How to manage virtual teams

teams as typical building blocks of an organization individuals with various skills and
talents combined to achieve goals
recently teams consisting of people from different geographical locations (different cultural
background, language, value systems)
quality of collaboration affected by dispersion, dispersed teams can significantly outperform
their colocated counterparts

disadvantages of dispersion: language differences, cultural incompatabilities, collaboration

across distance is more difficult (communication, coordination, reduced trust, inability to
establish common ground, potential for conflict, frustration and confusion (if coworkers are
unavilable for discussion), greater difficulty in resolving conflicts across geographic
boundaries, difficult teamwork
advantages: physical presence of coworkers improves familiarity, ability to reduce costs,
access to diverse skills/experience, knowledge about divere markets, create a team that can
optimally integrate different pools of expertise to perform particular task, increased
heterogenity, higher levels of structural diversity, enhance the overall problem-solving
capacity of the group
performance of dispersed teams: often fail to perform effectively, unable to realize their
potential
managers have to understand how to maximize benefits
key drivers of performance are certain crucial team processes that help coordinate work and
facilitate communication
dispersed teams with high level of task-related processes are able to outperform colocated
teams with similar levels dispersion not necessarily a disadvantage
BUT teams with poor task-related processes suffer heavily with increased dispersion

important to ensure that team members commit overall group goals and identify with the team,
social-emotional processes are important, establish interpersonal bonds that enable a group to
better cope with conflicts, social processes are able to boost performance of virtual and
colocated teams

different performance levels depending on degree of dispersion (efficiency and effectiveness)

lowest: intercontinental teams with intercultural diversity and temporal disperion

low: teams with people colocated in the same building but on different floors ( members do
not consider themselves as being dispersed underestimate barriers

higher: teams where all members are on the same floor in the same building

highest: teams spread across city, country (more aware of their situation, make extra efforts to
improve vital processes as communicaion/coordination)
leaders often underestimate significance of small distances

Emphasize teamwork skills

Key reason for organizing a dispersed team : superior knowledge that

resides in remote locations
o Important: managers must also consider social skills, not only
peoples expertise and availability
The ability of mutual support, communication and coordination, effective
exchange of the varying capabilities of team members are important to
achieve greater potential. Thus, teamwork skills are important for virtual
teams
Promote self-leadership across the team
o Beyond social skills broad based leadership skills to resolve
interpersonal conflicts, to overcome cultural problems, to lead teams
to success
Difficulties in virtual teams: different countries, different time zones, no
personal contact
o Importance of self-sufficiency of team members to manage own
work
For success of virtual teams, HR must focus on designated team leaders
and on team members for developing necessary skills of virtual work
Provide face-to-face meetings:
o Periodic face-to-face meetings can be effective for initiating and
maintaining key social processes for team identification, cohesion
and communication
o Time and expense of these meetings can lead to large returns if the
team is able to use advantages of heterogeneity and diverse
expertise
Foster a global culture:
o A global mind-set helps to provide a conductive environment for
dispersed teams
o Human resource strategies including temporary staff assignment
and intercultural training can help
o For example, companies send their managers to different locations
in order to learn about speciality of the markets, or to develop
informal networks across different countries
o Virtual teams can outperform their collocated counterparts when
they are managed in the right way and if they use the benefits of
diversity and varied expertise
o Only if the company ensure that the virtual group has the necessary
socio-emotional and task- related processes in place, virtual teams
can integrate dispersed knowledge to take advantage of diversity