Managing Teams from a Distance: Making the Most of Virtual Meetings

Abstract

This technical note is a meta-analysis of some of the issues involving the management of virtual teams. Managing people who are geographically dispersed across time, space, and organizational boundaries requires team leaders who are able to communicate effectively and navigate interpersonal relationships. This requires an understanding of team dynamics, how to create a virtual team culture, and what works best when managing from a distance. The successful virtual tam leader knows what it takes to create and sustain high-performing teams, whether people are working in separate, remote locations or in the same corporate workplace. Excerpt UVA-BC-0255 Dec. 11, 2014 MANAGING TEAMS FROM A DISTANCE: MAKING THE MOST OF VIRTUAL MEETINGS The Economist Intelligence Unit's “Foresight 2020” research report outlines five key trends in business for the next 15 years. Of these, three trends—globalization, atomization, and knowledge management—will have a significant effect on the structure, functioning, and distribution of teams within and across boundaries. As organizations become global and cater more to worldwide markets, the prevalence of multicultural and geographically dispersed teams will increase, especially as work gets broken down into more granular units to be managed and delivered by specialist teams or individuals. Atomization will enable firms to “use the world as their supply base for talent and materials…As a result, effective collaboration will become more important.” At the same time, many see the future value of their organizations becoming closely linked to the knowledge they can leverage—knowledge that is frequently an amalgam of individual experience, behavior, and understanding. Managing people who are geographically dispersed across time, space, and organizational boundaries requires team leaders who are able to communicate effectively and both understand and navigate interpersonal relationships. A 1964 Harvard Business School study noted that a successful leader “is able to communicate, to make sound decisions, and to get things done with and through people”—advice that is equally sound for today's virtual team leader. The virtual team leader of today needs to understand team dynamics, how to create a virtual team culture, and what works best when managing from a distance. . . .