group task, with a positive expectation that the team activity will be a success. Such teams, eventually, are said by Kramer to be more productive than those teams that are exclusively task focused from the start.

As a project team accomplishes its tasks, team members establish social relationships. At that point, the more traditional concept of trust, or "Sustained Trust" (a term coined by researcher R. Hardin in 2000), becomes a key driver of continued virtual team productivity.

Local vs. Virtual

Virtual teams rely heavily on communication and information technologies, such as intranet, conference calls, email, video conferencing, and various groupware applications to tap into the intelligence of team members. While the expansion of electronic communication technologies has facilitated a rapid increase in the use of virtual teams, most virtual teams still rely heavily on travel and face-to-face interactions to create team cohesiveness. Personal contact and socializing between members are still vital factors to building trust within a team.

Powerful negative forces can act to pull apart a virtual team. Casual, face-to-face contact occurs with local colleagues rather than with virtual team members, encouraging the pursuit of local priorities rather than virtual team objectives. This focus on meeting local needs is further reinforced by cultural differences that justify attention to local priorities and by time differences that reduce the opportunities for team members to discuss team goals. In a virtual environment, these negative forces typically do not diminish over the life of the team, negatively influencing trust and lowering productivity unless counteracted.

To build a high-performing virtual team, members first need a compelling business challenge that is personally relevant and energizes them to overcome the difficulties associated with spatial distance and a lack of direct interpersonal interaction. Second, a compelling challenge becomes that much more energizing when each team member is charged with determining how to achieve it. Therefore, it is critical that all virtual team members jointly define the team's identity, goals, and processes. Third, virtual team members need to pay close attention to performance management, not by seeking tight management control, but rather by defining a clear context within which team members are free to make important decisions by taking into consideration local policy and cultural needs.

MITRE's research with ECSS on collaboration technology and social dynamics has uncovered basic perceptions that can serve as guidelines to improved virtual team dynamics:

• Technology is perceived as a necessary, but not sufficient, mechanism to achieve team and individual goals. Collaboration or communication technology only provides a foundation to support virtual team member connectivity.


• The role of project management within a virtual team is perceived to be of prime concern. Management in virtual teams is considered more important than in co-located teams, given the lack of face-to-face interaction.


• Establishing social affinities, a sense of purpose, and trust within the virtual team membership are considered important factors to virtual team success.


• The existence of chaos and conflict in both successful and unsuccessful virtual team projects is acknowledged; however, successful teams are considered more adept at managing such chaos and conflict versus the unsuccessful teams.


• Managers of distributed teams agree that they need to be aware of impediments to team members' ability to communicate over distance and to help members overcome feelings of alienation.
  

MITRE's research into virtual team dynamics will continue to offer guidelines for improved virtual team performance not only to the military, but civilian organizations as well.

For more information, please contact Eugene Pierce using the employee directory.

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