Virtual Team Management Skills

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.

1. different leadership styles

For a team in the same place, if the role of the leader is the helper, the benefit of the team members is the biggest, and the virtual team needs a manager who can provide a clear defined direction to eliminate any ambiguity in the work.

Professor Jos Santos, a colleague at INSEAD business school, argues that highly centralized coordination is the best for teams with global distribution.

The team working in the same office can be looser in terms of job responsibilities, and even two people can play the same role.

This is not practicable in virtual teams.

Team leaders must clearly define their roles and responsibilities and set an example.

2. different ways of decision making

Teams in different parts of the world operate differently.

In the United States, managers are mainly responsible for promoting team work.

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.

So global teams need to be very clear about how to make decisions, and the best global team leaders must be willing to try different decision-making processes at different stages of the project.

3. establishing mutual trust is different.

In virtual teams, trust is given new meaning.

When you meet your drinking machine or photocopier every day,

Christina.

Cristina Escallon is another trainer of our new project to manage the global virtual team. He points 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 a geographically dispersed team are much broader than that of traditional management teams. Not only that, managers need to choose different skills according to the different composition of their team members and the distance between them. Welcome to the new virtual business world.