A+critical+evaluation+of+working+in+virtual+teams

toc =Introduction=

The concept of //teams// and //teamwork// is increasingly becoming an important key to productivity and employee satisfaction in the contemporary workplace. The use of teams has increased significantly as organisations (both public and private) have turned more and more jobs over to team-based structures. Seventy-eight percent of U.S. organizations report that at least some of their employees are organized into work teams (Bishop //et al. 2005//). Many organizations have directly attributed improvements in performance to the establishment of teams in the workplace (Wellins et al., 1991).

As technology has improved and collaborative software has been developed, virtual teams of members spread across diverse physical locations have become increasingly prominent. Virtual teams are able to largely transcend time and space, connecting people across disciplines, functions, geographies, and organizations, combining their individual skills in order to work together.

Virtual teamwork is regarded as an important form of work in modern organizations as it is capable of complying with the demands of the new business environments characterized by international competition, fragmented and demanding markets, and diverse and rapidly changing technologies (Peters and Manz, 2007).

A case study undertaken by the Team-based European Automotive Manufacture project (TEAM) in 2001 investigated the advantages of using technology in virtual teams along the engineering supply chain. Based on input from the engineers a system was developed that included a shared whiteboard, video conferencing, application sharing and product data management tools. User-based evaluation of this system with 40 engineers in 4 countries indicated that the potential of these teams to increase in efficiency by 10-50% for different stages in the product introduction process. It was also found that a potential saving in development time could be as high as 20% which would in turn increase sales volume by about £1 billion and could cut costs by £90 million (May A and Carter C 2001)

More recently, a study conducted by the Business Research Consortium (BRC) in association with American Management Association reports 9 out of 10 of the more than 1,500 survey participants said they had virtual teams in their organizations. More than half had attended seven or more virtual meetings over the previous month, while slightly fewer than half had attended as many traditional, co-located (that is, occurring in one physical space) meetings. The BRC study shows that, when managed effectively, virtual teams increases productivity, help meet organizational goals, and improve the quality of work (Dennis et al. (2014).

It’s hard to overstate the critical role that virtual teams are playing today. Virtual teams equipped with information technologies are invalidating the old 50-foot rule “If people are more than 50 feet apart they are not very likely to collaborate.'' (Lipnack and Stamps, 1997).

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Qk_qtuQR0-8/TCYVpJyA0hI/AAAAAAAAB14/_bwRKXmhpGM/s500/curva-allen-curve.png

=Leading a virtual team=

Successful virtual team leaders understand the fundamental principles of team output and accountability and do not let time and space alter these precepts. The team leader, whether virtual or co-located, is accountable for the team’s output. Top management and customers hold the virtual team leader accountable for the performance of the team. Even when the team’s task calls for a high level of team-member autonomy, the leader still is accountable for the final output of the team.

Some competencies for successful leadership of a virtual team are outlined below: In a virtual team environment, it is possible for each member to produce output without coordinating with the leader and other team members, taking key decisions alone. Hence the virtual team leaders need to be very clear and explicit with their team about the extent to which the leader needs to be kept informed and involved, and about the level at which decisions will be made.
 * Decision making **

The team leader must ensure that there is clarity and shared understanding in the team about the strategy and plan for completing team tasks. This is essential to make best use of expertise available within the team, to facilitate coordination, and to avoid redundancy and duplication of work.
 * Managing team performanc**e

Individual performance measures must be concrete and results oriented. This provides an objective way of determining individual efforts.
 * Individual performance measures**

Formal mechanisms such as weekly audio-conference calls should be used for facilitating regular reporting of progress and issues.
 * Reviewing progress and results**

A virtual team leader should identify and address as far as possible any special circumstances related to compensation and benefits that may affect virtual team members. For example, virtual team members may have different working hours and holiday patterns. Different compensation structures may exist across geographic sites.
 * Managing compensation**

The team leader should ensure that appropriate technology is used for communication and collaboration. For example, using audio conferences and e-mail to design a complex technical system may not be as effective as using a combination of video and desktop sharing. In addition, asynchronous methods such as scheduling software and wikis can be valuable for collaborating on schedules and knowledge sharing respectively. The virtual team leader must select technologies that match the skill levels within the team and provide training where necessary. Virtual team leaders must also know what they don’t know about technology. Virtual team leaders who are not technical experts need to seek help in evaluating the use of technology and in facilitating their use.
 * Using appropriate technology**

Virtual team leaders must understand cultural differences among their team members. They need to become aware of their own cultural biases and how those affect personal assumptions and behaviours toward team members. Furthermore, they need to understand the many ways in which each team member’s culture affects his or her biases and his or her expectations of other team members and the team leader.
 * Managing across cultures**

Virtual team leaders must ensure that the team members’ contributions are tracked and recognized, and that they do not get passed over for good assignments in favour of someone who has more visibility with management.
 * Aiding in Team Members’ Career Development and Transition**

In a virtual team, team members may never have the opportunity for face-to-face contact or to use other traditional sources of information (such as people’s non-verbal communication and their interactions with others) that form the basis for developing trust. In a virtual team, creating trust requires a more conscious and planned effort on the part of the team leader. For example, explicitly discussing with the team what it takes to build trust within the team.
 * Building and Maintaining Trust**

The above section is based on excerpts from (chap 4, Duarte and Snyder 2001).

**Leadership Effectiveness **
Leidner et al. (2000) conducted a study to understand leadership effectiveness in virtual teams by applying the behavioural complexity theory (Hooijberg et al., 1997). They set up twelve highly diverse virtual teams of 5-7 members each across universities in US, Mexico and Europe and assigned a research task to each team to complete. Leadership effectiveness was assessed via surveys and open ended questionnaires given to both to team leaders and members. While the teams consisted of student members rather than employees, the study provides interesting perspectives (see table below) that seem relevant to virtual “work” teams.



=**Building a Virtual Team**=

( Leadingvirtually, 2014 )

Interaction between team members is essential if success is the ultimate goal. As the human contact is not part of the equation, trust, spirit and productivity are the elements that compensate in virtual teams. The key is to let communication and engagement between people flow as much as possible improving efficiency and relationships ( Wiley and Sons, 2010 )
 * What are the key issues ? **

**What can bring people together ?** Trust at task level seems to be more relevant to Virtual teams than interpersonal level. In order to build strong foundations trust should be strong and a common feeling of “we” between team members is just one of the recipe for success. Regarding one another credible and being openly positive must be further exploited between the community.

Skills form an important aspect of the members’ requirements but sometimes strong focus is concentrated on technical skills and not on interpersonal skills. In order to maximize the capabilities of virtual teams common practice must be redesigned and further considerations of communication and collaboration must be the new criteria.
 * Whatr are the requirements ? **

Long term projects tend to have peaks in performances in the first months and then inevitably the performance curve points down indicating a strong warning sign. <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">The success of a virtual team is to keep a strong sense of direction and allow enough time to commit to the team.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">How are they judged ? **

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The evident lack of human interaction is the result of technology and even though it is hard to replace, team members have the need to meet in person at least once a year. Even though technology is bridging the gap consistently, nothing can replace personal meetings.
 * <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Are they all alone ? **

<span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">The importance of leadership is substantial also in virtual team, as it goes hand in hand with performance and success. In fact, without proper methods, distance and lack of efficiency may deteriorate the entire Virtual team, that is evidently lacking sensibility to culture and interpersonal communication.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Any other recipe for success ? **

=**The five challenges & five critical success factors of Virtual Teams**=

Kirkman, Bradley L. //et al.,// (1995) identified five challenges of virtual teams;


 * 1) building trust within virtual teams
 * 2) maximize process gains and minimize process losses on virtual teams;
 * 3) overcome feeling of isolation and detachment associated with virtual teams;
 * 4) balance technical and interpersonal skills among virtual team members;
 * 5) assessment and recognition of virtual team performance;

White (2014) identified the five critical success factors of virtual teams:


 * 1) Virtual teams should have very clear objectives so that it is possible to set the investment in the team against the outcome, and also that team members bring appropriate skills, authority and expertise to take action.
 * 2) Without good team meetings a virtual team is unlikely to achieve its objectives and so particular care should be taking in developing guidelines for virtual meetings and for facilitating feedback.
 * 3) Team dynamics of virtual teams can be quite fragile, often depending on a very high level of trust in people that team members may have not met before. Introducing a new team member into an existing team may mean starting the process of building trust starts all over again.
 * 4) People will have different levels of competence in understanding, speaking, reading and writing in English, even if the notional corporate language of the organisation is English, and these levels of competence might be pushed to the limit and beyond when working in a team.
 * 5) Every member of a virtual team should feel that they have gained from their participation and the experience is useful to their local situation and their personal career development.

=ICT Tools for Virtual Working= [|http:]

=<span style="color: #333333; font-family: arial,helvetica,sans-serif;">**Face-2-face vs. Virtual Teams** =

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;"> (Businessinsider, 2014)

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">Then main strength of //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;">face to face //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt; line-height: 1.5;"> interaction is that meeting people in real life will give a better grasp of understanding the person in front. Body language will give unique signals that are enriching the experience of interaction and leading to more engagement ( T imemanagementninja, 2012 ) <span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;"> On the other hand, //virtual teams ( Corbinball, 2014 )// will give more opportunity to enrich the communication experience by promoting structured meetings, with clear focus and timetables to follow that are conducive to a high a level of professional knowledge with more very few interruptions and off topic chat.

//<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Face to face //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">has the opportunity to break the group into small mini groups and focus on specific tasks that can be added together in the end to see the big picture. //Virtual teams//, on the other hand, can spread tasks not only in mini groups in the room but also in macro groups according to different continents and time zones, giving the change to diversify as much as possible the outcome. The global access will inevitably promote a global knowledge with the immense privilege of give life to 2 way interaction that will to such a synergy that the whole will be bigger than the sum of its parts

<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">A general rule of thumb is that //face 2 face// interactions have a limited amount of distractions as bosses and supervisors usually refuse to have people on the phone and being distracted by other means of communication, therefore the learning environment has few obstacles. //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">Virtual teams //<span style="color: #000000; font-family: Arial,sans-serif; font-size: 10pt;">, conversely, with the help of web sessions and the internet can complete their experience in knowledge by working and interacting with different tools that can integrate the experience of knowledge. Desktop sharing, audience chat and slides presentations are just a few examples of how the distraction turns into focus as the environment is rich and diversified in sharing information that all participants will inevitably perceive as a valuable input that will be soon converted to feedback that will give life to rich and detailed conclusions.

=**Planning a virtual meeting**=

Once a virtual meeting has been decided upon a number of steps need to be taken in order to obtain the best result from the meeting. Mankins (2014) noted that above 7 people in a meeting reduces the effectiveness of that meeting by 10% so the delegates in a virtual meeting do need to be selected carefully, however, it must also be true that the companies must recognise the need for virtual teams and provide encouragement and training. Research indicates that fewer than 16 percent of employees in multinational organisations who work virtually have had any specific preparation or training this work (Goodman et al 2014). With any team the team members need to be assessed for effectiveness in that team. For virtual teams this is easier because the work is recorded with date electronically usually via emails or customer relationship manager (CRM) systems. This also allows for an easier peer evaluation

Five factors that can support virtual team effectiveness include having: - a supportive organisational culture - some characteristics of the task itself - technology use - team membership characteristics supported by training and development - work and team processes (Cohen and Gibson 2003)



Once a meeting has been planned, the company being supportive and the attendees decided an agenda and a plan for the meeting need to be distributed prior to the meeting. Communication facilitates a flow of information that can clarify expectations and casual connections between individual actions and group outcomes (Kogut, 2000). In this respect the meeting should run smoother as everyone knows what to expect and what will be relevant and pertinent to the conversation (this is not always the case - see real world examples of virtual team working). By reducing the possibility of surprises, communication can provide convergent expectations that enhance the coordination and cohesion of the group (Malmgren, 1961; Williamson, 1975)

There is a two stage process where communication is more effective, first, when it is associated with the knowledge of the critical issues that need to be resolved during the meeting. Challenges encountered during this resource allocation process may provide insights on what issues are the most important to discuss. Second, communication without this resource allocation may result in "cheap talk", since it may not carry significant payoff-relevant information, or worse, may be strategically misleading as partners assert intents that are not backed by actions (Crawford, 1998; Ledyard, 1995, Farrell and Rabin, 1996)

Tips to aid virtual team working

=**Advantages of virtual teams**=

Virtual teams do have certain advantages in that electronically mediated communication offers efficiency benefits by reducing the cost of co-ordinating travel, finding common times for all members to attend meetings and the expense of having all members of the team meet in the same place, at the same time, whether this is convenient or not (Berry 2006) and as also noted; v <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">irtual teams are usually cost efficient, as compared with the expense and time of travel and travel coordination for synchronous face-to-face teams (Lipnack and Stamps 1999). Not only are less people inconvenienced by the travel and the expense but there is also a wider implication in terms of fuel costs and environmental costs to the planet. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Setting up of virtual teams significantly helps companies in outsourcing as well. Many I.T companies, B.P.Os and shared service centres have been set up in low cost countries like India due to this technology, thereby creating more employment opportunities to an educated tech savvy population. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Having a global presence will allow a company to have 24 hour coverage.

Some professionals have a preference towards electronic communication and it has been found that t he reflective tone often found in asynchronous communication can lead to team identity and support, at least for some (Berry 2006). It can also be true in that case that e <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">mail provides participants time to reflect, research or reconsider their replies before responding (Khoshafian and Buckwitz 1995). Technology is the key to virtual meetings; v irtual team leaders and members only need to use a web browser to manage and participate in online meetings (Chen // et al // 2007).

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">Other advantages as outlined by Ale Ebrahim //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">et al //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;"> (2009) include:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reducing relocation time and costs, reduced travel costs.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Reducing time-to-market (Time also has an almost 1:1 correlation with cost, so cost will likewise be reduced if the time-to market is quicker).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Able to tap selectively into centre of excellence, using the best talent regardless of location.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Greater productivity, shorter development times.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Greater degree of freedom to individuals involved with the development project.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Higher degree of cohesion (Teams can be organized whether or not members are in proximity to one another).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Producing better outcomes and attract better employees.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Provide organizations with unprecedented level of flexibility and responsiveness.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Respond quickly to changing business environments.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Sharing knowledge and experiences.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Enable organizations to respond faster to increased competition.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Better team outcomes (quality, productivity, and satisfaction).
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Most effective in making decisions.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Higher team effectiveness and efficiency.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Greater self-assessed performance and high performance.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">An effective way to cultivate and manage creativity.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Improve the detail and precision of design activities.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Provide a vehicle for global collaboration and coordination of R&D-related activities

=**Disadvantages of virtual teams**=

Whilst there are a number of advantages of virtual teams there are, conversely, a number of disadvantages too. When compared to face-to-face communication, resource allocation activities are more circumscribed and provide limited emotional cues and fewer opportunities for rapid feedback (Daft and Lengel, 1986; Lengel and Daft, 1984). Especially when a team is under time constraints virtual team performance has been found to be less effective than face-to-face performance (Graetz, Boyle, Kimble, Thompson and Garlock 1998; Hollingshead, McGrath and O'Connor 1993). Face-to-face d irect communication is a richer medium that enables the transfer and assimilation of nuanced messages and offers the means to confirm understandings and correct misintepretations (Russ //et al//., 1990). This could be in the form of visual/ non-verbal clues, for example, eyes-rolling, a shrug or other nuance of a person's speech or alternatively a hand gesture to emphasise a point. These visual clues will be missed when communicating via audio or written only, however, when in a face-to-face scenario these visual clues are often very revealing. Factors that affect a group's performance include team member's prior online collaboration experiences, task types, rewarding systems, members' language skills, and cultural backgrounds. One major challenge of managing online meetings was that the facilitator can neither observe participant's body languages nor continuously monitor their activities in real-time (Chen et al 2013). Creating effective virtual teams, even if experienced with face-to-face teams, need enhanced competencies to be effective (Berry GR 2011).

There is a perception that time and space separation of virtual teams present some unique challenges being consistent with Warkentin et al 1997 and Malhorta et al 2007 noting that the lack of social context may hinder the process of trust building among team members, hence, intentions and meanings are often distorted or misinterpreted. Creating social relationships may be more difficult or at least slower to develop in the virtual environment (Walther 1995) however for certain people this lack of a social relationship may lead to superior task outcomes because they spend less time on social tasks (Johnson et al 2003). In contrast further research indicates that participants in virtual learning communities actually score higher on measures on interaction than do participants in face-to-face learning environments (Hay, Hodgkinson, Peltier and Drago 2004). Negative outcomes are clearly possible when using virtual teams as virtual members tend to initially share less information than members of face-to-face teams (Hinds and Weisband 2003). However, given time these lack-of-shared-information issues appear to fade (Walther 1995) and local priorities which may be tied into local performance appraisals may also interfere with team members fully participating in virtual work (Klein and Barrett 2001).

The absence of physical presence is considered by some to be the major drawback of virtual teams and virtual work (Cohen and Gibson 2003). It is also foreseeable that side conversations occur when for example an audio conference occurs, for example, if a decision needed to be made a side-bar conversation via instant messaging, texting or other means could occur which would tell other members of the group their persuasion without informing the rest of the group (Cohen SG and Gibson CB 2003). In virtual meetings people tend to either talk more or are more unwilling to contribute. A silent pause on a telephone seems much longer than one in a face-to-face meeting and leaders need to be aware of this. It takes only one participant in a virtual team meeting to become a problem and for the other participants to remember the meeting more for the problem that occurred rather than the meeting itself.

During face-to-face meetings it is easier for the meeting to be longer often two hours or more. When a coffee break is due everyone breaks at the same time meaning a meeting can continue at the same time for everyone and they will often feel re-energised. This is not the case with virtual meetings where it is much harder for a person to disconnect and join the conversation at a later date. They will be unable to take bio-breaks or, unless conveniently situated, reach for drinks during the meeting. Duration of virtual meetings may be an issue as it can be challenging physically, intellectually and emotionally and it has been recommended that virtual meetings should go on no longer than an hour. The actual environment of the listeners could cause an issue. Someone drilling outside for example, a knock at the door, child crying. While this could also occur in a face-to-face meeting it affects all the people and they can deal or live with it collectively. As the number of participants increases, the locations also increase as will the likelihood of noise interference.

When choosing a virtual team it is also necessary that if, say, a video conference were to occur it is important that all participants have the same technology. Technology can be an issue where the internet connection is not consistent, crossed telephone lines, poor mobile phone signals or people joining meetings while driving with irregular loss of signal, instances of computer and web cam failures, and video conferencing malfunctions. This can lead to ineffective meetings, frustration and lost time. The danger with ICT is that it may end up high-lighting inadequacies in the management of virtual teams, while not improving their effectiveness (White 2014). Most virtual team members prefer basic email with attachments as the primary medium of communication and rarely use more advanced technologies (Gibson and Cohen 2003) significantly email provides participants with time to reflect, research, or reconsider their replies before responding as opposed to the usual synchronous response during say, a video conference (Khoshafian and Buckwitz 1995).

The different working week (for example in the Middle East the working week starts on a Sunday), different start and end times to each working day and even different approaches to "lunch time" can be an issue. Also, different holiday periods, public holidays - national and regional, religious holidays (many vary even for the same holiday, for example, Russia celebrates Easter at a different date to the UK) also need to be considered. Other factors include daylight saving adjustments, different date formats (e.g. is 10/04/11 10th April? 4th October? or 2010 11th April?) which are all important, practical issues that must be considered and agreed protocols put in place. This can be an enormous challenge.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">According to Ale Ebrahim //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">et al //<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;"> (2009) some of the other main disadvantages associated with virtual teams include:
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Lack of physical interaction.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Communications, decisions and outcomes need to be reinforced in a structured, formal way.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Challenges of project management are more related to the distance between team members than to their cultural or language differences.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Challenges of determining the appropriate task technology fit.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Cultural and functional diversity in virtual teams lead to differences in the members’ thought processes.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Developing trust among the members can be challenging.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">May create challenges and obstacles like technophobia ( employees who are uncomfortable with computer and other telecommunications technologies)
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Variety of practices (cultural and work process diversity) and employee mobility negatively impacted performance in virtual teams.
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Team members need special training and encouragement

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">A video example of a dysfunctional virtual team (David Grady: the conference call) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbJAJEtNUX0 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">:

media type="youtube" key="zbJAJEtNUX0" width="272" height="205"

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; line-height: 1.5;">A real life situation where a virtual team was needed was the 28th January 1986 Challenger shuttle disaster. The day before on the 27th January a virtual team meeting was held to discuss whether or not it was safe to launch the shuttle in cold weather. The meeting broke all of the rules of virtual working because no one was sure who was an active participant in the meeting, no agenda had been agreed beforehand in advance and the papers for the meeting had been distributed by fax resulting in the sequence of pages of data being inconsistent across the meeting locations. The lack of management at this crucial meeting was a major factor in the decision to launch (Vaughan 1986).
 * Case study:**

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 150%;">The potential killers of Virtual Teams & how to overcome them ** <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">(Bailey, 2013)

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Killer 1: Lack of everyday non-verbal, face to face communication ** Conversation is important for daily working life. Limited contact leads to isolation; becomeing possible limiters of innovation and effectiveness. To overcome isolation one-to-one interaction is a possible cure. The inability to read meeting participants' physical reactions to proposals, opinions & actions agreed

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Killer 2: Lack of social interaction ** Limited social interaction can lead to demotivation. To overcome this problem it’s important to promote “social time”.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Killer 3: Lack of trust ** Limited contact leads to distrust. To overcome this problem it’s necessary to state specific goals and expectations. Feedback helps to develop and win back trust.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Killer 4: Cultural clashes ** Diversity can be misinterpreted in virtual teams. To overcome this problem leaders should recognize and capitalize team diversity, promoting intra-team diversity, experience, expertise and personal information and the creation of team customs and guidelines to align expectations.

**<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Killer 5: Loss of team spirit ** Global dispersion can lead to poor direction and vision, if poorly managed. To overcome this problem leaders must encourage people through interaction and cohesiveness.

** Attributes of an effective virtual team member ** ( Morris, 2008)


 * comfortable with the technology provided.
 * able to effectively contribute to audio conferences and video conferences.
 * able to influence from a distance.
 * able to start up and maintain virtual relationships.
 * able to work independently.
 * able to prepare for and manage effective meetings by phone.
 * able to manage core processes virtually – issues management, problem solving, decision-making.
 * able to be experienced as human from a distance.
 * insights and ability to work across cultures.

=**Conclusions**=

Virtual teams have become a norm in the workplace over the past 20 years, as confirmed by Thomas (2007) virtual teams are increasingly common in most organizations and business communication is increasingly intercultural, horizontal, strategic and change focused as well. Virtual teams have come about because of the globilisation of commerce, aided and abetted by ever-advancing communication technologies. Our world has truly become a smaller place.

While the research of Jarvenpaa //et al// (1988), Schmidt //et al// (2001) and Maynard (2006) indicates that in certain situations virtual teams have created superior performance, much research over the past 20 years comparing face-to-face and virtual teams notes no significant difference in the output or performance levels (Cappel //et al// (2000), Hiltz //et al// (1986) and Straus //et al// (1994)). While most employees are motivated and satisfied in part as a result of interaction with co-workers (Kirkham et al 2002), other research suggests that virtual work environments commonly experience face-to-face team-process losses caused by stereotyping, personality, power or political conflicts, and cliques (Timmerman 2000).

It is very clear from a myriad of research sources (Hambley //et al// (2007), Duarte //et al// (2001)) that leadership in a virtual team situation introduces challenges not encountered in a face-to-face situation and there is strong evidence that such leadership is even more critical to the sucess of the virtual team than in other team enviroments.

Virtual teams with effective leadership and members, the appropriate mix and use of communication technologies and the implementation of best practice behaviours, procedures and protocols can be a powerful force providing effective outcomes, knowledge and learning opportunities, innovation and perhaps competitive advantage. However, the challenges outlined are great, indicated by the fact the list of disadvantages above is significantly longer than the list of advantages, and the loss of the physical human contact has a profound impact. The good and the bad of virtual teams based on our own experiences are a reflection of what happens if the real world, the real working enviroment.

There is little doubt virtual teams are not only here to stay, but will become an even more important part of our working lives. Further research in the area is inevitable and hopefully can shine further light on how a virtual team can become even more effective, while enhancing members' work/life balance. So we must put our faith in technologies, our abilities to communicate, be respectful, tolerant, imaginative, innovative and colloborative, and above all to be human. Surely then virtual teams can be rewarding for its members, leaders and the orgainsations they serve - we'll be virtually there!

=**References**=

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