世聯(lián)翻譯公司完成遠(yuǎn)程團(tuán)隊(duì)共享信息課題英文翻譯

One of the biggest hazards of remote teams is that information isn’t distributed evenly. That person in the Dallas office knows the answer to the question the person in Bangalore is asking but the questions don’t get asked for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes this is the result of bad team dynamics, but it happens on even the most highly-functioning teams. Here are some scientific reasons why.

According to research shared on the UK-based Psyblog, there are three main reasons teams don’t share information. Four, if you count “I hate you and want you to crash and burn” but we won’t go there today.

Here are those three reasons and how managers can help their teams share information better:

• Memory is a shaky thing. Generally, people remember shared information better than information they pick up on their own. Let’s face it, if three people remember something, it’s more likely to come up in a meeting — surly someone will remember if you don’t. The problem is, that we don’t trust our own memories and might not mention something because no one else seems to remember it that way. Tech tools allow us to simply archive important information for easy reference. Shared file sites like Sharepoint, Google Docs and others make good common references to check information. You can also store recordings of conference calls and quick summaries of action items so no one conveniently forgets when that report is due. 

• Pre-judgements and assumptions get in the way. A major reason people don’t share information is they don’t think they have to share it. While it might be a good thing to give people the benefit of the doubt, often people don’t know (or can’t immediately recall) a specific piece of information. One challenge with remote teams is that not everyone has a shared experience: team members come and go so one person might remember a conversation or a piece of data from early in the project someone else might not be privy to.  One important role of a leader is to regularly check assumptions and explicitly challenge those things “everyone knows”. Also new team members should be mentored by people other than the official leader. This will lead to casual conversations where shared memories are more likely to be imparted through stories (which is a nicer word than gossip). 

• Anxiety and stress are part of the job. Many of us would recall and share information more readily if we weren’t so stressed out. It’s hard to think clearly when your amygdala is screaming warning signals in your brain. If the meeting is long and boring, and all you can think about is getting back to your “real” work, you will miss the signals that someone else on the team has faulty or missing intelligence. Additionally, we don’t want to cause trouble, so if someone’s recollection of an event is different from ours we often defer to that other person. It sounds trivial, but no one wants to the person who keeps that painful teleconference going one second longer than it has to. Build challenges or questions into the agenda and keep to schedules so that discussion is part of the timetable. Well-run webmeetings and teleconferences encourage discussion and sharing of information as well as create an environment where people learn to give even uncomfortable feedback in a way that doesn’t stifle the discussion or make people afraid that the “other kids” won’t like them anymore. 

As a leader, you need to help create a team environment where people capture information easily, share it proactively and challenge faulty memories and assumptions about who knows what.