Managing Diversity in Virtual Teams

¿Do you consider managing diversity a key success factor in the performance of virtual teams? was the question proposed by the teacher to those of us who attended the conference on Virtual Teams. The lecturer is a visiting proffesor from abroad who has experience on this topic.
Managging diversity was actually a key point of the conference, the parts were trust is absent and therefore the virtual teams will not work properly because of that. The trust is a way of managing diversity in virtual teams.

So the main conclusion about this topic was that it is fundamental to know how to manage diversity in virtual teams. As I will explain in latter posts diversity is a key element to obtain great results when is managed properly, because it fosters creativity and innovation to a greater extent than homogeneous groups.

The opposite is truth as well badly managed diversity can cause a situation in which the virtual teams will not be able to perform properly, thus causing a the loss of the resources assigned to the project and the team effort to be in vain, apart from the psychological effect of having to work in and environment and with people you dislike.

Virtual teams are made up of people who may never get to know eachother, so trust is fundamental to get the team working properly.
Taken from: blog.atlassoft.com/?p=50

So how to gain trust? The answer is not that simple; the lecturer showed that it can be earned by having a face-to-face meeting when possible but when it is not possible the trust needs to be gained trough getting to know each other in the group, a hard task when the members do not get to know each other.

But he also pointed that getting the people to know each other is not always good enough because there are other factors that you must consider, for example if the other side of the virtual team has proper leaders, in order to make the work flow.

Another way to generate trust is having what the lecturer called a “trust point”, in this case the virtual team has a person that can be used as a contact point between the members of the team, referring them to one another, this fact of knowing someone in common generates trusts, especially if that person is trustworthy.

How does trust manages diversity in the virtual team? Well the diversity is a factor that fosters creativity in the sense that different people think differently, this means that more points of view are going to come up while you are working, but in order to those point of views be understood and taken into account when you work together with someone you don’t know you have to get rid of the stereotypes and prejudices you may have. Trust is the way you manage to do so, get to know the other helps you to understand him.