In a previous post I referenced Bruce Tuckman’s team building model. I have always found it to be a useful way to describe how teams form, and indeed how people start to work together. It’s mostly remembered by the phrase “Forming, Storming, Norming, and Performing” — although Bruce added another step in the process too. The basic gist of the model indicates that there is a natural process that we all adopt. First, we form the team. We establish a team identity and all behave nicely. Then, eventually, storming takes place. In storming, we have to negotiate who does what, and we sometimes test the boundaries of our roles. It’s a natural phase, and one that we hope goes quickly. But it has to take place at some point in the life of a real team. After storming settles down, we “norm” into our team roles. Then we can perform as a team. All this is pretty well know to many HR management effectiveness consultants. It’s good “old-school” lessons that help team work well.
In the new-school era, we face some new challenges. One is distance. We work with people we might never meet, in time zones that are annoying to deal with. Dr. Karen Sobel Lojeski uses the term “virtual distance” and discusses this, and related issues, in her excellent book on virtual workforces. The basic idea is that the “closer” we can make you feel with your co-workers and partners, the better you can work together.
I noticed a related phenomenon about formation time – the time that it takes to create that initial familiarity. When you meet someone new, you go though the Tuckman stages. You are formal, you search for the boundaries, you normalize a relationship, and you work together. Most of us can do this in a very subtle way. This is the way we become familiar with others.
In the world of Twitter, I find something quite cool: When I meet people that I’ve been following — and have been following me — we are already familiar with each other. In a way, we feel like we know a lot about each other. I’ll call it “virtual familiarity”. Do you have a better name for it? Let me know.
Much like the way a high-quality telepresence experience can significantly reduce “virtual distance”, if you follow someone on Twitter (or FriendFeed for that matter), and then meet that person in real life (IRL), you increase virtual familiarity. The result? you start off the conversation very quickly and productively. It’s a wonderful benefit. So, if you are interested in Enterprise 2.0 — follow me on Twitter and let me know who you are. I’ll follow you back. When we work together — it will be very productive. I tweet @gyehuda.
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I think this is an extremely interesting observation, in one of my roles as a manager of a large global institution I am a team leader for a virtual team in completely different time zones, and most of us have never met face to face.
Large institutions move much more slowly when introducing social media technologies (like Twitter), and I think your “virtual familiarity” concept points to a collaboration benefit that senior management seldom considers. I also believe senior management never truly live this concept, as they travel more easily and will have met their own peers mostly face to face.
So far I have segregated my social media identity into “personal” and “professional” modes (Facebook for personal, Linked-in for professional), and I have been resisting having work colleagues in my personal Facebook spaces, but perhaps I should re-consider in order to increase my VFI (Virtual Familiarity Index:)
Which raises a question for me: Accepting that there are benefits in VF, is it a good idea to consolidate professional identity with corporate identity and interests?
Cheers, Juergen
(I tweet @JuergenB, and blog at )
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“is it a good idea to consolidate professional identity with corporate identity and interests?”
Great question, healthy debate. I’ll share my opinion. There are some elements of a person’s personal identity that are not harmonious with a professional identity. The classic topics that most avoid associating themselves with in their professional identity are sex, religion, and politics. So when you are managing your corporate identity, you’ll want to be careful about how people read your “message”. Note: we all have a perspective and opinions on these topics – it’s perfectly OK. But the challenge is in how we present those views. But when it comes to other aspects of your personal identity, such as a hobby or interest (sailing, craftsmanship, music, etc.), these represent great ways to relate to others who might share similar interest — or might simply find you to be more multi-faceted and interesting.
Do you think this is a good way to draw the line?
In general terms, I agree…
However, I would add that it can be more delicate than this, depending on if the the organizational culture supports a holistic view on their employees, has forward looking thinking about work-life balance and is enlightened enough to encourage the blending of corporate vs. personal identity. IMHO the larger the organization, the rarer this is.
It also creates an opportunity: If organizational culture can be moved forward to embrace a more holistic view of their workforce, then it becomes a more fertile breeding ground to introduce social media tools and collaboration metaphors, and reap the more subtle benefits you wrote about, speedier team building, greater “virtual familiarity”, and ultimately a more engaged workforce!
So, I’m sure there are folks working on how best to define the ROI behind increased Virtual Familiarity
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