Virtual Team Dynamics - The Ulfire Podcast

Visiting your partner offices as part of a virtual teal project can be brought with potential risks. Cultural, business and personal mistakes are relatively easy to make, but equally easy to avoid, or at the worst, to mitigate to the level that they may even help build relationships.

This article gives some tips, such as avoiding a sense of intimidation during your visit, maintaining a level of cultural sensitivity and considering extending your stay beyond the time needed for business only, to consider when making those all important business trips.

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This article discusses some of the key virtual team problems that occur in organisations, it highlights the causes of the problems and draws out some ways in which these issues can be identified and avoided.
Many issues will occur on project after project in organisations, some organisations will quickly learn how to build and run effective virtual teams, others will have very varied results with some projects being successful and others extremely problematic. A considered and planned approach will, however, usually help avoid many of the major issues.

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Getting the most from email in a virtual team environment is far more then just sending requests and receiving responses. Used well, email can be a good tool to help maintain a trusting environment and relationship between team members.

Email is frequently treated as a purely transactional tool, resulting in a purely transactional relationship. With due consideration, email use can genuinely help build a team. This article considers some of the challenges and offers suggestions and solutions to doing things better.

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Holding a regular distributed team review ensures that the host organisation is getting the best efficiency and value from its distributed teams, and that the personnel in the teams are receiving the support and leadership they need to perform at their best.

Reviews should be performed, at a minimum, at each major change in the focus of a operationally focussed distributed team and, at each major stage change in a distributed team working on a project.

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Empathy is a vital skill to build in a distributed team relationship. Virtual colleagues need to be empathetic to the cultural, social and temporal expectations placed on and experienced by their colleagues.
The different pressures coming from each team member's working situation, social and cultural environment can be a major cause of misunderstanding between personne. This article discusses some of the challenges faced and introduces some ways to mitigate and manage the impact of these differences.

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Issues around corporate politics are common in co-located organisations where they are generally well understood and managed, however, the issues associated with corporate politics extending beyond a single location into a virtual team are less well understood but can be equally destructive.
This article discusses some of the common issues and challenges associated with corporate politics in virtual teams, the causes, impacts and some potential resolutions.

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Understanding the impact of culture shock in an expat relocation, planning for the potential experiences and seeking and providing support through the process through corporate mentoring, local administrative and cultural assistance and accessing existing informal expat communities will make the experience easier for most expats.

This article discusses some of the major issues that will be experienced during a relocation and provides a sense of the way in which the changes can be managed and understood.

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Undertaking an expat relocation contract is an exciting and risky experience in the career of many employees. Some will thrive in the experience, emerging as a more rounded, more experienced and more valuable employee, others will find the experience traumatic and may well suffer lasting personal and career damage.

This article attempts to highlight some of the major areas to consider when planning an expat relocation, things to include when planing for the experience and offers some guidance to help things go smoothly.

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A not for profit organisation operating in multiple locations will face different challenges to those of a for profit organisation. Among these are their limited access to funds to pay for technology and any training they may need, the relatively low level of control the organisation has over the level of commitment and turnover of personnel and the difficulties motivating staff, who are often volunteers, to do something that may not have signed up for.

Many not for profit organisations do however have highly motivated and enthusiastic personnel, something that many for profit businesses sadly lack.

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Understanding the concept of temporal diversity, where individuals and teams will each place a different value on time, timeliness and schedules is one of the key skills needed to successfully lead a international virtual team.
When team members place widely differing values on the time available it can lead to tension and conflict in the team, This tension in turn can result in schedule issues and failure to deliver the desired outcomes.

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