Team management - Leading virtual teams

1. Leading Virtual Teams
Lika Sapir + Lyronne Marciano + Royee Toledano + Raphael Chicheportiche
IMAGE
by Arvind Malhotra, Ann Majchrzak, and Benson Rosen

2. How many of you did a project
without actually meeting
Before we start
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives

3. How many of you find it convenient doing
assignments online?
Before we start
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives

4. Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il4f7PGeiuc
Before we start

5. INTRODUCTION
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual teams
Geographically dispersed
Work on highly independent tasks
Unique leadership challenges
Communicating with minimal face to face interaction
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6. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
Leaders of all teams have number of responsibilities, such as:
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7. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
All leaders must carry these motivation tools:
Establish right norms of behaviors
Encourage social events
Building trust
Setting goals
Preparing the team to anticipate and cope with novel situations
Fostering internal communications
Recognizing contributions
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8. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual teams leaders
are different !
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NO

9. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
But…
Spend time mentoring the team members
Enforcing norms
Recognize and reward members and the team
They…..
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10. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
It’s harder hence they aren’t physically
present
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11. Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual team leaders must know:
#1: What does the virtual silence means
#2: Ensure that the knowledge is fully utilized
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12. INTRODUCTION
Leading Virtual Teams
There are 6 leadership practices of
effective leaders of virtual teams:
1. Establish and maintain trust using communication technology
2. Ensure that distributed diversity is understood and appreciated
3. Manage virtual work life cycle (meetings)
4. Monitor team progress using technology
5. Enhance visibility of virtual members
6. Enable individual members of the virtual team to benefit from the team
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13. Establish and Maintain Trust Through the Use
of Communication Technology
Leading Virtual Teams
 Establishing norms on how information is
communicated (What, When, How to post)
 Revisiting and adjusting the communication
norms as the team involves
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14. Establish and Maintain Trust Through the Use
of Communication Technology
Leading Virtual Teams
 “Seeing is believing”
 Equally “suffering” in the
geographically distributed world
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15. Ensure Diversity in the Team is Understood,
Appreciated and Leveraged
Leading Virtual Teams
Prominent team expertise directory and skills
matrix
Virtual sub-teaming to pair diverse members and
rotate sub-team members
Allowing diverse opinions to be expressed
through use of asynchronous electronic means
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16. Manage Virtual Work cycle and meetings
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Pre meetings practices
Idea divergence between the meetings and Conflict resolution during the
meeting
 Start of meetings Practice
HUMAN SIDE IS IMPORTANT AS WELL!
Sharing personal stories, recent hobbies, and major events of member’s life.
Ensure team members have clear
agendas
Request members to post their progress

17.  During meeting practices
IMPORTANT TO KEEP TEAM MEMBERS
ENGAGED
• “Check in” methods
• Instant Messaging
 End of meeting practices
• Ending the session with a list of action items
• Ensure the minutes and summary of the session is
posted in the repository
Manage Virtual Work cycle and meetings
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives

18.  Between meeting practices
ALWAYS COMMAND MEMBERS
ATTENTION
Manage Virtual Work cycle and meetings
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Notifications
Electronic discussion
Instant messaging
Spontaneous announcements

19.  Closely examine asynchronous and synchronous communications
patterns
 Virtual meeting participation
 Posts in the repository
 Experimentation of technological means
 Leaders monitor tools that work and allow flexibility as technology
evolves
“Let’s try and work virtually and find the tools we need to
do our job”
Monitor Team Progress through the use
of technology
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives

20. Enhance External Visibility of the Team and its
Members
Leading Virtual Teams
Frequent report-outs to a virtual steering
committee
(comprised of local bosses of team members)
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21. Leading Virtual Teams
Ensure Individuals Benefit from Participating in
Virtual Teams
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22. Ensure Individuals Benefit from Participating in
Virtual Teams
Leading Virtual Teams
 Virtual reward ceremonies
 Making each team member’s “real location” boss aware of the
member’s contribution
 Individual recognition at the
start of each virtual meeting
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23. Leading Virtual Teams
To Conclude …
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Virtual team leaders must:
 Overcome coordination barriers
 Cross cultural and language barriers
 Trust and team cohesion barriers

24. Leading Virtual Teams
To Conclude …
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The additional challenges of fighting for each team member
Overcoming member feeling of isolation
Build team cohesion
Establish norms of collaboration and knowledge sharing
Motivating team members to make a major commitment to the teams mission
Virtual team leaders emphasize on:

25. Leading Virtual Teams
A tip for the future…
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Given the challenges associated with leading a virtual project
team, the payoffs need to be substantial for an organization to
embrace this relatively new way of working. Because virtual teams
have access to specialized expertise across geographical
boundaries, they are poised to develop better-informed and
more creative solutions to complex, often global organizational
problems.

26. Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Criticism about the text
 Getting members involved:
Tracking team members work is not the best way to make sure people in the team
are contributing to the job.
 Another frustrating part about virtual work is:
The constant rotation in the minute taking or in the equal suffering.
 Virtual work can be very frustrating:
How many of you ever felt too much pressure because you are tracked from instant
messaging?

27. Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Interesting points we took from the text
1. The repository brings out transparency and trust, everything is shared
and nothing is done secretly on the side.
2. The diversification of the subgroups is similar to what we experience at IDC
3. Virtual parties is an exaggerated way of rewarding people for their work

28. Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
THANK YOU !!
Any Question…?

29. Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Virtual Conversation