Four Key Skills Of Managing Virtual Teams

The financial crisis forced many companies to select members of project teams from all over the world, and then let them communicate through virtual ways, such as telephone, e-mail and video conferencing, to save time and money.

At present, the number of global virtual teams is the largest in history, and their membership is increasing rapidly.

I have received a lot of requests from my INSEAD international business school. People hope that we can open up new courses to teach executives to deal with this new problem.

1. different leadership styles

For a team in the same place, if the role of the leader is the helper,

Two

Teams in different parts of the world operate differently.

In the United States, managers are mainly responsible for promoting team work, selecting direction quickly and making adjustments in project progress.

This method is quite effective, but other methods are feasible.

In Sweden, the team can establish consensus and make decisions through long meetings. This may require many meetings, but members have high acceptance of decisions and quick implementation decisions.

France's Cartesian education system believes that debates and face-to-face disputes are necessary steps to make progress in any decision-making process.

In Japan, decisions are often made in informal one to one discussions before formal group meetings.

Based on my own research, I find that one of the most difficult challenges for global team leaders is to recognize that their decision making styles may be rooted in the culture of their countries.

Therefore, the global team needs to be very clear about how to make decisions, and the best global team leader must be willing to try different decision processes at different stages of the project.

3. establishing mutual trust is different.

In the virtual team,

Christina Escallon (Cristina Escallon) is another trainer of our new project to manage the global virtual team. He pointed out that the leader of the virtual team needs to focus on creating a highly defined process so that the team can provide specific results in a number of times and continuously.

Such reliability, that is, the degree of trust, can be determined after the two cycle.

After that, face to face meetings can be reduced to about once a year.

4. different ways of communication

There is no doubt that the most important skill in global virtual team leadership is communication.

But when we engage in virtual communication, our influence often decreases.

Professor INSEAD Ian Woodward has proved that moving your body during speech can enhance your speech.

Managers of global virtual teams often sit at their desks and concentrate on Skype or video conferences, thus losing the effectiveness and persuasion of interpersonal interaction.

Walking or simply waving your arms is a simple and effective communication skill. Managers can apply these skills to improve the persuasiveness of the message conveyed.

The main point of all this is that the skills needed to manage geographically dispersed teams are far more extensive than those traditionally managed and working in teams.

Not only that, managers need to choose different skills according to the different composition of team members and the distance between them.

Welcome to the new virtual business world.

Erin Meyer (Erin Meyer) is an adjunct professor of organizational behavior at INSEAD. INSEAD is an international business school with branches in France, Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

Erin Meyer specializes in cross cultural management research, and currently serves as the director of INSEAD's new "global virtual team" project, which focuses on corporate executives.