how to manage conflicts in a virtue team
Communication and information technology have now enhanced individuals’ collaboration from different locations and cultures due to asynchronous and synchronous based tools that facilitate and support the distribution of individuals and teams across the globe. Management teams participate in virtual business organizations and communities to exchange knowledge and nurture collaboration. In the process of cooperation, potential conflict may arise within the team, especially when the members have different understandings and learning of the English language (Mukherjee & Natrajan, 2019). In the same case, the group development stages are somewhat different for face to face teams compared to the virtue teams. Therefore, there is a need for recommendations to deal with differences in virtue teams. The paper discusses how to manage conflicts in a virtue team, provide a comparison of group development stages, summarize, and identify barriers to communication.
Technological advancement is a critical tool for collaboration. Giving birth to new media forms increases collaboration from spatial to temporal constraints. The progress of these technical features results in potential conflict in a virtual team when the members do not have the same cultural language; for example, English. The members of a virtual team involve people working in different countries, cultures, departments, and business organizations. They all work, live, and study in different time zones (Khalil, 2017). Generally, team members use communication and information tools.
Most business organizations, groups, and individuals prefer a virtual team in conducting work and learning. At one time, the team members may get into conflict in the performance and instruction settings (Mukherjee & Natrajan, 2019). In such a case, the use of ICT in the corroborative work could be a potential tool for promoting multicultural understanding and effective performance among cultures and citizens of different states.
For virtual teams, the group development stages could be somewhat different in comparison with traditional face to face teams. Ideally, a multicultural team comprises of people whose members have exposure from other countries and understands other nations, languages, demeanors, and values. The addition of “Virtual” in the multicultural team may not develop the benefits of face to face communication and interaction (Mukherjee & Natrajan, 2019). The virtual team solely relies on work tools, cooperative learning like chat rooms, and email. In the traditional look to face to face team, there are patterns and conflicts among team members affecting cultures, for example, collectiveness vs. individualism, flaming, and consensus in communication (Khalil, 2017). In virtual teams, there is a need for trust, relations in time, and adoption of conflict resolution techniques in the group stage development.
Interpersonal communication fails due to the availability of barriers. Active listening, reflection, and clarification are significant in contact, but communicators should understand the obstacles, overcome, avoid them from communicating effectively (Jimenez at al., 2017). Lack of interest or attention is one of the walls of effective communication. Some people do not express topics and emotions during the discussion, hindering communication between the communicating parties. Differences in how the two parties view things and perception is a barrier to effective communication (Khalil, 2017). Some parties use unfamiliar and overcomplicated terms that somewhat blocks the flow of information from the sender to the receiver. People may not understand various accents and languages, becoming a barrier to effective communication. In a case where the receiver has an oversized ego, I would reduce the obstacles by checking the receiver’s understanding and providing the appropriate feedback to the listener. In a nutshell, working with virtual teams, multicultural, facilitates satisfaction, success, and facilitation of communication.