How To Lead A Virtual Team

*INSTRUCTIONS: Your essays will be graded on content to include grammar and spelling. While there is no end to what you might write you must convey your thoughts in essay of at least four to five pages excluding cover page and references section. Assignment: Read the “Raygen Company Slum”case study and write an essay that describes how you would handle the situation. You essay should incorporate the leadership skills learned this week as well as challenges that many leaders face. Submission Instructions: Your completed essay must be submitted as an MS word attachment to this assignment no later than Sunday. Assignments completed in a narrative essay or composition format must follow the citation style cited in the _ American Psychological Association (APA).Students are encouraged to read/understand the basics. *LESSON Lesson Title- How to Lead a Virtual Team “Out of sight, foremost in mind. How do you manage people whom you don’t see regularly” Quality leadership is essential for any team success. For those of us in leadership roles, you are aware that leading others is not as easy as it seems sometimes. Leading from a distance is twice as hard as leading a face to face team. Virtual Leader face challenges unique due to the fact that the team is dispersed all over the place. Challenges Virtual Team Leaders Face Survey results on challenges faced by virtual leader revealed the following barriers; Infrequent face-to-face contact Lack of resources – remember this from week 1 Difficult building collaboration atmosphere – remember this from week 4 Lack of time to focus on leading the team – Remember Team composition? Shifting team and organizational priorities Difficult managing poor performance in a virtual environment Out text book organizes these into Challenges – Challenge 1 through 6 Challenge 1 : Infrequent F2F This is the top challenge that industry leaders faced according to OnPoint research. 43% of the industry leaders agreed and the main reasons were because being on a virtual environment it make it tough to; Build Trust Engage Team Members Monitor members work Solution – A Virtual Leader should; Change approach when managing Virtually or from a distance Increase communication with the team Unscheduled check in with the team Note – Skill for leading from a distance. Challenge 2 : Lack Of Resources Industry leaders (39%) indicated that they faced lack of resources in their Virtual teams.Specifically technology savvy resources and the technology itself. Also the survey indicated that most virtual leaders lacked the technology to communicate with their team due to organizational policies. Those who work for the government know that this can be a challenge. Lack of funding was also cited as another challenge in this category. Challenge 3 : Difficulty building a Collaborative Atmosphere Virtually In a virtual environment, it is important for organizations to support and implement a high touch ability. This is done through use of simple to use and easy to collaborate tools that increase team cooperation. Yet many leaders indicated that their organizations did not support them enough. Solution – Empower virtual leaders to break their team into small groups, increase clear communication, encourage team approach rather than individual, implement process of how the team should work together (remember this from week 4?) and eliminate competition in the team. Challenge 4 : Lack of Focus on Leading the Team It is not a surprise that many leaders are stretched thin today. It not only the leaders but the team members as well. We saw this in week 2 when we talked about team composition (member belonging to many teams). This leads to missed deadlines due to lack of leadership responsibility. Solution – Organizational prioritization of Project staffing is essential. Periodic review of virtual team leads performance and adjusting as necessary is critical for the success of the team and the leader. Many industry leaders believed that growing team members to leadership roles could help reduce this challenge. Challenge 5 : Shifting Team and Organizational Priorities Many Virtual team leaders neglect to communicate organizational goal to the team. In some instance according to the survey, some team members were not aware of organizational changes in policy and or priorities. Virtual leader either did not get the information or got it too late. Solution – Organizations should treat Virtual teams as co-located team, ensure consistent and timely update to teams leads on organizational shift in priorities as well as keeping an up to-date organizational road map and other documents available to virtual team leaders. Communication, Communication, Communication – is the key. Challenge 6 : Difficult Managing Poor Performance Lack of holding employee accountable for their result led to this challenge. It is no surprising that lack of communicating expectations also led to this challenge. Employees that had poor performance did not get timely feedback sometimes because a team lead opted to avoid conflict. The environment itself (Virtual) also posses a challenge for leaders to observe poor performance due to lack of physical contact. Read the Raygen Company Slum Case study. What makes and Effective Virtual Team Leader? Communication is essential for leader and is also a critical success factor. Leaders need to create a two way conversation that keep people engaged. The authors listed five differentiators that we need to read and understand. Do not confuse these with Chapter the differentiators in chapter 4. Conclusion It is imperative for organizations to implement strategies that help address performance barriers for leaders. Using the differentiators a leader can manage change, foster collaboration, communicate, develop team skills and empower team members. Leading from a distance can be more challenging, therefore training Virtual Leaders and continuously assessing their performance can be a catalyst for their leadership success.