Harvard Business Review - Leading Virtual Teams (HBR 20-Minute Manager Series)

Leading Virtual Teams

Get up to speed fast on essential business skills. Whether youre looking for a crash course or a brief refresher, youll find just what you need in HBRs 20-Minute Manager seriesfoundational reading for ambitious professionals and aspiring executives. Each book is a concise, practical primer, so youll have time to brush up on a variety of key management topics.

Advice you can quickly read and apply, from the most trusted source in business.

Titles include:

Creating Business Plans

Delegating Work

Difficult Conversations

Finance Basics

Getting Work Done

Giving Effective Feedback

Innovative Teams

Leading Virtual Teams

Managing Projects

Managing Time

Managing Up

Performance Reviews

Presentations

Running Meetings

Running Virtual Meetings

Virtual Collaboration

Leading Virtual Teams

Hold people accountable
Build trust
Encourage collaboration

HARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW PRESS

Boston, Massachusetts

HBR Press Quantity Sales Discounts

Harvard Business Review Press titles are available at significant quantity discounts when purchased in bulk for client gifts, sales promotions, and premiums. Special editions, including books with corporate logos, customized covers, and letters from the company or CEO printed in the front matter, as well as excerpts of existing books, can also be created in large quantities for special needs.

For details and discount information for both print and ebook formats, contact .

Copyright 2016 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation

All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior permission of the publisher. Requests for permission should be directed to , or mailed to Permissions, Harvard Business School Publishing, 60 Harvard Way, Boston, Massachusetts 02163.

The web addresses referenced in this book were live and correct at the time of the books publication but may be subject to change.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is forthcoming.

ISBN: 9781633691452
eISBN: 9781633691469

Preview

Leading a virtual team presents a special set of challenges whether you have one team member abroad or several people working remotely. How do you ensure accountability when you dont see your people every day? How do you get them to communicate effectively when time zones, language barriers, and a host of complicated technologies conspire against your team? Distance poses difficulties, but you can overcome these problems and turn them into your advantage. Leading an effective virtual team is possibleand this book will give you quick tips and strategies for managing people productively, no matter where your team is scattered.

Leading Virtual Teams walks you through these important basics:

Ensuring you have the right mix of skills and abilities on your team for remote work

Assessing and meeting your teams technological needs

Clarifying the goals, processes, and norms youll use to communicate and collaborate with your team from afar

Regulating the myriad messages and media that enable your team members to work together apart

Keeping your people motivated, engaged, and accountable despite the distance

Surfacing and resolving conflict when you cant always see how people are working together

Contents

Leading Virtual Teams

What Is a Virtual Team?

What Is a Virtual Team?

How do you get your people to work together when you cant even get them in the same city? How do you get past technology glitches to have a productive conversation? Can you help your staff trust teammates theyve never laid eyes on? How do you maintain accountability with someone in a different time zone whos going to bed just as youre getting up? How do you replicate the small things that knit teams together: following the same sports teams, saying gesundheit when a sneezing fit erupts, sharing a look over a colleagues absentminded humming, even holding elevator doors for each other? These are just a few of the challenges you face when you manage a team of remote workers.

Youre a leader of a virtual team if you coordinate work around a shared goalwith team members who dont share a base of operations. You may be a sales director, managing people who perform the same tasks in different locations. Or perhaps you run a project with a team whose day-to-day responsibilities are as unique as their physical posts. Maybe you manage a handful of off-site employees who work with a core group at the home office. Even if you have one team member working remotely, youre managing a virtual team. And while leading any team involves a mix of people management, technical oversight, and project administration, virtual leaders must perform these functions with blunt communication tools and without face-to-face accountability.

Whether youre a veteran team leader or new to the role, coordinating the work of multiple people in multiple places will scramble your instincts and stretch your skills. But successful leaders make the most of these challenges by orchestrating technologies that meet their groups particular needs and establishing strong norms for how all team members will work together in this virtual space.

Why use virtual teams?

The ubiquity of virtual teams tends to blind us to their usefulness. What are the benefits of this arrangement?

Virtual teams maximize limited resources. By hiring for the short term someone who happens to live in another part of the world, you can ramp up and maintain a steady pace of production for your busy season. Virtual teams help you save on the overhead costs of owning and maintaining a physical plant by partnering with a manufacturer. You can assemble the smarts, staff, and supplies you need to fit your budget and schedule.

They cast a wide net for expertise. Virtual teams allow you to look beyond the resources right in front of you and tap into your organizations global capacities. You might find a technician with a rare skill setfor example, a translator fluent in an uncommon languageor consult a niche expert who cant make an in-person meeting. With virtual teams, you can put boots on the ground to host a client event or supervise a product rollout in a distant place where you do business.

They streamline collaboration. Integrating communication technologies allows the team to interact in whatever way makes the most sense for the individual and the task. When youre face to face with colleagues every day, you dont always think about the most appropriate way to work togetheryou schedule an hour-long meeting to launch a project, because thats what youve always done. But when your team is dispersed, youre forced to consider the best way for doing what you need to accomplish. If brainstorming sessions in conference calls tend to unravel into people talking over one another, you can initiate a discussion thread on chat and everyone gets a chance to weigh in. And if a complex discussion is bogging down over e-mail, you can set up a video call.