Assessment Task

An exciting new approach to teamwork has resulted from advances in information technology, shifting employee expectations and the globalisation of business, namely the virtual team. A virtual team is made up of geographically or organisationally dispersed members who are linked primarily through advanced information and telecommunications technologies.

Your Sydney HQ is developing a new marketing team with team members located in Sydney, New York, Beijing and Mumbai. This will necessitate the establishment of a virtual team spread over four different time zones using both synchronous (real time) and asynchronous (not concurrent) communication.

One of the primary advantages of virtual teams is the ability to assemble the most talented group of people to complete a complex project through creativity and innovation. On a practical level the virtial team can also save employees' time and cut travel expenses. However, virtual teams also present unique challenges.

A number of the team have expressed concerns about how it will all work, and whether meetings might be scheduled when one part of the team is about to go to lunch, while the other part is asleep. Other concerns include: language difficulties, time-and-distance challenges, the absence of face-to-face contact, as well as the barriers posed by cultural differences such as work-pacing, communication styles, decision-making, and the perception of deadlines.

To help 'sell' the idea and persuade the team members of the advantages of the virtual team your boss, the Marketing Director, is planning a virtual meeting with all team members. She is aware of the concerns and knows that the issues raised by the staff have the potential to provide rich soil for misunderstandings and conflict. To that end she understands how important this presentation will be in creating a favourable association with virtual teams, as well as a good opportunity to start to build engagement, trust and candour among the team members.

To prepare for the virtual meeting she has asked you to prepare two documents:

(i) a short report identifying some of the critical areas that need to be addressed when leading and managing virtual teams; and

(ii) a PowerPoint slide presentation comprising no more than five slides highlighting three practices for establishing effective virtual teams and solutions for achieving such practices (recommendations or how it's done).

Please note:
Persuasion aims to influence other people's behaviours and attitudes. Successful persuasion shows readers 'what's in it for them'. Persuasive writing, or the argument, is one of the main types of both corporate writing and academic writing. At work, some of the persuasive documents you might have to write are proposals, offers to clients, and memos suggesting alternative methods or new ways of doing particular tasks.

Persuasive writing has all the features of analytical writing (that is, information plus re-organising the information), with the addition of your own point of view. Most essays at university are persuasive, and there is a persuasive element in at least the discussion and conclusion of a research article.

Points of view in academic writing can include an argument, a recommendation, interpretation of findings or an evaluation of the work of others. In persuasive writing, each claim you make needs to be supported by some evidence, for example a reference to research findings or published sources.

The kinds of instructions for a persuasive assignment include: argue, evaluate, discuss, take a position.

To be effective, persuasive writing must contain a balanced assessment, strong evidence, and persuasive language using different types of rhetorical appeals or persuasive strategies.

Please follow these guidelines to complete the assessment:

1. To help reach your own point of view on the facts or ideas:
o read some other points of view on the topic. Who do you feel is the most convincing?

o look for patterns in the data or references. Where is the evidence strongest?

o list several different interpretations. What are the real-life implications of each one? Which ones are likely to be most useful or beneficial?

Which ones have some problems?

o discuss the facts and ideas with someone else. Do you agree with their point of view?

2. To develop your argument:
o list the different reasons for your point of view.
o think about the different types and sources of evidence which you can use to support your point of view.
o consider different ways that your point of view is similar to, and different from, the points of view of other researchers.
o look for various ways to break your point of view into parts.

3. To present your argument, make sure:
o your text develops a coherent argument where all the individual claims work together to support your overall point of view.
o your reasoning for each claim is clear to the reader.
o your assumptions are valid.
o you have evidence for every claim you make.
o you use evidence that is convincing and directly relevant.

4. Use three to five secondary sources.