WEEK 6 POST 2 RESPONSES
Discussion 2: Shared Practice: Managing Teams in a Virtual Environment
The internet age now allows you to connect to work from virtually anywhere in the world. However, managing a team of remote employees presents unique challenges. Monitoring, communicating, organizing, and motivating remote employees and coworkers can be difficult, even with available technology that helps remote employees meet and collaborate in virtual spaces. As you review the Learning Resources this week to prepare for your Shared Practice posting, imagine the following scenario:
At your current employer, or at a company where you would like to work, you have been assigned to manage a virtual team. Your virtual team is composed of some individuals in the office, some that work from home in various time zones, and some others that work out of another office several time zones away. Consider the challenges of managing virtual employees and how these challenges compare to managing a traditional “non-virtual†team.
By Day 7
Read a selection of your colleagues’ posts.
Respond to two or more of your colleagues’ postings in one or more of the following ways:
- Share an experience that is relevant to a colleague’s post about having managed, lead, and/or participated on teams that largely collaborated in a virtual environment. Evaluate the factors that made the teams successful or ineffective.
- Expand on a colleague’s post with relevant concerns or observations, based on your experiences or the readings in the classroom, about working on or managing virtual teams.
- Expand on a colleague’s post by offering resources and processes that should be in place to support virtual teams and how to mitigate the risks that working virtually creates.
Remember to consider challenges in virtual vs. non-virtual teams.
Jontay Blatcher-Pierce
RE: Week 6 – Discussion 2
With the current level of our technology, it is very easy for people around the world to connect virtually at any given time for leisure, recreational, or official purposes. However, diverse challenges do present themselves when meetings have to be conducted virtually and, specifically, for official purposes. Regarding official aspects, virtual connections are vital but they can hinder diverse issues including how teams are managed, empowered, and inspected. Therefore, this essay will primarily base itself as a solution to these quoted problems and many more.
The challenges faced when developing, leading, and motivating a virtual team
To begin with, virtual teams with members across different time zones complicate how initial meetings can be conducted due to the difference in time. As we all know it, the teams on the eastern side of the globe will always be ahead of those in the west. Thus, having a common time for a startup meeting is a common challenge. Secondly, not all regions have the best or similar network capabilities (Davis & Scaffidi-Clarke, 2016, pg. 197). Some regions have strong signals up to 5G, especially those in developed nations, while those in less developed regions may experience low connectivity up to 2 or 3G. Communication errors may result in misunderstandings at the meetings.
On leadership, the team manager may find it difficult to control such virtual teams due to the difference in work ethics (Liao, 2017, pg. 652). Some employees may be used to working from 9 AM to 5 PM. As a result, altering their working time from 8 AM to 4 PM may be very difficult. In addition to this, the manager may fail to find a better way of delegating duties to his or her team members. As a result, the productivity of such teams may degrade with time.
Finally, motivation requires, first, the assessment of how well the employees have performed their duties to identify their challenges. However, virtual work does not fully support this fact. Sometimes the mutual connection between the team leaders and team players is the key to finding the best types of motivation needed.
The benefits of developing, leading, and motivating a virtual team
Virtual teams aid in the expansion of the coverage that a particular firm has in a region, continent, or around the globe (Dulebohn & Hoch, pg. 570). Secondly, these teams play a big role in the reduction of costs needed to set up and run physical offices. Thirdly, these teams aid in the reduction of travel costs either by public or private means. The virtual teams aid in the reduction of unnecessary meetings as they only allow virtual meetings when serious issues need to be discussed.
References
Davis, D. C., & Scaffidi-Clarke, N. M. (2016). Leading Virtual Teams: Conflict and Communication Challenges for Leaders. InHandbook of Research on Effective Communication, Leadership, and Conflict Resolution(pp. 196-209) IGI Global.
Dulebohn, J.H., & Hoch, J. E. (2017). Virtual teams in organizations. 569-574.
Liao, C. (2017). Leadership in virtual teams: A multilevel perspective.Human Resource Management Review. 27(4), 648-659.
2 days ago
Jalen Wheat
RE: Week 6 – Discussion 2
Becoming a manager within any company comes with its advantages and disadvantages. There are many eyes that are laid on you in regards to the failure of success of the property. This all falls into your hands as you have the challenge of managing not only your in house staff, but also your virtual staff that may work for your company in a advertisement or marketing team. Virtual teams are greatly influenced by the effectiveness of communication (Emelo, R., & Francis, L. M. 2002). A great form of communication can produce great benefits to a manager, as they are able to handle all aspects of a bad situation for a business when dealing with staff members. There is no altercation between staff that they cannot handle on their own rather it be virtually or in person. The staff is more reluctant to gravitate towards this person as they feel they are someone that they can easily talk to.
The challenges that a manager should always let their staff handle would be any issue with the work load of any tasks or projects given to the team. You hire individuals based upon your belief that they have the ability to work within a team on projects handed out to them each week. If you are constantly intervening in this work then you will slow down your success on completing tasks that a manager has weekly. The challenges that a manager should have is filling any roles that you currently don’t have on your team roster, or even dealing with a team member that isn’t performing to their best ability as they bring down the groups quality of work.
Managing a virtual team and seeing people face to face would be fairly easy if you have great communication between your staff. This is done by having meetings including your virtual team each week to plan out the outline and goals that you have set out for them. This keeps everyone on the same page and allows you not to repeat yourself for each employee, when meeting notes can be handed out to each individual. The success that can be the outcome of this meeting also allows each employee to have a voice into much of how your business operates. The overall goal is to bring your team together to meet company achievements and grow the business in a appropriate timing, so the way your team produces their quality of work will often reflect on how their manager communicates with them on a weekly basis.
References:
Emelo, R., & Francis, L. M. (2002). Virtual Team Interaction. T+D, 56(10), 17.
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