What did the team leader notice during the team meeting (calls), and what did she try to do to enhance the situation?
During the meetings, Rebecca realized that most of the critical members were reluctant to share key information about their pipelines. Furthermore, the members were not as interactive as she has hoped for. As the team leader, Rebecca decided to deduce a way in which she could make everybody feel at ease and open up. Without proper research, she adopted humor as the appropriate mechanize to bring together the group members, lighten up the moods, and eliminated the nervous atmosphere that she had detected. Contrary, to her expectation, the members were even drawn further away, and most of them started to ignore her phone calls.
What should Rebeca had to do for each virtual worker, and why?
Team leaders are expected to research and analyses different cultural norms to be in a better position to avoid overstepping the cultural boundaries. Rather than just adopting a random mechanism, Rebecca needed to have private talks with each member individually before finalizing on the best structure and rules to be enacted and used in the meetings. Through this method, she would have identified Woo-jin’s situation of the strict hierarchical office environment and understand that whatever Woo-jin had to pass over needed to be vetted and approved by her supervisors. In the same way, she would have deduced that in Japan, the law of data passed on is strict.
What were the special situations with the Korean and Japanese workers?
Cultural rules and ethics need to be considered at all times. Japanese are generally sensitive to the data that is emitted to other countries. Kamiko originating from this environment, understood this. As a result, he was susceptible and reluctant to the information that he shared with the team member. To show that he wanted to participate in the discussion fully, he occasionally tried to tell signal of the strict rules in Japan to Rebecca but could not get her to understand.
On the other hand, the strict hierarchical office environment in Korea stipulated that Wooi-jin had to report to and submit any information to the supervisor before uploading for the group to see. She indicated that to her, this meeting was a formal business platform that called for seriousness at all times. Seeing the leaders adopt humor as a mechanism to bring the members to open up acted as a de-motivator to her. Don't use plagiarised sources.Get your custom essay just from $11/page
What the virtual leaders and the virtual members need to exercise?
In essence, while Rebecca began the teamwork with most of the components required to succeed, she discovered how cultural misfortunes sometimes stand up to the best strategy in the project. While care and due cultural diligence are a necessary part of working with a virtual team, the team leader and members must practice cultural knowledge and cultural competence in the process (Ivanaj & Bozon, 2016).
How can the virtual teams be as effective and productive as their traditional equivalents?
Some of the techniques Virtual should adopt to establish an effective communication plan first, which is usually appropriate to all members of the team when it comes to reporting. The other aspect is to ensure that the team leader communicates to the team, both cultural competences, and cultural knowledge because virtual teams can encounter people from the cultural context. Finally, the right technologies must be deployed to ensure that they openly express their ideas. In this way, the virtual leaders will build a highly skilled team that can freely interact (Maynard, Vartiainen, & Sanchez, 2017).
References
Cultural Preparation for Virtual Teams. (2015). International Virtual Teams, 33-54. doi:10.1002/9781118886465.ch3
Ivanaj, S., & Bozon, C. (2016). Managing Virtual Teams. doi:10.4337/9781785369278
Maynard, M. T., Vartiainen, M., & Sanchez, D. (2017). Virtual Teams. Oxford Handbooks Online. doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198758273.013.22