Communication skills to develop trusting relationships on global virtual engineering capstone teams

TLDR

Universities employ global virtual teams to provide cost‑effective cross‑cultural learning, making soft communication skills increasingly vital as weekly meetings reveal interactions that build trust. The study aims to teach students how to navigate cultural and virtual tool challenges to establish strong trusting relationships with distant teammates. Researchers observed weekly meetings of engineering students from two U.S. universities and one Asian university collaborating on a single GV capstone team, and conducted individual and group interviews with local members to identify trust‑building strategies. Results show that students’ choice of virtual communication tools, refinement of practices, and specific trust‑building actions are crucial, and that developing these attributes leads to improved collaboration and success.

Abstract

Abstract As universities seek to provide cost-effective, cross-cultural experiences using global virtual (GV) teams, the 'soft' communication skills typical of all teams, increases in importance for GV teams. Students need to be taught how to navigate through cultural issues and virtual tool issues to build strong trusting relationships with distant team members. Weekly team meetings provide an excellent opportunity to observe key team interactions that facilitate relationship and trust-building among team members. This study observed the weekly team meetings of engineering students attending two US universities and one Asian university as they collaborated as a single GV capstone GV team. In addition local team members were interviewed individually and collectively throughout the project to determine strategies that facilitated team relations and trust. Findings indicate the importance of student choice of virtual communication tools, the refining of communication practices, and specific actions to build trusting relationships. As student developed these attributes, collaboration and success was experienced on this GV team. Keywords: global virtual teamscross-cultural interactionscommunication skillstrusting relationships Acknowledgements The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by the US National Science Foundation grant EEC 0948997 that made this research possible.