Okay, now the business world is now global. Today, you’re more likely to have a conversation alongside someone next to yours as the woman inside an office space in China.
You’re a manager, and you’ve been assigned to oversee this exciting project that will boost your profile within the company and make you eligible to be promoted to the position you’re due. The only issue is that you need to oversee a virtual team of highly skilled employees that are spread all over the globe! What can you do? It’s challenging to manage a group of people who live located in the same place and which you meet every day. What do you manage people who are in various time zones?!
Do not be afraid; just follow these simple steps, and you’ll be well on the way towards becoming an international virtual leader!
1. Choose your Virtual Dream Team:
Set an appointment with the team members to get to know them personally. Introduce yourself, provide them with an outline of the project and tell them why they’ve been selected. Make sure to have this first meeting in person. When your traveling budget doesn’t permit this, you can arrange a video conference. It’s an excellent opportunity to give someone a pat on their shoulders for their previous successes. You could, for instance, tell them, “Femi, you’ve been chosen to be a part of this team because of your expertise in Data Mining and the excellent work you did on the data warehousing project. That project saved the company $5 million over two years, and I’m glad to have you on my team”.
2. Create an initial Team Meeting:
Plan a time to introduce team members to one another, establish expectations, and give everyone the chance to begin to feel familiar with the project and with each one.
3. Create a virtual Vision:
One of the most crucial things to be doing when managing a virtual group is to make sure the team members all work towards the same purpose and knows what the team wants to achieve. To achieve this, you must establish a vision/mission for your team. After the mission has been completed and everyone has printed it, print it and display the poster in a prominent location.
4. Establish Team Standards:
Every team must be able to go through the process of creating norms for the team. The norms define the guidelines and rules in which the team operates. Everything about how team members interact with one another and how work gets completed should be covered in the rules. Rules are more likely to be respected if team members contribute to the development of rules and agree to abide by the rules. One topic that is worth bringing up during the process is how conflicts and disagreements can be resolved and handled.
5. Make sure you are communicating correctly.
If communication is crucial for teams, it’s the vitality of virtual groups. The communication methods and the etiquette have to be established in the first few days of starting an entirely new team. The questions that need to be asked and discussed include:
* What types of communication are appropriate? For instance, do all team members use Instant messaging?
* What is an essential way of communicating?
* What time do team members must be available for each other?
* How do team members communicate with one another in an emergency?
* What will the team do to communicate important information? What is important information?
* What choices can people take?
* What are the decisions that require team input? What decisions do you need the team’s input on?
An additional exercise that can be conducted in conjunction with the discussion is a personality test like the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI). It is a test that MBTI can be utilized to speed up the beginning stage and help facilitate an understanding of each teammate’s communications and working style. It is also essential to focus on understanding the different cultures of your teammates.
Create a SharePoint page for the entire team. This is where the project’s documents are stored. Include profiles (with photos) of team members. Personalize the site by adding details about team members, including the team’s expertise, interests, photos of family members, etc.
After you’ve completed the steps necessary to run an effective, trustworthy virtual team, get out and be the best in the world. Best of luck!
