How to Prevent, Identify, and Resolve Miscommunication in Virtual Teams

This chapter presents an in-depth look at miscommunication in virtual teams as well as how to best prevent, identify, and resolve it. Engineering professionals acknowledge serious time and financial losses due to miscommunication in virtual teams. The most basic strategy for creating effective virtual workplaces is thorough planning that takes into account the characteristics of global virtual workplaces. The purpose of a virtual team should be stated explicitly and communicated to all team members. Social communication is common among virtual team members with such communication being more common for some individuals than others. It can take much longer to identify miscommunication and related complications in virtual teams than in face-to-face teams. Research in developing effective virtual workplace communication indicates the importance of planning (including discussing differences), face-to-face meetings, social communication, mixed media, and metacommunication.