Virtual Teams
Leadership Challenges in Global Virtual Teams
About ComCorp
ComCorp was founded in the year 1970. It was a innovative company in the industry of computer networking. It was roughly a $3 billion company with about 8,000 employees worldwide; it included a president and CEO (Kerber & Buono, 2004). In 21st century, various companies of technology and ComCorp were also challenged by the agitation associated with deregulation of the telecom industry. Accordingly, revenue of ComCorp's was declining, which was forcing the company to restructure and downsize (Kerber & Buono, 2004).
The new team consisted of new people, which included a new director and members, who were located in California, Illinois, Massachusetts, England, Ireland and Australia (Kerber & Buono, 2004). The critical issues faced by the T&D team were to lay down the integrity of the team at the administrator level and to select strategies and plans for fulfilling the reliability throughout the organization with the full involvement and commitment of the team (Kerber & Buono, 2004).
Team is a group of people organized for attaining a common goal. Teams play an important role in the success of the management of the company. Team is the aggregation of small numbers of persons who work for common goals, develop a shared attitude and are aware that they are part of a group (Prasad, 2008). The teams help the management in achieving the organizational objective. Teams play an important role in achieving the goals of an organization. A team helps to enhance the performance of all members. It improves the productivity, product quality and customer service (Mathew, 2003).
A team enables all the members to avoid wasted effort, reduce errors and react to customer’s need in a better way. In a team work, the concept of synergy is generated because of complementary skills of the team members (Prasad, 2008). While framing the groups, the teams move around the four stages of growth, i.e. forming, storming, norming and performing.
In the forming stage, a team is formed. All the members are explained why they are chosen as a part of team and what would be the role and responsibility of each member (Prasad, 2008). In the storming stage, all the members of the team enter with different ideas. In the Norming stage, the team reaches to an agreement (Tuckman Forming Storming Norming Performing model, 2008). Every member shares the newly establish focus. In the performing stage, the team starts to perform. The team settles its relationships and opportunities and they are able to function as a group and team (Prasad, 2008).
Virtual Teams
A Virtual Team includes a group of individuals who work throughout and don’t consider the time, space and organizational boundaries. The members of the team have the balancing skills. They are dedicated to a common purpose and have inter-reliant performance goals (Definition: Virtual Team, 2008). A virtual team cannot be characterized as the teleworkers. The individuals who work from home are defined as the teleworkers. In the present concept of organizations, virtual teams consist of employees both working at home and in the office but in diverse geographical locations (Definition: Virtual Team, 2008). In developing a team, motivation plays an important role. For achieving the targets and objectives of the company, it is essential that all the members of group and virtual teams are motivated and being provided with the additional benefits (Grazier, 1998).
The T&D team of ComCorp covers the17 time zones. The team depend on a kinds of communicating technologies like voicemail, telephone, e-mail, fax, and voice-and video-conferencin (Kerber & Buono, 2004). For the T&D team of ComCorp, the obligating challenge was to reconstruct the integrity of the team at a time. ComCorp was interested in developing the virtual team because they believed that employees of the organization can be positioned anywhere in the world (Kerber & Buono, 2004).
A flexible organization is more competitive and responsive to the marketplace. The members of the virtual teams incline to be more fruitful, less commuting and waste less time in traveling (Kerber & Buono, 2004). In a disruptive business environment, the challenges of evaluating the effectiveness of a virtual team, particularly over the long term is that the team performance is difficult to separate from the ongoing challenges Kerber & Buono, 2004). The virtual training and development team of ComCorp was involved in building capabilities and fulfilling the objectives against a backdrop of continuous change in organizations.
In performance management of the company, virtual global team leaders need to pay close attention. To make important decisions, the team members are free to take important consideration of local business unit and cultural needs (Kerber & Buono, 2004). In virtual teams, performance management is facilitated when team leaders are able to create a clear team identity, to maximize information flow. The team leaders are able to develop strong social relationships among team members and to apply online team discussions and document archives. The complex and challenging tasks faced by a virtual team leader are to maintain attention towards team communication (Prasad, 2008).
A global virtual team is pulled by several powerful forces. To overcome these centrifugal forces, technology is a sort of facilitator that permits the leader and the team to make undermining and centripetal forces that bring the team together (Kerber & Buono, 2004). To construct a high performing virtual team, members of the team need a compelling challenge that is personally applicable and energizes them to overcome the difficulties associated with distance and technology (Kerber & Buono, 2004).
It can be concluded that the work life of the virtual teams is increased with the help of decreasing fixed office hours. The travel time is also reduced by these teams. These are cost saving teams. The higher cost of the premises is avoided by the virtual teams. These teams are usually flexible as far as their working is concerned (Working with virtual team, 2008). Communication is possible even if the people and the team members are not at the same place. In the virtual team, a wide range of people is involved to solve a particular problem, people can work from anyplace at anytime. They can be recruited for their competencies, not just physical location (Definition: Virtual Team, 2008).
The physical handicaps are not a problem for the virtual teams. The expenses related with travel, lodging, parking, and leasing or owning a building may be reduced. The working of the virtual team is 24/7 hours (Working with virtual team, 2008) whereas the results achieved from the face-to-face teams are rich in nature and comparatively more beneficial for the organization. In the face-to-face interaction by the team members, the body language, which has a major share in explaining the ideas, can be shown to the audience. The emotional tone used by the face-to-face team is one of the important and essential elements of the team. It is a scientifically detached method (Prasad, 2008).
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