{"id":40773,"date":"2021-08-03T05:50:18","date_gmt":"2021-08-03T09:50:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/?post_type=emagazine&p=40773"},"modified":"2022-07-27T08:00:31","modified_gmt":"2022-07-27T12:00:31","slug":"remote-team-dynamics","status":"publish","type":"emagazine","link":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/remote-team-dynamics\/40773\/","title":{"rendered":"How leaders can level up a remote-working team’s dynamics"},"content":{"rendered":"

The proliferation of remote working<\/a> has brought many benefits, but how should a leader respond if dynamics in a remote-working team are not quite working?<\/p>\n

Rade Martinovic<\/a>, Team Facilitator and software engineer at internet of things experts Icentic AG<\/a>, explains how remote working altered some of his team dynamics:<\/p>\n

What used to be an interactive all-hands meeting is now a half-day session where we mostly stare at the Notepad software shared on our screens and watch one person write down the sub-tasks. Fatigue kicks in much earlier than when meeting in person.<\/p>\n

Rade Martinovi\u0107, Team Facilitator, Icentic AG<\/p><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cIt takes more effort to keep people engaged. After almost a year working this way, it\u2019s gotten better. I less often feel someone has dozed off or isn\u2019t paying attention.\u201d<\/p>\n\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Kaspersky Own Your Future Report<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

Future of Work research<\/span><\/h3>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/header>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

We asked what 8,000 employees of small-to-medium businesses think about the future of work.<\/p>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t

\n\t\t\t\t\tRead report<\/a>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/article>\n\t\t<\/div>\n\t\n

Considering IT, the distributed workforce needs enhanced support to manage the safety and security of business resources<\/a>. As employees access IT tools from different networks and sometimes personal devices, and asynchronous communication becomes increasingly important, preserving business communication<\/a> and ensuring the availability of critical data \u2013 like partner contracts, email correspondence, or service level agreements \u2013 becomes a top priority.<\/p>\n

One way to address these challenges and help a remote team flourish might come from an unexpected place: 20th-century Canadian psychiatrist Eric Berne, famed for his pioneering transactional analysis<\/a> theory. Berne also took on how groups work together in his seminal book, The Structure and Dynamics of Organizations and Groups<\/a>. Exploring the relationships between an organization\u2019s members, known as organization dynamics, many team leaders in tech have found his ideas effective in improving their team\u2019s communication, creativity and efficiency.<\/p>\n

Organizational boundaries: Seeds of team structure<\/h2>\n

The main pillars of organization dynamics are boundaries, defined as limits or edges of ourselves which protect our integrity. These boundaries determine expectations, accountability and responsibility of all parts of the organization, ensuring common standards across the board. In turn, these standards determine workplace communication \u2013 crucial for efficient remote work.<\/p>\n

Berne says three types of boundaries underlie groups: Major internal, minor internal and major external boundaries.<\/p>\n

At team level, the major internal boundary is between the team leader and team members. The major external boundary separates one team from the company\u2019s other teams. Finally, the minor internal boundary separates each team member from their peers. Berne thinks managers can understand relationships that happen at each communication point by examining each boundary.<\/p>\n

Open or closed boundaries<\/h2>\n

Each boundary is permeable and can be closed or open. A closed boundary is impossible to cross over once the group is formed. Berne gives an example of alumni of a university class. On the other hand, an open boundary is one anyone can cross at any time, for example, in a volunteering organization.<\/p>\n

What happens at each of these boundaries defines the team culture and shapes the way remote teams work. By understanding these boundaries, team leads can find reasons for poor internal communication, lack of engagement or weak results and solve these problems.<\/p>\n

What does this look like in real-life teams?<\/h2>\n

Anja Radoi\u010di\u0107 Vu\u010di\u0107evi\u0107<\/a>, Serbia-based software engineer and organizational coach, recommends assessing the group\u2019s dynamics rather than its structure, then incorporating individual team members\u2019 needs into an overall action plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe should always first consider whether boundaries are in the right place, whether agreements between all participants are clear and whether everyone in the team respects these agreements.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn any group, including remote teams, the group is not self-sustaining: It doesn\u2019t exist without interaction with the external environment. If we consider the pressure from the environment onto the system, the team can address it by opening or closing the boundary.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen the external boundary is open, the team can react quickly to market events or requirements from others, but they\u2019re also greatly influenced by external requirements. This can be a prelude to becoming reactive and endangering team identity.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor remote teams, the main source of challenges may lie in addressing the two internal boundaries \u2014 major internal and minor internal. For the major internal boundary, consider how team leaders direct employees and how consistent they are in their decisions. On the other hand, team members may pressure team leaders to manage projects one way or another \u2013 what we call \u2018agitation.\u2019<\/p>\n

Radoi\u010di\u0107 discusses how leaders can respond to agitation. \u201cWhen team leaders address agitation by opening the boundary too much, there\u2019s too much delegation without the leader participating. This happens, for example, when a leader is disinterested or insecure, not wanting to take responsibility. Team members begin to feel left to fend for themselves. If this boundary is too closed, there\u2019s too much control or micromanagement, waiting for approval for minor requests, which leads to a lack of trust and responsibility among employees.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fine-tuning boundaries between team members<\/h2>\n

Radoi\u010di\u0107 says collaboration and innovation happen around the boundaries between team members. For a team to cooperate effectively on projects, especially when working remotely, these boundaries must have the right amount of flexibility and transparency.<\/p>\n

When the boundary between team members becomes too open, it may be unclear who is responsible for which part of the project. If too many people are responsible for a job, no one is responsible. <\/p>\n

Anja Radoi\u010di\u0107 Vu\u010di\u0107evi\u0107, software engineer and organizational coach<\/p><\/cite><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cAnd if this boundary is wide open, there may be too many interdependencies between team members.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf this boundary is closed, team members have independence in their work, but reduced cooperation. Relations are strained and formal, and people don\u2019t feel they belong to the same group. They might end up separately building the same solution to the same problem. With remote work, there\u2019s greater need to strike a balance and keep everyone in the loop while giving enough flexibility for team members to be productive and engaged.\u201d<\/p>\n

Putting healthy team dynamics into practice<\/h2>\n

Martinovi\u0107 finds when managing engineering teams, team dynamics are crucial for improving productivity. \u201cTeams come to be through interactions between people, communication, responding to events and all the little things.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor established teams like mine, when the pandemic erupted, not much changed. Our team had an advantage because we supported each other, professionally and personally. The team dynamics continued online without much change, and people continued with their work.\u201d<\/p>\n

As a manager, how can you translate theory into practice and establish boundaries in the right place?<\/p>\n

Radoi\u010di\u0107 suggests team leaders work with remote employees to identify what restricts boundaries, coming to a mutual understanding of what needs to improve.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s a set of questions to help decipher the team\u2019s degree of control and delegation.<\/p>\n

For control, Radoi\u010di\u0107 suggests identifying the degree of autonomy team members have in critical and non-critical tasks. Must team members ask for permission to change a process that\u2019s not business-critical? Do managers fear delegating tasks? Look at how fit-for-purpose task definitions are, if employees have enough resources to complete tasks independently and if leaders feel insecure or shy away from performing tasks.<\/p>\n

To understand dynamics between team members, Radoi\u010di\u0107 recommends finding out how team members see their roles and responsibilities and what they expect of their peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile analyzing this internal boundary, it\u2019s good to understand whether team members help each other out, share knowledge and ideas, or if they tend to keep information to themselves. If the boundary becomes too wide open, team members end up waiting on each other, which clogs internal workflows and reduces efficiency. So it\u2019s crucial to see where each of these boundaries are, then get ideas from the team to set the boundaries right, so they work for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n

Structuring remote teams in sustainable ways<\/h2>\n

Radoi\u010di\u0107 believes healthy teams have clear and firmly defined structures and boundaries everyone respects. \u201cSetting boundaries stabilizes processes and makes activities effective. Some people tell me introducing processes withers creativity. But processes are not an end in themselves \u2013 \u00a0there should be only as many as are needed to make a framework within which people can be creative.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe other extreme, with no processes, leads to chaos where little actual work gets done. We have to establish a framework for work to happen, but leave freedom for ideas to bubble up and be tested.\u201d<\/p>\n

Martinovi\u0107 brings us back to transparency. \u201cI feel fortunate we work in an environment where we\u2019re transparent about our work, and the management didn\u2019t try to add more means of controlling people, measuring their work or significantly changing our established process.\u201d<\/p>\n

Before boundaries can be set to last, remote teams need to unravel together where these boundaries lie for them. It\u2019s in the mutual answering of these questions and frank discussions that remote teams can find a set-up that works long-term.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Understanding the psychology of group dynamics has much to offer when managing remote-working teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2667,"featured_media":40774,"template":"","coauthors":[4166],"class_list":{"0":"post-40773","1":"emagazine","2":"type-emagazine","3":"status-publish","4":"has-post-thumbnail","6":"emagazine-category-leadership","7":"emagazine-tag-psychology","8":"emagazine-tag-teams"},"hreflang":[{"hreflang":"x-default","url":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/remote-team-dynamics\/40773\/"},{"hreflang":"en-us","url":"https:\/\/usa.kaspersky.com\/blog\/secure-futures-magazine\/remote-team-dynamics\/25121\/"}],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine\/40773","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/emagazine"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/emagazine"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2667"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/40774"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40773"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kaspersky.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=40773"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}