Managing Virtual Teams: Strategies for Team Leaders

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 8-13 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rebecca Lyons ◽  
Heather A. Priest ◽  
Jessica L. Wildman ◽  
Eduardo Salas ◽  
David Carnegie
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Support Tools ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Collaborative Support ◽  
And Training

Organizations' increasing use of virtual teams has emphasized the importance of effective virtual team leadership. Yet the distribution of team members complicates typical leader functions, such as supervision and support, which the leader must now perform through technology. In this article, we present 10 strategies for managing virtual teams, focusing on the role of technology and training. Our hope is that these strategies will inform designers and guide them in developing collaborative support tools and procedures for these tools and in designing training for the use of these tools.

Successful Communication in Virtual Teams and the Role of the Virtual Team Leader

2011 ◽  
pp. 39-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie S. Switzer
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
The World

The world now lives and works in cyberspace. Often, organizations have their people perform functional tasks by working in virtual teams, where members use technology to cooperate across geographic and organizational boundaries. As the use of virtual teams in the workforce becomes more prevalent, those involved must have the knowledge to communicate efficiently and effectively, especially the virtual team leaders. This chapter provides a general overview of virtual teams and virtual team leadership, and discusses specific communication strategies and competencies necessary for virtual team leaders to be effective and successful communicators.

Getting Things Done, Virtually! - The Role of Virtual Team Leadership in Virtual Team Effectiveness

2017 ◽  
Vol 16 (2) ◽  
pp. 13-20
Author(s):  
Jude Ashmi E
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Leadership Roles ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Effective Performance ◽  
Traditional Work

A virtual team’s success depends on the team's effectiveness. Accomplishing such a team’s effectiveness is far more difficult when compared with traditional work teams. This article is a result of an exploratory study of the role of leadership in virtual teams. Virtual teams’ leadership is seemingly situational and supervisory, depending on the task. This study reveals that (1) individual virtual team members act as leaders based on the specific requirements for getting things done, (2) classifies virtual team leadership under supervisory and facilitating leadership, (3) suggests that both leadership roles are essential for virtual team effectiveness and functioning and (4) recommends exploration of leadership-oriented communication competency, shared understanding and virtual team citizenship behaviour as these are required for the effective performance of a virtual team.

Successful Communication in Virtual Teams and the Role of the Virtual Team Leader

2011 ◽  
pp. 353-366
Author(s):  
Jamie S. Switzer
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Communication Strategies ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Organizational Boundaries ◽  
Successful Communication ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
The World

The world now lives and works in cyberspace. Often, organizations have their people perform functional tasks by working in virtual teams, where members use technology to cooperate across geographic and organizational boundaries. As the use of virtual teams in the workforce becomes more prevalent, those involved must have the knowledge to communicate efficiently and effectively, especially the virtual team leaders. This chapter provides a general overview of virtual teams and virtual team leadership, and discusses specific communication strategies and competencies necessary for virtual team leaders to be effective and successful communicators.

Leader-Facilitated Relationship Building in Virtual Teams

2011 ◽  
pp. 2390-2395
Author(s):  
David J. Pauleen
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Relationship Building ◽  
Boundary Crossing ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Building Relationships ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Product Launches

How do virtual team leaders assess and respond to boundary crossing issues when building relationships with virtual team members? Virtual teams are a new phenomenon, defined as groups of people working on a common task or project from distributed locations using information and communications technology (ICT). With rapid advances in ICT allowing alternatives to face-to-face communication, virtual teams are playing an increasingly important role in organizations. Due to their global coverage, virtual teams are often assigned critical organizational tasks such as multinational product launches, negotiating global mergers and acquisitions, and managing strategic alliances (Maznevski & Chudoba, 2000). Their use, however, has outpaced the understanding of their unique dynamics and characteristics (Cramton & Webber, 2000). Virtual team leadership remains one of the least understood and most poorly supported elements in virtual teams. Virtual team leaders are often the nexus of a virtual team, facilitating communications, establishing team processes, and taking responsibility for task completion (Duarte & Tennant- Snyder, 1999), and doing so across multiple boundaries. Recent research (Kayworth & Leidner, 2001-2002) has begun to look at virtual leadership issues and suggests that the trend toward virtual work groups necessitates further inquiry into the role and nature of virtual team leadership. This article begins by briefly looking at the key concepts of virtual team leadership, relationship building and boundary crossing. Then, drawing upon the author’s research, it examines the complexity inherent in building relationship across boundaries, and concludes with suggestions on how virtual team leaders can mediate this complexity.

Collaborative Approach to Successful Virtual Team Leadership

2017 ◽  
pp. 55-70 ◽  
Author(s):  
Maureen Ellis ◽  
Eric Kisling
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Group Performance ◽  
Economic Recession ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Social Loafing ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Travel Costs ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
Specific Project

Due to the changing nature of organizations to meet decreased travel budgets, a globalized economic recession, and increased travel costs, multicultural virtual teams are rapidly growing (Hardin, Looney, Fuller, & Schechtman, 2013). Virtual teams are dynamic typically constructed for a specific project or task-focused group. Based on collaborative principles using state-of-the-art communication technology to support collaboration, virtual teams are often faced with several challenges: distance, time, technology, culture, trust, leadership, and social loafing, which can occur when group performance is less than the sum of the individual's efforts (Robbins, 1995). Einstein and Scott (2001) consider social loafing a result of team members putting forth less effort than they would on an individual assignment/task, leading to discourse and loss of synergy. This chapter describes best practices utilizing experiential learning activities for students on virtual teams can enable students to learn, practice, and hone their virtual team skills to be effective workers in the 21st century workplace.

Virtual Team Leadership, Operation, and Technology Deployment

2022 ◽  
pp. 165-181
Author(s):  
Anatoli Quade
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Success Factors ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Team Building ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Team Members ◽  
New Ways Of Working ◽  
Critical Success ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership

The COVID-19 situation has shown many leaders that their face-to-face meetings leadership style may well now be a thing of the past. Tech-savvy companies are now deploying new technologies to support the creation and leadership of virtual teams, working remotely in different locations around the globe. This presents a range of new challenges for both project leaders and team members, who must now adopt new ways of working. Using an inductive approach based on an analysis of relevant literature, online surveys, and in-depth interviews with project leaders and other practitioners, this chapter examines the transitioning to virtual team leadership and operation, identifies critical success factors, and discusses the facilitating role of new technologies. An operational model (V-CORPS) to guide the building and operation of virtual teams is developed and explained with the aim of increasing the flexibility and efficiency of virtual project teams and establishing a checklist of action points for team building and leading.

The impact of emergent virtual leadership competencies on team effectiveness

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 106-120 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Ziek ◽  
Stacy Smulowitz
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Global Economy ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Leadership Competencies ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Virtual Team Leadership ◽  
The Impact

Purpose – The research on virtual team leadership does well to describe the skills that are needed to guide and direct effective teams. However, what is presupposed in the previous research is that virtual teams have assigned leaders. That is, leaders were either management, appointed by management or were chosen by the team itself. Yet in today's global economy not all virtual teams have assigned leaders, instead many virtual team leaders emerge on their own to direct the group's actions. The purpose of this paper is to examine which emergent leadership competencies most impact virtual team effectiveness. Design/methodology/approach – This is a mixed method study where both a participant survey and content analysis of actual participant messages are used to determine the competencies of emergent virtual team leaders. The research participants for the current study were required to work in assigned teams on organizational case analyses. At the end of each case, teams presented their solutions in the form of final recommendations designed to fix the problem present in the case. Findings – Results indicate that not only do leaders emerge in virtual teams, but in most cases multiple leaders emerge. Results also show that the model that best describes team effectiveness includes the competencies of asking questions, cognitive and creative ability and vision setting. Originality/value – The contribution of the current study is that it extends the research on emergent virtual team leadership by introducing the idea that this type of leadership is often a collective action among individuals. It also advances a model of emergent virtual team leadership as a practice of communication. The better emergent virtual team leaders are at communicating to team members the more effective the team will be in completing tasks and projects, which in turn can lead to a more effectively functioning business unit.

Virtual Team Effectiveness

2017 ◽  
pp. 687-706 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Carlson ◽  
Dawn S. Carlson ◽  
Emily M. Hunter ◽  
Randal L. Vaughn ◽  
Joey F. George
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Team Effectiveness ◽  
Survey Methodology ◽  
Instant Messaging ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
Interpersonal Processes ◽  
Mediated Communication ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Main Effect

The work of virtual teams is increasingly important to today's organizations, work that is accomplished predominantly via computer-mediated communication. The authors investigate the moderating role of experience with instant messaging on the team interpersonal processes (cohesion and openness) to team effectiveness relationship in virtual teams. Data were obtained from 365 virtual team members using survey methodology and analyzed using hierarchical moderated regression and multilevel analyses. They found that team cohesion has a main effect on team effectiveness. Team openness has a main effect and is moderated by experience with instant messaging, i.e., strengthens the relationship. Understanding the role of team interpersonal processes and the role of the communication media will allow managers to more effectively build virtual teams and provide effective training and support. Using the theoretical lens of channel expansion theory the authors expand theoretical, empirical and practical knowledge of this area.

The Impact of External Factors on Virtual Teams

Virtual Teams ◽  
2011 ◽  
pp. 70-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andrea Hornett
Keyword(s):  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Virtual Work ◽  
Virtual Team ◽  
External Factors ◽  
Work Environments ◽  
Project Teams ◽  
Team Leaders ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Dynamic Forces ◽  
The Impact

Practitioners and researchers need to pay attention to how corporate organizing structures are impacting and are impacted by virtual work environments. Virtual teams are powerful organizing mechanisms, but they are not without limitations. This chapter reports on two cases in which dynamics outside the virtual project teams powerfully affected the teams. These cases, both based on studies of real project teams operating inside corporations, highlight the desirability of understanding virtual teams in context. While external factors are not unique to teamwork, their role has not been explored in depth in research on virtual teams. Dynamic forces outside teams seem more difficult to anticipate and to identify when team members are working virtually, and these powerful but invisible dynamics can be frustrating to virtual team leaders and members. Concluded in this chapter is that contrary to initial expectations, virtual teams are not replacing traditional forms of organizing. They are coexisting with traditional forms and dynamics, such as business drivers, hierarchies, departments, strategic priorities, and business needs. This coexistence can be fraught with conflict.

The Role of Leadership in Virtual Teams

2011 ◽  
pp. 540-546
Author(s):  
Kristi M. Lewis Tyran ◽  
Craig K. Tyran
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Structure ◽  
Task Performance ◽  
Virtual Teams ◽  
Communication Technology ◽  
Team Performance ◽  
Electronic Communication ◽  
Team Leadership ◽  
Team Members ◽  
Rapid Pace

As globalization and the prevalence of electronic communication technology has become more widespread, organizations are adapting and changing at a rapid pace. Many organizations are using “virtual teams” of people working across space and time as an organizational structure to enhance organizational flexibility and creativity in this changing environment (Duarte & Snyder, 1999; Townsend, DeMarie, & Hendrickson, 1998). As virtual teams become a more popular organizational tool, many researchers have begun to explore ways in which the performance of such teams may be enhanced (Cohen & Gibson, 2003). One aspect of teamwork that has traditionally had an important impact on team performance is team leadership. Leaders often facilitate effective task performance within a team. By assigning tasks to individuals with the skills, knowledge and abilities to perform best, as well as structuring the team to best accomplish its tasks, a leader can greatly increase the effectiveness and efficiency of a team (Hooijberg, Hunt, & Dodge, 1997; McGrath, 1984; O’Connell, Doverspike, & Cober, 2002). In addition to task-focused behaviors, leaders also motivate, coach and mentor team members toward higher levels of performance (Bass, 1985; Conger & Kanungo, 1998).

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