Most virtual project teams work like a dream. Everyone’s doing what they like to do. People like and respect each other. The team enjoys the excitement of creating something new. There’s a synergy. There are all the benefits of working with a collaborative group (creativity, support, fun), and none of the drawbacks of working with others (having to actually go to the office, sit in a cube, deal with annoying coworkers, etc.).

And then there are the projects that don’t go well at all. The one where someone’s trying to sabotage you. Where you’re being micromanaged. Where, if you’re the person hiring everyone else, people are trying to inflate their hours or their egos, or produce poor quality work and are non-responsive to your needs, or your team won’t communicate with each other.

Then what? How can you avoid having your project sabotaged by virtual politics? I’m not a management consultant or an MBA. But here are some thoughts, based upon my own experience.

If You’re the Project Owner

You may be the project owner, but have little or no “management” experience. You like and trust the people working for you. Why else would you hire them? But if costs and timelines start to get out of hand, you might need to take drastic action. How can you prevent costly headaches from escalating?

1. Planning, planning, and planning. Either by one knowledgeable person in consultation with the others, or collaboratively. Planning allows timelines to be set, deliverables to be determined, costs to be estimated, and roles and contributions to be clarified. On the other hand, failure to plan allows competing agendas to flourish and time constraints to disappear. As a friend in the construction business once told me, “Remember the seven P’s… Proper prior planning prevents piss-poor production.”

2. Collaborative project management software is a tool to help get a handle on unwieldy projects and facilitate communication among participants. Opening 20 or 30 or 50 project-related emails a day, filing, tracking and organizing them, can be a real pain. Make things easier on everybody, and bring some transparency to the process.

3. Clear decision-making… who’s in charge? If it’s you, are you actually qualified, or is your insecurity causing you to micromanage? Are decisions made collaboratively, collectively, or by you, or one manager, or a point person? Clarify. Delegate. (Helpful hints here from management coach Steven Cerri.)

4. Are you paying by the hour? Again, with competing team members, this can backfire badly. Consider taking bids on the whole job.

5. Are you, or the project manager, losing touch with one or more team members? And—key question—are you also being sucked up to by another team member? And does this person tend to complain about the others? This person may massage your ego ’til it purrs, but it’s bad news for your project. Get a clue: your project may be headed for 23 skidoo. Take the reins firmly now, or be prepared to spend a lot more time and money than you care to.

If You’re a Member of the Virtual Team

If, on the other hand, you’re a consultant or contractor who’s gotten embroiled in a “team” effort that’s turned into anything but, you can of course think about bowing out. But before you do that, here are some things to consider.

1. Are you being paid by the hour? Your colleagues as well? With a poorly matched team, this can be a recipe for disaster. Consider pointing out current cost and time overruns, and offering an aggressive bid on the whole job, by assembling your own team.

2. Are you an expert, or an employee? Is your opinion repeatedly ignored in the areas of your expertise? Are you getting squeezed out? Are you even becoming the project scapegoat? You’re probably the person who’s trying to keep your head down and get the job done without making waves. But if this is happening to you, you must confront the situation.

3. That back-biting colleague? The one sucking up to the client…The one you finally figured out is trying to sabotage you? Confront her. Hard, fast, and at the earliest opportunity. Do it by phone, not email. Do not let her off the hook. (“Jane, yesterday you emailed Richard that you were having trouble with a video file because I hadn’t saved it properly. But that wasn’t true—the file was fine. I want to know what’s going on that you didn’t come to me directly, but went to Richard instead.” Don’t argue, don’t insult, but keep asking questions. “Why did you email Richard, instead of just me?” The point is not to get an answer, an apology, or—above all—to become defensive yourself. The point is to let the person know that you’re willing to call them on their shit, and that you don’t mind making them uncomfortable when they overstep. Usually, the behavior changes. If it doesn’t, this person means problems, big-time. Being “nice” does not work with people like this. Do you enjoy constant confrontation? If not, consider…

4. Getting out. If despite all of the above you’re second-guessing yourself, dreading your inbox and stewing over emails when you get them, hating the people you’re working with… I hate to say it, but getting out can be the wisest course.

The economy might be suffering… but that’s no reason to recreate the cubicle, or to suffer toxic people when you don’t have to. Within days after virtual office politics finally pushed me to let go of one of my “best” clients, inside of a week I had five new, interesting, well-paying projects…. with literally no effort on my part. I couldn’t even have considered them if I had still been busy with the difficult client. As a self-employed person, never feel that you have to stick with situations that are not working for you. They can cost you money. More importantly, they can cost you your peace of mind, your happiness, and even your health.

Read Part 1, “Are Virtual Office Politics Sabotaging Your Project” here.

Ahhh, the joys of working for oneself, of being a sole proprietor, a lone creative entrepreneur. We have clients, not bosses; colleagues, not co-workers; and hire independent contractors rather than supervisees. We’ve never even met most of the folks we work with, and probably never will… because we communicate via phone, email, fax and chat. Office politics? Are you kidding? I thought I was done with all that. Didn’t you?

Scenario 1: Low-Level Sabotage

But consider this scenario. You’re working on a project for a client. In the routine course of the work, you need to send a file to someone else who’s also working with your client. On their end, something goes wrong. They don’t look at the file soon enough, they asked for the wrong thing, they don’t have the right software and can’t read it… whatever. Pretty soon you get a verging-on-snippy email (and here’s the kicker) cc’d to your client, telling you there was a problem—on your end—with the file you sent. This kind of finger-pointing tactic is annoying, but so petty and transitory that it’s easy to handle.

Scenario 2: Virtual Back-Stabbing

Scenario 2. The stress escalates. Now, in order to complete the client’s project, you have to work with this same person on a long-term basis. It soon becomes clear to you that there is a pattern to their behavior. They seize opportunities to make themselves look good by making you look bad. Worse, you begin to realize that there’s method to this madness: they actually want to take over parts of the work you do for this client.

You, of course, want to keep your client, your billings, and your self-respect. The client doesn’t care who actually does the work, as long as it gets done well and cost-effectively. But how is the client to decide between the two of you? The snippy back-biter is very convincing. The more sniping they do, the worse you look.

You find yourself beginning to dread your interactions with these people. How do you handle it? Go on the defensive? Go on the offensive? Meditate, ignore it, hope it goes away? Aren’t you working for yourself precisely to escape wasting your time with this kind of b.s.? Do you think that the work is getting done as well or as quickly as it could and should be? Are you giving your best? If you have to sit and stew, or seethe, or carefully craft a reply every time you read an email, I doubt it.

Scenario 3: Total Fiasco

Now let’s kick things up another notch. In Scenario 3, your client assembles a team of several different individuals and their subcontractors to finish one project. You have expertise and problem-solving ability in the project area, but you’re not “in charge.” You have no authority over your colleagues, nor they over you. Your client has authority, but no expertise. Nominally, your client is in charge. In practice, no one is.

Because the participants were brought on board at different times and weren’t able to coordinate planning in the beginning, the work goes slowly. As progress lurches on, key portions of the project run into roadblocks. Communication is difficult—some of your colleagues don’t answer crucial calls or email for days at a time. Everyone also has work to do for other clients, which they may have postponed thinking that this particular project would be finished within a certain time frame. You’re in the same boat. When you scheduled your time, you were imagining everything flowing smoothly… not the disorganized, frustrating mess that things have become.

The project gets finished months behind schedule and way over budget. Your client is understandably angry and unhappy. He admits “I have no management skills. I just want people to do what I tell them.” (True, but not helpful.) The back-biting colleague, with whom you’ve managed to work all this time, can hardly wait to heave you under the bus. And you? On the one hand you feel terrible for the client, who spent so much more time and money than would have been necessary with good planning and communication from the start. On the other hand, you’re so fed up and aggravated that as soon as you’re done, you say a permanent sayonara to him.

Did virtual office politics sabotage this project, not to mention this client relationship? You bet. How can you avoid this situation—as a contractor or consultant, or as the project owner? Stay tuned for part 2.

Have you experienced politics in the virtual office as a contractor, contractee or consultant? I’m eager to hear from you.