A virtual team is a group of geographically, organizationally and/or time dispersed members, brought together by IT technologies to accomplish one or more organizational tasks . Because of the distributed nature of their work unit, virtual team members have to rely heavily on information and communication technologies . 

The virtual environment presents challenges to effective communication

Technology tends to restrict the communication process because electronic media are intrinsically leaner than face-to-face communication and convey a limited set of communication cues- nonverbal communication, an important component of team communication, is usually missing in virtual teams. There are also many other challenges:

• Time delays in sending feedback
• Lack of a common frame of reference for all members
• Differences in attitude to and interpretation of written text
• Assurance of participation from remote team members
• Lack of mutual knowledge at the onset of the project
• Lack of a shared language among team members
• Information exchange is also complicated when some team members are co-located while others are dispersed.

Design and training of Virtual Teams

Virtual teams, as all teams, find it challenging to create trust and set ground rules for effective collaboration. In traditional meetings these issues are often resolved by spending time face to face, but virtual teams rarely or never meet face to face, and these challenges need extra attention. With the help of the latest virtual facilitation methods these issues can be addressed and worked on by the entire team. In this session, Grape People will take you through a facilitated workshop process. You will be working hands-on with a virtual team generating ideas, narrowing down options, taking decisions and making action plans.

Kick-offs for virtual teams

Key elements that need confirming before we start to work as a virtual team are :

• Purpose and Deliverables - why are we together, what will we deliver, how will we be satisfied - what are our success criteria and metrics - what is our end state
• Our membership and competences needed ( both process and content) -technical skills needed and training
• Work on relationship building: understanding our preferences to build openness, trust and cohesion
• Team guidelines - how to communicate, how often, when f2f, how to review work and progress - our culture, our values, our communication norms and rules
• Roles and responsibilities - how to monitor progress, follow up, sanctions
• How to share learnings and information
• What is our technology of information transfer, for storage and for relationship building - what are the various softwares and can we all use them competently ?

Dealing with Cultural Differences in Global Teams

The particular type of virtual team that has received significant research attention is the global virtual team distinguished because it draws members that work and live in different countries and are culturally diverse. You may think that nowadays that includes more or less all teams. Cultural differences appear to lead to coordination difficulties and create obstacles to effective communication Cultural and language differences are common in global virtual teams. The negative effect of cultural differences may be mitigated by an effort to actively understand and accept the differences .