I am sharing this with you with permission from The Oxford Review.

A new (2020) study looking at conflict in virtual teams has found that virtual teams, when compared to normal physical teams, are more prone to ‘team fault lines’, or divisions between team members based on their different attributes such as nationality, background et cetera.

The study found that by engaging in online affect management**, team leaders can significantly reduce the negative impacts of team fault lines and can increase team collaboration, performance, and resilience. Additionally, the study found that:

Virtual team resilience is enhanced when individuals feel that they can express their true feelings.

Virtual team resilience is largely based on the individual team members’ being able to engage in emotion regulation techniques and manage their own emotions in a constructive manner.

Suppressing emotional responses has a negative impact on both the team members and on team resilience.

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