• Competency 2: Apply the principles and practices of effective virtual team collaboration.
  • Describe behaviors that build trust in virtual teams in sufficient detail to illustrate specific aspects of the behaviors.
  • Describe behaviors that undermine trust in virtual teams in sufficient detail to illustrate specific aspects of the behaviors.
  • Describe principles of effective leadership in virtual teams in sufficient detail to illustrate specific aspects of these principles.
• Competency 4: Participate in a virtual team.
  • Apply real-world examples to illustrate effective and ineffective behaviors for virtual team leaders in sufficient detail to make them relevant and meaningful.

Competency Map

CHECK YOUR PROGRESSUse this online tool to track your performance and progress through your course.

Resources

Suggested Resources

The following optional resources are provided to support you in completing the assessment or to provide a helpful context.

• Breuer, C., Hüffmeier, J., & Hertel, G. (2016). Does trust matter more in virtual teams? A meta-analysis of trust and team effectiveness considering virtuality and documentation as moderators. Journal of Applied Psychology, 101(8), 1151–1177.
• Chang, H. H., Hung, C.-J., & Hsieh, H.-W. (2014). Virtual teams: Cultural adaptation, communication quality, and interpersonal trust. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence, 25(11/12), 1318–1335.
• Ferrell, J., & Kline, K. (2018). Facilitating trust and communication in virtual teams. People and Strategy, 41(2), 30–35.
• Jarvenpaa, S. L., & Leidner, D. E. (1999). Communication and trust in global virtual teams. Organization Science, 10(6), 791–815.
• Kimble, C. (2014). Building effective virtual teams: How to overcome the problems of trust and identity in virtual teams. Global Business and Organizational Excellence, 30(2), 6–15.

Assessment Instructions

Preparation

To prepare for this assessment:

• Research characteristics of effective leaders and how leaders build trust, specifically in the virtual team setting.
• Identify several behaviors that build trust and several behaviors that undermine it.
• Identify a number of principles of effective leadership in virtual teams.

Scenario

You have been asked by executive leaders in your organization to use your experience and research to develop a training program for a group of newly promoted middle managers. This is a group of experienced and successful front-line supervisors who have been promoted, and now have front-line supervisors reporting to them. Almost all of the supervisors reporting directly to this group of middle managers are located in centers across the United States. The middle managers have limited travel budgets and large areas to control, making in-person meetings very infrequent.Two areas you have been asked to specifically address in your training program are building trust and defining the principles of effective virtual team leadership.

• Approach the trust issue by identifying seven behaviors that build trust and seven behaviors that undermine trust. You will use examples from your own virtual management experience or examples that you have researched from current, relevant sources to illustrate each of the behaviors that build trust and those that undermine trust.
• Identify ten leadership principles (especially as they apply to virtual team leadership) and illustrate each principle with examples based on the successes and failures you have experienced or observed in virtual team collaborations, or examples that you have found in your research.

As you begin to develop the training, you receive one last instruction from your executive leaders. You are reminded that these managers are not new to supervision and already have significant leadership experience. They will not be engaged by training that treats them as if they are naive about leadership or trust in the workplace. Recognizing the sincerity and genuineness of the hard-earned lessons they have already learned is more likely to have a positive effect on their behaviors as virtual managers.

Deliverable

Create a PowerPoint presentation of 27–30 slides of your training on effective leadership and building trust in virtual teams. The more specifically you are able to include examples that demonstrate the principles of virtual leadership and building trust in a virtual environment, the more effective your training will be. Make good use of the presentation slide for identifying your ideas, and use the Notes view to develop your analysis and examples. Submit the PowerPoint deck with the supporting talking points in the Notes section.Strive to make the presentation easy for your target audience to view. The use of graphics is not essential to this assessment, but you may choose to include charts or graphs that enhance or support your points.Your PowerPoint deck should contain the following slides:

• Title slide. (What will you call your training?)
• Table of contents. (What is the agenda for this training?)
• Introduction. (Why are you providing this training?)
• Behaviors that build trust in virtual teams:
  • One slide for each of seven behaviors (include examples on the same slide as the behavior).
• Behaviors that undermine trust in virtual team:
  • One slide for each of seven behaviors (include examples on the same slide as the behavior).
• Principles of effective leadership in virtual teams:
  • One slide for each of ten principles (include examples on the same slide as the principle).
• References slide. Include a minimum of three research resources. Adhere to APA guidelines for citing resources.

It is important that you go beyond identifying the behaviors and principles and offer analysis and evaluation of each. Include answers to the following questions:

• Why is this behavior important?
• What impact does it have on the success of the team?
• What advantages does this behavior or principle have to the team?
• What costs or risks are experienced by failure in this area?

As important as your analysis is, the development of clear, relevant, memorable, fully developed examples to support each of the behaviors and principles is even more important to the success of the training. These stories will serve to anchor the behaviors and principles in real-world situations that will allow the individuals in this training to translate the ideas into action. Without clearly developed examples, this training program could become a collection of good intentions. The goal here is to provide ideas that will be translated into action by the participants.

Formatting Requirements

• Ensure written communication is free of errors that detract from the overall message and quality.
• Your presentation should be 27–30 slides, in addition to a title page and references page.
• Use at least 24-point font.
• Use at least three scholarly resources.
• Follow APA rules for attributing sources that support your analysis and conclusions. As a reminder related to using APA rules to ensure academic honesty:
  • When using a direct quote (using exact or nearly exact wording), you must enclose the quoted wording in quotation marks, immediately followed by an in-text citation. The source must then be listed in your references page.
  • When paraphrasing (using your own words to describe a nonoriginal idea), the paraphrased idea must be immediately followed by an in-text citation and the source must be listed in your references page.