Many institutions have resulted in virtual meetings due to technological advancements and the onset of the Coronavirus pandemic. We had this type of meeting with our team and there are some issues that I noted about different members. Roshunda Williams, the time keeper exhibited a unique strength by setting a particular note that directed everyone to stick to the given time and topic. This move enabled the entire team to concentrate on the work with little distraction. With everybody focusing on the assignment, we finished it within the given timeframe. However, the chairperson, Patricia Murray lacked necessary leadership skills. This weakness resulted in various members taking over the meeting and causing confusion. The team’s decision-making process involved formulating various ideas and passing the information to the leader. In terms of group formation, we used the Tuckman’s model as a guide of our discussion. This technique involved formation of the group, storming of ideas, normalizing operations, performing of the selected tasks and adjournment of the meeting after assignment completion. The team had two unique strengths. First, every member was knowledgeable on the topic assigned. This strength allowed easier formulation of ideas thus faster completion of the assignment. Secondly, many members were innovative when developing ideas for the team. However, the team experienced two weaknesses (Mahraz, Bouhalouan, & Adla, 2016) . First, the designated team leader did not possess enough skills to control every member. This weakness resulted in various people taking over the meeting and thus distract the team at various moments between the forums. Secondly, one aggressive member overrode the chairperson by forcing a dynamic group set-up. To direct each member, the team used emails and Microsoft Team software to pass important messages about the assignment. The two tools proved to be important factors that enable the virtual meeting to take place. The chairperson and the secretary explored the coercive power to emphasize particular concepts that were likely to generate better ideas for the topic. They put strong arguments which in turn convinced many people to adopt certain ideas.
There are various issues that I identified as the likely remedies for holding a successful virtual meeting in our team. First, there is a need to have more collaboration between the team members. This strategy will ensure that everyone sticks to a particular topic and have little distraction (Schulze & Krumm, 2017) . I noted that various members were not giving the appropriate contribution due to a lack of cooperation and the personal difference that existed. Some people failed to give a total contribution to the team due to the ideological rivalry that existed. With members located in different parts of the country in a virtual meeting, it was hard to note those differences and formulate solutions. The second remedy that would solve the challenges virtual teams encounter is to value each member’s output. I noted that certain members of the team felt that whatever they contributed was highly disregarded. They felt that their input was irrelevant thus unwilling to contribute (Chen, Celikyilmaz, & Hakkani-Tür, 2017) . Having not engaged with every member can lead to a lack of enough input making the team formulate a weak argument about a particular topic. I noted that during the meeting, the contribution of certain members was highly disregarded and thus making certain people feel neglected and out of place. This situation jeopardizes future engagement as some individuals might be reluctant to re-join.
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There are also various ways that the team should have improved its overall performance. First, the group should seek adequate time to evaluate and review the overall plan before embarking on the assignment. This strategy gives each member enough time to understand the topic and formulate the appropriate response. Some members complained that they could not contribute fully as they had to take a long to understand the assignment. This problem calls for timely communication between team members so that everybody does not feel left behind. Secondly, there was a need to allow feedback and response from each team member on various issues (Rubinger et al., 2020) . The existing difference prevented particular members to raise objections and suggestions about the topic or the conduct of the group. Their contributions were also highly disregarded thus preventing important information that could help the group to formulate better ideas. Therefore, the virtual team needed to consider each member’s feedback to make everyone feel part of the team.
References
Chen, Y. N., Celikyilmaz, A., & Hakkani-Tür, D. (2017). Deep learning for dialogue systems. ACL 2017 - 55th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Proceedings of the Conference Tutorial Abstracts . https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/P17-5004
Mahraz, A. O., Bouhalouan, D., & Adla, A. (2016). Facilitating Virtual Group Decision Making. Procedia Computer Science . https://doi.org/10.1016/j.procs.2016.04.222
Rubinger, L., Gazendam, A., Ekhtiari, S., Nucci, N., Payne, A., Johal, H., … Bhandari, M. (2020). Maximizing virtual meetings and conferences: a review of best practices. International Orthopaedics . https://doi.org/10.1007/s00264-020-04615-9
Schulze, J., & Krumm, S. (2017). The “virtual team player.” Organizational Psychology Review . https://doi.org/10.1177/2041386616675522
