"Five Challenges to Virtual Team Success: Lessons from Sabre, Inc."

B. Kirkman, B. Rosen, C. Gibson, P. Tesluk, and S. McPherson

Academy of Management Executive

August 2002, pp. 67-79

This article defies virtual teams as "groups of people who work interdependently with shared purpose across space, time, and organizational boundaries using technology to communicate and collaborate."

The authors identified five challenges of virtual teams, based on a comprehensive set of interviews with a subset of team members, team leaders, general managers and executives on 65 virtual teams at Sabre, Inc.—an innovative organization in the travel industry:

Challenge 1: Building trust within virtual teams—The conventional thinking is that building trust is the greatest challenge in creating successful virtual teams. From their interviews, however, the authors conclude that establishing trust in virtual teams is based on performance consistency rather than social bonds;

Challenge 2: Maximizing process gains and minimizing process losses on virtual teams—Conventional wisdom says that gaining synergy among members is difficult on virtual teams, but the authors conclude that pre-launch team building and shared plans and goals can greatly improve synergy;

Challenge 3: Overcoming feelings of isolation and detachment associated with virtual teamwork—Sabre, Inc. found that this problem could be greatly reduced in the following ways: "Psychological testing identifies members with strong social needs, realistic job previews shape expectations of prospective employees, increased client contact and teambuilding meets social needs, and virtual team leaders proactively reach out to far-flung team members;"

Challenge 4: Balancing technical and interpersonal skills among team members—Conventional wisdom says that members should be selected almost exclusively for their technical skills, but the researchers found that it is important to identify virtual team members who have a healthy balance of technical and interpersonal skills; and

Challenge 5: Assessment and recognition of virtual team performance—The researchers found that the way to address this challenge is to (a) establish the appropriate quantitative and qualitative data for accurate assessment of virtual team members, and (b) develop creative approaches for providing feedback, coaching, and support for virtual team members.

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