When consulting spatially or organizationally distributed business units, matrix teams or project teams, we are always confronted with the phenomenon of distance. The goal of our consulting work is to ensure and improve productivity and job satisfaction of these team constellations. Deficits experienced in this respect are often attributed at least to some extent to the perceived distance among the members of a given organizational unit.
By Hans Gärtner, Stephan Dohrn (Radical Inclusion) and Udo Kronshage (osb international systemic consulting)
In our blog post about the “New Normal” we already addressed the form of cooperation, which mainly takes place via virtual tools, as an essential factor.
Virtual collaboration offers less communicative bandwidth …
Even at first glance virtual collaboration and distance are closely correlated. The new forms of work all rely on technology for communication. This applies to oral communication as well as to the written transmission of content. The communication channel via technology is “thinner” than the face-to-face channel that feels “thicker”. That is why technical media make us feel socially distanced. During the collaboration via virtual media, we are usually also locally separated from our communication partners. We also subsume this actual local separation under distance.
… but technical media also allow for a density of cooperation that was previously unfeasible!
On the other hand: working with technical media is a prerequisite for some forms of cooperation that had not been possible via the so-called analogue route. In many organizations*, teams that are distributed over large distances are now part of everyday life, and forms of cooperation are becoming increasingly differentiated. Organizational boundaries are becoming more permeable. The virtual settings associated with these new forms of cooperation are sometimes seen as more, sometimes as less conducive to the completion of the tasks a team has to perform.
The COVID-19 induced division of teams results in additional virtualization of teams.
In the current situation, distributed team situations arise at one and the same location. One part of employees is in the office and the other part of the same team is working from home. And this in alternating fashion. For many, this constitutes a completely new experience of distributed work. Even in this case, staff perceive a distance and describe it as: “Somehow the contact gets lost”, “I feel lonely sometimes”, “I have the feeling I don’t get everything anymore”.
Effective collaboration requires a common context.
Without a sense of belonging, it is impossible to work together towards the same goal. If there is no basic trust, misunderstandings arise more quickly and have more damaging consequences. When collaboration suffers, productivity and satisfaction decrease. When this happens, the distance within the team increases even more. A vicious circle emerges. Yet how do you break such dynamics?
Before taking action to overcome the distance in a distributed work situation, it is worth taking a closer look at the distance phenomenon. This is what we intend to do in this article.
Experiencing distance draws from different sources!
In consulting, we use the terminology of a model coined by Karen Sobel Lojeski, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer of Virtual Distance International and Richard R. Reilly, Ph.D., Professor, Howe School of Management, Stevens Institute of Technology. The authors use the term “virtual distance” and define it as “…the perceived distance between two or more individuals, groups, or organizations that is brought on by the persistent and pervasive use of electronic versus face-to-face communications”.
The description of the perceived distance is important in this definition! One might, subjectively, feel little distance to a communication partner, even over longer periods of time without contact or greater geographical distances. It all depends on the sources that feed one’ s own view of the given distance, i.e. the distance we feel in situations of virtual collaboration. This perceived distance often correlates with the problems we experience in our work practice. The greater the perceived distance, the more problems a team experiences due to misunderstandings, unclear roles, interpersonal and intercultural conflicts.
11 Different factors that help to understand how we experience distance!
According to that model, we distinguish 3 dimensions comprising a total of 11 individual factors that have a particularly strong influence on the experience of distance: The physical distance, the operational distance and affinity. The physical distance is the obvious one, which you immediately think of when you hear the word distance. The operational distance factors imply concrete characteristics of work situations that are related to the design of work processes and the use of technical possibilities. The least evident factors are those that have to do with the way people interact with each other (affinity distance). However, these have the greatest influence on how a team experiences virtual distance and they are more difficult to modify than the first two dimensions.
The overall distance results from the combination of all these factors. The greater this distance, the more difficult it is to process tasks. There is no blueprint to solve all kinds of distance problems. Most virtual teams are too different in their internal structure to allow for that. And there are no quick fixes that one might wish for. A certain amount of diagnostic effort is required. The differentiated evaluation of various factors allows you to plan measures for improvement in a more targeted manner.
The most important thing is to expose the “elephant in the room” which creates or increases distance. Our consultation work begins with a diagnosis in which we address the individual distance factors of all three dimensions, roughly quantifying them and then discussing the views and interpretations that each member of the unit has.
The joint interactive reflection of the individuals’ assessments is the greatest benefit of this model; quantifying these distance factors merely serves to provide a quicker overview.
Let us now examine the three dimensions and their associated factors in detail. While the combination of all three dimensions – physical, operational and affinity – have a major impact on the success of collaboration, each dimension does not create a major virtual distance on its own. Their effects on the performance of a team or an organization are aggregated according to the “formula”: virtual distance = physical distance + operative distance + affinity distance.
Physical Distance
Physical distance includes all factors that are based on actual geographic, temporal or structural distance.
Geographic distance refers to the degree of physical distance among members of a collaborating team. This statement seems trivial at first: The greater the distance, the more people experience this distance. The greater the distance, the less likely it is that physical contact will occur. Increased distances (across countries or continents) are usually associated with other factors that also play a role in the distance model, such as cultural differences.
However, the distribution of team members is also important in determining the geographic distance. Are all team members scattered over different locations, or is there an accumulation of members at one location with individual satellite members at dispersed locations?
What is the effect of geographic distance? The main problem is that our familiar social skills cannot be relied upon in the perception of communication, because not all senses can participate in communication. Especially when it comes to recognizing your counterpart’s intentions, we experience communication via technical media as insufficient. This leads to a general uneasiness in the communication situation. The good news is: The negative impact of geographic distance can be compensated by solving problems caused by other distance factors.
Temporal distance describes the degree to which team members are separated by time zone differences or different working hours. Let’s again start with the obvious first: If team members work in different time zones, it is easy to understand the feeling of distance. If this distance covers continents and if time zone differences of 4 hours and more are the norm, the amount of overlapping office hours is relatively small. Moreover, if one team member is in – let’s say – India, and the rest of the team is located in the US, the partners experience significantly different biorhythms when they meet. One of them is just about to finish work, while the other one has just had his morning coffee at his desk. People can fairly easily compensate for this in their normal day-to-day business or when solving simple problems, but for more complex tasks or serious problems, handling can be significantly delayed once the time for synchronous contact is very limited.
Overall, temporal distance is a challenge for the coordination of work processes, and it is more difficult to establish a predictable rhythm in work processes.
Organizational distance describes the degree to which all team members belong to the same organization or organizational unit in contrast to a team made up of members from different organizational units. Organizations create togetherness among their members, because they are subject to certain rules and practices that are specific to the organization. Inner circles can develop, with other team members being considered as “outsiders”. Reward and sanction mechanisms are the same within an organizational unit. Matrix organizations or teams consisting of headquarter members working together with colleagues from country organizations are a recurring example of these difficulties. The larger the number of different reporting lines represented in a team, the greater the virtual distance.
In summary, it can be said that organizational distance arises from the differences in formalized organizational affiliation. The challenge here is to strengthen a sense of team unity and joint perception of values and goals.
Operational Distance
Operational distance encompasses the communicative distances that increase due to everyday problems in the work processes. In contrast to the physical distance, operational distance is more “fluid”. It describes the varying communication problems of everyday operations that can lead to feelings of not being properly in touch with one’ s counterpart. These problems can be technical problems, problems of workload or a feeling of not having an equal share in a given conversation compared to other members of the organization.
Team size. How often can the team meet face-to-face? Or is it always only possible to meet virtually? Do members of the team often meet face-to-face and are others always only virtually connected? These conditions affect the communication distance. A great communication distance in the team is the result of having experienced a greater number of less meaningful communication situations. Whenever there is no common physical space and people communicate from different settings – some face-to-face, others virtually – it hinders the development of a common context. In such a situation, communication gaps between team members are often not attributed to factual causes, but rather attributed to a (distant) person who, for example, has apparently “misunderstood” an e-mail to which the wrong answer was given, or is “not sufficiently competent”. Communication distance is also impacted by the size of the virtual team. In the virtual context, we see step functions in the number of team members: 5-7, 12-15, and over 15. The larger the team, the less likely it is to engage in an intensive personal exchange and develop a common context.
Face-to-face describes the team members’ access to resources of the organization or opportunity to be closer to the center of power which they perceive as being unequal. Parts of the team meet regularly in face-to-face meetings, while others rely solely on virtual communication in their teamwork. This can apply to the entire collaboration in a project or to the type of contact possibilities at important interfaces. Employees* at headquarters may be closer to important information than the team’s satellite members. On the other hand, however, they are stuck in a particular headquarter’s perspective as a result of their constant proximity. Both aspects create virtual distance in the overall team perception.
Multitasking addresses the question to which extent all team members can fully concentrate on their joint work and cooperation or whether they also have to operate in several other contexts and therefore have to share their attention and sense of responsibility.
Technical skill and support describes the team members’ ability to have tools and platforms available for collaboration and to work with them safely and without stress. Since technical problems always occur, tools are constantly updated and the virtual work environment is subject to constant changes, it is also important to assess the extent to which technical support is quickly available. In a nutshell: How much at ease are your team members in this virtual work environment?
Affinity Distance
Affinity distance encompasses the emotional disconnection among members of virtual teams, which is caused by a lack of fundamental relationship development.
A lack of affinity arises when we fail to establish personal relationships with team members that meet our social needs. Once this distance dimension is very pronounced, a powerful wall is created that prevents effective collaboration. Affinity is the most impactful of the three distance dimensions. If it is extensive, there is no reason for the individual to participate in something in common and the commitment is lost. Team members cannot be “motivated” from outside. On the other hand, if the affinity distance in the team can be reduced, the sense of distance in the other dimensions, especially the physical distance, decreases as well.
Cultural distance describes the diversity in a team, that is the extent to which team members share the same values and communication styles. Cultural distance is more likely to occur in teams with members from different national cultures or professional backgrounds or different locations of one and same organization. They differ in terms of deep-seated moral values (“what is right, what is wrong”), working styles and personal internalized values/views of the world. Differences in values also bear the risk of conflicts escalating more quickly if these are addressed openly, and at the same time they tend to increase the distance if they are tabooed. Here, a good moderation of how to deal with the differences is the challenge.
Interdependence distance describes the extent to which each team member’s own success depends on the success of the entire team or whether one’s own performance is measured in other contexts. Higher distance values are very typical in matrix organizations where the team consists of members whose superiors are line managers who themselves are not part of the team hierarchy.
Relationship distance describes the degree to which team members already know some other team members from previous work contexts or are personally well known or friends with others. This creates different circles in teams with varying degrees of closeness and distance. The more such circles there are, the higher the degree of virtual total distance (with, at the same time, closeness within the circles).
Social distance describes the influence that the formal role of a team member has in the organization or the contribution that a team member makes to the team’s success or how he or she makes an effort in the team and is acknowledged for it. In virtual teams, it is often wrongly assumed that all team members have the same status in comparison to a face-to-face context. The perception is that members are collaborating as colleagues with hierarchies moving to the background. Social differences are not that easily visible in the virtual platform, but they do exist. An additional complicating factor is the fact that international teams rely on a common language (usually English) and that linguistic capabilities are not necessarily in line with the normal title or status hierarchy. In practical work, this affects the individual players’ possibilities to influence the team.
The view is sharpened!
So much for the differentiated description of the dimensions and factors that contribute to virtual distance in teams and organizational units. We wanted to illustrate that there are many influencing factors in the practical work of virtual teams.
In doing so, we emphasize again and again that there is no simple equation like “less distance = more efficiency”! We have to distinguish between the two factors, distance and diversity or variance. Striking a balance between “too much” – “appropriate” and “too little” has often been studied in teams on the topic of “diversity”, but this also applies to many other factors such as “personal proximity” or “temporal distance”.
Most of the time we are not aware of the variety of influences on successful virtual collaboration, which is particularly true if communication partners or team members never meet in person. But the distance factors are powerful and worth discussing in a team.
In one of the next articles in our series on distance and productivity, we will show you how we specifically apply this model in our consulting work.
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*Communication technology has become a “game changer”! Therein lies the crucial aspect of innovation. A look back in time: Even in earlier times, even before electrification, there were cross-spatial structures, cooperations across geographical distances, and “teams”. However, their way of acting in a coordinated way was based on shared principles, predefined goals, and fixed, non-negotiable roles and rules. As this basis had been fixed, trading companies, for example, were still able to act in a coordinated, goal-oriented and thus successful manner over long distances even though they only sporadically exchanged information (letters, dispatches).