Working on a Team 1

Issues Arising as a Result of Working as a Team

Christopher Cochran
Eric Erickson
Joshua Gonzalez
Lisa Vaughn
GEN 300 – Skills For Professional Development
Cathy Dunaway
November 15, 2003
 Working on a Team 2

Abstract

Few are the times when teams get along for the whole life cycle of a team. This paper

speaks about issues that may arise with virtual teams and the new boundaries they must

overcome. In order to write this paper, a team of four people were assembled each with an

assignment for research and interpretation of that research. The results are discussed in a

form of the four C’s of virtual team issues.

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Introduction

Technological advances have spawned the era of virtual teams across the globe, but to

understand the mechanics of virtual team evolution we first must identify the dynamics that may

arise when working with virtual teams.

In this paper we put forth our contribution by identifying these dynamics, these issues that will

arise in any team and how to manage them correctly. In all practicality we suggest a model labeled

the “4C of Virtual Team Dynamics” where we identify four main issues that may arise as a result of

working with teams.

Guidelines to prevent dissolution of team confidentiality

A team according to the Oxford dictionary is defined as a group of persons associated in

some joint action (Oxford Dictionary, 2003). In order for a team to accomplish their joint

action and be successful, some level of trust between team members is needed. When a

team discusses confidential information, trust is required to keep the information within the

group. Since trust is very hard to regain, one can follow a little advice from Lou Holtz, one

of the best team motivators, in a speech he gives to business managers:

“Do the right thing; do your best; and treat others as you’d want them to
treat you. Just do what’s right. If you do what’s right, people are going to
trust you. If you use those three rules, and you answer those three
questions, then your self-image grows, and as that grows, your attitude
toward other people grows. Then you put that with some goals and
aspirations. It’s not a very complicated thing.” (Lansing, 1998)

Lou Holtz summed up team trust in that one statement. A team can exist in business, in

school, in sports and in our personal lives and trust is a major factor in the success of those
 Working on a Team 4

teams. In our case, the team is virtual and that provides a whole new set of challenges

where collaboration needs to happen on a global scale, across continents, time-zones,

cultural and language barriers (Armstrong, 2000). What makes the challenge more difficult

than with other teams is the lack of face-to-face contact.

There are several issues that need to be identified in order to understand the complexity

of working with a virtual team. Some of these issues are also present in all teams, but the

effects are amplified when face-to-face contact is lost. The first challenge is building a

team identity. The common example is the statement “There is no ‘I’ in ‘team’.” Most

often we hear this statement in reference to sports teams when one player always wants all

the glory. This will not work in a virtual team which needs to adopt a “we” philosophy.

The team needs to be bound by purpose and not by geography.

Cost and communication can be issues when working across geographic boundaries.

The technology to support virtual teams can be expensive compared to a more traditional

team environment. In most workplaces, team-members can meet around the coffee-pot or

in the lobby, which is typically a low cost or already in place solution. In the example of

Digital Equipment Corporations, their Stockholm, Sweden office, was designed to facilitate

employee interaction. By utilizing “magnet areas”, a place with amenities that attract

people and encourage certain behavior, they have been able to stimulate informal,

unplanned communication (Becker & Steele, 1995). This does not happen in the virtual

world where schedules are seldom, if ever, the same. For these same reasons, trust is

harder to build, and commitment from a team member is harder to achieve. An effective
 Working on a Team 5

leader can provide the motivation to overcome these hardships and allow the team to work

as a unit despite being separated by great distances.

As David Armstrong wrote in “Building Teams Across Borders”, there are six actions to

help bridge the distance gap and build a successful team. Those are redefining “we”, start

the team face-to-face, putting communication on the agenda, establishing team norms,

getting the maximum benefit of technology, and clarifying the teams’ goals (p.1). Of these

I think team norms and team goals are what will eventually make or break a virtual team.

Beginning a team with a charter helps determine what is appropriate for the team (the

norms) and also what the team is hoping to accomplish (the goals). A charter should be a

document that is approved by all of the team members. This document should include

information such as the purpose of the team, the makeup of the team, the skills needed to

successfully complete the goals of the team, ways to secure equal commitment, and the

confidentiality requirements of team information (Thompson, Aranda, Robbins, et al). The

team charter forms the glue that holds the team together and keeps it on track.

With the rules for the team defined, trust can begin to form between team members.

Trust in virtual teams takes on a role of its own and seems to form the personality of the

team. With a team spread out across the globe, trust can easily be gained with each team

member supporting the other. The words of Lou Holtz come to mind when thinking about

forming team trust. As hard as trust can be to achieve, it is all too easy for that trust to be

broken. One often overlooked way in which trust can be broken is a lack of specific

guidelines for confidentiality.

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The way information is passed to those outside the group can mean a lot for individuals

on a team. We have all heard how a story told to one person gets changed as each person

passes a story down. When that story gets back to the source, the original storyteller hardly

recognizes his own words. This of course would be a bad thing to happen to team

information. A great example is one from the text book Tools for Teams by Thompson, et

al. (2000). The team in their example had no set rules for sharing information to others

outside the team. Since team members all have different points of view, they were all

sharing their view of the team discussion to outside members and creating a very biased

model for information sharing, not to mention team members would often feel like they

could not share information because it would get distorted. This team decided to develop a

progress report after team meetings to share with others outside the team. They also

decided not to discuss meetings with others. Because this team now has rules for handling

confidential material, the team members could feel much better about communicating

within the team.

Since confidentiality among team members is a rule, and as the saying goes, rules are

meant to be broken, how does a team handle the consequences? This very good question

and is one that should be decided on while writing the team charter. The consequences of

breaking the teams trust will vary from team to team and within different situations. If

your team was working on a top secret military project, the consequences would be a lot

different than the team planning a homecoming dance. In one instance you stand before a

judge begging to avoid a jail sentence in the other ridiculed, you can decide which

consequence applies to which scenario. The consequences the team decides on in its team
 Working on a Team 7

charter should be approved by all of the team members by unanimous consensus so there

will be no surprises if that time comes. Trust is a valuable thing to waste.

A team that has its trust, its confidentiality rules broken by a member is bound to be

scarred for the life of the team. In due time, it will be a thing of the past, but when issues

arise it will come back to haunt the team. As this ruination of trust resurfaces another ruin

will emerge from the ashes: conflict. It is one of the most difficult things to deal with in a

team.

Dealing with Conflict

In the virtual team, Conflict not Money is the root of all evil. Internal conflict is the

major element in the destruction of any team, but more so in the virtual hardly establishes

face-to-face meetings. They all have different personalities and different issues to deal with

outside of the virtual world.

Internal conflict is like an unseen wound, festering until it kills any team, but with the

online team internal conflict could be much worse and the team would perish much faster

than the physical team. Just think of it, a group of people working in a high stress

environment and most likely never having met before. Not knowing team members

personalities and not being able to see each other to judge expressions and really get to

know each other. They also do not have the opportunity to socialize.
 Working on a Team 8

In this environment one has to be extra careful in order to avoid conflict since team

members are usually from different cultures and something as simple as a joke could turn

out to be an unintentional unseen wound, which festers until the team eventually dies.

Strongly believing that all adults should be able to work together and function as a team,

despite any problems they might have with each other, this Utopia only exists in a mindset

since all people have their own opinions about things and everyone cannot communicate in

a non aggressive manner, while others do not communicate their feelings enough that

people would know how to deal with them. As an adult it is a responsibility to instill in

children and young adults the idea that although they will not like every one they meet and

everyone they meet will not like them it is important to be able to work and communicate

in a positive manner with everyone that they might encounter.

Most conflicts, especially in a team and more so in the virtual team, are started because

of communication or lack there of. This lack of communication can take many forms. I t

might occur, as it usually does, that people fail to communicate to each other what they

expect of them. When this happens people are all unclear of their responsibilities and this

leads to one of two things, either a power struggle where two or more persons want to be in

charge or leader.

This lack of communication can also lead to a situation where little or nothing is being

accomplished. In this case members of the team fail to take responsibility for anything

because no one tells them what to do. With no leader this team would also crumble.
 Working on a Team 9

Although everything must come to an end; a conflict would last for an unnecessary

length of time when people start communicating. Although communication could be good,

in this case it would be used in negatively. Team members would use this communication

to recruit other team members into their army of conflict to gain followers in their cause.

They then use this army in virtual battles against the other team and cause the team to be

unproductive.

To eradicate conflict in any area of our life we would have to first eliminate negative,

aggressive communication, then in everything we would have to designate a leader that

everyone will follow without causing trouble by asking questions. Since we know that

these thing are very unlikely to happen we then go to plan B, where we would have to find

the right behavior to use when dealing with each other, bearing all the different

personalities and cultures in mind. Once members of a team learn how to work and deal

with each other effectively then that team is the one that can rise above the others.

One of the usual culprits in team conflict is team communication. It stems from not

understanding or not caring to communicate with others. Communication stems from

relaying information to another person such that that person understands what you are

saying.

Communicating in Meetings

Communication is the key to successful teams. Without it, nothing will get done,

obviously. Without communication, it is not a team; it is a group of individuals with no

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direction. Once communication becomes the glue to hold the team together, assignments

are given, decisions are made, people excel, and things get done. An important aspect of

successful team communication is having meetings where team members can discuss

problems and find solutions.

To run an effective meeting, you need to come up with a plan for the meeting,

something that will guide the discussion and set the parameters, an agenda. In Tools for

Teams, the guidelines for an agenda are laid out:

The agenda is the planning document that guides what you hope to
accomplish at the meeting. This agenda should state the meeting’s purpose.
Is it only to exchange information or is it to make decisions? Will all
relevant parties in the organization be included or merely their
representatives? And if decisions are to be made, how are they to be arrived
at? Will consensus be sought? If decisions are to be made by voting, what
constitutes approval: a simple majority, a two-thirds majority, or …? These
issues should be clarified ahead of time in the agenda.

The agenda should also identify who will be in attendance; what, if any,
preparation is required of each participant; a detailed list of items to be
covered; the specific time and location of the meeting; and a specific
finishing time (Swenson, 2000).

The agenda should be sent out to all participants well in advance. This gives them time

to put the meeting in their schedule, review the agenda, and prepare for their part in the

meeting. During this time, encourage feedback on the agenda. There may be items to add

to the agenda or items that have already been resolved that can be removed. Additionally,

this gives all attendants the opportunity to participate fully. In the section, “Getting

Results” in Tools for Teams, it says, “An unprepared participant can’t contribute to his or

her full potential. It is your responsibility to ensure that members are prepared.” Allowing
 Working on a Team 11

everyone time to review and then approve the agenda will help you to start your team on

the path to success.

We have discussed quite a bit on issues that arise form teams. An important issue that

until recently was never considered was cultural implications. It was never considered

because teams did not span geographically and virtually until now.

Considerations for cultural implication within Virtual Teams

Everyone at one time or the other has heard the story of the Chevrolet Nova marketing

fiasco in Latin America. Chevrolet decided to market a car with a name that meant “No

Go” in Spanish. It led to their reformulating a marketing strategy and changing the name of

the car to something more tangible in Latin America. Although recent reports are showing

that, with proof from Chevrolet, that this anecdote is nothing but an Urban Legend we can

clearly see how not paying attention to cross-cultural differences can have surmountable

consequences.

As in any country, employees that usually work with people of their own culture, when

it comes time to work in teams with people of differing cultures it is increasingly difficult

to think that we may be offending a person from a different culture. We must therefore ask

ourselves what is our role in culture (Thompson, 2000)? Thomson wrote in her book, Tools

for Teams, that “what are considered appropriate team behaviors may also vary

considerably from one culture to another” (p.38). This statement of Thomson warrants the

question exactly what considerations should be taken when working in teams that are
 Working on a Team 12

multi-culturally diverse? Cross-cultural differences may create considerable challenges for

team leaders of culturally diverse teams (p.38). The success depends not only on the

accurate perceptions and reading across cross-cultural teams, as Thomson states, but also in

crossing the cultural divides and integrating multicultural teams through training (Demers,

2002). Training team members before they join teams helps them understand the

implications that may arise when a Japanese team member criticizes his American

counterpart for arguing with his senior team leader. This may not be so evident in cultures

from United States or Sweden where team members “are comfortable with open

arguments” (p.38). “An effective team member in Japan is above all courteous and

cooperative, members avoid conflict and confrontation” (p.38). This is in stark contrast to

Americans or Swedes, where this environment, of debate and argumentative discussion is

almost welcomed.

Difficult interpersonal relationships can have various consequences in virtual teams

(Demers, 2002), which if left alone will turn into huge conflicts. Virtual teams do not have

the media richness, that comes from “telephone and face-to-face meetings” (Demers), that

is present in physical teams. Within virtual teams the communication used may sometimes

lose the multiple queues for comprehension of the context the message presents (Demers).

Dr. Ook Lee spoke about how the Critical Social Theory perspective can help us to unveil

the cloak on cultural differences by critical reflection, in this case, through e-mail use in

virtual teams (Lee, 2002).

 Working on a Team 13

In the western hemisphere, while it is not considered disrespectful to e-mail the boss the

report on inventories at Pier 11, it is considered rude to people of Asian cultures to e-mail a

superior. Understanding Asian culture in virtual teams where a superior or team leader may

be from Korea, for example, sending constant e-mails may not be the best way to create a

healthy, positive work environment. Lee found in his study of virtual teams in East Asian

countries and Western countries that:

A critical reflection occurs to Koreans when they are trying to use e-mail to
communicate with their senior, which forces them to illuminate the code of
respect usually hidden in unconsciousness of their mind. The virtual team
…is known to use email effectively and frequently among peers, whereas
communicating with the boss of the team is rarely done using e-mail; this
confirms the proposition that cultural difference is an important factor in
causing varied usages of e-mail in Western countries and East Asian ones.
(2002, p.228)

This creates indisputable proof that cultures will see uses of communication in a

different light. When team members are trained to see these differences beforehand the

result are categorically abundant and obvious. The team will have a better relationship with

one another. Creating bridges through training allows members to see the cultural

differences and understand why things said in jest about the old man, although may be

humorous for Americans, may not be seen with favorable eyes to our Asian colleagues.

Let us take an example from Grace Cocoa. Grace Cocoa needed to create a more global

focus in order to keep pace with a rapidly evolving business environment (Supervisory

Management, 1995). With over 14 locations across the globe, they needed to create a

program that would allow everyone to manage themselves appropriately within virtual

teams. The answer came from LIM, a consulting firm that created a program based on
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Action-Reflection Learning. The purpose of this program was to partner people from

different disciplines to solve specific problems (Supervisory Management). What did the

program do for Grace Cocoa? Not only did it save the company several million dollars but

it has given people from different cultures the opportunity to work together.

What is important, now that training has helped create an environment of understanding

within cross-cultural teams, is how will the team leader manage effectively a cross-cultural

team?

How can team leaders from Grace Cocoa or even from any other company manage their

multi-cultural teams correctly? The key here is to understand where team members are

from, researching their views on religion, history, economics, class systems, and politics.

Exactly know how they are perceived and how, when talking about them, they should be

handled. If the opportunity arises, spending time in team member’s cultural environment,

their country for example can help to comprehend to a degree, their culture (Kemper,

1998).

Demers gives us a list of attributes for effectively dealing with employees’ cultural

differences. This guide can help team leaders manage their virtual team in a very beneficial

way:

What to know:

1. Understanding one’s own frames of reference and those of people from

other cultures.

2. Understanding the primary cultural, historical and sociopolitical features

of team members from other cultures.
 Working on a Team 15

What to do:

3. Decode different methods of verbal and non-verbal communication

specific to different cultures.

4. Build bridges and find common ground (values, customs, etc.) with
people from other cultures.

5. Work in unstructured, ambiguous environments (flexibility).

6. Develop strategies that fit the context.

7. Establish contacts in different cultural contexts.

8. Operate in a culturally different environment.

9. Work in difficult environments (flexibility).

How to be:

10. Be natural with people from different cultures (building relationships).

11. Express a strong sense of personal values and clear cultural identity
(self-confidence).

12. Be aware of the impact one’s own cultural identity has on others.

13. Be open, respectful and tolerant of diversity (understanding others).

14. Understand cultural relativism (understand others on their own terms).

(Demers, 2002)

How do we measure up to these attributes? Maybe, upon deep reflection we can see that

serious rethinking on how information is presented to people of different cultures can have

a negative or positive outcome. Certain things may not come out correctly in different

cultures due to the language barrier. Gross makes a point in his book Peak Learning, to

research the culture, make an effort to know the people (p. 365). Following is a guide to

techniques for cross-cultural communication taken Peak Learning:

 Make an effort to establish common ground based on cultural values

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 If you use humor, direct toward yourself, never at the audience or their culture
 Every culture has taboos regarding gestures, and you can discover them by
researching
 Make your points with simple illustrations and anecdotes
 Project respect and sincerity and do not be frustrated

Practicing these guidelines to prevent implications due to cultural differences can help

the communicator trespass all the cultural barriers and bond with members of the team.

Only by understanding others’ cultural views and managing correctly a team can their ever

be any successful teamwork in the virtual environment.

The “4C” model is not a definitive method of working and managing teams. It is a

subtle way of looking for clues that a team may have slightly fallen short from its objective

due to an issue that is blocking the flow of virtual teamwork. What this model will do for

you is to create an introductory guideline to the pitfalls and perils of issues that will arise as

a result of working as a team.

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