Sunita Mohanty: Managing Virtual Teams
Once upon a time, offices, workspaces and cubicles was what came to mind when we thought of work and business. Then came the concept of virtual teams. The advantages of running businesses from multiple locations, tapping into talent pools from all over the world, reduced travel time and of course, lower office costs, made the virtual mode of operations very popular, until the COVID-19 situation made it a necessity. Given that working with virtual teams has become the new current normal, we decided to dedicate our Mentoring Circle for the month of May, to understand what it takes to run virtual teams effectively.
Our Guest Expert, Sunita Mohanty, Director and India Head, Trust and Safety at Google, took us through her journey and her experience with running virtual teams. The session was incredibly powerful because Sunita not only spoke about various practical aspects of running virtual teams, she shared how to do so with empathy and vulnerability.
Sunita’s Journey
Sunita has over 20 years of rich experience in the corporate space. As she likes to describe it, her journey began with three Indian multinationals before she joined Google. She started her career with TCS, moved to ICICI post her MBA and then to Infosys before she joined her current organisation, Google. From her experience with TCS, ICICI and Infosys, Sunita shared her observation about the fact that the robust processes, high quality talent pool and the ability to excel in the service industry makes the capabilities of Indian organisations unparalleled.
Meeting her role models
Reminiscing on her first day at ICICI, Sunita shared how as a fresh MBA graduate, being addressed by the senior management of the company, which comprised of four powerful women, Chanda Kocchar, Kalpana Morparia and Madhabi Puri Buch along with K.V Kamath and Shikha Sharma, inspired her immensely. Looking back at that day, Sunita fondly recollects how her first day at ICICI brought her face to face with her role models who went on to influence the Indian finance and banking industry in a big way. Getting to see her role models in action made Sunita set tall benchmarks for herself. She also took back an important lesson about what makes diversity a win-win formula: a support system of men who are comfortable supporting and teaming up with strong and high-potential women.
The power of organisational culture
From her experience with Google, Sunita shared how the organisations’ culture has remained consistent throughout its massive growth. This is the kind of culture that enables employees to being their whole selves to work, and isn’t merely driven top down – it is a consistent set of empowering values and beliefs that permeate across and within teams, holding diverse teams together like an invisible glue.
Summarising how each organisation contributed to the skills that she garnered, Sunita shared how her experience with TCS helped her learn client management, at ICICI it was data analytics, at Infosys it was client interface, global service delivery and working with diverse teams and at Google, it has been building effective teams. In the future, Sunita is looking forward to contributing towards the social sector and giving back to the country.
Insights on leading effective virtual teams
Sunita has been running virtual teams for a while now. During the pre-COVID times, she was sitting in person with her smallest team, and managing her relatively larger teams virtually. Here are her top lessons in running virtual teams effectively.
Building Trust
Sunita shared how building trust is one of the key factors influencing the success of virtual teams, and that creating psychological safety within teams is pivotal to employees bringing in their best. Psychological safety helps team members make themselves vulnerable and share what it is that will help them deliver their best or what it is that is coming in the way of them delivering their best. Given the challenges that the current pandemic has brought our way, creating an environment where team members feel safe speaking about their difficulties has become all the more important. Finding commonalities helps create the connection that fosters within teams. When leaders invest time in understanding lifecycle transitions, it creates opportunities to create deep connections.
Clarity about Goals and Vision
Building clarity in goals and visions helps teams as well as team members understand priorities while juggling multiple priorities. Sunita mentioned how Google’s annual survey asks a question about how their work contributes to the organisation’s goal. 80% of the respondents had the clarity about how they contribute to organisational goals. Having this sort of clarity creates alignment throughout the organisation, especially during challenging times like these.
Finding your Passion
Finding elements in our work that energize us, help us keep ourselves in a space where we can inspire our teams. Taking out an hour for self-care and recharging ourselves is an investment that pays rich dividends in terms of leading effectively for the long haul.
Lifting as you Climb
Carrying our teams along as we grow and move up the ladder is a mantra that Sunita strongly believes in. Her experience has helped her see how helping and supporting growth for others brings back more good in ones’ own life. In terms of everyday work-life, this may translate into small gestures of kindness and compassion like lending an ear to someone going through a rough phase or mentoring someone who needs support with a skill we are well-versed with. The idea is to keep challenging ourselves to support those around us in every way that we can.
Showing Vulnerability
As a leader showing vulnerability helps create connect and trust with virtual teams. It could mean being transparent while answering questions about uncertain situations and saying “I don’t know”. It could also mean making oneself vulnerable by sharing ones’ own challenges as a leader.
Creating Routines
Creating routines helps teams organise their time effectively between personal and professional responsibilities. Respecting time while implementing routines is of utmost importance – especially in times like these where lines between work and personal life are getting blurred. Starting meetings with a decisive tone and a preset agenda, helps build rhythm and routine.
Thank you Sunita, for sharing insights on how we can run effective teams virtually by bringing in empathy and vulnerability.
