Leader in a virtual team

Leader in a virtual team

Team members

  • Jan Vonka
  • Pavel Seiner
  • Michal Svoboda
  • Barbora Zbončáková
  • Jan Zubíček

Contents

  1. Contents
  2. Introduction
  3. Relationships in the virtual team
  4. Characteristics of a leader of a virtual team
  5. Motivation in virtual teams
  6. Using proper means of communication in leading a virtual team
  7. Conclusion
  8. References
  9. Evaluation of team members

Introduction

As the virtual teams become more and more important today, need for good leaders able to achieve the outcomes in this whole new environment appears arises. Many old ways and means how to make people do what you want may seem inappropriate.

The aim of our work is to show new challenges a leader of a virtual team will possibly walk into on his or her way to the success, how should this person pass them and what are the personal characteristics he or she whould possibly have.

There are many ways and means how to achieve your targets, none of them ideal in every possible scenario, everytime you have to choose the most appropriate means depending on personal characteristics of the leader, each team member and also other external influences. Therefore we don’t show the one and only universal way how to lead a team. Instead, we try to show what should come into consideration and how to find each ones way to the succes in leading people in a virtual team.

Relationships in the virtual team

At first just a short definition of what is the virtual team.

A virtual team is one, whose members share a common purpose, but are separated by distance, time, and organizational boundaries. In such a team, members are linked only by communication technologies.

For example, a software development team may have members in the United States, India, Taiwan, and Brazil, and their only communication may be through the Internet, telephone, and video conferencing technologies.

Building virtual relationships

It depends on the type of the virtual team how to build relationships. The difference is whether the hierarchy is set before the project has started or if it is build according to the work of the virtual team. The second type can usualy be seen in unofficial virtual teams (for example friends working on the project together).

More common way is that the roles of the team members are pre-set. Leader of the virtual team (virtual team leader) coordinates work of other team members; team members are aimed or specialized for their part in the project depending on the character of work or project theme. We can say that the basic structure of virtual team works by style: enter the task –> accomplish the task before the deadline time set.

Communication

This part is about the communication among the members of virtual team, not about communication mediums and devices. Excluding the video conferencing technologies and telephone, virtual communication is mainly used in its written form. It can be confusing, because sometimes you can’t recognize emotions, irony etc., which can change the meaning of the written message. On the other hand truth is, that usual communication between team members and virtual team leader is not the one, where you could expect such things. From the praxis we can say, that it works by style: team leader specifys the problem –> give the problem to team member to solve it –> team member responds to team leader.

Previous paragraph was just about the communication between the team leader and a team memeber. Let’s aim on the communication between team members. This depends on, how is the project or problem built. If I use an example of this project, in this case was the communication between team members almost unneccesary. At the begging, we agreed on the form of work and how it would be done, and each member could work on his part of work, independent on others. So any communication later was just between yeam members to team leader only. If one team member’s work would be dependent on another’s than would be communication between team members neccesarry.

Problems in virtual communication and relationships

Theoretically is the starting position in a virtual team better then in ordinary “live” team. In case that members of a virtual team haven’t ever seen each other, you don’t know who are you dealing with, but you also don’t have any prejudices about the race, physical disinclination or else. Because of this, dispersonalization usualy leads to official working contact only and does not motivate members to be willing to identify their co-workers. However, from the working point of view is this very practical and effective.

Untill now, we were suggesting that everything goes right. Now let’s think what can happen if some team member quit doing his duty. If the team work is divided into independent parts, it‘s smaller problem because other (working) members can carry on working on their part of project. If it’s dependent (one team member needs data from functionless team member), the problem is bigger because this puts down the whole project. In this case the solution is difficult if you’re not in contact with functionless team member. You don’t know whether it’s about technical problems or failure of the team memeber.

Managing

Virtual team leader is a person, who’s responsible for the results of the project. Naturally, his communication ability and managing skills are most important. Compared to “live” team leader is his role more dificult according to unexisting personal (face-to-face) contact to his virtual team member. Here’s where he loses the usage skills of a good manager, and that’s his personal approach. In virtual enviroment the usage of hard and soft managing methods loses its effect. Unability of using these methods should put more accent on reliability of virtual team memebers.

Conclusion

Significance of virtual teams in future is big. According to the globalization, it will be more and more important for specialists worldwide to cooperate. For the long distance cooperation this is the easiest and cheapest way. On the other hand, it’s natural for people to socialize in live. Also the virtual relationships should not replace real relationships.

Characteristics of a leader of a virtual team

There can be an assumption that virtual leading is simply the same as common face-to-face leading. We can of course agree or disagree with this assumption. It depends on our point of view. Virtual leading is often regarded as project management with application of technologies to share information. Technology is that mean that makes virtual team work more effectively. That is why virtual leaders have to have most of characteristics like common leaders, but because of it is a little bit different, he has to have other qualities besides. To lead team virtually need not mean that the team never meets each other face-to-face. On the contrary the good virtual leader should know, that the most successful virtual teams spend time during their formation period, frequently face-to-face, getting to know each other formally (competencies, experience, connections etc.) and informally (socially and personally), reaching agreements about how to work, this process being guided by a facilitator.

Key characteristic of virtual leader:

Professional qualifications – is one of the most important characteristics of any leader. When anybody wants to be a leader, he has to have knowledge from science like psychologist, sociologist and naturally from branch where he wants to lead. These understandings help him to understand peoples’ thinking and allow him to take power over them.

Communicativeness – each leader, who wants to be successful, should have very good communication qualities because when he wants to lead co-workers or subordinates, he has to be able to tell them what they should do. Virtual leading requires communications at distance and that’s why they communicate across a range of media, including email, phone, conference calls and others. Face-to-face communication should be from time to time also platitude because it helps to better relationships.

Acceptability – each skilled manager know that leader who isn’t accepted by his subordinates can’t force the team to be task focused and relationship oriented. For a leader who is taken to be professional idol is much easier to persuade of something, because when people want to be like this idol, they will try to be better by themselves and do not need any other motivation.

Monitoring new technologies – technologies are main means of communication, and that’s why virtual leader need to understand them. He should have more than basic skills in computers, internet, mobile technologies and others. The development of these technologies is very fast, and virtual leader who wants to keep successfulness of his team needs to monitor this development because it helps him to save his and team’s time, and because time is money, he also reduces the costs.

Prescience – a leader and of course also virtual leader, who want to be successful should anticipate, what could happened. It means that he should take into account all possible unpleasant events and avert or minimize them and of course also foresee the pleasant ones and try to utilize them maximally.

Engage all members – skilled virtual leader should know how to engage all team members even at distance, how to motivate them and of course how to reward them for accomplishment of a goal, because only then they reach maximal synergy effect. Synergy effect means that team consisting of 5 members do more job together than sum of each individual case. Mathematically we can say that 1+1=3. When he reaches this effect, he is in a fair way to be a good leader, and his team will be required for its successfulness.

Humanity – each leader should also know that only focusing on work will not bring him success. When it is possible, he should try to have humane approach because the co-workers will consider working much friendlier or even work will be fun for them.

Motivation in virtual team

Motivation in general

Motivation is a critical element for a high performing project team, regardless of whether the team is collocated or is operating in a virtual environment. However, individuals vary as to what is motivating for them, and the sources of their motivation may not be constant and may vary over time, even for the same individuals.

Motivation must address issues including team member personal baggage, economic forces such as downsizing, and sociological forces such as the increasing multicultural considerations. It also must consider the pressures of on site work versus work on the virtual team. People must feel committed to the project to complete the tasks for which they have responsibility. Mostly, this is a big quests for the leader of a virtual team.

Motivation in a virtual team

On a virtual project team, team members need to overcome the sense of isolation that so often exists and support and work toward the project team’s goals and objectives collaboratively. It is easy for a virtual team member to have an “out-of-sight”, “out-of mind” reaction. On a virtual team, it is important to determine whether team members are motivated primarily by a need for achievement, a need for affiliation, or a need for power, as each dominant style can impact one’s performance and commitment to the team and can identify the roles and responsibilities team members are best suited to perform.

Motivation of achievement-motivated team members

People with a high need for achievement, for example, are driven by the challenge of success and the fear of failure. They typically take calculated risks and set goals for themselves that are of moderate difficulty. These people like to see concrete evidence of their completed work. Achievement-motivated people tend to be more concerned with personal achievement than the rewards of success. They like to work on a problem and not leave the outcome to chance. Someone with a high need for achievement, for example, should best be placed in project roles in which he or she is asked to complete a challenging task. The work should test abilities and skills. Administrative tasks for the achievement-motivated team member are viewed as ones to avoid if at all possible in order for this person to be able to concentrate on the technical work to be done. These team members, motivated by personal challenge and accustomed to working alone on tasks, are ideally suited for the virtual project.

Motivation of affiliation-motivated team members

On the other hand, people with a high need for affiliation may find it difficult to be virtual team members. They are interesting in building a friendly environment in which to work, like being part of a collocated team, tend to conform to group norms, and like to work toward team success. Affiliation-motivated people are noted as seeking acceptance and friendship from others and having a cooperative attitude. They respond positively to requests for assistance from other team members and are sensitive to the feelings of others. But, with the increase in use of virtual teams, affiliation-oriented people will be assigned to work on them. Here, a role such as a relationship manager would be ideal in which the affiliation-motivated person could help provide a sense of identity for the team, could mentor other team members, introduce new team members to the team’s operating protocols, be a facilitator in virtual team meetings, and serve as a communications expediter.

Motivation of power-motivated team members

People with a high need for power are noted for influence and control. They like to make decisions and will try to persuade people to see or do things their way, even if they are not the official project manager or leader. They will often try to clarify the goals of the team, in terms of the overall goals of the organization. Power-motivated people are noted for being competitive. They are comfortable directing the work of others, will take risks, and like to be recognized for their contributions. These people also may find it challenging to be on a virtual team but can perform functions such as: relating the project’s purpose to the overall strategic vision of the organization, leading the team in its meetings and helping the team come to closure during problem-solving situations, and pointing out the merits of possible opportunities that others may perceive as risks.

Conclusions

If there is a possibility for the leader to choose all team members, the leader should consider individuality characteristizations of each member. Sometimes it´s difficult for the leader to streamline all the (above listed) characters. Leader must be aware of all possibilities resulting from differencies between team members and he has to dispose by all manager-characteristics in general, to be able to manage various motivated virtual team members.

Means of communication in virtual teams

Because the main characteristic of a virtual team is its independence on the geographical location of its members, suitable means of communication are essential for the existence and effective work of a virtual teams. Especially the modern means of communication that became available in the late 20th century are the ones that make virtual teams as important as they are today.

Which are the communication technologies that are used in the virtual teams? Of course they are the ones that enable symmetrical communication over long distance.

In general, there are three types of communication techniques:

  • verbal communication
  • written communication
  • pictorial communication

The most natural communication technique – verbal communication, can’t be used in it’s best form – face-to-face verbal communication. Fortunately, there are still still forms of verbal communication that are possible to use – telephone communication and video conferences. For a long time these two means of communication couldn’t because of the price of long distance connections, thanks to the Internet the differences between short-distance and long-distance connections are virtually absent.

Written communication is the first form of communication which accelerated the spreading of knowledge in the modern human society. Today they can be seen as the most important form of communication in the virtual teams (at least from the quantitative point of view). The oldest form is a well-known letter, which is still commonly used. Unfortunately letter sent by a postal service is not ideal because of it’s speed. Still, it helped to form the very first virtual teams (mostly in the art).

The evolution of a letter is a fax, but I don’t think it’s more than a dead end. Very close to a letter is an e-mail, the most commonly used form of communication on the Internet today and also the oldest form of communication on the computer networks up today. Quite popular today are the instant messaging programs like Jabber, Yahoo Messenger, MSN, ICQ or AOL Messenger, most of them are aimed at the free-time communication, but few of them are also used for the in-corporation usage. They allow for an effective, flexible communication without delays.

The pictorial communication represents a complementary mean of communication, it mostly helps to supplement other means of communication. the most frequent are graphs, animations and visualisations of all kinds.

I have mentioned the Internet few times. It’s probably the most important invention in the history of virtual teams as it allows for all the means of communication mentioned before and even takes them higher. Take for example Wikipedia – an encyclopaedia, that is created by an virtual team of volunteers and which is nearly as good as classic encyclopaedias such as Britannica. Most importantly new means of communication are emerging today; even a computer game can become a way how to achieve an objective in a virtual team.

It’s obvious that a leader of a virtual team has to fully understand all the means of communication mentioned here and modern trends in technologies to behave effectively. You can’t lead a virtual team like a “normal” team.

Advantages and disadvantages

It’s obvious that different means of communication have different qualities than ordinary means of communication. To master these differences we first have to be able to find them and name them. So what are they?

First the advantages. What can be more advantageous than enabling people to communicate over long distances, often as long as a half of the world? All above, the main advantage of the modern means of communication is that they allow us to form teams of people form distant location, who would probably never meet in person! This communication can be quite fast and can take many different forms.

As we could find one major advantage of the modern means of communication, we can also find one major disadvantage. It’s just isn’t a communication face-to-face.

Each communication is a sum of many factors, while face-to-face communication means we can use many verbal and non-verbal forms of communication. A good leader or manager can use them all to achieve what he or she wants. Unfortunately, every other communication technique other than face-to-face verbal communication means that we have to give up a lot of non-verbal means of communication. Negative impact of this can be minimized but still it means a major disadvantage.

Proper use in leading

When we know the advantages and disadvantages of using the modern means of communication, we can prepare to properly use them.

The proper use has two dimensions:

  • what mean of communication to use in every situation
  • how to exactly use it

We always try to use a proper mean of communication to maximize the impact of communication. A good leader has to have a good sense what communication technology is appropriate in every single moment. While it’s perfectly OK to chat informally about every day problems, when formally complaining you have to use a more formal mean of communication, e.g. when you have to write something important to your inferior you will probably use an e-mail rather then ICQ and when your inferior doesn’t seem to respond you will probably pick up the telephone receiver and use the whole scale of the voice.

When you choose the proper way of communication, you also have to understand it’s pros and cons. An e-mail gives you a long time to think of every word and it’s impact while telephone is a good way of letting people know what are your emotions without explicitly saying that.

A good leader have to master both.

Problems to avoid

Problems are something we can never avoid (remember the Murphy’s Laws?). An unfamiliar environment such as virtual world is even more demanding to avoid problems as they tend to be surprising.

Most problems originate from not mastering the aspects mentioned before. People use wrong means of communication, they do not seem formal when they should and many times they are not taken seriously. Proper usage of the means of communication can avoid this.

There are two other things you have to avoid when communicating to effectively lead a team. At first, you have to show that the most important thing is the teams objective and you’re ready to sacrifice anyone not working on this objective. This can be quite difficult when frequently using informal means of communication. The other thing involves on of the three parts of communication – your partner, you inferior. To be a good team leader you have to choose carefully who your inferiors are. This can seem not to be an issue of the communication, but there’s no communication without at least two sides of it.

Although my description of means of communication was far from a full-scale view on the problem I hope I showed the basic approaches to proper perception and usage of the forms of communication available. It should be obvious to anybody now that the communication is a essential and most important thing to master when someone wants to lead a (virtual) team.

Conclusion

Even before we started our work, it was quite cleare that leading a virtual team isn’t the same as is leading of a “normal” team. The characteristics and differences of a virtual team are so strong that it’s not possible to apply the same rules that are convinient in more traditional management.

Everyone who would like to lead a team must take into consideration many things, and without this it would be much more difficult to achieve the success. To become a good leader one has to master the following:

  • relationships in a typical virtual team
  • her own personal characteristics
  • ways to motivate people
  • and ways how to communicate her ideas

When we look at these points, we can see one more important thing: These are the very aspects every good leader has to have! While the ways how to lead a virtual team may be different from what we are used to, the basic approach remains the same: Understand peoples’ motivations, how they form relationships and communicate with each other and take advantage of it.

This doesn’t mean that someone who’s succesful in leading a traditional team will be succesful in leading a virtuall team and vice versa, success can be a matter of coincidence. However, someone who really is a good leader in it’s true meaning will have a chance to adopt to this new environment.

References

Evaluation of team members

The overall work went good and even there were some minor problems, every team member did enough work to deserve the credit. Even there were some minor problems such as missed deadlines or getting someone’s part of work, the team worked well enough to compensate such small issues. I appreciate everyone’s effort.