Thoughts on Virtual Teams

Clayton Boessen

Working in a virtual team is a very interesting concept, and is becoming a more popular

option for businesses. While in a virtual team you can work from your own home and at your

own pace, or you can work at a central business location. What is different from a regular job is

that you can be working with people from around the country or around the world. This is what

makes the virtual team virtual, as you may never actually meet these people in real life. Being in

a virtual team can create some benefits and also some problems for the team members. Some

benefits that virtual teams have, are the flexibility of working where you want, and as a business

you can hire the best possible people that are available to you. Some disadvantages of virtual

teams are communication, trust, and time management within the virtual team. However these

problems can be easily solved with correct management of the team.

While reading through the different articles that we were provided and from doing some

research of my own, I realized that one very common theme that they all had, was trust. Almost

every article that I read had mentioned how important trust was between virtual team members at

some point. I find that this is a very reasonable claim though. How would you be able to

complete your tasks if you couldn’t trust that other group members will complete their own

tasks? To work in any team you need to be able to trust and get along with your team members.

The key to building trust with your team members is honest communication with everyone on

your team. You need to give express your thoughts on matters that are important to the function

of the team. I think that it is best for everyone that you give your opinion on any problems that

are occurring and to give a reasoning behind your opinion. If you are having issues with your

particular part of the project, you should tell the team that you are, then see if they have any

advice that could help you overcome it. If you do nothing and just struggle with your part, you

will cause the project to fall behind. This will cost the business time and money, as well as waste

the time of the members in your group. If I were having a problem with my part of the project, I

would explain to my group members what the problem is that I am having. Then I would ask for

others help on what I should do or how to go about this problem. The best part of being in a team

is the combined experience that you and the other members all share. What one person may

struggle on others may fly through, and so they can help share their knowledge with everyone

else. So while you might be embarrassed about having a problem, it is best to be truthful and

communicate the problem with your team. While doing this you gain the other members trust as

someone who knows how to admit their faults, and the person who shares is trusted more and is

viewed as someone people can rely on.

Something else that helps to build trust with group members is to get to know your team

members in some way. People will trust someone more if they can relate to them in some way or

if they at least know something about the person. Something that was mentioned in the web page

that I found, was that the business could fund a meet up to help the team to connect. Doing a

team meetup could greatly help build trust between team members. Doing a team meet up allows

for members to truly get to know each other. You can learn a lot more about a person in a couple

days from a physical meet up, than from a virtual one like one social media. Many businesses

will fund events like this for team building. However this may not be possible with all businesses

because of the cost it may take to send a group of people to a central location. A possible remedy

for this would be for everyone to connect on social media networks. This would allow for group

members to get insights into other member’s lives. You could pick up on small things that occur

in your team members lives, and better understand them. I would try to make all my group

members friends on the social media sites that I use, just so that I could keep in touch with the

different members. I think that as a virtual team it would be beneficial to everyone to have some

sort of monthly or annual meet up to catch up with each other’s lives. I would try and get a

meeting like this to be pushed through and funded. This would help with trusting others in the

group, and it could help reduce the feeling of being alone if you are working remotely.

The website that I found mentioned the problem of worker isolation. Worker isolation

happens when team members who are working remotely start to feel as though they are alone

and unimportant to the business or group. Something to do about this would be to include

everyone in any important decisions that are being made for the group. This would help them

feel like they are included and are a key factor in any decisions being made. Another idea would

be to just start some friendly conversations with members of the group just to check in on them

and see how they are doing. These conversations don’t have to be work related, they can be

purely social. Just asking how a person is doing, or what kind of important events are going on in

their life. Doing this will go a long way towards making people feel that they are not alone and

that someone cares about them.

Another large challenge of being in a virtual team is communication within the group. It

may seem like it wouldn’t be a problem considering all the different types of communication that

are available these days, but it can be a big problem. The problem that occurs is that people like

to use fast types of communication like email or texting. While it is nice to communicate in these

fast ways, you likely will miss out on the body language of members in your group. This can be

important to seeing how a person truly feels about something that is being discussed in the

group. Without body language or tone of voice it is very easy to miscommunicate what you are

trying to say. That being said I think it would be a good idea to incorporate using Skype or other

video conferencing software, once a week for general decisions, and for all important decisions

being made, so you are able to see how others are reacting to the decisions being made. This

would allow you to see the different member’s body language and hear their tone of voice. While

doing these video calls it is important for members that are participating to pay attention to the

person or people who are speaking, as it shows that you care about what they are saying. It is

also important to make sure that everything you are trying to communicate is as clear as possible

to reduce the chance of miscommunication. Poor wording or limited cultural knowledge can lead

to offending other members of your group. So it is very important to carefully choose what you

want to say, and how you are going to say it.

After doing research on virtual teams I found that there are a couple things that are

important for the group to function well. First off there needs to be trust between group

members. A group that can’t trust one another will make very little progress towards their goal.

Second you should get to know your group members fairly well. Getting to know one another

will help with creating a fully functioning group, and make you feel like you have friends that

you can talk to. Next you need to include all group members in major decisions to help them feel

as though they are important and contributing to the project. Last there needs to be solid

communication between members of the group. If you can’t communicate what you really want

to say, the project will go wrong. Belonging to a virtual team can be a strange experience, but

can be a very beneficial one as well.