Case Study : Managing a Global Team: Greg James at Sun Microsystems, Inc.

This would minimize the crossing of time zones and the process can increase team effectiveness. The author, as a project manager can establish a common time to interact face-to-face through video conferencing.

“Team building is an investment in the “people” resource of an organization. Important to any investment decision is an assessment of how effective are the outcomes in relation to the money and time spent. So it is vital to measure effectiveness, and this can be done through the use of case studies and questionnaires. Team development should not disguise the fact that a team contains individuals. Rather, it should highlight that it is individualism that provides a team with tremendous amounts of power, and should help to develop the individuals to improve their contribution to the team.”

Kaye, B., & Hogan, J. (1999). Improve teamwork. Executive Excellence, 16(6), 17. Retrieved from http://search.proquest.com/docview/204610635?accountid=458

In the book Creating Effective Teams: A Guide for Members and Leaders by Susan A. Wheelan (2016), the reader is challenged with transitioning a work group into an effective team body. Throughout the text, effective teams is described as a methodical discipline that places emphasis on principles and strategies that can withstand adversity among members. Wheelan adopts a philosophical stance in moving the reader from group development to a high performance team. By providing a checklist for the organization, team, and leader, the author helps members and teams to make the necessary improvements within their cultural setting. In essence, being a part of an effective team should flow out of our being.

Having played a variety of team sports throughout my life, I saw a lot of parallels throughout the class work on team building between positive teamwork and success. Reading Five Dysfunctions of a Team and then applying what we learned from the reading into several team building exercise gave me a unique perspective on how to create and identify key team building skills.

Team building is not something new. However, the ways that it is done today more often than not does not achieve its goals. The reasons for this are

Teambuilding videos are easy to find on the internet. There are numerous different techniques and opinions on training and teambuilding throughout the web. I found three videos to be the most interesting and will explain the different ideas throughout this paper.

Teamwork is essential to the smooth running of many projects, organisations and companies. Much research has been conducted into the effectiveness of teams and their contributions to organisational success.

First, it is very challenging to build trust within virtual teams. It is very hard for you to trust people who you do not know well or those whom you have not observed working over time. Secondly, in virtual teams, it is difficult to obtain group-process gains (positive synergy) that many times accompany face-to-face communication. Process losses (negative synergy) are more likely. It is difficult to create team synergy and to overcome the absence of informal, interactive learning. Thirdly, there is a feeling of isolation and detachment associated with the virtual teamwork. There is no physical interaction which is associated with verbal and non-verbal ques and thus, there is absence of social interaction with supervisors and coworkers. Virtual team members may be less productive and satisfied than their counterparts working face-to-face due to feeling of isolation and detachment. Fourthly, it is tricky to balance technical and interpersonal skills among the virtual members. There is a challenge for a virtual teal leader to recruit, select and retain team members who have a good balance of technical and

As it is being stated earlier that this paper will be discussing about team development and it will then explain the theories of teamwork and team development. Team development is defined as the improvement of the efficacy of working in teams or groups by advancing goal progressions (Eyre, 2015). Bruce Tuckman firstly identified the four stages of team development in the mid 60s (Eyre, 2015). These stages are; Forming, Storming, Norming and Performing. In the 1970s Dr Bruce Tuckman added the fifth stage, which is Adjourning (Businessballs.com, 2015). Dr Bruce also mentioned that this theory is a helpful and beneficial description of team development (Businessballs.com, 2015).

Due to the recent increased utilization of information communication technology in organizations, there has been a rising trend of the adoption of virtual teams. These teams have helped organizations conduct their businesses in a very effective way. In furtherance of that, these teams have also helped in enhancing the speed at which communication is carried out. For instance, team members in different countries or continents can actually contribute ideas for a project in real time via electronic means (Hendrickson, 1998). However, these groups have faced some criticisms which have made them to be underutilized. Some of the issues raised against these teams include lack of involvement and inclusiveness, lack of trust, lack of employees with technical and interpersonal skills and lack of cohesion among others. Past research has revealed that virtual teams have proved to be effective,

Beaudin, J. A., & Free, L. (1999, August). Building Teamwork. American School & University , 71 (12), p. 101.

Managing remote employees is a growing challenge for many of today’s leaders. It is not just about managing employees at satellite offices; it is also managing telecommuters who work a certain number of days from their home offices. A manager needs to understand the complexities of managing a virtual team and communicating across the boundaries of time zones, organizations and cultures. Good communication practices as well as building personal relationships are both key to working with remote employees. As Pauleen (2003) states, “Effective communications is a key to successful virtual teams, and one of the keys to effective communications is how well team members are able to build and maintain their personal relationships.” (p. 229). Video conferencing works well and provides a company’s employees with a visual link that serves to backfill for the lack of face-to-face communications that employees would have if they were collocated.

This manual is intended as a reference for projects managers managing projects in a virtual team environment. Our company is moving towards a virtual organization setup. Current project managers who operate in traditional project management environment setup should be trained in aspects related to managing projects planned for execution in virtual environments. Projects that operate in a virtual team environment face

The science of team building is an art. The uncontrollable variables are people. Just putting a group of talented individuals together for the sole purpose of goal achievement can be met with disastrous results. It can leave individuals left feeling unfulfilled and lead to costly mistakes in the long run. While team building can be considered an art, there are some methods and approaches that can assist with successful builds. While no approach is full proof, taking time to acclimate oneself with human