W4: Knowledge Clips

Question 1

Virtual teams

Answer 1

Becoming increasingly relevant in today’s digital age where advancements in technology allow people to collaborate and work together remotely

Question 2

Virtual team

Answer 2

Defined as a group of people or stakeholders working together from different locations and possibly different time zones who are collaborating on a common project or common goal, and use information an communication technologies intensively to co-create together

Question 3

Virtual team leaders

Answer 3

Can play an important role in fostering the work of virtual teams. They must ensure that members have access to and proficiency in the use of digital tools to facilitate communication and seamless teamwork

Question 4

Transformational leaders

Answer 4

Can foster collaboration among virtual team members in several ways; (1) establish a sense of purpose by setting goals, developing agendas, and visions, (2) focus on motivating members as it leads to better individual and group performance, (3) fostering trust and encouraging open communication, (4) facilitate collaboration and coordination

Question 5

Sense of resilience

Answer 5

Helps individuals and teams to bounce back from setbacks, adapt to change, and thrive in dynamic environments. It promotes emotional well-being, enhances problem solving abilities, contributes to sustained productivity, and sustained performance

Question 6

Virtual team transactive memory

Answer 6

Leaders should ensure the right combination of member knowledge, agreement of who knows what in the team, the right level of diversity of knowledge, and correct knowledge distribution among members

Question 7

Virtual team creativity

Answer 7

Leaders should compose diverse virtual teams and encourage perspective taking and pro-diversity beliefs. They should set goals, establish virtual team identities, and create shared tasks understanding

Question 8

Psychological safety

Answer 8

Should be fostered by leaders. They should emphasise inclusivity, seek input early, and often speak and act appreciatively. They should also be accessible, encourage discussion of mistakes, and encourage perspective taking and charters or structured activities

Question 9

Teams

Answer 9

Groups of two or more people that are working towards a common goal

Question 10

Traditional teams/co-located teams

Answer 10

Work together in physical proximity. Usually, a single leader distributes tasks and determines the individual priorities for such a task

Question 11

Virtual/distributed teams

Answer 11

May be geographically located in different parts of the world but working for the same organisation

Question 12

Asynchronously

Answer 12

Means that team members’ working times do not align with each other and they must depend heavily on virtual or digital means of communication. This requires careful coordination and clear communication of tasks and resources

Question 13

Speed of response

Answer 13

We overestimate how quickly senders expect a response for non-urgent emails. We need to be clear about what the norms and expectations are within the team. Making these rules explicit can prevent miscommunications and unnecessary stress

Question 14

Self-managed agile teams

Answer 14

Individuals manage their own workload. They shift work amongst themselves based on need and best fit and they have a participative decision-making style. There are clearly described and delegated tasks, but the individuals discuss who does what, when, and how

Question 15

Virtual meetings

Answer 15

Often fall prey to the biases and inefficiencies of social interactions. It refers to a meeting where team members have to work across locational, temporal, and relationship boundaries to work together interdependently. They often take place in the context of; geographic dispersion, organisational dispersion, structural dynamism, and diversity with a short life cycle and more turnover

Question 16

Geographic dispersion

Answer 16

Members are in physically different places

Question 17

Organisational dispersion

Answer 17

Members may work for different companies

Question 18

Structural dynamism

Answer 18

Members may be members of many teams beyond the team of the current meeting. Team structures are likely to be fluid

Question 19

Media richness

Answer 19

The degree to which the communication medium provides information about the meaning of messages. This includes whether the medium provides immediate feedback and the possibility for people to check interpretations and messages of one another. In less rich media, people are more likely to social loaf and are morelikely to show extreme aggressive behaviours since they feel less seen

Question 20

Face-to-face

Answer 20

The richest communication medium. They are fully synchronous

Question 21

Social loafing

Answer 21

When individuals do not pull their weight in the team

Question 22

Information overload

Answer 22

E.g. sending a lot of attachments

Question 23

Media asynchronicity

Answer 23

The degree to which people can communicate at the same time or they have to wait to respond to a message. Video calls come close to face-to-face, but phone calls introduce asynchronicity as you can’t see each other and it’s more difficult to jump into conversation

Question 24

Asynchronous interactions

Answer 24

Introduce uncertainty in social interaction and has been associated with conflict, politics, and organisations. It raises questions of how to react to silence

Question 25

Well managed virtual team meeting

Answer 25

Involves a small team (2-5), carefully selected people who work well in virtual meetings, face-to-face kickoff, formalised vision, role, norms, work processes, and strategies

Question 26

Clear communicator

Answer 26

Historically based on access to information. Now, everyone has access to information, so the advantage is moving to the ability to curate information. You need to be able to make sense of information, separate the signal from the noise, pick out the most important, and share it effectively. This is especially important in distributed teams, since communication is digitally mediated and time-bound

Question 27

Sender

Answer 27

Originates the communication

Question 28

True communication

Answer 28

Not necessarily the message that the sender intended to send. It is the message as it was understood by the receiver

Question 29

Clear communication

Answer 29

Only exists when the message sent was the message received

Question 30

Trust

Answer 30

Important in effective team work. It is the general willingness to take a risk in a relationship. If you trust someone, it means your expectations and beliefs are that this person's future actions will be beneficial or favourable, or at least not detrimental to your own interests. More effort is needed if you have never met the person. If you don't trust each other, teams cannot function properly

Question 31

Cognitive trust

Answer 31

About your beliefs about someone's competence and capability. It is built through actions. It is also important to establish a learning culture by being vulnerable and admitting mistakes, which increases cognitive trust

Question 32

Affective trust

Answer 32

The warmth and emotional trust you share with someone based on the social connection and rapport you build with them. It is a general positive feeling you have about someone. It is most needed in the beginning of relationships

Question 33

Swift trust

Answer 33

When groups first form, the prevailing feeling is everyone is in the same boat. Success will reflect well on everyone, and failure will hurt everyone. People have little choice but to trust each other

Question 34

Interpersonal trust

Answer 34

Has to be proactively built. It emerges after swift trust