  When members of ad-hoc virtual teams need to collectively ideate or
deliberate, they often fail to engage with each others' perspectives in a
constructive manner. At best, this leads to sub-optimal outcomes and, at worst,
it can cause conflicts that lead to teams not wanting to continue working
together. Prior work has attempted to facilitate constructive communication by
highlighting problematic communication patterns and nudging teams to alter
interaction norms. However, these approaches achieve limited success because
they fail to acknowledge two social barriers: (1) it is hard to reset team
norms mid-interaction, and (2) corrective nudges have limited utility unless
team members believe it is safe to voice their opinion and that their opinion
will be heard. This paper introduces Empathosphere, a chat-embedded
intervention to mitigate these barriers and foster constructive communication
in teams. To mitigate the first barrier, Empathosphere leverages the benefits
of "experimental spaces" in dampening existing norms and creating a climate
conducive to change. To mitigate the second barrier, Empathosphere harnesses
the benefits of perspective-taking to cultivate a group climate that promotes a
norm of members speaking up and engaging with each other. Empathosphere
achieves this by orchestrating authentic socio-emotional exchanges designed to
induce perspective-taking. A controlled study (N=110) compared Empathosphere to
an alternate intervention strategy of prompting teams to reflect on their team
experience. We found that Empathosphere led to higher work satisfaction,
encouraged more open communication and feedback within teams, and boosted
teams' desire to continue working together. This work demonstrates that
``experimental spaces,'' particularly those that integrate methods of
encouraging perspective-taking, can be a powerful means of improving
communication in virtual teams.
