Teamwork and Virtual Teams
Teamwork has been utilized ever since man realized that there life could be easier if they worked at a task together.
“Necessity is the Mother of invention”, has been practiced by man as long as teamwork has been around. Teamwork has been practiced by ancient man to achieve a prosperous hunt to carry them through the winter with food. Conventional teamwork has provided man the ability to provide the means for surviving.
Virtual teams weren’t planned to accomplish a goal. It just happened because of cultural changes and the technology was available to assist communicating. A virtual team is made up of a group of people who communicate electronically. They usually meet in cyberspace.
Working at home is a terrific option and some like the idea of sitting at their terminals in robes and slippers. Others find it disconcerting and lonely. The loss of social interaction, with some individuals, causes them concern.
With virtual teams since there are more and more of them they do offer some definite benefits to our environment. For one thing there is a reduction in need for office parking spaces. Air pollution and congestion are reduced when people don’t commute to their offices. Virtual teaming offers more positives for the workers and organizations alike.
Using the old style of command and control with conventional teams is impossible in a virtual environment. The virtual environment has thrust upon the team’s management a new way to run the organization based upon trust instead of control. Technology on its own is not enough for us to enjoy the efficiencies and other benefits of the virtual organization.
New technology and software enhance the virtual teams through the use of the Internet. Video conferencing in the recent past was unwieldy and expensive. With advance’s in hardware technology allowing greater use of broadband capability has allowed the virtual teams more personal interaction.
Virtual teams working under this new technology take on the same basic structure as real teams. The new virtual teams using video conferencing tends to replace the face to face meeting of conventional teams. However, it is important and teams that have the association of being face to face as very important. This allows more compassion, understanding and more personal interaction with fellow team members.
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual team leaders are operating within a different framework and this requires different affective leadership techniques. Since the team is physically separated management practices had to be changed to keep management. In early structures of virtual teams there is a certain amount of randomness, chaos and ad hoc decision-making. With maturity, processes are put into place and the team becomes more efficient.
Individual recognition within the team was infrequent and when it did occur it was on an individual personal basis. Team leaders offered support and coaching to the team members. A challenge, encouragement, and coaching are the very nature and technique for successful virtual team management.
Communication in a virtual environment has its own set of challenges. With electronic text it’s hard to inject meaning and feelings within those messages. However, human ingenuity seems to have triumphed once again by finding a way to add “emoticons” to express feelings in text.
To improve your communication environment within virtual teams:
- Use video conferencing to allow “face to face” meetings.
- Update team members on how the overall project is going.
- Establish a request code to avoid delays. (24 hour reply)
- Establishing a Well Understood Purpose.
- Clear and Complimentary of Roles and Responsibilities.
- Clarifying Stakeholder Expectations.
- Use workgroup calendaring software for task management.
- Publishing charts, pictures or diagrams can augment text only communication.
- Development of trust instead of control.
Affiliates as Virtual Teams
Self-motivated affiliates as virtual sales teams are the virtual teams that are most familiar. They are independent salesmen promoting a product through their promotional ads.
Virtual teams are supported by both hardware and software. General hardware requirements include telephones, PCs, modems or equivalent, and communication links such as the public switched network (telephone system) and local area networks. Software requirements include groupware products such as electronic mail, meeting facilitation software (audio and video), and group time management systems.
One way to think about virtual teams is that teams are a network organization and team members communicate by links that are the communications channels that allow face-to-face interaction. In virtual teams, the links are primarily virtual (electronic) and software used to mediate the interactions.
Most virtual teams are organized for a specific purpose and then when the project is complete then the team is disbanded.
Several benefits of virtual teams include the following:
- People can work from anywhere at anytime.
- People can be recruited for their competencies, not just physical location.
- Many physical handicaps are not a problem.
- Expenses associated with travel, lodging, parking, and leasing or owning a building may be reduced and sometimes eliminated.
- There is no commute time