Introduction
Team management is an important task in operating the business in more than one country. Therefore, as an in charge of managing a global virtual team is a responsible task to handle them effectively for the benefits of the company (Siebdrat, Hoegl & Ernst, 2009). This paper will discuss criteria to managing professional’s virtual team around the world.
Team Organization
An in charge should follow effective leadership in organizing the virtual team members. In-charge should be set the clear goals and objectives and establish the direction for all members to accomplish the priorities of the company. Manager should use his technical, team-building and interpersonal skills to keep the members engaged through timely feedback and team-building exercises (Hoefling, 2003). In charge should conduct periodic meetings through different means with separate professionals groups to build relationships to each member and outline team goals and responsibilities to work together. The manager should use virtual meetings and regularly update information to the organizational intranet site to inform team members about any changes over the time.
Developing Rules: The rules to manage the virtual team members should be acceptable to follow and develop good relationship among them and according to the culture of people. In this, the virtual team members should trust one another to create good environment. Organization should not penalize for any miscommunication and try to think in other way to increase the significance of rules (Walther & Bunz, 2005). Disagreement and differences of opinions of virtual team members should be respected through fair hearing. The conflicts among team members should be resolved in a fixed process, which will be effective to manage all team members.
Assigning Tasks and Follow up the Tasks: The assigning task should be concerned with each professional team members separately according to their skills and knowledge and they should follow on given task to develop new high technology product. All separate function’s professional members should do communicate with each other in defined processs through web conferencing software separately such as engineering team members should do meeting separately from marketing and manufacturing team members (Guffey & Loewy, 2010).
Further, the follow up the task should be on regular periods with a meeting with separate team members to know the progress of the task. Team leader as an in charge of separate functions professional should be responsible to provide all the progress information on weekly and monthly basis in given time.
Communication and Technology
Setting up Communication: To manage the virtual team members, in charge of the organization should set modern communication techniques to improve information sharing with trust among team members. For this purpose, in charge should use videoconferencing systems to interact through interactive audio and visual transmissions to collaborate with each other (Zofi, 2011). The communication between all members should be related with only the organizational issues and aspects to develop high technology product. Further, in setting up the communication between team members, collaborative software should be also used to allow team members to work together towards a common goal without face to face meeting.
Overcoming Time Zones: To manage the overcoming time zone, a managing in charge should use “real time” conference calls as the primary method to communicate with virtual team members in case of most important meeting to discuss (Tan, 2002). Further, in case of regular contact for taking the progress report, manager should use communication devices and send or receive information through e-mail or voice mail massages.
Technology: The managing in charge should use the modern digital computerized technology to manage the virtual team members. The use of internet, intranet and groupware systems are effective in managing the team. The synchronous such as chat, document sharing and non- synchronous communication technology such as e-mail should be used to encourage the virtual team members (Hunter & Tan, 2006).
Language Issues
Language issues: In order to execute operations effectively by virtual team, language plays a quite significant role as it is the only available source of communication. All professional in team members are belonged from different countries and native language is preferred by them. For reducing language barriers among virtual team members, a majority world language (often English) framework will be used to communicate (Khosrowpour, 2005). The use of majority language will be useful to reduce barriers in virtual team that come across due to language variations.
On the other hand, by motivating all team members to use their learning attitudes in communication, language barriers will be reduced at greater extent. Due to learning attitude, team member will not only be enabled to make communication more effective, but also enabled to develop understanding in regard to different languages. With this way, each member of virtual team will be facilitated to communicate in other foreign language that would be beneficial for individual and organization as well (Bessis, 2009).
This team consists professional from all areas of organization and due to this it will be easy for them to formulate unique codes for certain situations, which will reduce language issues. By developing understanding in regard to unique codes, misunderstanding that would create in communication due to language difference will be solved at greater extent (Chavaren, 2003). At the same time, with the help of varied IT tools of communication, training sessions will be designed to understand their jargons and social behavior as well. In order to reduce language issues among the members of virtual team, some standards and rules will be also formulated on how team members will be addressed and treated in email communication (Rad & Levin, 2003).
Cultural Differences
Hofstede’s Model is based on five dimension of culture such as power distance, individualism or collectivism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and long term orientation (Morgan, 2009). In this concern, power distance shows in team members to the degree of inequality with and without power that creates strong hierarchies, large gaps in compensation, authority and respect. Therefore, to manage this cultural difference, manager should use teamwork strategy to involve as many people as possible in decision making. Individualism or collectivism culture refers to the strength of the ties people to others within community that sometime shows lack of interpersonal connection and little sharing of responsibility (Dunne & Dunne, 2011). In this difference, manager should not ask too much personal information; encourage expressing ideas and respect traditions as well as age and wisdom among team members. Masculinity shows the perception of society to respect or not the values, traditional male and female roles (Morgan, 2009). This difference should be treated by manager through making them understand that both are valuable for the society and any task. Further, in lack of uncertainty avoidance, the manager should communicate to provide detailed plan and focus on tactical aspects of project to remove sense of nervousness, high level of emotions and expressions, which would be effective to develop high technology product. Moreover, to avoid discrimination of tradition and values thinking, a manager should encourage team members to respect each other’s traditions through loyalty and commitment.
Conclusion
From the above discussion, it can be concluded that the use of several management criteria in managing virtual team members would be very effective to run the across border business effectively and efficiently.