Most of us are familiar with Bruce Tuckmans’s model of team development. This typically gets a passing mention as one of the theoretical frameworks used in most team building programs, but no efforts are made to see which stage of team development the team is currently in, and/or how do we guide the team through the stages.
Recent times have seen the development of virtual teams across many organizations, owing to massive geographic expansion plans and clustering of specific competencies. During workshops conducted across the country, I have had the opportunity of observing team members of different organizations spread out across vast geographies. They did not possibly fit the bill of the conventional definition of a virtual team – the image coming to mind that of different clusters of individuals working across offshore/onshore locations in a software development firm. But organizations, with operations spread across a country like India with its cultural diversities are as much a virtual team as the former case. We got a first hand experience of this, when we were speaking to team members in one particular location, whose manager happened to belong to a state which was as different from the team’s as could be, right from the language spoken to understanding of their roles! Such scenarios are becoming exceedingly common, and it becomes important to examine some of the things we can do better while managing these “virtual” teams as well, separated by distance and culture. Below are some of my thoughts on the subject
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