Ferrazzis Four Must-Haves - Literature review Example

FERRAZZI’S FOUR MUST-HAVES By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Ferrazzi’s Four Must-Haves Introduction A virtual team is a group of sub-teams or individuals interacting by means of co-dependent tasks, which are guided through normal work and purpose across connections fortified by technologies, communication, and information. Besides that, virtual teams can be defined as teams with geographically dispersed members who principally coordinate their work by means of electronic ICTs (telephone, e-mail, and, video-conferencing). Given that the marketplace has become very competitive, virtual teams symbolise the increasing response to the demand for rapid solutions to multifaceted problems at organisations, low-cost, and fasting time-to-market. More importantly, Virtual teams facilitate organisations to amass the employees’ and non-employees’ expertise as well as talents through the elimination of space and time barriers. These days, business organisations are investing heavily in virtual teams with the objective of improving their competitiveness and performance. As pointed out by Ferrazzi (2014, p.120), the value of creating virtual teams is obvious; for instance, it enables employees to manage their personal and work lives flexibly. Furthermore, the virtual team offers employees an opportunity to interact with colleagues across the globe. Still, virtual teams come with a number of challenges such as feelings of isolation and trust issues. Therefore, to get virtual teams rights, the organisation must focus on Ferrazzi’s four must-haves: the right touchpoints, the right team, the right leadership, as well as the right technology. With view to these four must-haves, this paper seeks to critically discuss how they can be applied in a virtual team. Furthermore, the piece evaluates examples of where virtual teams have been successful and unsuccessful. Body The Right Team Ferrazzi (2014, p.121) is of the view that the composition of the team is always the beginning point. He maintains that when creating a team, a person must consider not just the right people, but also the right roles as well as the right size. That is to say, the members of the virtual team should have a suitable set of abilities, like work independently, high emotional intelligence, and effective communication skills. Ferrazzi (2014, p.121) further maintains that sensitivity to as well as awareness of other cultures is crucial when creating global virtual teams. With the view to roles, Ferrazzi proposes a framework defining different tires of team members: outer, operational, and core. The outer network involves part-time or temporary team members included in the team at a certain phase of the project due to their specialised expertise. On the other hand, the core comprises mainly of executives in charge of the strategy. Lastly, the operational group focus on making decisions regarding daily work chores but have no say on the issue tackled at the core tier. In a virtual team, role coordination is considered to be extremely vital because it is concerned with the management of virtual team members’ interdependent tasks. Still, role coordination amongst the virtual team members is considered to be challenging because reinforcing the reporting levels in the virtual teams because they only support the flatter organisation structure. Besides that, the management of interdependent tasks is somewhat challenging because of cultural influences and differences in time zone. The Role Theory states that the actions of all people are guided by the place they occupy in the social structure. All team members anticipate some set of behaviours from others and also themselves in the social setting. In a team, all members exhibit two forms of behaviours; socio-emotional and task-related behaviours. Members of the virtual teams play three forms of roles; socio-emotional roles, which enable the team to collaborate, create trust, as well as work effectively to achieve a common goal. Task-oriented roles are those that allow the team to realise the goal of its formation. Lastly, the individual roles are those associated with the team member’s personal needs like the desire for control or recognition. Such are needs have perceived to impact collaboration and trust in the team enormously. According to Ebrahim et al. (2009, p.2654), organisations that can swiftly create virtual teams of the talented individual could quickly respond to the ever-changing business environments. In their study, Morley et al. (2015, p.190) observed that the number of ideas that a virtual team generates, increases with the size of the group. They further established that creating virtual teams allows the leaders of the team to gain access to employees having the needed expertise so as to manage different organisational problems. As observed by Morley et al. (2015, p.199), people play a crucial role in the success of failure of the virtual team; for instance, trust is vital since many tasks are carried out separately, and virtual team members must depend on other’s expertise so as to successfully carry out such tasks. Morley et al. (2015, p.199) emphasises that lack of trust in the team results in knowledge sharing barrier. More importantly, instilling a sense of cultural awareness to every virtual team member can lead to the creation of openness and trust, especially in an organisation with diversified team members. According to Watanuki and Moraes (2016, p.1967), the size of the virtual team is a crucial factor in the formation of the team which is associated with the team performance. Increases in the size of the virtual team result in challenges associated with the management of interactions amongst because of the intrinsic interactions complexities amongst diverse individuals. Therefore, having a large virtual size can lead to reduced productivity as well as performance for output quantity and quality. These authors noted that, as group size increases, groups tend to experience more problems a small size team is considered effective because engagement between team members is greater and has high participation equality (Watanuki & Moraes, 2016, p.1970). The Right Leadership With regard to leadership, Ferrazzi (2014, p.122) outlines several key behaviours, which he believes are crucial to the virtual teams: trust, open dialogue, and communicating a common vision. Ferrazzi (2014) argues that a leader can promote trust in the team by offering the members an opportunity to socialise with people, by means of the virtual format. After establishing trust, the leader should ensure there is open dialogue since a team with no openness is destined to fail. Lastly, the leader should clarify guidelines or goals and also make sure that the individual ambitions and needs of the team members are framed according to the team vision and goals. The leader should communicate the vision of the team and the expected benefits. As pointed out by Morgeson et al. (2010, p.8), team leadership can be sourced from numerous sources that reflect the individual trying to satisfy the needs of the team. The authors believe that the leadership sources could be conceptualised alongside the locus structural dimensions of leadership as well as leadership formality. Normally, informal as well as internal leadership happen in the virtual team when team members share the leadership responsibilities or when a particular member of the team come out informally as a leader. Informal and external leadership often happen when people not in the virtual team try to meet the critical needs of the virtual team. Sometimes, these individuals are known as executive coordinators, team champions, or team mentors (Morgeson et al., 2010, p.8). As mentioned by Razor (2012, p.140), leaders have two crucial functions in the virtual teams: team development and performance management. In addition, the leaders of the virtual team have to distribute these functions facets to the team and should also formulate a procedure that enables the team members to control their individual performance effectively. Gazor (2012, p.140) stresses that leaders of the virtual teams must keenly monitor environmental evolutions and changes since they normally influence the outcomes of the team. Furthermore, the virtual team members have to greatly commit themselves to the team and must generate uniformity. Ebrahim et al. (2009, p.2663) emphasise that although strategies for direct leadership can be utilised in the conventional teams, virtual teams’ members can effectively be managed through empowerment and delegation of the management functions to the team members. In so doing, the team leader’s role is changed into moderating and coaching functions. In their study, Kayworth and Leidner (2002, p.27) observed when leaders mentor the virtual team members; they normally exhibit strong relational skills. Essentially, the majority of team members desire to have an individual who can encourage, motivate, and challenge them towards excellence. Therefore, they generally need a mentor. On the other hand, leaders desire for members who are more independent, those who perform effectively without ‘hand-holding’. Kayworth and Leidner (2002, p.27) asserts that virtual team leaders considered to be highly effective are those who express understanding, concern and care for the members of the team, and at the same time, can employ their authority to realise the team goals. Besides that, effective team leaders are those capable of engaging members of the virtual team in an extremely collaborative and personal fashion and also be able to retain their authoritative figures. Kayworth and Leidner (2002) assert that effective leaders should have mentoring capability, which they can use to create a healthy social environment that allows for interaction between team members. The Right Touchpoints Ferrazzi (2014, p.123) holds that virtual teams must get together at kickoff, onboarding as well as milestones. At kickoff, coming together will enable the team members not only to ‘put a face to a name’ but also outline expectations for openness as well as trust. They will also be able to clarify behavioural guidelines and the team goals. Body language, as well as Eye contact, could help encourage the ‘swift trust’ and personal connections which facilitate the members of the team to work together before developing long-term bonds. Onboarding can be described as the process through which a new individual is introduced to the virtual team. Ferrazzi believes that onboarding can be intimidating since the person is introduced after the team is already operational. As a result, the team could start losing momentum since the members start feeling disconnected. This can be countered by ensuring that the entire team is brought together at the same time. Greenberg et al. (2007, p.333) emphasise that the leaders of the team have to remember the interim deadlines achievement or other forms of milestones. The team leaders have to come up with ways of celebrating with the team members when they meet the deadline. They can utilise gauge-type or graphical depictions to measure the virtual team’s milestones, which they can display and update on the team's portal or website. Greenberg et al. (2007, p.333) are of the view that this will facilitate the building of strong social bonds required to assess benevolence crucial factor of trust positively. The most effective as well as a drastic solution to virtual work problems is eliminating the virtualisation completely, including the form obstensively utilised by collocated workers in adjacent offices. Collocation of the virtual team in one room can improve availability, coordination, and awareness and also lead to improved productivity gains. In their study, Hemphill and Begel (2011, p.19) found out that the nature and frequency of interactions in a virtual team has a strong effect on the pace as well as the effectiveness of onboarding in such teams. They further established that virtual teams’ performance was much better when the team had frequent interactions as well as more structured processes. Clearly, this indicates that manager should participate in onboarding activities, such as setting realistic as well as clear expectations regarding time-to-productivity, creating plans for learning, and moderating meetings actively with the objective of including the newcomers and ensuring that they also participate actively. Lawrence (2016) posits that having the initial meeting of the team face-to-face could help clarify expectations as well as establish trust. It is much easier to comprehend the style of communication used by an individual in person. It also facilitates the interpretation of members’ messages after the team has dispersed. Therefore, time should be set up after the kickoff to for a face-to-face meeting since knowing and seeing other team members in person could make people feel more connected to the team’s goals as well as to one another. The Right Technology As mentioned by Ferrazzi (2014, p.123), technology is very important to virtual teams since it enables the team members to review their own work and interact with other team members through text messaging, direct calling, conference calling as well as virtual team rooms. In the modern-day business environment, virtual teams have become a major necessity. Earnhardt (2009, p.4) established that technology plays a crucial to the virtual teams’ success or failure since they offer communication means and improve the team ability to finish the project. Ceresa (2015) points out that technology facilitates communication since members can talk through online messaging services and can also organise their work centrally. Technology facilitates the sharing of tasks amongst the team members; thus, enabling the individual team members to submit work or claim a task and remain well-versed of what the rest of the team is doing. Thanks to technology, group members can share information, which enables the company to work effectively. Without technology, communication in the virtual teams would be very challenging. As mentioned by Gazor (2012, p.139), high-tech communications technology could improve the team's ability to collaborate. Morley et al. (2015, p.199) maintain that technology is a virtual teams’ key enabler considering that members of the virtual teams are dispersed widely in different geographic regions. The supply chain offers an interesting setting through which technology impacts can be examined since it depicts the contemporary workplace complexities, which comprises mainly of organisational relationships and social networks. Technological advances do not only improve communication but also facilitates information sharing between virtual team members and enables organisations to access an enormous pool of skills that help improve performance, reduce the time used in product development, and also enhance employee participation as well as lateral communication. Virtual teamwork depends on a different range of technologies such as communication technologies and also sophisticated technologies. Although maintenance as well as the creation of team identity is facilitated by technology, different types of technologies can result in new contextual problems that non-exists in the face-to-face communication. Furthermore, some technologies can be very complex; thus, creating the need for training. Examples of Where Virtual Teams Have Been Successful and Unsuccessful For Virtual Teams to be successful, Earnhardt (2009, p.4) posits that they must have team forming, technology, and clarifying objectives. Clarification of responsibilities, roles, and objectives as observed by Earnhardt (2009, p.4) is closely associated with the responsibilities of management in communication, alignment and team forming. On the other hand, team forming defines the virtual team success considering that the members of the team could be sourced from virtually everywhere. For this reason, the management has to take caution when forming teams by ensuring that there is diversity in order to avert misunderstandings and cultural clashes. Additionally, technological flaws like missed documents, poor training on technology as well as less monitoring can result in team failure. When the members of the virtual team fail to clearly comprehend how to utilise technology to facilitate communication, their contribution to the team will be less satisfactory. As emphasised by Earnhardt (2009, p.6), technology can lead to challenges if the members of the team are not allowed to make decisions. Without the ability to make decisions, the technologies utilised to facilitate collaboration in virtual teams will not add value; therefore, competitive advantage related to responding rapidly to market demands will likely be lost. Besides that, forming team improperly can lead to team failure, since the mix of team members is incorrect and could hamper the production of the virtual team on a certain project. While reviewing BankCo Inc., a multinational financial institution with branches in over 100 countries, Lee-Kelley and Sankey (2008, p.62) established that workers had become used to virtual team-working; therefore, scores of the expected difficulties were not important to their performance. Still, they observed that face-to-face interaction was considered crucial for building relationship and trust. The study further established that BankCo Inc. virtual team is successful because there is no interference, but the team lack authoritative leadership that could coordinate as well as drive project progress in different sub-groups. As cited by Ebrahim et al. (2011, p.5) managing virtual teams is challenging because of functional and cultural diversity as well as mistrust amongst the members of the team. While reviewing the virtual teams failure at Sabre, Inc, Kirkman et al. (2002) posit that the failure was caused by five challenges: (1) inability to build Trust in the virtual teams; (2) lack of knowledge on how to minimise process losses and maximise process gains on Virtual Teams; (3) isolation feelings and detachment related to virtual teamwork; (4) problem in balancing interpersonal and technical skills amongst the members of the virtual team; (5) lack of recognition of virtual team performance. These shortcomings can be overcome by ensuring availability of technology, making sure the selected team members have the sought after competencies, promoted engagement, ensure there is a strong social tie and trust, and espousing ‘hands-on’ style of leadership. Conclusion In conclusion, the essay has focused on Ferrazzi’s four must-haves: the right touchpoints, the right team, the right leadership, as well as the right technology and has also examined the examples of where virtual teams have been successful and unsuccessful. As evidenced in the essay, virtual teams have become very important in the contemporary organisations since they offer a quick means of collaboration and reduce costs associated with the face-to-face interaction. As pointed out, the successful virtual team are those have espoused the right technology, comprise of members with the needed skills, and with clarified objectives. Still, most virtual teams fail because of problems associated with team empowerment, improper training, team discontent, as well as trust issues. The leaders of the team must make a substantial investment in the virtual team in order to increase creativity amongst the team members, generate knowledge, and generate competitive advantage. Leaders should ensure most of the virtual team members are encouraged, motivated, and challenged towards excellence. They should make sure that they form team properly by ensuring that the mix of team members is correct and does not hamper the production of the virtual team on projects. References Ceresa, A., 2015. The Importance Of Technology In Virtual Teams. 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An investigation into the role of virtual team size in IT service provisioning. Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 116, no. 9, pp.1967 - 1986. Read More