Individual reflection
The evening team Alive and our group form a
virtual team to complete assignment of virtual website. A virtual team is a
group of individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries
with links strengthened by webs of communication technology. It is different
from a face-to-face group. This paper introduces the details of our
cooperation, including team practices and team processes.
Team Practices:
Part1 Communication technologies:
There has a report about technology used to
communicate with virtual teammates. Specifically, 28% of respondents reported
using email, 27% the telephone, 19% instant messaging, 7% text messaging (SMS),
7% web cams, 6% Skype or another VoIP solution, 3% other technologies, 2% cloud
storage, and 1% Yammer. Again, this was a new question posed because of the
central role played by technologies in the day‐to‐day
activities of virtual teams. While it is surprising that the use of telephony
has fallen to second place, the obstacle presented by time zone differences and
concerns about interrupting teammates during the workday have propelled email
communication to the top of the list.
The main tools in our virtual group are
email, Wechat (something likes Skype), and telephone. Specifically, the email
prefers to use in sending resources and outcomes. Wechat could support
multi-people session, so it applies for our group discussion and message
notification. Telephone always be used for connect with each other when faced
some emergencies such as schedule change and personal business.
Part 2 General challenges:
Some experts study the general challenges
faced by virtual teams. Among all of the choices, time zones (78%) presented
the greatest general challenge to virtual teams. This was followed by the three
new survey choices: the amount of time required to make a decision (74%),
understanding different accents (69%), and cultural differences (59%). Language
was in fifth position (51%), followed by holidays, local laws, and customs
(47%), and technology (46%).
In our virtual group, we do not have the
problem of time zone. But we should also care about the time planning because
members of evening team should go to work. We could not have enough time to
discuss and should grasp key points in every meeting. In my opinion, our
communications are effective and efficient. Every time we could come to an
agreement. From another point of view, all of us are devoted to get results and
ignore the importance of discussion. So, our group lack of innovation and imagination.
Part 3 Decisions & Conflicts:
Our virtual group decisions in accordance
with the assignment schedule formulated by teacher and us. Both evening team
and our team could finish cooperate assignments on time and avoid influencing
each other. Our decisions are also in order to improve our virtual website. Although
every teammate in our virtual group tries to come up with ideas to develop
collaboration, evening team is more positively make a decision.
Our virtual team also would occur
conflicts. The first conflict is about communication tools. Evening team wants
to use Skype to communicate. Our group thinks Wechat is more suitable for us. Because
it has a function of multi-people video by mobile phones and we cannot use
Skype for free. So we initiatively communicate with evening group to convince
them. In the end, evening group agrees with us. So we could realize the importance
of communication between partners through this conflict case. The second
conflict is something about choosing two different organizations as partners to
build a virtual website together. Evening team would like to combine the world
peace organization with the religions organization and establish virtual
website WELOVEWECARE.COM. In our opinions, the cooperation between animal
rights group and luxury institute is more innovate. Faced with this argue, we
prefer to believe the choice of teacher. So, we present two cases in the class
and respect the teacher’s suggestion. This kind of argues is about professional
contents, so it is necessary for us to ask a professional person for help. The
third conflict is about the first presentation to introduce our ideas about
virtual website. The evening before presentation, evening team suddenly come up
with an idea that using PPT to present our ideas. Our group thinks it is unnecessary
to make PPT and it is too late to prepare. We think they should inform us in
advance. After negotiation, we decide to make a simple PPT to present our ideas
and evening team make a promise that never do this again. This conflict is
about cooperation, as a team, we should care about other teammates and also
should make a concession in sometime.
Team processes:
Part 1 Commitment:
The accompanying chart lists virtual‐team meeting
challenges by the severity of the challenge. As in the 2010 survey, the top
challenges were insufficient time to build relationships (79%) and speed of
decision-making (73%). In the current survey, the top two challenges were
followed by colleagues who did not participate in the process (71%), method of
decision making (65%), and different leadership styles (69%). To help us
determine the ranking sequence for these challenges, we “weighted” the
responses to reflect their degree of severity. For example, very challenging
responses received more weight in our calculations than challenges that were
identified as challenging or only somewhat challenging. While the remaining
team issues cited in the chart were somewhat less challenging for respondents,
up to 59% of participants had some degree of challenge with the remaining
hurdles. The responses underscored the importance – in virtual teams – of team
structures and defined processes. Introducing them will not only enhance the
comfort level of participants but will have a marked impact on performance.
Making group meeting’s commitments or
promises could effectively solve these challenges. In fact, when our virtual
team first came together, we did not make any specific promises or commitments.
Fortunately, our virtual team seems has a serious of unwritten commitments. Specifically,
every teammate should positively express their ideas in the discussion. We should
have a regular meeting on Monday. Teacher’s feedback should share with each
other in the meetings. The decision should be agreed by every teammate. These
unwritten commitments make our meetings are more effective and efficient. In my
opinion, the most important thing in the teamwork is effective cooperation. So I
suggest that searching enough data to support your ideas and come up with
specific project, rather than just deny others opinions. Our virtual team makes
me realized that the importance of paying attention to every details no mare
than how small it is. All of these commitments work well and improve our
cooperation work.
Part 2 Good virtual teammates:
When experts asked about the
characteristics that made good virtual teammates, respondents provided results
that resembled those in the 2010 survey. The most important characteristic was
being proactively engaged (19%), followed by a willingness to share information
(18%), being collaborative (18%), organized (16%), providing useful feedback
(11%), having good social skills (10%), and offering assistance to teammates
(8%). Perceptions about good teammates are culturally rooted. For example, in
some cultures, sharing information is both a manifestation of power and a way
of building relationships. Furthermore, in some cultures the bulk of
information sharing takes place in off‐line settings, which
are hampered in the virtual environment. Furthermore, direct communicators (who
are also low context) focus on sharing just the facts, which will leave high‐context
communicators feeling under‐informed. Global team leaders would be well advised to develop plans
to share this off‐line information with their team members.
As a member of a group, we should share our
concerns with other teammates. During our virtual cooperation, I would like to share
my ideas about assignment itself. It means that I always focus on the virtual
website, such as the structure of the virtual website, the innovation of the
virtual website, and clear both two groups’ different assignments respectively.
I am not vey care about the ways that could promote our cooperation, like time schedule,
cooperation rules, and communication skills.
Part 3 Successful virtual groups:
Research by Lynda Gratton and Tamara
Erickson (2007) found that successful virtual teams shared the following
characteristics: Executive support, Effective HR practices, Well-structured
teams, and Strong team leaders.
Focus on Executive Support.
Their study found that virtual teams do
well when executives support the development of social relationships at work
(thereby building trust among colleagues) and demonstrate collaboration. The
ways in which executives build and support social relationships in their
organizations are as varied as the organizations themselves, but Gratton and
Erickson found that the most successful executives employ “signature” practices
that are memorable, hard to replicate and particularly well-suited to their
organizations.
Focus on Effective HR Practices.
The study also found that two particular HR
practices improved team performance; training in skills to build collaborative
behavior and informal community building. In instances where collaboration was
strong, they found that the HR team had made a significant investment in one or
both of those practices, often in ways that reflected their organizations’
cultures and business strategies. Collaborative behaviors include demonstrating
appreciation of others, engaging in purposeful conversations, creatively and
productively resolving conflicts, and program management. Informal community
building activities include feedback, mentoring and coaching because these
practices help virtual workers feel connected to the organization. HR should
also ensure that succession planning and promotions are tracked to make sure
virtual team members are receiving recognition and credit (Leonard, 2011).
Focus on Well-Structured Teams.
Selecting the right people to serve on
virtual teams is critical to a team’s success. T.H. Ong, vice president,
Americas and Asian Pacific for Global Integrations, Inc., notes that the best
virtual workers are those who thrive in interdependent work relationships and
who are self-reliant and self-motivated. Good virtual team members tend to like
or tolerate ambiguity, and are independent thinkers who are willing to take
initiative. Most importantly, Ong notes, good virtual workers have strong
communication skills (Leonard, 2011).
Focus on Strong Team Leaders.
For virtual teams to succeed, strong
leadership is a must, and while the skills and abilities needed for managers of
conventional teams are similar to those needed for leaders of virtual teams,
there are a few key differences. Virtual teams don’t have the benefit of
frequent face-to-face interaction, and consequently, experience difficulty
building trust and rapport among team members. To help foster trust and
rapport, virtual team leaders must focus on relationship building, demonstrate
excellent communication skills (including the ability to provide frequent
feedback), and have emotional intelligence. Because decision- making can be a
challenge, particularly early in a virtual team’s partnership, virtual team
leaders must also have a track record of producing results and a focus on
process.
Our virtual group possesses executive
support that hard to replicate and particularly well suited to our group. We
also have collaborative behaviors and try to build an informal community. Specifically,
we respect each of teammates, creatively and productively resolving conflicts, and
offer feedbacks. Our virtual team also has well structure and good virtual
teammates have strong communication skills. The only point we lack is that we
do not have a strong team leader. In order to complete a high quality, our
virtual group should develop a strong leader to help foster trust and build
relationship.
Conclusion:
Working virtually is not natural or
intuitive, and what works in face-to-face teams will not work on virtual ones.
Imagine an environment where being virtual or working across distance is not a
barrier. Imagine how productive an organization can be when it has the ability
to eliminate the obstacles to effective virtual team.
Reference:
(1) The challenges of working in virtual teams. Virtual teams survey
report-2012
(2) The characteristics of effective virtual teams by Lynda Gratton and
Tamara Erickson (2007)
