Features

Published March 2009

Virtual Leadership for a Virtual Workforce

Jerry Fjermestad

As work is increasingly carried out by teams whose members are spread across the globe, learning leaders are challenged to design and deliver learning solutions that meet the needs of virtual teams, but also develop leaders who are comfortable and capable in the virtual environment.

The new paradigm of work in the virtual team environment consists of team members working from anywhere at anytime in real space or cyberspace.

In a 2004 article, Anne Powell, Gabriele Piccoli and Blake Ives defined a team as a collection of individuals who are interdependent in their tasks; share responsibility for their outcomes; see themselves and are seen by others as an intact social entity embedded in one or more larger social systems; and manage their relationships across organizational boundaries.

In traditional organizations, team members are colocated, meet face-to-face and come from similar business units with a common cultural background. As teams become virtual, membership becomes more cross functional, more geographically dispersed, more culturally diverse and more temporary. These teams are assembled in response to specific needs and often are short-lived. The need for distributed virtual work is created by the dispersion of work around the world and the integration of knowledge, products, process and activities across the organization.

Virtual teams bring together critical contributors who might not be able to work together because of time, travel or cost. However, there are tradeoffs in the virtual world. In the absence of face-to-face communication and interaction, virtual teams have less understanding of each other, potentially contributing to misunderstandings and conflict. To overcome these challenges, virtual teams rely heavily on information and communication technologies (ICT) such as e-mail, instant messaging, videoconferencing, computer-mediated communication systems, cell phones and voice mail.

The ultimate challenge for team leaders is to create a level of collaboration and productivity that rivals the experience of the best colocated teams. Leaders of these virtual teams must be able to facilitate team cohesiveness by taking full advantage of existing and emerging ICTs.

Virtual vs. Traditional
Leadership consists of guiding, encouraging and facilitating others in the pursuit of a common end. In this framework, a leader must have the ability to encourage and coerce team members to follow the leader voluntarily. The leader must create an environment in which members can accept and execute their responsibilities with confidence.

Leaders in the traditional world manage by planning, organizing, controling, motivating and communicating. In many cases, there is no need to meet face-to-face. In other cases, work teams can use any mode of communication available, from the cell phone to computer-mediated communication. But questions remain. Are these new virtual teams as effective as the standard face-to-face teams? Is there a different way to lead these teams? More importantly, how do we develop and train these new virtual leaders?

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Communication Activities of High- and Low-Performing Teams

Jerry Fjermestad

Effective teams have effective leaders who actively facilitate the sharing of specific information.

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