A Comprehensive Guide to Virtual Team Management: Best Practices

This presentation outlines best practices for managing virtual teams, which are geographically dispersed but connected through digital mediums. It emphasizes the importance of structured meetings with punctuality and reliable digital connections, regular discussions to maintain clarity and discipline, and effective communication in a language understood by all team members. Recommendations include defining a specific team agenda, appointing a team facilitator, providing effective training, ensuring punctuality, and celebrating team successes. The presentation also references academic works that support the strategies discussed, highlighting the need for cultural intelligence and global identity in diverse virtual teams.

Virtual team
management
Name of the Student

Virtual team management
– The virtual teams can be stated to be teams which are
geographically dispersed but connected to one another
using digital mediums.
– Although technology has made this considerably easier,
the management is not quite easy.
– The given presentation will be stating the best practices
which can be used to manage virtual teams and provide
recommendations for the same.

Best practice 1: Holding
structured meetings
– Meetings tend to form an essential aspect of the organization and it is for this
reason, that when the meetings between the different teams are held, the need
to be included adequately in order to ensure that the agenda is discussed and
no time is wasted (Erez et al. 2013).
– The meetings need to be punctual and the digital medium to be used needs to
be well connected so that there are no disturbances.
– Time is a valuable component here and hence, no delays need to take place and
a fixed time needs to be discussed and defined before holding the meetings.

Best practice 2:Regular
discussions
– As the different virtual teams are not present in
the same discussion and the different members
of the organization do not meet regularly, it is
important that weekly meetings are to be held
so that the clarity within the organization exists.
– It is not necessary that these meetings are
formal or informal in nature, but the regular
discussion can help in maintaining the discipline
of the firm and help in achieving objectives.

Best practice 3:
Communication
– The communication is the key to success in case of a virtual team and this is the
reason why it becomes critically important for any team to engage in an
effective communication to ensure success.
– The members are required to communicate freely so as to make the agenda
understood by all (Hackelberg 2014).
– In addition to this, the communication needs to be in a language which is
understood by all.

Recommendations
– After the analysis, the following practices can be recommended for successful
virtual team management:
– Defining a specific team agenda
– Appointing a team facilitator
– Effective training
– Ensuring punctuality
– Celebrating team success.

References
– Erez, M., Lisak, A., Harush, R., Glikson, E., Nouri, R. and Shokef, E., 2013. Going
global: Developing management students' cultural intelligence and global
identity in culturally diverse virtual teams. Academy of Management Learning &
Education, 12(3), pp.330-355.
– Hackelberg, T., 2014. A team is more than the sum of its parts: the role of
diversity in personalities in virtual teams (Master's thesis, University of Twente).