Feeling a bit stretched lately? We all are as we frequently find ourselves on international virtual teams that stretch our work across time zones and cultures. Increasingly, the foundational work unit in today’s organizations is the virtual team, and it has gone global.

A virtual team is defined as “a group of people who interact through interdependent tasks guided by a common purpose.” It crosses “space, time and organizational boundaries with links strengthened by webs of communication technologies.” (Virtual Teams, by Lipnack and Stamps). Just as technology has enabled product and services markets to go global, it has also done so with both internal and external labor markets. Via global virtual teams, organizations have access to scarce talent anywhere in the world. This certainly is a good thing, but it does have its challenges.

As consultants that get derailed projects back on track, we frequently help get our clients resolve the difficulties that both internationalization and virtualization present. In the next three articles, we’ll review quick tips and real examples for improving global virtual team performance. And successful project outcomes all begin with a strong foundation of trust and communications.

• Build trust

According Patrick Lencioni’s The Trouble with Teamwork, the top team dysfunction is an absence of trust. Trust can manifest itself in many ways. For virtual teams, however, trust lives at the task not interpersonal level. It is critical that trust is established through performance consistency and rapid response to team members’ emails, requests for information and completing tasks. Build a culture of trust by clearly defining roles, responsibilities and communication expectations, and hold the team accountable to them. More quick tips on managing communication expectations below.

• Set strong guidelines around communication

Within the project team, establish communications guidelines and expectations around response times for voicemails and emails. In a recent client project performance improvement engagement, establishing a 24 hour response time was a simple but important change. With staggered time zones, missing that turn around window can actually set the response time back two days or more, and deadlines were being missed.

Build the sense of team, empower communication and codify these response time rules with a project roster or contact sheet. It should list the basics such as name, title, project responsibility, back up contact, FedEx addresses and fax numbers. Go beyond that by including normal working hours, accessibility hours, national holidays and vacations. With telephone numbers and email addresses, include how often they are checked and responded to. Adopt protocols for senders taking responsibility for prioritizing communication (urgent, FYI, action required, etc.). List any special knowledge and tool proficiency the team member has. Some include appropriate personal information such as photos and hobbies to help the team get to know each other as people and not just digital work units.