GROUP

ASSIGNMENT
LEADING A HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAM

PROJECT TITLE: THE VIRTUAL TEAM CONFLICT

Assignment submitted by: -

Sr. No. NAME OF THE STUDENTS ROLL NO.
1 Arnab Das 2021X001
2 Chandan Kumar Choubey 2021X002
3 Shhanya Madan Bhatia 2021X007

Instructor Name: - Dr. Chitra Khari

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Introduction
A US company was working on a software project that was going off the
course. The development team comprised of two groups, one in
California & the other in New Delhi, India. The pilot run was successful
but the two teams could not work together & there were organizational
problems. Jay Park was the head of this high-profile project & his
promotion was incumbent on the experience he was gaining with the
virtual team, Jay asked the project manager Darla Jackson to brief him
about the project & if there were any foreseen problems.

The overall management of the team resided in the US. At the beginning
of the project, Darla had spent a lot of time at New Delhi, hiring &
training & coordinating across the teams.

Also, some of the Indian developers came to the US for integration of

the software code. A majority of the development work took place in
India, where there were around 40 developers working on the project.

Review with US Team

After the brief, Jay asked Darla to stay put. From Jay’s perspective, there was
something missing in the brief. He saw that between 2018 & 2020, 90% of
Software’s development had taken place in India, but now majority of the work
was being carried out in the US.
“To be honest, our newly hired US- based engineers don’t want to work with
the Delhi team anymore.” Darla replied
“Did they give any valid reason?” Jay asked
“The US team said that they would like to work with the people in the same
location. More important, they don’t seem to have faith on Indians.”
“So, what’s going on?” Jay asked Darla, “We are paying the Indian team to
work on this project. Why is the US team doing all the work?”
Darla kept quiet “Well,” Jay said nervously, “it just seems that a lot of US
based engineers here would prefer not to work with the Indians.”
“Are you saying the Indian’s aren’t doing their job well?” Jay asked
“I really don’t know,” replied Darla, “but I have heard things, you know, that
they aren’t fast enough or that their suggestion is little off. I just think everyone
would be happier working on the project here.” “Do you agree?” Jay asked.

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“I don’t really know,” she responded. “There’s clearly a problem. I’m just not
close enough to know the specifics.”
Jay offered a suggestion:
“I think the only way we’re going to understand the specifics is to call on the
entire US team & discuss what’s going on.”
Jay meets with two senior engineers. He explained that he needed the honest
feedback as to why the project should be run completely in house & why
outsourcing through the idea of the upper management doesn’t seem to work
practically.
“So, please explain what’s not working with the team in India, “he began.
“My first question is, what is their expertise level? Are they able to do the
work?”
After a nervous silence, Ben, an engineer, spoke up, “Well, let’s just say they
were not producing quality code. To be honest, I have no idea what they are
working on.”
Peter, another engineer, responded, “I’m going to have to disagree with Ben. I
was stalled by how much the Indians knew about the code, about the entire
project. They know this software inside out, & we shouldn’t ignore them.”
Peter said, “They know the product better than we do,” he said.
Others in the room smirked & rolled their eyes. A colleague retorted,
“Apparently, they are working until 2 am & even up to 4 am. But on what?”.
Other developers questioned the work practices in India, one developer Jeff
voiced, “Maybe they are not concentrating, or maybe he’s not focussing on
what we do here. Maybe he doesn’t discuss it with others, maybe he was just
thinking & working by himself.”
“Jay,” another developer, said
“The Indian engineers want to make sure they have work to do, but they have
less of a stake in the product, & are less concerned with the end product. How
do they feel about things that fail?”
Ben said: “Why should they give us their suggestions? They’re not paid to make
suggestions; we are telling them what to execute & that’s what they should do.”
“Let’s just say we can do this ourselves; the smaller the group the better.”
“Exactly,” another chimed in.

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“That’s the problem. They’re 9,000 miles away, & there’s a 12-hour time
difference. And frankly, I don’t know what’s on their mind. They may send a 20-
page document, & I’m so busy I can’t be bothered to read it.”, Ben said
“So, if you had a problem with the work done by your counterparts in India,
how would you resolve it? “Jay asked. “What systems are in place for working
together? Who would you go to?”
“So, are you saying that distance & a lack of procedures are the main
problems?” Jay asked. “And if we could fix that, you would be happy to work
with the Indian developers?”
Again, the room filled with silence
Darla told Jay who was in deep concern, “The salary of the engineers has begun
to creep higher & offshore work was a concern. I was in a recent meeting of IT
association of America & if US wanted to be a global leader, companies should
limit sourcing their assignments. The offshore countries will emerge as
competitors”.

Review with Indian Virtual Team

A week after his meeting, Jay was on a plane to Delhi. As he settled in for the
flight, he thought about distance issues. He himself had led virtual teams
collaborating between the US & New Zealand. However, he noticed an
important difference between the two projects: the one being developed in New
Zealand involved a well-defined task on a known problem, while this software
was a rapid development project & required a lot of creativity in problem
solving.
Jay was greeted at the airport by one of the Indian Team’s project managers, Raj
who expressed his pleasure at having someone visit from the American side. On
the car ride to the office complex, they talked about the project. Raj explained,
“the team was excited initially at the start of the project, when they had learned
they would own certain parts of the code. That was really wonderful for us, “he
said. “It was such a boost.”
In the conference room, Jay met with the engineers who were working on the
project, he laid out his desire to understand how the relationship was going &
how it could be improved.

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The first developer spoke up.
“The most difficult thing about working with the American team is the lag in
their response. The lack of rapid answers & clarifications hinders
collaboration,” he said. “It takes 15 to 20 days to get a reply from, that too
after a lot of follow-ups.”
Another developer added, “The frequent changes in the design & specifications
done by the Americans make our jobs very hard. Also, the division of work is
unclear.”
An Indian manager expressed his & his colleagues’ reactions to the fact that
their work was not being used. “It was good when the American manager used
to come to Delhi often. We’d have discussions on every other day, or we’d talk
on regular basis sometimes for even three hours, so we knew what was
happening. But it all stopped”
Jay was shocked to hear that the Indians felt so alienated from the software team
settled in America. He was even more disturbed to hear that many of the best
programmers were leaving the project because they felt they were not being
properly assigned their role & the output that was required from them.
Another developer explained, “Once the whole US team had visited India but no
one really came to talk to us, to introduce us to each other. Even when we went
for lunch together in one of the restaurants in Delhi, the Americans all sat at
one table & we sat at another. It was really uncomfortable situation as all the
team interacted with respective country team members.”
Another engineer said, “We were the owner of the module; now it’s slowly has
moved to US. I feel I’m not being utilized properly.”
Jay’s solution
Jay told Darla:
1. You’re also the liaison Manger. You would be required to provide weekly
updates on the progress of the relationship of the Indian & the US team.
2. There would be weekly conference calls between the teams. You will be
responsible for organizing the meeting & the agenda of the meeting &
also ensuring that progress of the specific module is being discussed & all
the members are participating.
3. The developers from both the sides to visit their counterparts more
frequently. They would need to travel to each other’s country.

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Update
After a few days, Jay looked through a pile of memos sent by Darla, there
was a terrible news about none of the conference call meetings being
attended by the US team members & turnaround time from US based
developers back to India continued to be slow. Many Indians had travelled to
US, yet no one from the US team had travelled to India. Also, the US-based
developers were complaining about the Indian counterparts & continued to
insist that they did not want to work with the developers in India. The
deadline for the project delivery was coming close.
Jay was morbidly worried, was he wrong about the root cause of the
problem?
Were there any other issues that he had overlooked?

Individual Component

Q. What solutions would you suggest to manage these above-mentioned

factors so that team effectiveness is enhanced?

Answers: By Arnab Das

It is impossible to avoid conflicts in a workplace, especially when two virtual
teams are working on the same project from two different countries having
different cultures. Reasons for the conflict in virtual team are communication
gap, interpersonal clashes, difference in work styles, trust issues, task conflict
etc.
In case of virtual team, it becomes difficult to notice when a storm start
brewing between the team members. Preventing conflict in virtual teams
means one need to pay more attention to the tiny details. Jay can take the
following steps:
 Build trust to prevent team conflict between the team memebers
There is a strong bond between trust & the team success. High levels
of trust are necessary specially in case of virtual team to feel safe to
speak up their thoughts, ask questions or even make suggestions. Even
though both the teams are miles apart, building trust will make them
feel close enough to share their fears, opinions & intentions. Moreover,
transparency builds trust. When issues are discussed openly &
resolved based on their technical merits & not on biases, then
transparency will engender a fair play, leading to the atmosphere of
trust within the team.

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 Trust can be built by Jay, by dividing the two virtual teams into mini
groups first from both the countries in such a way that there should be
members from the both the countries in each of the subgroups doing
the sub group task assigned by Jay or Darla.

 Create a team agreement

To keep team members connected psychologically Jay or the HR of
the company, can conduct group activities or virtual team building
activities that can be held during happy hours by making teams from
each other country’s members. Team building activities like conflict
resolution games helps team members to build trust, improve
communication & increases the team’s productivity as a whole.
 Share a common virtual workspace to improve communications
Since the Indian team was facing problem of getting reply from the US
team, who took days to reply, both the country team members can use
a common virtual workplace like there are many projects management
softwares to share documents, manage workflows & this would also
help to keep an eye on daily work progress, thus reducing the
unnecessary delay & conflicts due to the delay. This will also help to
communicate effectively due to frequent communication.
Whenever there is a meeting instead of telecall, one should insist on
video call meetings.
 Set clear roles & responsibilities
Jay should clearly designate task sub groups with deadlines & should
held them accountable for the given task. Accountability will make
clashes over incomplete work less frequent & increase the team
cohesiveness.
 Handle every issue immediately
Conflicts always begins with small differences. Jay should always be
attentive & should not ignore any issues. He should check up on
individual members & should also council them in order to avoid
hatred for each other team members.

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Answer: By Chandan Kumar Choubey
In my opinion, these are the main solutions to manage the team effectiveness
between US and India team.
1. Sharing a common vision
India team who are separated by geographical distances struggle to identify with
the US team they are part of. The camaraderie and culture that develops by
working in the same location are difficult to replace in a virtual team, but it is
important that the team leader/manager spends time to communicate the team
goals and what the team stands for to each of the members working in different
locations. Clear communication on how their roles is adding value to the
overall team/organizational performance goes a long way in improving the team
members’ confidence in the leader and taking pride in the work that they do.
2. Communicate regularly
Regular communication between India and US teams will effectively not only lessen
the physical differences between the teams, but also try to capture all the
hinderances that affect the teams working together. For instance, if developers from
India team have the issue that there is a lag in response from US developer’s side,
this can be effectually managed through bi-weekly update calls so that everyone is
aware of the project agenda and timelines. Further, in order to avoid any discontent
when working with offshore teams, it is of paramount importance to clearly define
success criteria upfront.
3. Building Trust
I believe this to be the most important aspect of managing any team. Team members
develop trust in their leader first and post that in the organization that they are part
of, which partially accounts for the saying “People quit their managers, not
organizations!”. The problems arose because US team had lack of trust on the work
done by India team. Thus, US leaders must trust that they will work hard, to the best
of their abilities to make you and your product successful – unless proven
otherwise. 
4. Foster a unified culture among onshore and offshore team members
Whether you work with internal, collocated resources or with offshore team
members, it is always imperative to create a culture of belonging. Ultimately,
everyone is working towards the same goal. If a product is successful, everyone
wins. Together!  It is this winning attitude we think every client needs to own and
promote as part of their engagement with offshore distributed teams.

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 5. Have a regular check-in schedule
A regular cadence of meetings is critical to the overall success of the project. A very
structured approach should be followed to have a regular check-in schedule where
both the onshore and offshore teams are aware of the issues and critical nuances of
the project and thereby every member of the team can deliberately work together as
a team to achieve the firm’s objectives.

Solution : Shhanya

The case relates to the coordination and collaboration challenges in a team of software
developers comprised of two virtual groups: one located in US and one in Delhi India. The
distant collaborators are disengaged due to following factors :
(a) work together using tele conference more often than face-to-face (b) are distributed
across space (c) are responsible for a joint outcome which is the software development
project (d) work on strategic or technically advanced tasks as the project is technical and
needs creative problem solving and (e) is involved in multicultural interaction. Each
element is related to the challenges and contingencies faced by teams, and performance
can only be explained by their combination.

- Use of Communication Technology and its challenges

Tele- Conference is more for information exchange and talking about deliverables and
updates. The suggestion is to implement an interactive platform or an internal
communication site. Interpersonal relationships are more likely to flourish if we
include visual and written profiles of all team members, their roles, responsibilities,
and contact info. A shared collaboration page would create visibility. By including
project details along with the ability to instantly share data and insights across borders
and time zones, cross-cultural virtual teams would increase their potential contribution
to the business. However, there would some challenge where this type pf
communication may eliminate the communication cues individuals use to convey
trust, warmth, attentiveness, and other interpersonal affections

- Task and Social Process

Davison and Ekelund (2004) on virtual team dynamics and effectiveness dwell on
these two aspects and task process needs to be integrated and coordinated in such a
way that there are no time lags and delays in queries and feedback. This would require
a proper work in progress report, sharing documents and managing workflows and
collaborative exchange of ideas via virtual meetings at least twice a week: this would
help the virtual teams to integrate the modules. To foster creativity and innovation,
the teams would need to collaborate and leader would have to step in to motivate the
Indian distributed team for their achievements. A team climate of openness and
inclusiveness would be needed to foster innovation and cohesiveness. The social
process which is related to the team ‘s ability to work together over a longer period of
time needs attention. With the coordinating mechanisms in place we would have to
work on how to build mutual trust, collective team identity and confidence in team’s

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 ability to achieve its tasks. Successful virtual teams need to be “focused specifically
on building relationships to increasetrust and develop shared views” A way to
motivate members to feel like they belong is through uncertainty reduction.
Uncertainty Reduction Techniques: information sharing, members making an effort of
understand each other, and high levels of member responsiveness and clarity of
members’ roles.

- Cross Cultural Interaction

Adler (2002) has noted differences between task oriented cultures and relationship
oriented cultures when international team members first meet: those from task oriented
cultures spent little time getting to know each other before getting down to business.
Those from relationship oriented spent much more time establishing a personal
relationship. As see in the case study, the American Team is more task oriented and
individualistic. While, the Indian virtual team being the off shore team wanted to interact
and build relationships but there was not much response from the US based team. The
collective work culture is in the ethos of the Indian Team as they visited their counterparts
and wanted to interact with them.
To bridge the cross – cultural gap requires team practices like routines of discussion or
norms of communication, clearly defined goals, positive feedback, supportive discussion
space and accountability. y

- Effective Leadership Behaviours and Activities

Supporting actions such as encouraging the US based developers to see the strengths and
talent of the Indian team would help and overcome the stereotype that Indians cant be trusted,
responsiveness, giving of feedback, precise communications, clarification of roles,
understanding and assertiveness would be needed from the leader. Jay would also need to
manag the virtual work-cycle and any meetings, supervise team progress with the aid of
technology, develop visibility of the team and team members would be needed.

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