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The digital age is not without conflict. Online bullying, keyboard courage, and a new level of passive aggressive behavior all have brought new challenges to humans interacting digitally.
But what about in business?
Not seeing each other everyday should grease the wheels of social collaboration and reduce conflict, right? But in reality, it may have just created new types of conflict in virtual teams.
So what do you do as a manager or leader?
As in most issues of a digital workplace, we are still discovering the answers. Identifying the types of conflict in virtual teams, its avenues, and how it slips through the cracks are half the battle. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the root of the issue: culture, transparency, and either precautionary or reactionary measures.
Digital workplaces can be fantastic. Just because the conflict is new doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to spot it and avoid it on your teams.
What are the root causes of the various types of conflict in virtual teams?
Ideally, your virtual team is free from bias, differing opinions, or any other type of conflict. It’s a digital utopia led by you as the fearless leader. But who are we kidding? We’re the same people we’ve always been and just switching to digital doesn’t change our propensity to create and seek out conflict.
A lot of the types of conflict on virtual teams comes back to what you’re not doing, rather than your current actions.
Lack of transparency
You don’t have to divulge every single secret, organizational move, or business idea to facilitate transparency in the workplace. However, there is a litany of opportunities to discuss business matters and open the doors of communication with your employees.
Inclusion is an overused buzzword, but in today’s business world, it’s essential to recognize. When you’re inclusive of everyone in your company, you can reap what you sow. That is to say, you can provide the inner teachings that dissect conflict and provide a forum for discussion.
If you’re lacking transparency, expect your employees to do the same. When one person rubs another the wrong way, this can blow up in indescribable ways. Where there’s clarity, there’s peace.
The limited fidelity of text communication
Emojis dominate the world from the office to dating apps. Yet within the context of apps and text lies a greater worry: misconception.
This is one of the greater worries of the virtual leader. When you send a message on Slack, do your employees perceive a joking manner? A serious manner? Or somewhere in between?
And that’s just your messages. Within departments or between departments, not everyone has the same humor or feelings. A joke could come off as sexist, racist, or distasteful. Even posting dog pictures to a person that doesn’t love dogs might be off-putting.
In a world where the thick-skinned have turned to ultra-thin, you have to play mediator, disciplinarian, or arbitrator. Fidelity of media is one of the core communication challenges in a remote team, and one that you need to discuss openly.
Lack of ground rules
When you send a colleague an email, how long is it before you should follow up? At what point does it become irresponsible? What if it’s a phone call or a Slack message? Is it ok to call someone after working hours?
Most work teams leapt into digital spaces without any ground rules for how they would use the space. More accurately, everyone had their own set of rules. So, one person expects immediate responses while someone else will reply when they remember to. Some agree to stop using email for internal communication, but keep sending them when it’s convenient.
A lack of shared ground rules and working agreements creates a lot of conflict on virtual teams.
Types of conflict on virtual teams
The types of conflict on virtual teams will vary by how big your company is and what rules you’ve set in place. But beware the personality types that breed conflict within your company.
Passive-aggression
Ah, the passive-aggressive personality. The odd thing about the digital workplace is that this person may or may not be passive-aggressive in real life. But one thing’s for sure: they don’t know how to make the right comments or ask the right questions.
The tendencies of the passive-aggressive type of conflict of virtual teams brood through frustration and lack of clarity. Make sure to be direct and open. This will curb the comments that can affect people both in business and personally
Ghost teammates
Ghosting has become extremely common in both the social and business world. While you expect to be ignored when sending outbound emails occasionally, it stings differently when your own teammates don’t reply to requests for comments.
This type of conflict in virtual teams creates frustration both in terms of productivity and communication.
Conflicting priorities
Digital teams can reduce down to siloes pretty quickly. Everyone has their own objectives and if you don’t connect often to recalibrate, it’s easy to see conflict brewing. People see their projects as the most important and expect everyone to agree.
Team leaders have to create a shared sense of priority. Everyone on the team needs to know where they need to chip in and whose work impacts everyone else.
Lack of information
Another huge part of conflict is the lack of informational flow. If a team member doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, it can send the same idea to other people. Eventually, all work comes grinding to a halt.
And that’s where transparency and communication comes in. You, quite literally, cannot have conflict of work when everyone knows exactly what they should be doing. Make directions and objectives clear. Post them where everyone can see them. Follow up. This should disintegrate the idea that a lack of information is an acceptable form to be combative to others.
Conflict begins and ends with you
In-office teams can carry a certain amount of conflict on their own. The social connections throughout the day often make it easier to balance things out. But in digital teams, those spontaneous interactions don’t happen as much and people have all day long to stew and build up steam about things that caused conflict.
As a leader of a digital team, you need to be much more proactive. You can’t just assume that things will work out on their own as they might in an office.
Build more transparency. Establish shared priorities. Create shared ground rules for communication.
When you sense conflict, ask people to handle it in higher fidelity media like video calls, phone calls, or in person.
Conflict will certainly happen in a digital workplace just like in offices, but leaders have much more responsibility to address it quickly.
The digital age is not without conflict. Online bullying, keyboard courage, and a new level of passive aggressive behavior all have brought new challenges to humans interacting digitally.
But what about in business?
Not seeing each other everyday should grease the wheels of social collaboration and reduce conflict, right? But in reality, it may have just created new types of conflict in virtual teams.
So what do you do as a manager or leader?
As in most issues of a digital workplace, we are still discovering the answers. Identifying the types of conflict in virtual teams, its avenues, and how it slips through the cracks are half the battle. But at the end of the day, it comes down to the root of the issue: culture, transparency, and either precautionary or reactionary measures.
Digital workplaces can be fantastic. Just because the conflict is new doesn’t mean you can’t learn how to spot it and avoid it on your teams.
What are the root causes of the various types of conflict in virtual teams?
Ideally, your virtual team is free from bias, differing opinions, or any other type of conflict. It’s a digital utopia led by you as the fearless leader. But who are we kidding? We’re the same people we’ve always been and just switching to digital doesn’t change our propensity to create and seek out conflict.
A lot of the types of conflict on virtual teams comes back to what you’re not doing, rather than your current actions.
Lack of transparency
You don’t have to divulge every single secret, organizational move, or business idea to facilitate transparency in the workplace. However, there is a litany of opportunities to discuss business matters and open the doors of communication with your employees.
Inclusion is an overused buzzword, but in today’s business world, it’s essential to recognize. When you’re inclusive of everyone in your company, you can reap what you sow. That is to say, you can provide the inner teachings that dissect conflict and provide a forum for discussion.
If you’re lacking transparency, expect your employees to do the same. When one person rubs another the wrong way, this can blow up in indescribable ways. Where there’s clarity, there’s peace.
The limited fidelity of text communication
Emojis dominate the world from the office to dating apps. Yet within the context of apps and text lies a greater worry: misconception.
This is one of the greater worries of the virtual leader. When you send a message on Slack, do your employees perceive a joking manner? A serious manner? Or somewhere in between?
And that’s just your messages. Within departments or between departments, not everyone has the same humor or feelings. A joke could come off as sexist, racist, or distasteful. Even posting dog pictures to a person that doesn’t love dogs might be off-putting.
In a world where the thick-skinned have turned to ultra-thin, you have to play mediator, disciplinarian, or arbitrator. Fidelity of media is one of the core communication challenges in a remote team, and one that you need to discuss openly.
Lack of ground rules
When you send a colleague an email, how long is it before you should follow up? At what point does it become irresponsible? What if it’s a phone call or a Slack message? Is it ok to call someone after working hours?
Most work teams leapt into digital spaces without any ground rules for how they would use the space. More accurately, everyone had their own set of rules. So, one person expects immediate responses while someone else will reply when they remember to. Some agree to stop using email for internal communication, but keep sending them when it’s convenient.
A lack of shared ground rules and working agreements creates a lot of conflict on virtual teams.
Types of conflict on virtual teams
The types of conflict on virtual teams will vary by how big your company is and what rules you’ve set in place. But beware the personality types that breed conflict within your company.
Passive-aggression
Ah, the passive-aggressive personality. The odd thing about the digital workplace is that this person may or may not be passive-aggressive in real life. But one thing’s for sure: they don’t know how to make the right comments or ask the right questions.
The tendencies of the passive-aggressive type of conflict of virtual teams brood through frustration and lack of clarity. Make sure to be direct and open. This will curb the comments that can affect people both in business and personally
Ghost teammates
Ghosting has become extremely common in both the social and business world. While you expect to be ignored when sending outbound emails occasionally, it stings differently when your own teammates don’t reply to requests for comments.
This type of conflict in virtual teams creates frustration both in terms of productivity and communication.
Conflicting priorities
Digital teams can reduce down to siloes pretty quickly. Everyone has their own objectives and if you don’t connect often to recalibrate, it’s easy to see conflict brewing. People see their projects as the most important and expect everyone to agree.
Team leaders have to create a shared sense of priority. Everyone on the team needs to know where they need to chip in and whose work impacts everyone else.
Lack of information
Another huge part of conflict is the lack of informational flow. If a team member doesn’t know what they’re supposed to be doing, it can send the same idea to other people. Eventually, all work comes grinding to a halt.
And that’s where transparency and communication comes in. You, quite literally, cannot have conflict of work when everyone knows exactly what they should be doing. Make directions and objectives clear. Post them where everyone can see them. Follow up. This should disintegrate the idea that a lack of information is an acceptable form to be combative to others.
Conflict begins and ends with you
In-office teams can carry a certain amount of conflict on their own. The social connections throughout the day often make it easier to balance things out. But in digital teams, those spontaneous interactions don’t happen as much and people have all day long to stew and build up steam about things that caused conflict.
As a leader of a digital team, you need to be much more proactive. You can’t just assume that things will work out on their own as they might in an office.
Build more transparency. Establish shared priorities. Create shared ground rules for communication.
When you sense conflict, ask people to handle it in higher fidelity media like video calls, phone calls, or in person.
Conflict will certainly happen in a digital workplace just like in offices, but leaders have much more responsibility to address it quickly.
