10 challenges of a virtual team
- 1. 10 challenges of a virtual team In many professional spheres, there is a nascent recognition of the need to collaborate externally through a virtual team. Presently, a professional meeting and team collaboration are among those concepts that have certainly continuously evolved in meaning ever since the internet age.
- 2. So, what is a virtual team? • It can simply be defined as a group of people who work through organizational boundaries with, connections reinforced by technologically based communication. They work beyond the constraints imposed by geography and time and may possess complementary skills. • In addition, they are committed to a common objective of interdependent performance by sharing a professional outlook for which they must hold each other accountable.
- 3. The challenges of a Virtual team Alienation • A virtual team is suitable only if it’s a small team. The multiplier effect of alienation in a virtual team is far greater than a direct face to face interaction. Moreover, it has to nourish the feeling of “being ignored” among some team members once you make it a large-scale operation.
- 4. Cultural differences • Cultural differences include, differences in work rhythm and language barriers. It is important to remember that not everyone, is a polyglot. • Just because a company cultivates a global corporate culture that does not mean that it can successfully insulate itself from, or is totally indifferent to the local customs. This often leads to different expectations and frequent divergence from common goals.
- 5. An upsurge of E-failures transposed to virtual teams • This is a portmanteau of the word e-mail and failure. It designates the complications associated with e-mail communication more so as a result of human error. • Did you forget to attach a document? • Did an important message, go into the spam folder? • Have your sent a message to the wrong receiver? • This is because these kinds of errors are a frequent occurrence among virtue teams collaborating on a project.
- 6. Time wastage in unravelling communication failures. • Let’s say all the stakeholders are reading from the same script but when miscommunication occurs, it is only much mater that such errors are discovered. • You see, lack of communication is bad enough when your colleague is a few feet away. But in a virtue team, lots of time is wasted before you clear up the misunderstanding.
- 7. Different tool box for the same process • To put in place a coherent process of a virtual collaboration, you will inevitably exert the probability of replicating the same process twice or thrice. • This is due to the act that virtual teams are notorious duplicators. However nuanced the different processes each team uses to achieve their goal, demarcation lines have to be re-drawn so many times. • This is especially so in virtual engineering teams. NASA being the first big organization to realize this, incurred huge losses from the now famous metric mishap which was caused by one team using the metric system while the other team used the imperial system. • Consequently, since neither teams bothered to make the conversion, the mars climate probe overshoot it's orbit.
- 8. Geographical and time differences • Preparing a videoconference time zones away requires you establish strict rules that everybody adheres to. • It is extremely unwise to make unnecessary video calls if there is a huge time difference meaning that from time to time, you may be obliged to leave them out, in some meetings.
- 9. Interpreting Nuance and non-verbal cues • We are social animals. Because of this, we can tell early on from informal interactions in our office what our colleagues are like. • These kind of impromptu interactions are valuable for team building and cohesion however, this cannot be replicated in virtual teams.
- 10. One size fits all • Virtual teams are monologue intensive! • Consequently, not all industries are adapted for that type of communication. • While it may work well in a travelling agency or in retail. It may not hold true for complex and heavy industries.
- 11. Too many cooks, too many ingredients. • If you have a message board where team members regulary contribute, inevitably you will have to deal with lengthy messages in the discussion forum. • Speaking is spontaneous but the constant barrage of messages to be read can impede effective output since the likelihood of ignoring messages is high. • Skip a paragraph on a live chat, and context is lost.
- 12. Conflict resolution. • Being behind a keyboard changes you. • You may be a very a cordial person in real life but, once you are on an online platform, the likelihood of your demeanor changing dramatically is very high. • Indeed, you are more prone to invalidate other people’s concerns and dismiss them when in a virtual team.
- 13. Conclusion • While identifying the challenges that underpin virtual teams, it is important to remember that they are here to stay. In fact, for some industries that is the future. • In any case, non-governmental organizations, intelligence services, journalism, shipping, aviation, diplomacy, the military, scientific communities, universities and think tanks, are already used to working as virtual teams. • However if there is one industry where virtual problems have been solved, just have a look at the online gaming communities. • As a matter of fact, this is one industry that is successful at bridging and overcoming virtual communicational gaps.