1. There IS a letter I in virtual team and that I stands for isolated. You don't have a team; you have individuals who are working on parts of a project or goal independent and isolated from one another.

Isolation is one of the most common problems that plague virtual teams. Distance not only makes communication more difficult, it frequently destroys all chances of really bonding as a team. As a result, team members feel disconnected from one another and the boss. If boss relies on the people at his site for all the important tasks this makes it even worse.

Here are some of the warning signs of isolation.

• Team members don't collaborate, they all have individual tasks.
• If there is a problem, only people at the site where the problem exists are asked to help even if they aren't the most qualified.
• People don't pay attention in virtual meetings. When you ask a question they will respond by asking you to repeat the question.
• Frequently people fail to show up at weekly virtual meetings

2. Miscommunication is rampant. There is no rhyme or reason to the way people communicate and it shows. The number one complaint from most virtual teams is poor communication and in a recent study 7 out 10 people in global organizations say communications is ineffective.

Some of the warning signs of poor communications include:

• People fail to respond in a timely manner when something is asked of them.
• People fail to get the "word" even though there was an email sent out with the information.
• People fail to send out information assuming others already know about it.
• People fail to use the right media for the message they are sending.

3 Different sites look down upon one another. When a problem comes up the general feeling is "we are doing it right," why doesn't the other site do it correctly."

This is human nature. Research by Thomas Kuhn that showed scientists were physically unable to perceive data that didn't agree with their pre established ideas. This is true as well for people in business. If two sites do something differently, both tend to think their way is best and because the distance between them, it is easy to get into an "us vs. them" situation.

4. There is a class system. Employees are quickly shown who is important and who is not. If you are in the manager's location, you are important. If you aren't, forget it.

This is a common problem and one the leader must address. Some of the signs of this phenomenon include:

• The leader relies more on the people at his site.
• Meetings are schedule for the convenience of the leader's site.
• When a promotional opportunity comes up, it generally goes to someone at the leader's site.
• People at the leader's site are given better evaluations for the same level of work as people at remote sites.

5. Your virtual team is not really a team. Your scheduled meetings are used primarily for information dumps. There is little interaction and almost no collaboration going on. A team is a group of people who collaborate with one another. So when you are on a virtual team, when do you collaborate? The only time is in virtual meetings. When this precious interactive time is used not to collaborate, but only to give out information you have a major problem.

The warning signs here include:

• OnLINE meetings tend to be "death by PowerPoint" meetings.
• Mixed media meetings are regularly held (leader and local members in a conference room with remote people phoning in) which tend to shut out remote members entirely.
• Meetings are designed to give out information, not to accomplish anything.
• When there is a crisis, everything falls apart rather than the team pulling together.

So is your virtual team broken?  It doesn't have to be that way.  Better communication and more interaction will heal a lot of the problems found here.