Listening beyond Words: The Effects of Nonverbal Communication on Virtual Team Emergent Processes and Outcomes

Abstract: As virtual teamwork has become more prevalent, we need to better understand how key factors, such as nonverbal communication and virtuality, as well as emergent team processes, such as relationship-building and trust, contribute to team performance-related outcomes. Accordingly, in a study among 174 U.S. professionals, we show that nonverbal communication awareness contributes to relationship building in both face-to-face and synchronous virtual interactions (e.g., videoconferencing), and relationship building in both types of interaction contributes to perceived team effectiveness. In a second study among 312 business students, we demonstrate that nonverbal communication awareness in both synchronous (e.g., videoconferencing) and asynchronous (e.g., chat, email) interactions contributes to perceived team trust, which in turn contributes to perceived team effectiveness. These results demonstrate the important role of nonverbal communication awareness in interactions with different degrees of virtuality, highlighting the essential mediating effects of relationship building and trust as emerging team processes supporting team effectiveness.

Keywords: nonverbal communication, virtual communication, synchronous, asynchronous, team processes, trust, relationship building