Your response should be a minimum of 200 words, but may not exceed 350 words. Pa
ID: 420331 • Letter: Y
Question
Your response should be a minimum of 200 words, but may not exceed 350 words.
Page 195 of your text book, "Organizational Behaviour - Key Concepts, Skills and Best Practices" (Kinicki, Fugate, Digby) describes the benefits and challenges of creating a virtual team.( attached below) Please read the section on Virtual Teams and answer the following questions:
1. Considering the challenges, please describe the overall values, skills and behaviours you would look for in members of a virtual team. Please also include the reason these values, skills and behaviours are important.
2. Describe one team-building activity or exercise that could be used for a virtual team. How does this activity work in spite of the challenges faced by a virtual team?
You may look for ideas online or think back on some of your own experiences for this question.
Page 195
Types of TEAMS—2. Virtual Teams
A virtual team is a physically dispersed task group that conducts its business through modern
information technology.43 Virtual teams are a product of modern times. They take their name
from virtual reality computer simulations, where “it’s almost like the real thing.” Thanks to
evolving information technologies such as Google Docs, teleconferencing, Skype, Dropbox,
email, texting, and GoToMeeting, you can be a member of a team without really being
there.44 Traditional team meetings are location-specific—team members are either physically
present or absent. Virtual teams, in contrast, convene electronically with members reporting in
from different locations, different organizations, and even different time zones. In other words,
the workforce is distributed. Distributed workers often have no permanent office at their
companies, preferring to work in home offices, cafés, airports, high-school stadium bleachers,
client conference rooms, the beach, or other places. They are members of teams and
projects connected by the web.
VIRTUAL TEAM
A physically dispersed task group that conducts its business through modern information
technology.
Advocates say virtual teams are very flexible and efficient because they are driven by
information and skills, not by time and location.45 People with needed information and/or skills
can be team members, regardless of where or when they actually do their work. Today it
seems that most people are connected to work remotely at least some of the time. One
estimate is that nearly 1 billion people work remotely via the Internet.46 And more than 60
percent of companies with more than 5,000 employees use virtual teams.47 Individuals who
crave face-to-face interaction argue that virtual teams can weaken trust, communication,
and accountability as employees can deviate from their roles and assigned tasks. Click on the
Law and Ethics feature below to read a discussion on the social deviance that can occur in
virtual teams.
Explanation / Answer
Virtual teams can be defined as a non physical team which communicates digital platforms and have a huge difference is indications between them. The kind of teams are formed according to the strengths and weakness of the specific individuals which can provide their knowledge to other people and contribute in the team with the help of the knowledge.
Some factors which are essential to create an efficient virtual team management can be described as follows
Clarifying the task and processes
While a new plan is implemented into a team, management of the plant is one of the most important task for a team specifically with virtual team. Implementing a plan inside a virtual team could be a tough task as the distance between each and every member of the team is very large. For clarifying the specific task and processes in a leader has to create an implementation plan for strategizing the overall effectiveness of the specific task as well as processes.
Implementing Technology
Implementation of Technology plays an important role in virtual team management as it provides support to the structure in communicate in between the team. While communicating inside the team one can easily implement new structures for increasing the overall effectiveness of the communication inside a virtual Team Management. Implementation of the Technologies directly increases the overall efficiency as well as productivity of the communication which directly affects the implementation level of the virtual team management system.
Creating a virtual personality
By creating a virtual identity from a manager or a leader one can easily increase the level of fear inside the team which would directly increase the level of dedication of the employees towards the specific time. By frequently communicating with the employees and providing them instructions regarding the same goal which they have to obtain is one of the major strategies used in creating a virtual identity for an authority related to managing as well as leadership.
Being a good long distance supervisor
Why motivating as well as facilitating different offers and increase the thickness of the cultural environment of a virtual team even if you are located far away from the specific employees could be very beneficial for increasing the overall efficiency of the specific team. A leader can be an elevator of the specific motivational tools for a team which can directly increase the level of implementation of the team strategies towards a specific organisation.
Having effective virtual meeting
By outlining the overall virtual team meeting as well as creating a structured pattern of the virtual team meetings can be very beneficial for a virtual team. While having a meeting on track and creating a specific guideline for discussion as well as creating reminders before the meeting would be very beneficial for carrying out a specific successful meeting for an organisation in virtual team management system.
Major tools like TeamViewer are widely useful in creating unethical environment for the meeting as well as implementation of the new technologies inside the organisation which would directly help a team leader to create a more effective team.
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