Welcome All! You are now all a member of a Global Virtual Team in a highly innovative international project that works with a real client on a current PR issue. Your lecturers know that working in a global virtual team is a challenge so please talk to your lecturer as they know exactly what you should be doing.

These pages give you a timeline, suggest collaboration platforms and processes. There is also a special section for Global Team Leaders. Please make sure you get to know all your team members. The best way to do this is to socialise online. This will help to develop trust and team spirit and can be challenging in an online situation. Please be sensitive to cultural issues. Look at the Collaboration page to help you get some great online collaboration tools where you can post photos and documents.

The student introduction pack (SIP) (1 MB) provides you with guidance about:

• How does a global virtual team look like
• What are the roles in each global team
• What is the timeline for the GlobCom project
• What are the phases of the project
• What do you do in each of the project phases

As additional resource about virtual teams you find a copy of the book of the former Vice President of GlobCom Dr Averill Gordon ‚Leadership in global virtual teams: Roles, models and challenges‘ here.

Another valuable resource is this chapter from Dr. Gaelle Duthlers book, called “How Similiar or Different Are We? A Perception of Diversity in Global Virtual Teams” is available for download here.

Get to know your team members

Have informal meetings at first as everyone joins over the first few weeks. Identify a good virtual platform such as google drive, MS Teams or trello. Then meet online through MS Teams, zoom or meet.  Teamwork is very important in this project.  However, you will not have the rich social context you have in face-to-face meetings so you need to make up for this by spending time socialising online in order to know each other. You may want to do an audit of  what everyone prefers doing.

Tip: Start each meeting with a socialising task. Task a team member week by week to start the meeting with a conversation about a topic of their choice. For example: which sport do you do to keep in shape.

Arrange a meeting schedule
Agree about formal meeting dates for the whole project where the group will discuss progress. Usually one a week at the same time works well. Think about timezones to suit everybody!  At every meeting you need an agenda – it must be circulated to your team in advance. After every meeting someone must send out meeting minutes with names and timings against actions. then post these on your virtual platform. Here is a timezone calculator http://www.timeanddate.com/

What does everyone do in the team?
Set goals as to how you want to work as a team.  Think about roles. You may want to ask everyone to say what they are good at or want to do such as  research, writing, editing, design.  Everyone must have a role. You also select a global team leader, a global deputy. Team members from each university select their local country leaders and deputy country leader. It may be best to get to know each other for a few meetings before you elect a global team leader.

Who is your team leader?
Effective leaders combine the role of getting tasks done as well as maintaining the social relationships within the group. They create a group climate that encourages and stimulates interaction, e.g. develop agenda, facilitate group communications, offer internal summaries and continual evaluation.

What makes leadership different in a global virtual team?
However, research has shown that for a global virtual team to work well and for conflicts to be resolved all members  need to  take active responsibility for their group’s progress.  Everyone needs to  prepare for meetings and be responsiveness to all their group members.

In a virtual team all members must be active and initiate activities for their team to be a success!! The project is ‚owned‘ by all team members!