Conventional teams often communicate face-to-face, but virtual teams rely on technologically mediated communication (Bell & Kozlowski, 2002), with different challenges and best practices. It's worth learning this new set of relationship skills; effective communication promotes knowledge and information sharing (Siemsen et al., 2009). You'll see in Part III that this is key to preventing and managing conflict.

Communication Technology 

Navigating communication technology is tricky. Fortunately, research offers insights that can inform best practices (described in the Actions Items section below).

• Email: People are confident in their ability to communicate emotions over email, but research does not support this. Riordan & Trichtinger (2017) found that both friends of study participants and strangers were unable to identify the intended emotion of an email. Byron & Baldridge (2007) had also previously found that impressions of emails are largely determined by the recipient's personality, not only the sender's message.
• Virtual Meetings: In his podcast, Worklife, organizational psychologist Adam Grant (2020) discusses some of the challenges of virtual meetings. First, Grant says you risk one person taking over the meeting. Secondly, trying to process the non-verbal cues of others on a screen is tiring. What's more, we are often distracted by seeing our faces and emotions (Vergallito et al., 2020). This creates a barrier to effective communication.

Podcast: How Science Can Fix Remote Work - WorkLife by Adam Grant. 

Article: 25 Tips for Perfecting your Email Etiquette

Unplanned vs. Scheduled Communication

When it comes to working in virtual teams, it is vital to strike a balance between unplanned and scheduled communication (Kelley & Kelloway, 2012; Ter Hoeven et al., 2016). There are advantages and disadvantages to both. 

Scheduled communication: 

• Advantages: scheduled communication is non-obstructive (Ter Hoeven et al., 2016). It also allows you to get a large group together, preventing the group isolate problem discussed in Part I.
• Disadvantages: if communication is too scheduled, you miss out on spontaneous conversations, idea sharing, and positive interactions that build relationships.

Unplanned communication: 

• Advantages: positive, unplanned communications build relationships and trust (Kelley & Kelloway, 2012). 
• Disadvantages: unpredictable communication can be distracting and an interruption (Spira & Feintuch, 2005; Ter Hoeven et al., 2016).

A combination of scheduled and unplanned communication is required to be perceived by your team as an engaged and effective leader (Kelley & Kelloway, 2012).

Action Items

1. Only use emails for short messages or facts. Email is great for sending the minutes of a meeting, forwarding a project document, or asking to meet. When you see emails going back and forth, it's time to set up a virtual meeting to avoid the complications of email discussed earlier.
2. Moderate virtual meetings. In official meetings, turn off the cameras and ask everyone to mute themselves. Agree on a system for others to indicate when they wish to speak and unmute (many platforms have a ‘hand-raising’ feature). This achieves a few things; 1) no one person can dominate the meeting, 2) it eliminates distracting background noise, and 3) attendees can listen attentively without being distracted by seeing their own face.
3. Manage notifications (and teach your team). Email and messages are great because they allow the sender to pass on information and ideas in the moment. However, they can be distracting for the receiver (Spira & Feintuch, 2005). Here's how to manage notifications on a Mac and PC. Bonus: Mac OS has a "Do Not Disturb" feature. 
4. Create a Slack community (or another chat platform) that feels more casual than email to facilitate asking for help and to provide a channel for unplanned communications.
5. Track your communications. Create a spreadsheet with everyone's names to track the frequency and types of communication that you have. Ensure that you engage in both unplanned and scheduled communication. I use this strategy myself! My Virtual Team Contact Form is below to help you get started.