This is the 2nd post in Pepper’s Virtual Teams Series. Before reading on, we suggest you check out the first post in the series, What is a Virtual Team. You can also read the next post in the series, Online Collaboration Tools for Virtual Teams.
Communication and collaboration are two key success factors of effectively managing virtual teams, and ultimately, making the team work efficiently for you.
Virtual teams are linked together by communication technologies that allow them to interact electronically by email, instant messaging, and Voice over IP technologies like Skype. For US based businesses, an internet-based telephone service (VoIP) is an essential tool for real time communication. Conferences can be done through telecons and video conferencing as well.
Managing virtual teams effectively and efficiently
If you’re the leader of a virtual team, keep in mind that you’re managing a set of individuals with different personalities and eccentricities. More often than not, they will be working from different time zones, at different hours. For virtual teams to work effectively, the virtual team leader should:
Set clear team goals and objectives – make sure that each team member has completely understood and accepted project goals.
Define work responsibilities and accountabilities of each member – team members should be clear with each member’s role, and how a member’s inaction or delay can affect the work that the other members are responsible for.
Supplement team conferences with one-on-one time with each member – regular online meetings should be followed up with individual discussions with each member of the team. This ensures that each member is clear with project goals and timelines. Individual issues and questions that are of a more personal or confidential nature can be addressed during this time.
Make each team member feel his or her ownership in the project – A sense of ownership leads to commitment and focused action. Allow collaborative effort for team members by involving the whole team in the decision making processes that need consensus and commitment. Set group goals and do regular group discussions of possible solutions and outcomes.
Ensure seamless communication lines – make sure there are no blocked lines of communication and each member of the team is kept fully informed of all developments at all times.
Strengthen team rapport and camaraderie within the virtual team environment – make it a point to incorporate team building activities and opportunities for extra social time with each other into your schedule. The benefits for your team are invaluable. Among other things, this smoothens relationships among team members and encourages open lines of communication.
These are just some tips that can help you effectively manage and get the most out of your virtual teams. Working with virtual teams can be a challenge, but also provides several benefits, both tangible and intangible – but this is a topic for a future post.
For the next post in the series, we’ll discuss collaboration programs or software that can further help you manage your teams and ensure seamless coordination on project goals and timelines. Until then, do you have any tips for effectively working with a virtual team? Share them in the comments.
Tags: pepper, productivity tools, series, virtual teams
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[...] HOT Pepper Virtual Assistant Summer Packages!!! Virtual Teams Series: How to Effectively Work with a Virtual Team » August 3rd, 2011 Virtual Teams Series: What is a Virtual Team? by Maan [...]
This article provides comprehensive information in working with a virtual team. In a world wherein a lot of people depend on information technology to keep up in a fast paced environment especially for business, this article gives the importance of a virtual team to address clients’ needs across the globe. The details of the article give specific instructions in handling the team. As we know, there are a lot of things to do when a client wants to keep up their business. In reality, if there is no proper communication and collaboration, this would create stress and tension of each team member that could also make a lot of misunderstandings and would provide misleading information when reporting to the client. So every time I read articles like this, it would give me a constant reminder to help each other out for the whole team itself. For the team leaders, this serves a good piece of advice in handling the virtual team.
[...] In case you’ve missed the first three posts, you can check out What is a Virtual Team, How to Effectively Work with a Virtual Team, and Online Collaboration Tools for Virtual [...]
[...] Virtual Teams Series: How to Effectively Work with a Virtual Team Virtual Teams Series: Pros & Cons of Working with Virtual Teams » August 17th, 2011 [...]
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[...]Virtual Teams Series: How to Effectively Work with a Virtual Team « Pepper Virtual Assistants[...]…
Great tips Maan, these tips are very useful to manage virtual teams effectively. There are also different ways to manage virtual team and I believe that in order to manage virtual teams effectively you will need the right online tools and resources that can help you run your business effectively and efficiently to progress. Communication is the key to virtual team. Skype can help you communicate to your virtual team. Here are some of the tools that you will need to manage virtual team.
http://www.timedoctor.com/blog/2011/04/14/compare-screen-monitoring-software
This article really helps on how you work effectively with a virtual team as a leader. Team Leaders should really focus on the needs of the team members to keep the team running and be one of the best team there is. Leaders should always set some goals on the team and make the team productive. Some Team Leaders is more focus on the tasks and sometimes forgets about the team. Leaders should always remember that without the team, Team leaders don’t exist! This article should not only be read but also be reflected by Team Leaders who want to have a good team! This article really helps a lot! Thank you
The tips are very helpful most especially when managing virtual teams. This would be very helpful for leaders to be effective with their subordinates but I guess this not only applies to virtual teams but also on jobs which require teamwork