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.

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.