Introduction
During the process of
completing the final group project with the morning class Team Dancing, I have
learnt how to communicate with different virtual channels, how to enhance team
coordination and how to solve conflicts. “Virtual team is a group of
individuals who work across time, space and organizational boundaries with
links strengthened by webs of communication technology” (Wikipedia-virtual
team)
Team work is hard to enhance through virtual communication because we may
face the combined hurdles of language, culture, and time‐zone difference when
we try to complete our work; however, a virtual collaboration works after
solving conflicts between two teams by continuous negotiation, communication,
dialogue, cooperation, intervention, exchanges and interaction.
Team Practices
Communication method
During
completing the group project, my team members and I used three virtual
communication methods during the discussions with Team Dancing and they are
email, WeChat, video conversation and telephone. There are advantages and disadvantages by
using each communication method.
Email
We
used email to communicate with Team Dancing proactively at the beginning and
our team sent a greeting email to Team Dancing and we suggested a few virtual
communication channels, for example, email, whatsapp, facebook, msn, skype,
etc. and we asked for their feedback. (Please refer to the below screen capture of
email conversation). We preferred to use email as our first
communication channel because we think more contents can be included in email
comparing with other communication channels.
However, the main disadvantage of using email as communication channel
is people may not have immediate response us other communication channels, such
as, Whatsapp and Line. Team Dancing replied
us by email and they preferred to use WeChat as our virtual communication
channel.
WeChat
Although
our team prefer using Whatsapp as communication channel because most people in
Hong Kong are more familiar with Whatsapp other than WeChat or Line. We understand people from Mainland are more
familiar with WeChat other than other virtual applications. Therefore, we agreed to use Wechat because our
team agreed that Team Dancing may have shorter response time if we use WeChat
as our virtual communication channel comparing with email.
As
the response time from Team Dancing was not ideal, we suggested using video
conversation to communicate with them. Both
teams discussed and agreed to gather together with own team members and make a
video conversation through WeChat. However,
the video communication was not smooth due to network problem. Both teams cannot hear from the others. Therefore, we suggested using telephone call
instead.
Telephone
During the telephone conversation with Team
Dancing, we could easily know the ideas from each other more. Although we were using different language as
Team Dancing; our mother language is Cantonese and the mother language of Team
Dancing is Mandarin. Moreover, Team
Dancing seemed not quite familiar in oral English. We tried hard to explain our ideas using Mandarin
and sometimes English. At the same time,
we are not familiar in listening to Mandarin and this was a challenge for us to
communicate with Team Dancing. The
advantages of using telephone as communication channel are we can get quick
response from Team Dancing and we can share more content during the telephone
conversation. However, the main
disadvantage is we were not able to record the conversations in black and white,
which means we may not remember all contents from the telephone conversation
and some contents may be missing after the telephone conversation.
Team Coordination
"Teams are groups of people with
complementary skills who are committed to a common purpose and hold themselves
mutually accountable for its achievement. Ideally, they develop a distinct
identity and work together in a co-ordinated and mutually supportive way to
fulfil their goal or purpose. Task effectiveness is the extent to which the
team is successful in achieving its task-related objectives. Shared goals are
most likely to be achieved through working together and pooling experience and
expertise. Successful teams are
characterized by a team spirit based around trust, mutual respect, helpfulness
and – at best – friendliness." (Effective Teamwork, A Best Practice Guide for
the Construction Industry)
Successful team coordination is enhanced by decision making, managing
conflicts, sharing knowledge and facilitation of technology.
Decision making by the team
All
members in the evening team have a full time job and all of us are busy at work
and it was hard for three of us to discuss face to face. We understand each other’s difficulties which
was we only have limited time for discussion and decision making. We try to make use of our lunch break at
work, break time in class and end of class to discuss our ideas. However, team members from morning class have
different background as us because all of them are full time students. We believe they can have more opportunities
to discuss their ideas face to face during school time and have much more time
to make decisions comparing with us.
During the
discussions through Wechat, we found it was hard to communicate with Team
Dancing due to slow response time by them in WeChat. Because we had limited time to complete the
group project, we wanted to make the decision on which two communities we
choose for the group project shortly. As
mentioned before in “Communication method”, the team coordination did not work
well in both virtual communication channels - Email and WeChat. The slow response and sometimes no response
by Team Dancing made frustration and discouraged our team because we could not
make decision without their agreement.
To solve the problem of slow response, our team suggested using video
conversation to make decision with Team Dancing.
Conflicts occurred within
the team
Conflict
involves awareness by team members of differences of opinion or perspective,
incompatible wishes, or irreconcilable desires.
There are three types of team conflicts and they are task conflict,
process conflict and relationship or interpersonal conflict. Moreover, conflicts include personal
differences of opinion based on interpersonal issues, informational
deficiencies stemming from communication problems, role conflict due to unclear
goals and responsibilities and environmental issues relating to uncertainty
and/or resource scarcity. Process
conflict, task conflict and role conflict occurred during our team and Team
Dancing’s collaboration.
1.
Process conflict
During the
discussion, process conflict which is the conflict over how work gets done was
occurred. As mentioned in “Decision
making by the team”, the conflict was our team was not familiar on the slow
response and sometimes no response from Team Dancing. As members in Team Dancing are full time
students and they should have more opportunities and more time to discuss their
ideas face to face. At the same time,
they should have more time to focus on their school assignments comparing with
us. At the beginning of the
collaboration with Team Dancing, our team expected to receive prompt response
from them. Knowing that it was hard to
receive quick response with communication through email, we agreed using WeChat
to communicate with Team Dancing as they requested. We used change strategy to solve the
conflict. The solution was to change to
another virtual communication channel that can let us receive quick response
from Team Dancing. (Please refer to the below WeChat dialog). We chose
video conversation to communicate with Team Dancing; however, because of the
technical problem of poor network, we changed to use telephone conversation
afterwards. During the telephone
conversation with Team Dancing, we shared our own idea and thoughts. At the same time, we could get immediate
response from Team Dancing and we could make decision together easily and
effectively. This turned out to be
effective team coordination.
2.
Task Conflict
Task conflict is conflicts over content and goals of the work. At the beginning of the discussion with Team
Dancing, we had different ideas on choosing two communities to collaborate a
virtual platform. Team Dancing thinks
the cooperation between animal rights group and luxury institute is more
innovate and creative. However, after
understanding their thoughts and ideas, our team thinks there are too many
conflicts between the two communities and we think the two communities can use
other platform to get the value added instead of using virtual platform. Our team gave Team Dancing some ideas and
thoughts but they did not agreed to our thoughts. (Please
refer to the below WeChat dialog). Team
Dancing thinks there are less innovation in our team’s idea on the
collaboration between World Peace organization and Religion Organization. Moreover, they are afraid they could not
complete the group project because they are lack with religion knowledge. We could not have a common view on choosing
which two communities to collaborate in the virtual platform. The solution for solving this conflict is to seek
for third party’s feedback and suggestions.
Therefore, I suggested presenting both ideas in class and we make
decision after we seek for Frank’s feedback.
3.
Role Conflict
Role conflict is due to unclear goals and responsibilities. During the discussions through WeChat with
Team Dancing, our team thinks they were not clear with the instructions
provided by Frank about the group project.
Firstly, they did not realize we can present two ideas in class before
we confirm our ideas on choosing which two communities to collaborate in the
virtual platform. They thought we have
to present our confirmed ideas in class. (Please refer
to the below WeChat dialog)
Secondly, as both morning class and evening class had to present the
ideas of choosing which two communities to collaborate in the virtual platform
in class, we need the ideas from Team Dancing before the presentation to have a
better preparation. Team Dancing did not
provide their ideas to us proactively.
As we wanted to have a better preparation for presenting, we made
PowerPoint slides. To let Team Dancing
to have a clearer picture on our ideas, we shared the PowerPoint slides to them. However, when we send Team Dancing our
PowerPoint slides, they seemed like not appreciated. When we asked for their ideas which can be in
any format, they could not provide to us on the spot. We received their ideas by email in the
mid-night before the presentation date and we did not have time to prepare for
the presentation because we have to work on that day. (Please
refer to the below WeChat dialog)
Thirdly, after Frank gave us more instruction on how to
complete the group blog and group presentation, Team Dancing asked our team for
general structure / suggestions on the group blog. After sharing our ideas on the virtual
collaboration of World Peace Organization and Religion Organization, Team
Dancing suggested to exchange our presentation PowerPoint slides to review each
other’s ideas. As per Frank’s
instructions from class, the presentation should be based on our own
community’s perspective. That means the
ideas that we had to confirm with each other are the services provided by both
communities in the platform and the values for both communities and the
society. (Please refer to the below WeChat dialog). The solution for solving
role conflict is to get the confirmation from Team Dancing to make sure both of
us were clear on the ideas and set deadline when we seek for their feedbacks.
Team Processes
Promises
and commitments
At the beginning of the discussion with Team Dancing, both teams did not
request each other to make promises and commitments. During the process of the collaboration with
Team Dancing, I found out the importance of making promises and commitments. Sometimes it is hard to get response from
others without promises and commitments.
As mentioned in the “Role Conflict”, Team Dancing did not give us their
ideas on cooperation between animal rights group and luxury institute and this
made us feel frustrated on lack of time for presentation preparation. I learnt that setting deadlines and timelines
can initiate others to make promises and commitments. When our team suggested having a video
conversation with Team Dancing and setting a deadline for their response, Team
Dancing promised to let us know their feedback before the deadline.
Sharing concerns
Sharing
concerns is very important for virtual collaboration. My team members and I encourage each other to
share our concerns with Team Dancing. Our
team has shared a few concerns during the discussion with Team Dancing. The first concern that we shared was the
discussion of the idea from Team Dancing of the cooperation between animal
rights group and luxury institute. The
second concern was lack of time to complete the group project due to busy full
time work. The third concern was we
would like to have a quick response from Team Dancing.
Collaboration of the group
I am happy
to work with my members in Team Alive because we understand each other’s
concerns and we know each other’s difficulties.
At the same time, we understand the goals and responsibilities during completing
the group project. We are responsible to
our own part and we discuss about the contents after we combine our parts. I think we are working well and we are
successful when completing a high quality project.
I am also
happy to work with Team Dancing because they have innovative and creative ideas. However, because of they do not have working
experience before, some of their ideas are not realistic and I think sometimes
Team Dancing should listen to other’s ideas and opinions and to express their
thoughts to enhance successful team collaboration.
Conclusion
Team work is hard to enhance through virtual communication
because we may face the combined hurdles of language, culture, and time‐zone
difference when we try to complete our work; however, a virtual collaboration
works after solving conflicts between two teams by continuous negotiation,
communication, dialogue, cooperation, intervention, exchanges and interaction.
To enhance successful team collaboration, it is important to
share concerns and make promises and commitments. At the same time, solving conflicts and
making decisions within the team can help enhance a successful virtual team.
References
1.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_collaboration
2.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team
3.
Understanding and Resolving Conflict PowerPoint slides
4. The
Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams, VIRTUAL TEAMS SURVEY REPORT – 2012
5. Conflict
to Collaboration, Harvard Business Review Notice of Use Restrictions, May 2009
6. Effective
Teamwork, A Best Practice Guide for the Construction Industry
