Ralph Poole has been asking for some public comment to his good post about best practices to enable globally dispersed virtual teams.

As he rightly points his focus to communication and interaction approaches that facilitate more effective online teamwork, I am contributing my humble views and much approval on many of Ralph's good points.

Ralph writes: "Global competition requires the use of web-based collaboration tools to coordinate the work of distributed teams.

Because work gets done at different times, in different places, it needs to be coordinated via tools that easily facilitate the presentation of work in process and promotes the visibility of issues.

Working virtually with a team that you rarely, if ever see, is becoming a frequent event in projects or organizations that need to deal with lots of information (and tell me who is not)."

Even teams of people that operate within the same physical space find that the use of shared document libraries, threaded discussions, group calendars, task lists and archived company communications makes working together more productive.

But despite the obstacles of distance and time, there are also some powerful practices that teams can use that make their collaborative work more effective.

1) Set clear objectives and communicate the objectives to the entire team.

Communicate verbally, with PowerPoint slides, let the team ask questions and push back on the assumptions and the objectives. Have a note taker record as much of the meeting as possible, noting objections and points that are not clear or require more research. Post all materials discussed in the meeting to a shared workspace. Prepare a list of assignments with a description of the problem that need to be solved. Set a specific date for a follow-up discussion.

Get the objectives to be selected and identified by the true stakeholders of this team. The roots. Collaboration is all about getting everyone involved. So if you keep using command and control and a top-down architecture while adopting collaborative technologies you are only going to frustrate yourself.

2) Agree on a set of group norms in a facilitated session.

Everyone needs to express how they feel about working electronically. During each meeting there needs to be a process check about how the team is doing using this new mode of work. At the end of every meeting, make a point of asking each individual if they thought the time was productive and if they have any improvement ideas. Each person must respond with feedback.

Right on with this one. Great point, rarely seen put in action.

3) Be patient with people who don't speak English.

Make sure that all points are understood. Ask people on the team to summarize what they think they have heard so that you can check for misunderstandings and clarify points immediately. Make it a norm that people can stop and ask for clarification.

Asking for others to summarize in their own terms what they have understood is always an effective communication skill. Making a norm that people can stop and ask for clarification is also good though it is best that technology mediates this rather than reversing to classical interruptions, which over time, could tear down the overall team flow. Instead, the use of a parallel communication channel like a private text chat area or a non public VoIP room can help those who need particular assistance to be helped without needing to affect negatively the larger group.

4) Communicate much more frequently to a virtual team than to a co-located team.

At a minimum, schedule one long meeting each week, where each individual can talk about their work and can ask questions. Team members need to be prepared for meetings and submit their status reports or work summaries on time. This meeting happens no matter what. If one person can't attend they can send a proxy, but everyone is always represented. You must be very direct on this point. Do process checks to make sure that everyone is listening and onboard.

How true. I can't stress enough how this aspect really is, as distant teams need more than any physical counterpart the need to meet, familiarize themselves with the topics, partners and issues at stake. Expecting that the same amount of time that would be normally devoted to physical meetings can be translated into corresponding virtual meeting time is unrealistic. Results of short and rare online meetings is that participants hardly know each other, there is much more difficulty in getting deep into topics and it seems that everyone is just not as focused and "on" the topic as when doing the same in a physical space.

Multiple short and focused meetings can greatly enhance virtual teams abilities to bond and to get enough idea exchange to motivate all team members. Long and far apart online meetings only dilute and weaken the strength and collaboration opportunities that can be built online.

5) Do fun things that help the team learn about each other.

One time at the start of a virtual team project. Each location introduced themselves and their office mates via video. They also took pictures out their window and discussed their work life. One of the team members did a simple editing job to combine all the taped interviews. It was shown at each locations team meeting during a predetermined week. Everyone felt very good about meeting their team members around the world.

Fun is positively a needed element of collaboration and learning so I am all for it. My advice is going for more direct engagement of all virtual participants in ways that allows them to have fun while doing something useful at the same time. One good evolution of the presentation section at the beginning of any virtual meeting is to pair participants and to require each member of the pair to introduce the other one. Pairs are given a few minutes to meet in breakout rooms and to introduce themselves to each other. The approach guarantees that at least a few people get to familiarize themselves quite deeply with other ones, while guaranteeing that the delivery of individual introductions is enjoyable, lightweight and fun.

Other fun approaches are the simulation of specific scenarios with team members enacting hypothetical roles, brainstorming sessions, rapid fire polls to establish agreement on basis issues.

6) Plan developmental activities.

Invite a senior executive to the meeting to give their perspective on the business and allow your team to ask them questions. Work on a specific skill set, like negotiation, with the team, give a short presentation and ask for feedback.

Use the virtual team to explore new ways of doing things. Expose the team to external resources and ideas and let the team contribute as much in ways and modes that reflect the character of the team members.

Leverage the opportunity provided by the use of online technologies to establish new communication policies to introduce aways extensive feedback and evaluation loops in every process.

7) Relationships are so important that scheduling a one-on-one conversation with each team member once per week is important.

It is very easy for people to disconnect from each other when they are physically distant. Communicate often with the team, communicate more frequently with individuals. If there is nothing to talk about, say hi, agree there is no need to talk today and confirm the time for the next scheduled talk.

Agree. In full. Ongoing, direct, one-to-one communication is critical to maintain or even create trusted, reliable and effective online team partnerships.

The idea that just because I cannot be seen or called in as easily as in the physical world, must not prevent those that seriously intend to leverage collaboration technologies in business and real projects to understand that the amount of time and dedication required to be successful in virtual teamwork is inversely proportional to the familiarity that team members have with these new media technologies.