International Teams in Global Settings

Virtual Teams Throughout the Globe My assessment of the best practice suggestions regarding privacy at work made in the January 2013 issue of Cosmopolitan magazine is favorable. It is quite clear that social media has had a significant impact on the way that people interact with their co-workers, and on relationships between employees and employers. The key is to utilize that impact in a way that is advantageous to workers.

Specifically, the author of this article makes a good point when she indicates that it is best to get to know one's employer on a somewhat personal level, as long as it is done in moderation (Anderson, 2013, p. 76). The point is for one's employer to think favorably of his or her employee, not to become best friends with him or her. Such sagacity is applicable to virtual teams just as well as to those that operate in a physical environment.

Actually, they probably apply even more in the former because the only means of communication is via the internet and the occasional phone call. Thus, employees must take caution to not allow too much of their personal lives to be revealed. In fact, they should only disclose as much as their employers do, as Anderson (2013) indicates (p. 76).

The crux of the issue is that when working in a virtual team, it is not as necessary to guard one's privacy as it is when working with others in a physical location -- because one never sees one's co-workers. Therefore, it is all the more critical to take one's cues from one's employer in terms of discerning how much personal information one should reveal about oneself.

The point is to maintain one's privacy while not becoming too aloof from one's co-workers, so that they do not feel as though they do not know whom they are working with. The vast majority of the recommendations for the success of virtual and global teams elucidated in this week's readings were prudent. Dispersion inherently affects a team and the way that it functions.

One of the most valuable of the recommendations for the success of such teams includes evaluating "the social skills and self-sufficiency of the potential team members" (Siebdrat et al., 2009, p. 63). Self-reliance is a critical factor to evaluate, because it is disadvantageous to work in a situation in which team members do not do all of their work simply because they are not in a physical environment in which their efforts are well-regulated. I have actually encountered such an experience while involved in group projects for my post-secondary education.

It is not uncommon for people to wait for others to do work that they would rather not do themselves. Had I been able to pick the team myself, I would have evaluated the capacity of each member to function autonomously within.