Individual Reflection

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)