Measuring Success, Training and Performance Administration - Essay Example

Due to technological advancement, virtual teams do not need to waste time traveling, and this increases their productivity. The focus of this essay is the areas of competence that are essential to be focused for the success of virtual teams. According to Duarte and Snyder (2011), seven areas of competencies exist. These competencies are discussed below:

1. Training and Performance Administration:
For the success of virtual teams, leaders must focus and make sure that virtual team members have a clear understanding of the mission, vision, and organizational strategies so they can deliver even in ambiguous circumstances. Members must have a shared understanding of accountabilities and roles that avoid repetition and redundancy; sharing of the best practices and knowledge will leverage expertise. Timely feedback regarding performance should be given, and compensation policy should be equal for all teams.

2. Effective Use of Technology:
Technological use must be according to the nature of the team and its tasks. For example, the production team requires workflow software and the problem-solving team requires groupware. The leader has to use technology that can help employees to do faster communication to understand each other which would maximize the dynamics of the team. Technologies must be selected according to the skills of employees. A leader must know all technologies that are required for the enhancement of a virtual team’s success.

3. Cross-Cultural Management:
Management must have an idea of various cultures that affect the team member biases and find out the techniques that do not promote biases of one culture to another in such a way management can better serve its cross-cultural employees.
4. Career Expansion and Team Associates’ Transition:
Leaders must focus on the negative aspects and should develop strategies to deal with these negative aspects. A leader must encourage his team members by assigning preplanned projects to reduce the time and increase the utilization of expertise. He must hold career developmental discussions and should focus on the personal needs of the career that will motivate employees to give their best. He must focus on coaching and training new employees so they can perform their tasks quickly and accurately.

5. Trust Building:
For the success of any business, trust-building among employees is an important factor that cannot be ignored. Trust building is much more complex when it comes to virtual team and require planned efforts. A team leader must focus on the development of a clear trust plan for the members of a virtual team. This can help them share their problems without any fear, and it will enhance productivity.

6. Networking:
Networking is the most important issue on which team leaders spend their time most. For the success of a business and good returns on investment, a virtual team must be competent and to have competency team leader must have a broad and strong network that can deal with priorities, and non-constant requirements and gain resources.
7. Adjusting and Developing Processes of Team:
For the success of the virtual team, the team leader should make sure that all members are adopting standard approaches and have the flexibility to adopt processes according to the demand or requirement of the project. Not all projects may have the same process requirements therefore; the team leader must be adaptable to making adjustments accordingly and should work on finding similar processes that are feasible for all team members. Read More