Nonverbal communication
Communication is one of the most crucial things in virtual teams. Communication is vital to the success of the virtual team and it is crucial that the team is a group of excellent communicators with the proper technology for the best levels of communication. It starts from selecting excellent communicators for the team members and the right technology for them to use. Virtual communication technologies cause many difficulties in effective team communication, such as time delays, common reference frames, differences of interpretation, and assurance of participation for remote team members. Some empirically found challenges in successful communication in virtual teams are failure to communicate due to wrong or lacking contextual information, unevenly distributed information, interpretation of the meaning of silence and technical problems. Nonverbal communication, which is vital for team communication, is also missing in virtual teams. Traditional teams communicate more effectively than virtual teams. Difficulties often arise when some team members are co-located while others are geographically distant. There is an assumption that co-located team members communicate with each other about information that is not communicated to the distant member, which can cause friction between members. Leadership and cultural differences also substantially affect the effectiveness of communication. The frequency and predictability of communication and how much feedback is provided regularly improves the effectiveness of communication, which leads to greater team trust and improves team performance. On the other hand, inconsistent and infrequent communication reduces the coordination and success of virtual teams. One common reason is that some team members leave for a short amount of time without communicating their absence to other members. However, virtual teams are found to communicate more frequently than normal teams and female-only virtual teams have higher communication than male-only or combined gender virtual teams. Higher effective communication is shown to improve cultural understanding.