Resources to Enhance Virtual Team Effectiveness

The accomplishment of goals within a specified limit through the use of virtual team is an arduous task simply because most of the interaction is not personal and human contact between the team members is very little, if not nonexistent. However, in any team, for successful implementation of any task, there needs to be interpersonal connection among the members. It is therefore a challenge to ensure that this interpersonal connection is created and maintained throughout the time period when the team is working together towards a particular goal.

Purpose and Goal

As a way of creating interpersonal connectedness among the members of the team, the goal of the team was introduced to the members as a way of creating the connection. Since team members as a result would feel that they are part of larger and purposeful goal, it would act to create interpersonal connection among the members. The goal would provide an objective point at which the interests of all the team members converged and thus act as a point of establishing interpersonal connection among them.

Leadership

Leadership within any group has been known to establish interpersonal connection among members of teams. In using leadership to create interpersonal connection, the process of choosing a leader and a deputy for the group was through consensus where the input from each of the members of the team was considered.

The position of a team leader is also a reference point in case of disputes and the settling of differences among the team members. The leader thus acts to create interpersonal connection among team members since he can facilitate communication among the team members.

Clear rules and protocols

The establishment of clear rules and protocols in communication and action on tasks was also a way of creating interpersonal connection. This is because the rules so established were binding to all the members of the team, and thus gave the team members a feeling of being part of one larger and purposeful team.

Barriers to connectedness

The greatest barrier to creation of interpersonal connection among the team was the absence of physical meetings. This had the implication that the advantages that come with easy connections created in face to face meetings were absent, and it was not exactly possible to replicate such in a virtual meeting.

Communication was also a barrier to effective establishment of interpersonal connection among the team members. The ability to create sync in communication is difficult since some of the team members would wish to communicate through email while other would prefer to use other modes of communication such as phone calls. This created disharmony and was detrimental to the effort to create interpersonal connectedness among the team members.

Conclusion

In trying to deal with the barriers to establishing interpersonal connection among team members, reference to material from the module were avoided and solutions to such barriers were sought through the use of opinions sought from members of the team.

References

Beranek, P., Broder, J., Reinig, B., Romano, N., and Sump, S.  (2005). Management of virtual project teams: guidelines for team leaders.  Communications of the Association for Information Systems (Volume 16, 2005)

Kratzer, J. Leenders, R. and van Engelen. (2005). Keeping virtual R&D teams creative. Industrial Research Institute, Inc.

Panteli, N. and Tucker, R. (2009). Power and Trust on Global Virtual Teams.Communication of the ACM. December 2009, Vol. 52, No. 12.

van der Smagt, T. (2000). Enhancing virtual teams: social relations v. communication technology.  Industrial Management & Data Systems, MCB University Press.