VT MiniBook Chapter 5

In this chapter we examine the types of people, the manner in which they interrelate, and the number of individuals who can successfully come together to make up a virtual team.

Virtual Teams require people to change roles quickly and shamelessly. Some companies, like Tetra Pak CT, have given up functional divisions completely, working instead in boundary crossing networks.

People must simultaneously be "me," independent individuals, and "we," interdependent part of groups. To a significant degree virtual teams are self-managing. The members must have more independence and decision-making capability than people typically do in bureaucracies. This is made possible by a clear sense of purpose and personal commitments binding people to the group together with open, accessible, comprehensive information environments.

Independence:
Respect for the individual is a core value of all the great team companies. Because virtual teams need higher levels of interdependence in roles, they require correspondingly higher levels of independence and voluntary behavior on the part of individual members.

Shared leadership:
It takes more than one good leader to make a successful virtual team . Virtual teams that are highly self-motivated and self-managed are leader-ful not leader-less.

In virtual groups, people play multiple roles, often more than in conventional teams. These roles require greater clarification and role flexibility. Because the process is dynamic, roles are constantly changing.

Types of leadership:

Task leadership is oriented to expertise, activities and decisions required to accomplish results measured through productivity.

Social leadership arises from the interactions that generate feelings of group identity, status, attractiveness and personal satisfaction as measured through group cohesion.

Size of the Group:

Five is the approximate midpoint of a range for the size of a team; larger groups tend to break down into "teamnets" (networks of teams). In virtual teams there tend to be small active core groups and larger extended memberships.