Communication and virtual teams

In this chapter we start by defining a few concepts in the field of communications.

Interpersonal communication is communication between two or more people within an organization; the communicator is the person, from which the message first gets out, and the receiver is the person receiving the message, a perceptual screen is defined as a window used to interact with people that influence and affect the communication.

By definition reflexive listening is the ability to listen carefully to someone else and repeat back to the speaker the message to avoid misunderstandings this kind of listening has four level of verbal response, which are: clarify the implicit, reflective core feeling, paraphrase the expressed and affirmed contact.

When it comes to communication, here we see to ways of communicating:

One-way communication: here a person sends a message to another person and nothing follows. This is good for simple directions but less accurate than two-way.

Two-way communication: here the communicator and the receiver interact; this is actually great for problem solving.

There is also nonverbal communications that refers to any kind of communication that does not involved words. Proxemics, kinesics, facial behavior and paralanguage are the four basic types of the nonverbal communication, some of the barriers to communication are: physical separation, status and gender differences, cultural diversity and language.

Virtual teams are groups of workers brought together by information technologies to accomplished organization activities and tasks. Here information technology is given what is needed for the development of new organization forms, virtual teams can be geographically dispersed and driven by a common purpose, and some team members might be part of other companies, these kind of team differ from traditional teams, here all team member are communicate face to face while in virtual teams the communications takes place through asynchronous means. Not everything is good about virtual teams as mistrust and communication break downs are a mayor draw back.

According to Kuruppuarachchi (2009) what benefits and problems arise as a consequence of the creation of virtual team? Identify five each. Based on this, explain how to make the transition from a more traditional team structure to the more distributed team structure.

The main benefits that arise from virtual teams are: cost and money saving, the great flexibility that will allow members of the team to work together even if they are not in the same room or place, another benefits are time savings as it cuts down on the excessive and expensive travel, it also help to build local and global presence faster.

This kind of teams presents problems as well, among those we find,  a constant failure to see emotional aspects of the team members, misunderstandings present themselves as communications is not face to face, and also technology constrains, it is important to notice that not everyone can perform well in a virtual team environment, members should be able to work separate and independently.

When it comes down to making the transition from traditional teams to a virtual team structure, the best way to get this done with the lease amount of trouble possible is by simply mentoring, teaching, and couching because is not the same thing leading a team in person than it is virtually, you also need to have the people willing to work separated from other team members, this also has a certain degree of self motivation of the members.

image retrieved from: communication, http://www.google.com/search?q=communication&hl=es&prmd=ivnsb&source=lnms&tbm=isch&ei=k8vTTdGjKIb20gGoiKzmCw&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=2&sqi=2&ved=0CBIQ

image retrieved from: virtual teams, google imagenes.

information retrieved from: eafit interactiva, oraganizaciones y culturas course, contenidos.

information retrieved from: The Benefits and Liabilities of Virtual Teams: Six Things Managers Need to Know

information retrieved from: virtual team benefits and challenges, http://www.time-management-guide.com/virtual-team.html