Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques That Succeed, Third Edition

Chapter Nine. Virtual Team Dynamics

Dynamics of a virtual team are likely to manifest over the team’s life cycle. It is important to understand the factors that influence and are affected by team dynamics in a virtual setting. Helpful strategies and tools facilitate virtual team dynamics. These tools help leaders and team members assess the health of their virtual team.

Technical and Adaptive Environments

Virtual teams can exist in technical or adaptive environments. In a technical context, work is usually planned and executed according to a timetable, with schedules and project plans. The knowledge necessary to solve a problem usually exists and may even be codified in policies, processes, or procedures. In this situation, the team acquires the knowledge and applies it to the team’s task.

In an adaptive environment, situations are unique and do not have defined or routine solutions. The challenge is to devise a solution to a problem or a strategy that does not yet exist. Along the way, team members and organizational stakeholders may need to make painful adjustments in their attitudes and expectations. The specific character of a team’s dynamics depends in part on whether the team’s task environment is more technical or more adaptive. Clearly, this is a continuum; most tasks include problems for which partial solutions already exist. However, most virtual teams face situations that require behaviors toward the adaptive end of the continuum.

Traditional Models of Team Development

Bruce ...