What Factors Contribute To Effective Management of Virtual Teams?
An extensive PhD study conducted over 8 years examined what factors increase leader effectiveness in virtual teams. This study identified 5 factors which are essential for effective leadership of virtual teams:
Develop Follower Trust: There are numerous features of a virtual team environment that may impact on the development of follower trust and the team members have to trust that the leader is allocating work fairly and evaluating team members equally.
Establish Role Clarity: Virtual team leaders need to spend more time than conventional team counterparts being explicit about expectations, because the patterns of behaviour and dynamics of interaction are unfamiliar. Moreover, even in information rich virtual teams using video conferencing, it is hard to replicate the rapid exchange of information and cues available in face-to-face discussions. In order to develop role clarity within virtual teams, leaders should focus on developing: (a) clear objectives and goals for tasks; (b) comprehensive milestones for deliverables; and (c) communication channels for seeking feedback on unclear role guidance.
Be aware of Information Overload: While technology choice is important for the development of role clarity, virtual team leaders should be aware that information overload may result in situations when a leader has provided too much information to a team member.
Become a “Present” Leader: Virtual team leaders need to become virtually “present” in order to closely monitor team members and notice any changes that might affect their ability to undertake their tasks. Due to the distributed nature of virtual teams, team members have less awareness of the wider situation of the team or dynamics of the overall team environment. Consequently, as situations change in a virtual team environment, such as adjustments to task requirements, modification of milestones, or changes to the goals of the team, it is important that leaders monitor followers to ensure they are aware of these changes and make amendments as required.
Not all teams are the same: Finally, when examining virtual teams, it is crucial to consider that they differ in terms of their virtuality. Virtuality refers to a continuum of how “virtual” a team is There are three predominant factors that contribute to virtuality, namely: (a) the richness of communication media; (b) distance between team members, both in time zones and geographical dispersion; and (c) organisational and cultural diversity.
Read more about this topic: Virtual Management
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