Virtual Leadership: Practical Tips to Build, Engage and Manage Remote Teams

OVERVIEW

Virtual team is the new reality of 21st century workplace. Owing to the increasing competition in the marketplace, decentralization and globalization of work processes and advances in information and communication technologies, companies, to remain competitive, require flexibility and agility in their delivery of products and services.

Virtual teams play a key role to meet these demands. Also, these companies are adopting the virtual team approach to reduce their operating costs, encourage knowledge sharing among their employees to promote organizational learning and expand their business hours to 24/7.

Unfortunately, having solid business reasons for implementing a virtual strategy does not mean that strategy is always going to be executed well. The problem is that too many companies lack the ability to manage remote teams and treat their virtual teams the same way they treat teams that share the same physical locations.

In other words, virtual teams may be increasingly popular...but they're not necessarily successful. Large number of HR practitioners as well as organizational leaders has come to realize that virtual teams are different from traditional teams. They now must shift their attention towards devising and utilizing new tools and techniques to manage the unique challenges posed by virtual and dispersed teams.

WHY SHOULD YOU ATTEND

Many companies recycle the same guidelines and best practices they use for their co-located teams and hope for the best. That just doesn't work. Virtual teams and face-to-face teams are the proverbial 'apples and oranges' – and leaders who recognize this fact are the ones whose teams succeed. 

Virtual teams regularly fall victim to four pitfalls:

• Lack of clear goals, direction, or priorities – Because it is tougher to communicate with team members who are geographically dispersed, it is often difficult to keep all team members focused on the same goals, especially over time. 
• Lack of clear roles among team members– In virtual teams, it is especially important for members to clearly understand their individual roles and how their work impacts other team members.
• Lack of cooperation and trust – Because there’s limited or no face-to-face contact the process of establishing trust and relationships that lead to group cooperation will be more difficult and can lead to a silo mentality. 
• Lack of engagement – With virtual teams, people can easily become bored and "check out" because there is a lack of dynamic face-to-face interaction and because there are more distractions.

Also, research has shown that the leadership style of the team or project leader has greater effects on the productivity of virtual teams as compared to that on the traditional collocated teams. It’s important for all the virtual team leaders or managers to revisit their leadership approach and, if required, enrol for managing remote employees training.

AREAS COVERED

This webinar will provide leadership tips and cover these seven points:

• Identify the nine critical success factors for virtual teams to get a higher ROI
• Review the four-dimensional model of virtual teams: purpose, people, link, time
• Do a reality check: The five advantages and three disadvantages of virtual teams
• Understand and put into practice the three virtual leadership styles essential for virtual team success
• Discover how to manage the social isolation in virtual team; dealing with out of sight out of mind challenge
• Identify seven critical competencies of virtual team members beyond just good technical and communication skills
• Get remote team management tips and learn to set up a virtual team- answering two critical questions: What do we want to accomplish? How do we do it?

LEARNING OBJECTIVES

The focus of this webinar is to help companies maximize their ROI in virtual teams as well as help leaders enhance their effectiveness in leading and managing virtual teams. Get tips for managing remote employees and know about virtual leadership styles.

WHO WILL BENEFIT

COO’s, CFO’s VP of Human Resources, Human Resource Professionals, Chief Learning Officer, Directors, Project Managers, Operation Managers and Supervisors, Team Leaders, Staff Managers and Supervisors