The challenge of the virtual team
By David Clutterbuck (August 2004 Issue)
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For the training professional used to working with a group of people in a classroom environment, the virtual team, whose members may be scattered around the globe, may have elements of the nightmare scenario. Although typically initial training will be done face to face, it is often too expensive to bring people together thereafter. Anyone who has tried to deliver training via teleconferencing to a group of people knows how time consuming and complicated it is, along with the difficulties of establishing a high quality of interaction between participants.
New technology, already in existence, could make the virtual classroom easier to manage. Visual images of the presenter and all the participants can be manipulated so that everyone sees themselves and their colleagues in the same virtual classroom and has a greater sense of collegial interaction. Breakout groups and one-to-one dialogue can take place in the same way, with the facilitator able to monitor all of them (simultaneously, if s/he so wishes!).
However, this article is not about virtual training; it’s about the nature of learning in the virtual team and how the trainer can facilitate the learning process among people who do not normally work in close proximity to each other. This is just as daunting a task and perhaps more so, not least because it demands that the trainer releases control of the learning process to the participants.
HOW A TEAM BECOMES VIRTUAL
The typical description of a virtual team is one in which the members are geographically separated and communicate primarily by electronic means. It isn’t quite that simple. For example, the members of a senior management team in a manufacturing multinational are ...
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