The Effect of Aikido on Communication Between Virtual Teams

Executives are confronted with the compelling need to become effective communicators in order to become effective leaders. The lack of paraverbal cues in online communication is a problem that causes miscommunication. The focus of this quantitative inferential study was to measure changes in interpersonal communication strengths as outcomes of awareness training through the art of Aikido, and how this training may or may not influence computer-mediated communication styles among regional virtual workgroups in a sales and services company in the United States. The specific areas of communication measured in this study included the communication style and strengths of dominance, extroversion, patience, and conformity contained in the Forté® Communication Style Survey© (Morgan, 2005). In this study, the null hypothesis could not be rejected; there were no statistically significant relationships found in this study between Aikido/self-awareness training and online communication, given the study s design, sample population, and other variables. There are suggestions for future research and the implications of this study to leadership and the broader society.