Virtual team
introduction
Our virtual team is formed
by two small teams. One is a team from morning class with three mainland China
students, and the other one is from evening class with three local students.
In
general, our virtual team members coordinated well in the whole project, and we
finally finished our own assignment successfully. However, we also met a lot of
problems during collaboration, especially
with the evening members who we never meet even the project is done. The collaboration project in virtual team does not finish so smoothly
in our team members. We also encountered several conflicts which become the
obstacles to this team work as the following shows.
Team processes &
Team practices
Virtual team is different
with the normal team mostly because people have seldom opportunities to meet with
each other personally by face-to-face. Every team building processes have four
basic steps including forming, storming, norming and performing, which is the
same as virtual team. Here is my reflection about our virtual team.
Forming
Getting to know each other
The first step of team
building is forming. As a virtual team, it is limit for us to communicate with
each other in personally. Before we began our project, I browsed their group
blog website to know their basic individual information including their
pictures and self-introductions. It made me feel close to them even though we cannot
see each other. Actually, during the whole communication in this project, the
evening team members never introduced themselves to us but just talked about
the tasks. If I haven’t search for their personal information, it would let me
feel uneasy and easier to trust them. Although it is just a simple step, it
really helps me a lot.
Team
communication
After
I actively know their personal information, I sent an icebreaking e-mail to the
evening team in order to start our collaboration project. Since the team
members in the evening class are all very busy for their work and have difficulty
to give immediate conversation with us in the same time, we then chose e-mail as
the technology of our communication method. Because of the technology, we can
talk to others, share our ideas and even have a meeting with others in the
virtual world which is far away with each other. Our frequency of communication
time is not very high, which generally reaches average three to five e-mails
every week. To the team in the same morning class, our communication methods
are more various and flexible. The most common way for we to discuss are face-to-face
and virtual communication tools, such as WeChat and Tencent.
The way
in e-mail works a lot during our communication of this project. Everyone in our
virtual team can find the information which we provide, and give our own
thoughts by the message tool. Whereas, maybe because we just used the only communicate
method by e-mail, we didn’t have a perfect coordination with the evening team
members sometimes. The technology also did not work well because it prevented
us to meet each other personally, thus, problems came out when we need to
decide what we should do. On the contrary, to the team members in the same morning
class, we mostly work well for our project. It is mainly because we can see
each other and be familiar to each other better. If we get conflict during our
team work, it is easy for us to get together and talk about it; even it is
something hard for us. The difference between our virtual team and real team
shows both the advantage and disadvantage of virtual technology communication.
Storming
In the second process,
storming, we ignored an important factor for an efficient team that is team
leader who have a favor to solve the team’s obstacles. In this stage, team
members are not very familiar with each other, and because of individual’s own
characteristic, there will be conflicts in some members.
Team leader
As a team, virtual team also
needs a leader. According to Lepsinger and DeRosa, an effective virtual team
leader who is assigned carefully need to have the ability to manage change
effectively, foster an atmosphere of collaboration through building trust,
communicate team goals, and delegate and empower team members. (Sadri, 2012)
However, in our virtual team, we ignored this critical step and were in a mass
at the very beginning. In that situation, team members provided their own ideas
without sure result. The atmosphere of our collaboration was also a little bit
intense.
Team guidance and direction
Based on Bruce Tuckman’s
suggestion, “at the first meeting of a new virtual team, ground rules should
be established”, especially when the rules include type and frequency of
communication. (Sadri, 2012) The rules are also helpful to discuss procedures
for dealing with conflicts, while in the situation of without the head of team
leader, we hardly to set up the rules for our virtual team, including the
timeline and goals. What we did is just writing our ideas in the email and
sent it to others. No one concluded this information.
Conflict 1- misunderstanding
In the
stage of storming without a virtual team leader, we encountered the first
conflict through team members. It occurred when we
first communicate with each other and try to choose the final topic. In
details, at the beginning, we brainstormed some appropriate ideas about our
topic. For example, the evening team members thought about the ideas about
fashion, and we came up with the ideas about flight information. The conflict
occurred because they want to use their chosen topic while our own team member
regard our topic is easier to feasible than theirs. Thus, we didn’t reach an
agreement at the very beginning. Some days later, one of the evening team
members sent us a long e-mail, which showed that how the topic we choose is not
capable because there is already a similar one in the real world. Once we
received this e-mail, we realized that there was a misunderstanding about the
virtual company between us. Actually, what we thought is a new way of virtual
company in the chosen internet industry. Of course, we sent an e-mail to
explain what we misunderstood each other and hope to choose one of each team’s topics
during class presentation. However, they claimed that our topic is not good and
because of the time limit, we finally compromised and decided to choose the two
of their ideas in the class. The result was that we didn’t use any of these two
topics which the evening team members chosen, but came up with a new topic
again at last.
This conflict shows that there will easily be
misunderstanding in a virtual team if the communication method is not enough.
Since team members cannot have a meeting by face-to-face or have the immediate
message, the information what we get from others are hysteretic and can be
omissive. Besides, whatever the suggestion from others is right or wrong, it is
better to accept the meaningful information but not just ignore it.
Conflict 2 - interpersonal/cultural
difference
The second conflict we met is the time for giving
feedback. As we just use the e-mail to contact to each other, it is hard for us
to control the whole temple of project. Once I sent a long email to my team
member, in order to make sure if they agree my opinion so that I can do the
next step. It was the day before Easter. I don’t know if it because of the
culture difference to check email on holiday or their busy work, no one replies
to me in a long time. Several days later, I asked another team member in
morning class to send an additional email to remind the evening team members,
but they still have no reflection. Other two team members in morning class and
I were all very worried because we want to do our project early. What the
evening team members’ behavior did made us a little bit not happy. However, we
had no other way to contact them but can just wait. Finally almost one week later,
they gave the replied email to us.
This conflict mainly releases
the disadvantage of email communication and the conflict of culture. Firstly,
as the paper of Friedman shows, compared with face-to-face conversation in
team, e-mail lacks: “copresence (parties
are in the same surroundings), visibility (parties see one another), audibility (parties hear speech timing and intonation), cotemporality (parties receive utterances as they are produced), simultaneity (parties
send and receive messages at once) and sequentiality
(parties take turns)” (Johhnson, 2002). Because we
just use email to discuss our project, the weakness of “simultaneity” is
obvious. Besides, many people in Hong Kong do not have the habit to check their
email, which the behavior is different with mainland people. Therefore the
conflict occurred.
Norming
When
we first set up our virtual team, we did not have a specific group structure,
timeline or goals. After some contact and communication with each other, we had
our own team customs to do this project. Usually, we provided freedom ideas
about everything in email, within respect words such as “please feel free to
tell me what is your comments”, “your ideas is really good”, etc. It began to
release the intense atmosphere in our virtual team. We listed our detailed
thoughts through email to every team member, then compared and analyzed all of
the ideas and finally choose what we want. Although we didn’t have specific
timeline for the work, we actively made decisions as soon as possible. It seems
that our virtual team went into a good track, while we met the third conflict
in this stage.
Conflict 3 - lack of trust
Another conflict during our team work is about
trust. In details, when team members in our morning class provided suggestions
about the content of virtual work to the evening team, they just denied almost
all of them and defaulted we understand all of what they said. All of us were
very confused why they cannot accept our opinions. As our analysis, we find
that it is probably because members in evening class have rich working
experience while we morning class members don’t have working experience. They
may think that we do not have enough ability to provide high quality
suggestions. Their behavior of denying made us frustrated and even a little bit
angry. What we thought is that they are not trust us. In order to solve this
conflict, we chose accommodating as our first way.
This conflict shows the importance of trust in a
virtual team. As Handy said, “virtuality requires trust to make it work:
technology on its own is not enough” (Handy, 1995). Since we never seen
each other with evening team members, they know us just from what we write on
our blog. Handy Said that “trust needs touch”, and “the more virtual an
organization becomes, the more its people need to meet in person.
Unfortunately, we have no opportunity to meet together, which lead to the gap
for trust.
Performing
In the fourth process of
team building, performing, our virtual team overcame the obstacles and had a
good performance. In this stage, team members have been contact for a relative
long time. The most significant change for evening team members is that they
began to accept our opinion but not just reject us. If we have the divergent
thoughts, we usually negotiate with each other and collaborate or compromise
with the other side. In this situation, our team work became much more
efficient.
Brief summarize what I
learned from this course
In general, this High
Performance Collaboration course challenges me a lot during my master period.
The form of teaching is very different from normal classes, which almost let
students do whatever they want in a specific topic. This course not only let us
collaborates with each other with familiar people and strange people, but also
stimulates our creativities. Through the experience in this course, here are
several major things I learned:
1. Creativity
Creativity is not just a
talent. It can be learned from right ways. There are four steps to be
innovated, which is sum to call the knowledge-broking cycle. The specific
four respectively steps are capturing good ideas, keeping ideas alive, imaging
new uses for old ideas and purring promising concepts to the test. (Hargadon
& Sutton, 2000) Creativity and innovation can be bolstered anywhere as long
as you find opportunities for taking good ideas.
2. Negotiation
When people are negotiating,
the ideal result is the so called win-win negotiation. In order to reach the
win-win negotiation, there are three levels of integrative agreement. Level 1
integrative agreement is in the positive barging zone which has mutual
settlement. Level 2 focus on settlement demonstrably from superior to other
feasible settlements. Level 3 are settlements that lie along the pareto-optimal
frontier of agreement. Some strategies are not really worked for example
compromise, long-term relationship, extra time and etc. On the contrary,
strategies that works are perspective-taking, unbundle the issues, making
package deals and so on. (Thompson, 2009)
3. Collaboration in virtual team
Collaboration in traditional
team is not strange for me, but collaboration in virtual team is a field which
I am not very familiar. I think that the basic factor to manage a virtual team
is the technology using to communicate each other. It is better for a team to
have opportunity to meet each other personally by face-to-face, but not just
image the team members. Besides, I regard the most important thing for a
successful virtual team is building trust in team members.
4. Conflict
Conflict will always be
there in a team, especially in the virtual team. Because of personal
characteristics, cultural differences, behaviors and other specific attitude or
opinion to the task, people will be struggled in the conflict. Choose one right
way to solve conflict is important, which includes compromising, confronting,
avoiding, collaboration and accommodating.
Resources
Hargadon, A., & Sutton, R. I. (2000).
Building Innovation Factory. Harvard
Business Review. May-June, 2000, pp. 158-159.
Handy, C. (1995). Trust and the Virtual
Organization. Harvard Business Reviews.
May-June 1995, pp. 44-48.
Johnson, L. K. (2002). Does E-mail Escalate
Conflict? MIT Sloan Management Review.
Fall 2002, pp. 14-15.
Sadri, G., & Condia, J. (2012). Manage the
Virtual World. Industrial Management.
January-February 2012, pp. 22-24.
Thompson, L. L. (2009). Win-win Negotiation:
Expending the Pie. The Mind and Heart of
the Negotiator, pp. 77-92.
Appendix
e-mail documances of our virtual team
Appendix
e-mail documances of our virtual team
