Leading Virtual Teams Sapir + Lyronne Marciano + Royee Toledano + Raphael Chichepor IMAGE by Arvind Malhotra, Ann Majchrzak, and Benson Rosen
Aug 20, 2015
Leading Virtual Teams
Lika Sapir + Lyronne Marciano + Royee Toledano + Raphael Chicheportiche
IMAGE
by Arvind Malhotra, Ann Majchrzak, and Benson Rosen
How many of you did a project without actually meeting
Before we start
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
How many of you find it convenient doing assignments online?
Before we start
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
Leading Virtual Teams Academy of Management Perspectives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Il4f7PGeiuc
Before we start
INTRODUCTION
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual teams
Geographically dispersedWork on highly independent tasks
Unique leadership challenges
Communicating with minimal face to face interaction
Academy of Management Perspectives
Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
Leaders of all teams have number of responsibilities, such as:
Academy of Management Perspectives
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 trustSetting goals
Preparing the team to anticipate and cope with novel situations
Fostering internal communicationsRecognizing contributions
Academy of Management Perspectives
Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
Virtual teams leaders
are different !
Academy of Management Perspectives
NO
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…..
Academy of Management Perspectives
Leadership Practices of Virtual Team Leaders
Leading Virtual Teams
It’s harder hence they aren’t physically present
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
Academy of Management Perspectives
Establish and Maintain Trust Through the Use of Communication Technology
Leading Virtual Teams
“Seeing is believing”
Equally “suffering” in the geographically distributed world
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
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
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
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
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)
Academy of Management Perspectives
Leading Virtual Teams
Ensure Individuals Benefit from Participating in Virtual Teams
Academy of Management Perspectives
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
Academy of Management Perspectives
Leading Virtual Teams
To Conclude …
Academy of Management Perspectives
Virtual team leaders must:
Overcome coordination barriers
Cross cultural and language barriers
Trust and team cohesion barriers
Leading Virtual Teams
To Conclude …
Academy of Management Perspectives
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:
Leading Virtual Teams
A tip for the future…
Academy of Management Perspectives
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.
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?
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