Advantages And Disadvantages Of Virtual Teams

Due to the change many organizations realize the need for offices in various geographical locations. Therefore, the concern is how to ensure that employees located off-site are constantly connected to their counterparts. Virtual teams were developed to answer the call to ensure the ability to stay tied to the main office of any organization. As one can see a learning organization at times it may encounter difficulty in ensuring that virtual teams are learning according to the guidelines as set forth by the learning organization (Boone, 2015). A simple way to fix these issues are to ensure that communication is consistent, through the use of technology and employees are given the chance to build relationships with their virtual team members, team empowerment is necessary for virtual teams to be involved in the decision making process. Because of the diverse backgrounds of the virtual teams conflicts will arise and a leader must determine ways of handling these conflicts. Also, barriers involve the geographical, time, cultural/language, communication can be handled at each individual level and proper enhancements as needed will aid in ensuring that the team remains viable and productive. For example, cultural differences can be handled by ensuring that employees are trained to comprehend what is or not acceptable to each

Trust- should be slowly built up across team members, through developing confidence in each other’s competence and reliability. Trusting individuals are willing to share their knowledge and skills without fear of being diminished or exploited.

Trust among team members is crucial when building a team. As your leader, I want

I believe that building the trust of the team begins with communication. Communication and trust are mutual actions that assist teammates in sharing thoughts and opinions. My intent is for lines of communication to be established by having group meetings

Trust has to be earned and not automatically given. In order for this cross-functional team to operate cohesively, it is vital that trust is created within the department. This will not be a small task, seeing that “it takes years to build trust, but only a second to destroy it” according to Harvey Mackey. When employees trust management they are more involved and productive. (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). If trust is “having faith in others in a relationship,” then management must come up with a way of gaining the trust of this team. For example, a member on a football team practices hard, based on the assumption other members of the team are doing the same. His trust is a cognitive leap of his interactions with his teammates.

“Trust is defined as reciprocal faith in others’ intentions and behavior” (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013, p. 312). A standout amongst the most fundamental attributes of a high-functioning team is trust (Molinsky & Gundling, 2016). Any individual who has dealt with a group realizes that colleagues must have the capacity to believe each other to take care of business, and be committed and devoted to the overall welfare of the group. In any group of people, trust is challenging to create and maintain (Molonsky & Gundling, 2016). The first guideline in building trust among members is communication (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). Having an open line of communication allows team members and employees to be informed about policies and decisions; they can also hear honest feedback (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013).

Teams have always contributed significantly towards the successful operation of any organization. Traditionally, team members had to endure the challenges of time, distance, and even cultural differences in order to successfully complete a team activity. However, recent advancements in technology have led to the birth of virtual teams. The paper aims to explore the effectiveness and differences ofvirtual teamsas compared to face-to-face teams. The evaluation will be on the basis of dimensions such as performance, cohesion, conflict, trust and satisfaction among others.

Trust is paramount in any work situation, and definitely in this situation with a cross-functional team due to the diversity of the group and different philosophies. Trust is based on relationships within the group, and is difficult when so much of the time we work as antagonists(Ettorre, 1997). Leaders must be focused, engaged, and self aware to promote positivity and encourage strong relationships.

The team that I would like to discuss going virtual would be the Academic Advising team at Baker College. The newly designed virtual team would be answering all student questions by email, phone or chat. Academic Advisors work from home; the position would be completely remote. An economic advantage of this virtual team for Baker College would be the decrease in office supplies (paper, ink, office space and shredding services).

As a virtual team we are facing additional difficulties. According to Dyer, Dyer & Dyer special difficulties presented by virtual teams

Their findings also demonstrated the criticality of the coach as a third party in facilitating trust transferability and establishing and maintaining trust in the team. This validated their focus established in the beginning on “the role that the trustworthiness of the third party plays in the development of team trust, rather than on the role of the leader’s trust in others”. I believe this was one of the most noteworthy findings of this research regarding development of theory. In addition, they further developed theory with their finding that a team’s future performance is a function of trust in the coach, level, consensus, particularly in the context of poor past team performance.

A different habit of a thriving team is trust within all team members. “The lack of trust among team members constrained their individual and collective voices, restricting the sharing of knowledge, experience, and opinion…” by Linda Loehr.

According to Cronin and Weingart, teams high in both trust and respect should be desirable as team members begin with the belief that their fellow team mates have something valuable to

(3) A second dimension of the leader-follower relationship is explored by Dirks (2001). According to Dirks, “trust” plays an important role, influencing the level of team importance. What is trust (distrust)?

Virtual information project teams have become a significant mechanism to utilize when desiring to achieve a particular task or goal globally. A virtual team consists of a group of individuals who are geographically diverse, which causes them to use electronic information or technological tools to coordinate their ideas in order to succeed at a given task. Unlike traditional teams, virtual teams are not run with face to face interaction, but virtually, which means members can participate from any country or time zone as a part of the team. The expansion capability of virtual teams is a reason why they have become a very useful asset in all fields of study and research. The various skills associated with each individual that makes up a virtual team result in the development of the many unique characteristics that virtual teams possess, which differentiates them from ordinary teams. Although there are countless distinctive characteristics of a virtual team, there are still shortcomings. Having a team of individuals with various personalities, perceptions, and values can cause assimilation to become difficult. During an individual’s lifetime, some remarkable human assets are acquired, resulting in the creation of his or her cultural background. National culture can be present on any team, but most teams are formed with members belonging to the same city or state, which makes it easier to arrange. However, a virtual team with a national culture is a more difficult concept to