virtual team - Organizational Behaviour

1. Identify and explain the advantages and disadvantages of virtual teams. Outline the factors required for virtual teams to be successful.(10 marks)

A virtual team is a team whose members operate across space, time and organizational boundaries, and are linked through information technologies to achieve organizational tasks. [1] With more and more corporations having their business operations going global and being enabled by the advancement of technology, virtual team becomes an emerging new-age trend. [2] Virtual teams offer several advantages and disadvantages to organizations that require exploration. [3]

Advantages of Virtual Teams
- Cost savings
One of the advantages an organization would enjoy through creating virtual team is cost saving. The organization will be able to eliminate costs associating to office spaces, utilities, executives’ travels, co-locations of global teams. [4]
- Improved productivity and customer service
With the members of the virtual team spreading over the time zones, there could be people working on the same project or serving customers on a 24*7 basis. The project or the service keeps running without being interrupted when any team member needs to be off work for rest. This shortens the product development time as well as enables the firm to respond more quickly to the demands of customers in both global and local markets. [5]
- Access to previously unavailable expertise and talents
Virtual Teams allows organizations to look for expertise beyond their geographical locations of operation. This brings together the experts and specialists from across the globe to work together on the project. It also creates the opportunity for organization to hire talents who are less mobile and hesitant to relocate due to either family requirement or physical challenge. [6]
- Knowledge sharing and transfer:
Virtual teams represent a natural part of the organizational learning process because employees are encouraged to share and use knowledge where geography limits more direct forms of collaboration. Increased knowledge sharing and greater innovation happen as organization’s human capital share their understanding of global and local markets as well as best business practices. [7] Online meetings, remote computer access, wireless technology, and conferencing systems offer a way for participants to join a complex discussion from anywhere in the world. This benefit can enable most companies to compete on a global scale. [8]

Disadvantages of Virtual Teams
- Conflicts and collaboration issues
Very likely, members of the virtual team come from different cultures, especially in big organizations. The cultural differences among virtual team members may create misunderstanding or even conflicts. If the lack of awareness towards culture differences goes on, the willingness among team members to collaborate with each other will be reduced. This could lead to mistrust and difficulties in team work which, however, is vital for the success of virtual team functioning. [9]
- Communication deficiency:
Another disadvantage virtual team may suffer from is the loss of efficiency in communication due to constraints in virtual communication mediums. People communicate better through face to face interactions primarily because it would enable them to read the sub-context through the non-verbal language such as facial expression, tones and body moves. Limited by the inherent nature of virtual interaction, teams will inevitably face challenges that the assumptions and judgment could be incorrect when messages are not laid out clearly. [10]
- Leadership and management challenges:
Poor leadership can result in the failure of any team, whether virtual or not; however, it becomes a much more prominent problem in virtual teams. As members of the virtual team can be based out of everywhere and across different time zones, the manager of team may face huge challenges in order to provide sufficient level of supervision towards team performance and offer appropriate support and counseling advice to individual team member when needed. [11]
- Social Isolation
Many members of virtual teams are adversely affected by the lack of physical interactions as most of the communications in virtual environment is task-oriented. Lack of social interaction with colleagues who very often become friends gives people who work in virtual team a not-so-good feeling of social isolation. This in turn counter-effects productivity as well as leads to stress. [12]

Factors for Virtual Team to be successful:
- Face-to-face meeting early in the team development process
It helps with team building and also contributes to form the team trust through creating opportunity for people to get to know each other [13]
- Sufficient structures: Shared operational objective, work processes, clearly defined roles and responsibilities
A team is more likely to be effective with shared goals as it enables greater collaboration, communication, and a greater degree of unity. Shared goals also create a culture of accountability, which encourage teams to take a public position and motivate one another to fulfill their promises. [14]
Clear definition for each team member’s roles and responsibilities are also crucial. Each team member knows exactly what he/she is expected to perform. It will, to a great extent, avoid the situation that some people are extremely busy in the team while some others are idle, which may eventually result in complains, distrust and conflict
- Good communication technology skills, strong self-leadership skills to motivate and guide each team member’s behaviour without peers or bosses nearby [15]
- High emotional intelligence
People can decipher the feeling of others from email and other limited communication media, able to sense and identify the early risks associating with culture/ background difference [16]
- Efficient communication mechanism and the freedom to choose the best communication channels [17]
- Culture for cooperation, trust and respect [18]
- Effective team leadership
- Clear criteria for measuring both individual member’s performance and team success 2. Describe the kinds of behaviours that individual team members can engage in that positively impact overall team effectiveness. (10 marks)
There are certain behaviours that would positively impact the team effectiveness:
- Demonstrate ownership mentality
Instead of only taking assignments and completing them without a thought as to how individual efforts impact the success of the business, virtual team members, when have ownership mentalities, enthusiastically give the extra effort and choose strive for bigger and better results [19]
- Highly motivated to team activities [20]
- Self- Disciplined and self-reliance
If every individual of the virtual team walks the talk and never fails to meet any commitment, people then know they can count on each other during the course of pursuing team success [21]
- Ability to tolerant ambiguity
Virtual team inevitably faces ambiguity as many other types of teams do. High tolerance of ambiguity allows people to absorb large amounts of disruptive change while showing a low level of dysfunctional behavior which may significantly detract individual or team from quality and productivity [22]
- Openly communicate but meanwhile maintain respects to individual and cultural difference
Expressing ideas in a direct but respectful way and treating other people with consideration and courtesy will significantly reduce the conflicts in the team and help create a healthy working environment
- Offer support to others
Providing support through offering positive feedbacks, and helps when needed contributes to a healthy team environment and improves the team efficiency

3. Describe the kinds of behaviours that individual team members can engage in that negatively impact overall team effectiveness. (10 marks)
There are also behaviours adversely impact team effectiveness:
- Avoid accountability
When team members aren’t accountable for their own actions, they hurt their own performance. And when they duck responsibility for calling out other team members for their behaviours, the performance of the whole team suffers [23]
- Focus on personal agenda rather than team objectives
The shared objective among team members helps to create a synergy effect within the teams. An individual though can accomplish much by acting alone, but a group of people acting together in a unified force can accomplish more. If people focus more on their personal agendas, synergy then no longer exists. The competitive advantage obtained through teamwork goes away [24]
- Not consistent between words and deeds
Repeatedly fail to deliver on promises and commitments eventually lead to distrust among members in a virtual team. A team without members trusting each other dooms to failure.
- Stingy to share important information
- Passive-Aggressive Behaviors
Behaviours such as making chronic excuses for lack of follow-through or poor performance, or being unresponsive or non-communicative to avoid discomfort or conflict will inevitably lead to tension, depletion of energy and conflict in the virtual team and hence result in deficiency of the team work [25]

4. Outline how you intend to approach participation in your group project, explaining how your plans for participation will likely impact your project team. Include an analysis of your results from the Group/Team Skills activity you completed from the Module 6 reading. (10 marks)
To participate in my group project, I will:
- Actively participate to group discussion
- Make efforts in team coordination
- Seek first to understand, then to be understood (7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey)
- Provide constructive feedbacks to other team members and meanwhile be open to others’ comments
- Do exactly what I commit to
- Offer helps to others when needed
I would anticipate that my plans for participation would positively contribute to build team trust and cohesion. As it is a newly established project team, there may be a certain level of trust. However, it is very fragile and could be easily broken if any of the team member drop the ball or demonstrate the social loafing behavior. The consequence of working in the project team without trust is that the efficiency of the team is significantly handicapped. Besides, I would anticipate that my behavior would help me build rapport with other team members, which, in turn will establish the emotional tie within the team and contribute in team cohesion. Good team cohesion will enhance the performance of the team too.

Results of Group/Team Skills Activity
Skill Area
Items Assessment – Dimension Scores
Developing and Maintaining Rapport 1-5 24
Listening to others 6-10 28
Displaying Sensitivity to Others’ Needs 11-15 28
Eliciting Ideas, Feelings and Perceptions 16-20 30
Presenting Feedbacks 21-25 26
Total Scores 135

According to the result of this activity, I scored high in ‘listening to others’, ‘displaying sensitivity to others’ needs’ and ‘eliciting ideas, feelings and perceptions’, however, my score was comparably lower in ‘developing and maintaining rapport’. It indicates that I tend to be open to ideas and maintain sensitivity to others’ needs. However, it also indicates that I tend to build up relationship with others more slowly, which might be relating to my personal characteristics. According to the MBTI result, my profile is INTJ and my profile with DISC is High D, High C, above average S. Introverts might take longer time establishing rapport with others. Moreover, the ‘J’ in MBTI and ‘D’ in ‘DISC’ both indicate that I am a result-driven person. In the team setting, I may want to take the lead to drive for final result which can be an advantage but also be the potential area of improvement that I should be aware of. Sometimes I might seem to be pushy and overconfident of my judgment, which could cause problems when working with others.

Reference
[1] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 230
[2] http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm

[3]http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=7&cad=rja&ved=0CFoQFjAG&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.regent.edu%2Facad%2Fglobal%2Fpublications%2Flao%2Fissue_16%2FLAO_IssXVI_Earnhardt.pdf&ei=56tuUri3OfWj4AOf64DQBA&usg=AFQjCNEaJx5GJBveFn1XDA1SfMubQLnKBA&sig2=qW-GEze5IrbCU22U3tv-GQ&bvm=bv.55123115,d.dmg

[4] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 230 http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm [5] http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm

[6] Managing Human Resources, Belcourt http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm [7] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team

[10] http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm
[11] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team

[12] http://adriandavis.com/shared-goals-means-shared-responsibility/ http://www.managementstudyguide.com/virtual-teams-advantages-and-disadvantages.htm [13] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[14] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[15] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[16] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[17] Canadian Organizational Behaviour, Steven L. McShane, page 231
[18] http://aran.library.nuigalway.ie/xmlui/handle/10379/351 http://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/interview-answers/team-player-defined-example-interview-answers-to-behavior-based-questions-about-teamwork/ [19] http://choice2bfree.blogspot.ca/
[20] http://www.google.ca/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&frm=1&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCoQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fconnerpartners.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2FDeveloping_Resilient_Teams_for_Managing_Change.pdf&ei=3LdyUqDxJZXb4APM1IGABg&usg=AFQjCNEh3W6jAdgyqki48bSY4ScGZ9UoxA&sig2=Odx3ubH1PDPHu2cUw3SrmA&bvm=bv.55819444,d.dmg
[21] http://job-interview-answers.com/job-interview-tips/interview-answers/team-player-defined-example-interview-answers-to-behavior-based-questions-about-teamwork/
[16] Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results, Nancy M. Settle-Murphy, page 140
[23] http://www.executivebrief.com/project-management/team-implode-signs-act/
[24] http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/leader/diverse.html
[25] http://liveboldandbloom.com/11/life-coaching/what-is-passive-aggressive-behavior