Virtual teams

Virtual teams are central to maintaining our increasingly globalized social and economic
infrastructure.
Virtual teams have several potentially beneficial aspects that aid productivity. Much like
collaboration in co-located teams, collaboration in virtual teams refers to synchronous and
asynchronous interactions and tasks to achieve common goals. The use of virtual teams allows
organizations to enroll key specialists, regardless of their physical location. This allows
organizations to optimize teams by using only the best talent available. In theory, virtual teams
also reduce the need for travelling between sites, which should reduce costs in terms of time,
money, and stress. Virtual teams have become vital to maintaining our increasingly globalized
social and economic infrastructure.
Behavioral Competency
A competency is behavior, knowledge, skill, ability or any other characteristic that contributes to
the employees’ success in performing their identified duties and areas of responsibility. These
competencies can be directly observed and measured by others.

Virtual teams have become a fact of life, so what does a leader have to do differently to make
them work effectively?

Historically, management has been based on an assumption that teams are located in the same
place, all there at the same time and sharing a common culture.

As a result, most managers believe it’s their job be the font of all knowledge and be in control.

However, the role of managers today is to lead others to be responsible for themselves and their
performance.

After all, even if the traditional role of management were desirable, it simply isn’t practical when
people are located all over the map!

"However, to make virtual teamwork work this well, you’ll need to move your team to a new set
of behaviours, not just to a new generation of technology, with human engagement as the first
priority." - Keith Ferrazzi

At a fundamental level, managing from a distance means learning to build trust and delegate
effectively.

But developing the social warmth, spontaneous humour and social bonding that comes naturally
when people come together, is the leader’s biggest challenge.

You can deal with these challenges both confidently and effectively by adopting the following
behavioural framework:
  VISIONARY – create a vision for the organisation, one that others find inspiring
and energising

 RESULTS ORIENTATED – get great results, managing by principle rather than

policy, boundaries rather than directives

 RESOURCEFUL – actively facilitate, bringing together the necessary tools,

information and resources for getting the job done

 INITIATE CHANGE – eliminate barriers by opening doors, challenging status quo

and breaking down the barriers that act as interference to team success

 CUSTOMER FOCUS – understand and communicate the big picture, acting as

advocate for the customer

 COACHING – effectively coach others to reach their potential

Set up an effective communication strategy

It is rightly said that:

Communication is "the oxygen of a distributed company."

A good communication strategy will be as fundamental as keeping your stakeholders on board.

Without such plans in place, there will be a complete lack of coordination and transparency
among the dispersed team members. Even if you create virtual breakout rooms, make sure you
do it right.

After that, it is only a matter of time before your virtual team is treading the deep waters of not
getting successful outcomes.

A good communication strategy should mainly focus on four major points:

 Make sure to share information that is factually correct or relevant.

 The projected information gets delivered to everyone intended.
 The data is easily understandable by the recipients.
 The recipients or the team should be encouraged to display/practice a certain
level of communication skills.
 2. Invest in the right communication technology
Unless you are part of a virtual team, it is easy to underestimate the importance of
communication for team building and engagement. When you can’t any longer pop into each
other’s cubicles to discuss the smallest things, you learn to appreciate how good communication
keeps a team functioning smoothly.

Without their usual face to face interactions, the overall team performance will most likely take a
significant hit.

That is why having a functioning communication toolbox is perhaps one of the essential
requirements of a dispersed team. A well-planned communication toolbox should at least have
these basics:

 An excellent video conference tool is a must for conducting virtual meetings

among remote workers. Some of the great tools for virtual teams to connect
over is Zoom, Google Meet, or Google Hangouts.
 A chat tool for a virtual team to help continue their relationship building.
Slack and Skype are extremely helpful for virtual knowledge sharing.
 A virtual meeting scheduling software (such as Google Calendar) for
remote team members to stay updated on each other’s schedules.
 Document/Resources accessibility is a massive part of making remote work
feasible and to share information. Services to share documents are provided
by many, but the more popular ones seem to be Google Drive and Dropbox.
 An agile project management tool is the best thing that you can invest in right
now. Not only will agile project management help your team keep track of
the upcoming projects, but it will also hold everyone accountable for their
goals and tasks.

3. Track goals and commitments

In a study of 70 virtual teams, almost 82% fell short of their goals, and 33% rated themselves as
mostly unsuccessful.

A considerable part of this is because of the lack of the right productivity measures. Having a
virtual team doesn’t throw accountability out of the window. Now it’s even more relevant to
business success.
Thus, managers should set clear employee goals and commitments to achieve for remote
workers. It is important to set SMART Goals and make sure that employees are aware of the
expectations. It can also get facilitated by holding regular “status virtual meetings.”

Simultaneously, it is also equally necessary to have a precise system to assess the employees’
performance.

Tracking performance will allow you to hold an employee accountable to his remote work and
help you gather data about which tactics helped to maximize productivity. However, managers
should never indulge in micro-managing.

Try to encourage the dispersed team to stay true to their commitments. Not only will it help to
build trust, but it also will help in relationship building.

4. Appreciation matters!
Remote team members require as much as, if not more, recognition. While remote workers have
a better work-life balance, they still need connection and appreciation from the rest of the team.

A regular 9-5 employee is “in the moment” while working and is well aware of his significance
to the team’s success.

Now that we are collectively going through a pandemic, it’s necessary to acknowledge the
positives more than ever. Any employee working through such times and managing to deliver
excellent results should be appreciated timely and frequently. Even a few words of
appreciation can turn the day around for most of the remote workers.

Not only will appreciating your remote workers make their day a little easier, but it will also help
you to establish that you care from them.

5. The right leader

A recent study pointed out that managers with previous experience of leading a virtual team will
show better success when doing it again.

Even though if you are a novice to managing virtual teams, having the right leadership
qualities will help you gain some traction over it:

Build Trust

It might be frustrating to know that you can’t control the team or circumstances but always be
respectful towards the virtual team members. Also, don’t leave empathy far behind.
Encourage open communication practices

Once you’ve established and built trust among your dispersed team, it’s essential to encourage
open dialogues. A good practice is to ask before any virtual meeting an open icebreaker
question about their day so far.

Be There

It is perhaps the more important of them all. Be there to guide the remote team members through
any difficulties. You might be doing remote work, but it’s your job to be present.