Virtual Team Coordination Communication is more difficult for a virtual team because relationships are more geographical distributed, more asynchronous, temporary, more multicultural, and more likely to extend outside the organization (Kokko, Mar 2007). Collocated teams are demographically located, members have usually worked together for a period of time and already know each other, which help to build relationships, and meetings are face-to-face interaction. Virtual teams may not have face-to-face interactions, which make relationship building difficult, cultural differences can break down understanding in communications, the lack of shared experience have negative effects on sense of trust between members, and time zones can create problems with setting up meetings.

Research found that virtual teams are significantly less socially aware than collocated teams (Branson, Feb 2011). In collocated teams, members have visual cues with face-to-face interactions that communicate without spoken words. Virtual team members do have visual cues. Interactions are based on what a team member perceives about other members. This can create communication problems for the virtual team, which can cause interactions to degrade. Social issues can also create a lack of trust among team members, which can create other problems in communications as well.

Without the attribute of shared experience, cultural differences can be problematic in understandings of communications. Virtual team members have to rely only on the voice or technology mediated conversations to understand...

Communication can become limited due to not understanding how a team member values the goals and tasks of the project.
The biggest obstacle for successful implementation is the lack of incentive for sharing intellectual capital across boundaries (Loughran, n.d.). If team members do not understand the importance of information sharing, especially detailed, or do not have incentive to do so, it will affect the performance of the team and could cause failure. The lack of shared goals can create communication problems within the team. Differing perspectives, or when members do not realize the differences, can also create communication problems.

High emotional self-awareness predicts team effectiveness and team performance (Branson, Feb 2011). The interpersonal processes and skills of the team members will define success or failure and depends on social awareness. If team members do not know how to effectively communicate, communications begin to degrade and will affect the project goals and performance.

Essential competencies for virtual teams are; goal, role, responsibility, and clarity. Members must follow a common process of compliance, be highly committed, and maintain a common understanding and diversity tolerance. Team members must take extra care to engage with the team in a socially intelligent manner, maintaining awareness of other's perceptions and emotional responses to self and others, communicate clearly, and provide and attend to additional interpersonal cues of…