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Virtual Teams
• People who work for a share purpose,cordinate
and communicate through technology.
• Group of interdependent people.
• Located across the world.
• Members from different cultures
• Hardly seen each other.
• Allows originations' to combine best expertise.
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According to surveys:
• According to US labor department 19 million
people work from home online.
• Research on US company Sabre,out of 500
members 8 members on average are per
team.
• Virtual team members are located both on
field and home.
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• For global virtual teams there are cultural &
communication barreir.
• Virtual teams require high startup costs.
• Sometimes the outcome of team decreases.
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Dimensions of virtuality
• Dimension1- Proportion of time of team
members spent face to face.
• Dimension2- Proportion of team members at
one location.
• Dimension3- Proportion of time, members
devote to virtual teams.
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Five Challenges
1. Building trust.
2. Process gains and process losses.
3. Overcoming isolation
4. Balancing technical & interpersonal skills
5. Virtual team performance.
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Trust
• Trust is glue of workforce.
• Building trust is greater challenge.
• The virtual the organisation the more people
need to meet in person .
• Challenge for virtual teams is more as
compared to face-face teams.
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How to gain trust ?
• We gain trust in people when they deliver
what they promise.
• Trust can be build virtually rather then
meeting face to face.
• Face-face trust is known as BENEVOLENT
TRUST.
• Virtual team trust is known as ABILITY-BASE or
TASK-BASE trust.
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Challenge 2:Maximizing Process Gains
and Minimizing Process Losses on
Virtual Teams
Conventional Wisdom: Virtual teams will
struggle with creating synergy.
Group process gains produced in face-to-face
teams are more difficult to obtain in virtual
teams.
Example: Nancy Kurland and Dianne Bailey
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Challenge
Overcoming group process losses associated with
virtual teams
Creating synergy without daily physical encounter
Every team must complete a business plan
outlining its annual goals and objectives
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Response to challenge
Teambuilding
Pre-launch classroom activities
include:
Clarify roles
Build personal relationships
Develop team norms
Establish group identity
Continuous virtual team training
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Lesson learned
Extensive training helps virtual teamwork
to overcome process losses.
Comprehensive training can create synergy
Stereotyping, gossip, politics and conflict
are often minimized
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CONVENTIONAL WISDOM
Face to Face teams
Social interaction with
supervisors and coworkers.
Team members are more
productive and satisfied.
Motivated and satisfied as a
result of interactions (lunch
brakes, promotion
celebrations).
Virtual Teams
No physical interaction.
(isolated) .
Less productive and satisfied.
Less motivated and satisfied (
lack of interactions).
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Actions taken by Sabre
Individuals with strong social needs may find
virtual teamwork difficult , others desire
independent , virtual work.
Gave employees option for working from home
or an office (interaction opportunity).
Team building and training sessions.
Virtual team members were invited
General manager frequently communicated with
virtual team members to reduce feelings of
isolation.
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Learnings
Virtual teams needed more frequent communication.
Detachment and alienation can be overcome with
careful attention to social needs.
Team leaders play a critical role in maintaining
continuous contact with remotely situated virtual team
members.
Redesign job assignment to provide virtual team
members with occasional face to face customer
contact to reduce isolation.
Organize face to face meetings for virtual team
members at company sponsored conferences.
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Challenge 4 – Balancing technical
and interpersonal skills
Conventional wisdom
Since face to face interaction are minimal , some managers assume that interpersonal
skills for virtual team member are less important than for face to face teams.
Some Examples-
• Beverly Geber suggests that managers should select people who are comfortable
sharing information and working with computers.
• Manager in Martha Haywood’s book Managing Virtual teams Stated:
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Sabre’s Experience
Ideal virtual team member skills-
•Communication
•Desire to support team and team work
•Flexibility and adaptability
•Giving and receiving Feedback.
Therefore experiment suggests that virtual team
must possess excellent interpersonal skills.
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Challenge of recruiting team with
right balance
To overcome this challenge Sabre, Inc used two
approaches of selecting team members-
1. Behaviour interviewing and scenario based
questions.
2. Panel Interviews.
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Challenge 5:
Assessment and Recognition of Virtual
Team Performance
Conventional wisdom suggests that it is
extraordinarily difficult for virtual team leaders to
assess member performance and ensure
fairness.
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Sabre developed a multi-tiered assessment
process with a balanced scorecard which
consists of:
•Growth (Share of the market)
•Profitability
•Process improvement
•Customer satisfaction
.
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Growth:
1. Managers collect survey data quarterly
from each team’s external customers.
2. Then Sabre posts team customer service
scores on the intranet.
3. Members know exactly where their Team
stands relative to other teams.
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Process Improvement:
1. Process improvement is an objective
measure of Team learning.
2. Sabre tracks the individual performance
measures and evaluate accordingly.
3. GM’s monitor Team e-mails and other Team
activities.
4. They also submit their own evaluations with
peer evaluations.
