Virtual Team Coordination Communication Is More Difficult

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 the belief systems and how each team member perceives the communication. 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 other members.

For a virtual project to be successful developing trust, group identity, clear structures, as well as sharing information and understanding information is vital (Adams, Jan 1997). In order to develop trust, there has to be clear communication channels where a group can gain some kind of identity with the overall team. A variety of communication channels need to accessible to the team as a whole. Depending on the implementation budget and already available resources in the organization, website portals, chat rooms, and video conferencing are good ways to build communication where team members can communicate with the whole team. This also helps to begin to build relationships where the team members begin to get to know each other and how each other perceive the goals and objectives of the project.

The initial meeting of the team should be used to define the goals and objectives, talk about concerns and problems, not just from the manager, but from each team member, and evaluate risks as a group. It should contain a standard format that contains a list of topics that need to be discussed. There should be a time for members to share about themselves to enable better understanding of the cultural differences of each member. Checking for clarity of objectives and goals with each team member is essential for ensuring understanding. Each member should be required to explain viewpoints, describe actions, and solicit possible impacts on other members.