Sources used in this document:

Such sagacity is applicable to virtual teams just as well as to those that operate in a physical environment. Actually, they probably apply even more in the former because the only means of communication is via the internet and the occasional phone call. Thus, employees must take caution to not allow too much of their personal lives to be revealed. In fact, they should only disclose as much as their employers do, as Anderson (2013) indicates (p. 76). The crux of the issue is that when working in a virtual team, it is not as necessary to guard one's privacy as it is when working with others in a physical location -- because one never sees one's co-workers. Therefore, it is all the more critical to take one's cues from one's employer in terms of discerning how much personal information one should reveal about oneself. The point is to maintain one's privacy while not becoming too aloof from one's co-workers, so that they do not feel as though they do not know whom they are working with.

The vast majority of the recommendations for the success of virtual and global teams elucidated in this week's readings were prudent. Dispersion inherently affects a team and the way that it functions. One of the most valuable of the recommendations for the success of such teams includes evaluating "the social skills and self-sufficiency of the potential team members" (Siebdrat et al., 2009, p. 63). Self-reliance is a critical factor to evaluate, because it is disadvantageous to work in a situation in which team members do not do all of their work simply because they are not in a physical environment in which their efforts are well-regulated. I have actually encountered such an experience while involved in group projects for my post-secondary education. It is not uncommon for people to wait for others to do work that they would rather not do themselves. Had I been able to pick the team myself, I would have evaluated the capacity of each member to function autonomously within the team framework and selected members accordingly.

In the near future, I have a team project in which I will have to work with a team distributed throughout the continental United States. One of the most pivotal recommendations that I will implement in this project is the need to "establish and maintain trust throughout the use of communication technology" (Malhotra et al., 2007, p. 61). There is a shared, virtual work space in which members of my team will communicate with one another about the research we are conducting in various locations. It is not enough to have such a work space. Someone should help to establish normative means of communicating in this space so that each team member feels comfortable communicating in it and using it appropriately.