BA essay conclusion and recommendations

In the academic environment, students need to be prepared for the workplace. There are skills that need to be learned, for you to be more successful at your job. In school, the group activities we are assigned are great opportunities to work on your teamwork communication skills. Online classes are making you communicate in discussion boards, and communicating to team members via phone, to complete assignments. There needs to be more emphasis on group assignments, and other team activities in school to help bridge the gap from school to work. Employers are constantly saying that most applicants have a lack of written and/or oral communication skills In this paper, we are going to go over strategies to help you transition from school to your career more successfully.

In a world that is constantly evolving due to technology, it is crucial for students to be able to work effectively in a virtual team setting. Students need to sharpen their skills and techniques that deal with working in a virtual team. With more and more companies expanding their reach to various countries, virtual team settings are becoming more common. With a virtual team, you can have a group that is comprised of people from all corners of the Earth. Technology allows this group to get in touch with a simple click of a button via calls or even video conference calls. This is obviously more cost effective and feasible than requiring everyone in a group to travel to a certain location. There is a plethora of benefits when using virtual teams and that is why virtual teams are becoming more prevalent. With that said, these group could possibly fail without group interaction, open dialogue, and shared accountability. We have found these three key strategies to be not only important to us, but our research shows that these strategies are proven to be effective for virtual teams.

Group interaction leads to trust, which is a key component when establishing a strong foundation to build off of. How can anyone expect a group to survive and strive if there is no established trust amongst the members. Without trust, one cannot rely on the others to get anything accomplished. Without trust, there is no open and honest dialogue. Without trust, there is just a broken and ineffective team. The key, therefore for successful virtual team working, Henttonen and Blomqvist suggest, is interaction that develops “trust through actions and communicating individual roles and shared goals” (Henttonen & Blomqvist, 2005, p.117).

A strong virtual team also needs to have a flow of open dialogue. Open communication allows every member of a team to be on the same page and it better protects members from falling behind. If you have a group of friends or even strangers working to obtain the same goal, they will most likely fail without open dialogue. Every member in a group should be assigned a task that is their responsibility to accomplish. If the members of a group are not assigned tasks, then you run the chance of multiple members doing the same task. You also have the chance of certain members not doing anything at all because they were not told to do so. A team member who is confused or unsure of what they are exactly supposed to do is another issue that could arise without open dialogue. It is vital that a group can openly provide feedback to the others and offer any assistance. Team members need to feel that their opinion matters and what they say should be respected and considered by the others. Like that cheesy saying goes, “there is no I in team,” everyone in a group is trying to accomplish the same goals. You need to act as one cohesive unit in order to be effective.

Another main ingredient that ensures the success of a virtual team is shared accountability. Every team member needs to pull their weight and take responsibility for their part. If shared accountability is absent in a team, then that is when issues become rampant. All team members should agree on the best way to communicate and relay information to the team. All team members should know their designated roles and duties, as well as the overall objective. If everyone clearly knows what they are assigned to do, then there really is no excuse for tasks not getting done. Assigning everyone certain tasks also allows the team as a whole to hold those accountable whenever something does not get done. Trust and open dialogue are also tied in with shared accountability.

The relationship between academic and workplace engagement can be explained by the fact that both constructs mean that students or employee actively participate in workplace or academic activities that contribute to their success in virtual teams. A virtual team is a group of people that work from different geographic locations (Parke, Campbell & Bartol, 2014). In the world of a globalized economy that faces the fast development of information technology and the Internet, virtual teams are becoming more and more popular. That is why it is important to use engagement strategies that can ensure the effectiveness of virtual teams such as interaction, open dialogue, and shared accountability.

Interaction is an important strategy for working together that allows building trusting relationship in virtual teams. Without trusting relationship, members can experience stress because of lack of communication, ineffective teamwork, and poor decision-making process (Guillaume & Austin, 2016). Open dialogue is the second strategy that is important for supporting the ongoing development of team relations after trust is established. That is because open dialogue helps to achieve effective communication during which members can discuss goals, objectives, deadlines, identify clear tasks for every member. This is especially important in virtual teams where members are not provided with the ability communicate with each other in real life. The third strategy which is shared accountability ensures that every team member has the responsibility for achieving team outcomes. The strategy defines the expectations and the desire behaviors of employees and the management that can help to build a stronger company in the long-term.

The most important aspect of the effectiveness of virtual teams is communication. All the three strategies discussed above have a similar that is connected to facilitating good communication. In case all three strategies are effectively implemented, a virtual team is able to show greater performance and contribute to the long-term success.