Have you worked as a part of Virtual Team? I was fortunate to work both on professional and academic front. While working with my Virtual team members our communication was limited to Phone calls, Mail, Voice and Video Conference and Company forums.
Looking at the speed with which social networking is gaining popularity and organizations using it to build on there business strengths I was forced to believe that social networking can be a great tool to enhance the dynamics of Virtual team by providing a platform to share ideas, build relationship, cultivate trust and mutual understanding and belief. Social networking can be a great place where team members:
1. Can form similar interest groups
2. Share ideas
3. Indulge in informal conversation and exchange information.
4. Get to know more about each other’s culture and living style.
5. Generate innovative plans to build long lasting team relationships.
Given the benefits can social networking hamper virtual teams? Yes, it is possible that social networking tools can damage more than they can benefit because:
1. People have natural tendency to drift from cause of incorporating social networking as a part of virtual team building activity.
2. Not every one in the team can be welcoming to the idea of social networking tools.
3. Selection of wrong networking site, for instance, in order to know more about professional experience of team members LinkedIn or Ryze is better than face book or MySpace.
4. Lack of team norms and policies for usage of Social networking tools
In order to make sure that social networking is used only as a tool to aid in team building following should be done:
1. Use Social Networking for what they are best doing: Social networking is best for participants to share ideas, connect to people with similar interests and form groups. Virtual Team members can invite other team members to join groups of similar interests and vision enabling them to break the ice and get to build that trusting relationship.
2. Invest time and select best suited networking site: as with every new tool, take some time to experiment with the social networking site you select for your group. Spend time learning about it, its features and how can it be best used. Also while selecting the networking site we should pay close attention to the team demographics for instance older team members may not be open to the idea of introducing the concept of social networking to build team trust and relationship. Hence it is always good to have a team virtual meeting to discuss the benefits and plan to best utilize social networking tool to the teams dynamics.
3. Set clear policies and boundaries: similarly as company has policies and procedures for the usage of internet, email and group forums, even Virtual teams should establish rules about the use of social networking sites especially when they are networking on Public sites. Norms and policies should be set for when and how to use social networking tools.
Hence with little planning and careful structuring social networking sites can be viewed as a great place to build trusting, deep, long lasting and meaningful team relationships.
