Question

How are a group member's communication and personality traits conveyed when working in a virtual group? To what extent does technology enhance or restrict the impressions group members make about each other in terms of their communication and personality traits?

Answer 1

• In the ever divergent global business market, virtual teams are emerging as an important resource for
  organisations, and can save on resources such as time, travel and accommodation costs.
• Virtual teams work in a communication technology-mediated environment, which allows face-to-face meetings only to a limited extent, if at all.
• Verbal communication conveys just a small part of the meaning, while the rest is communicated by
  actions such as posture, waving, facial expressions i.e.‘body language’ as well as tone, voice
  emphasis, pauses, and all the factors that make communication a complex social process.
• Therefore virtual team members need to find out ways to express what in a “real” environment is expressed non-verbally. Common solutions are emoticons in electronic messages, taking extra care in wording messages to mitigate the risk of misunderstandings, consideration of the speed with which a response is sent, and so forth.
• The virtual team leader should encourage team members to engage in social communication by exchanging information, comments, opinions and feelings not necessarily related to work tasks. Social communication also functions to partially replace non-verbal cues.
• Face to face meetings can contribute to improve social communication if informal conversations are included in the programme of the day. When back to a fully virtual environment, the virtual team leader might want to organize regular chat sessions with all team members present and using humour to lighten moods.
  
• Technology obviously makes the communication faster in virtual groups and helps to stay connected with eachother,the use of emails,chats,regular face to face meeting through video conferencing all do help in group members understanding each others personalities since interaction is the key and that is still happening even if virtually. On the down side,obviously technology is not always helpful. To be having group members in the same physical space is much more effective in understanding each other and working with each other and that happens less with virtual teams. Non-verbal language is highly effective in small teams working together. Virtually it happens less. But,the gap is being bridged and people are working with each other virtually as well along with understanding each others temperaments and personalities.Social interaction always works whether virtually or in proximity, in the same space.