Managing Virtual Teams
Three Tips for Teaching Managers to Lead Virtual Teams
By Beth Zadik
From scheduling online meetings across international time zones to communicating effectively online, virtual operations come with their own set of management challenges.
So how do your equip your leaders to function as effective managers of virtual teams? The quickest, most effective route to desired performance is to task them with leading a simulated virtual project.
By modeling the virtual management experience, you’ll not only give your managers the opportunity to test solutions and determine what works, you’ll allow them to do so in a safe environment that doesn’t pose actual risk to your business.
Ready to get started? Here are three tips for designing a virtual management simulation that delivers the goods: |
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1. Model your organization’s typical project cycle. To make your simulation as realistic and translatable to the real-world as possible, the project lifecycle that you incorporate into the simulation should mirror the same project phases that your virtual managers follow in their real jobs.
In a virtual management simulation that we designed for a global accounting firm, for example, participants are assigned a realistic project and then spend each of three simulation “rounds” tackling a variety of tasks as they push their project toward completion.
Round one of the simulation entails communicating with their team, creating a project plan, and the establishment of team norms and expectations. During round two, managers are tasked with establishing development objectives, handling cross-cultural communication differences, and encouraging effective team dynamics. The simulation concludes with the third round, during which managers identify ways to support a team member’s career development, manage change, resolve team conflict, and build team synergy. Upon completion of the simulation, each manager identifies action items to implement on the job.
2. Identify the real-world challenges your virtual managers face. Then, build obstacles into your simulation that force your managers to confront them. Whenever we design a customized virtual management simulation, we first conduct a needs analysis to uncover the challenges that a client organization’s virtual managers face. With one client, for example, this analysis revealed four key obstacles the firm’s virtual managers regularly encountered. These included:
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Engaging in clear communication.
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Establishing team norms and guidelines.
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Supervising and mentoring virtual staff.
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Effectively managing projects and team deliverables.
We then built a series of obstacles into the simulation that forced the firm’s managers to confront each of these challenges head on.
RLS‘s Managing in a Virtual Environment Simulation helps organizations equip their managers to effectively manage worldwide workforces. Offered entirely online and facilitated via instructor-led webinars, the simulation provides virtual managers with the skills they need to build and maintain high-performing virtual teams. To learn more, contact us. |
To enhance their supervisory and mentoring skills, for example, participants were asked to deliver difficult feedback virtually. At one point during the simulation, each participant learns that one of her subordinates isn’t keeping up with his deadlines. The manager must then have a virtual conversation with the employee and take steps to resolve the matter. Based on the path she takes and the choices she makes at each point during the conversation, feedback that underscores key learning objectives is automatically generated by the simulation.
In addition, the participant is able to see how her decisions during the conversation (and within the simulation overall) impact the success of her team in several key areas, such as team communications, team morale, and project performance. That’s because at the end of each task, a built-in dashboard reporting tool appears on-screen that depicts “at a glance” results showing the manager how each and every move she makes affects both team and project outcomes.
3. Use the power of story. A wealth of adult learning research points to the fact that adults learn more effectively and remember things more clearly when they are emotionally engaged in a learning experience and when their learning is tied to memorable stories.
It follows, then, that by creating an environment in which stories are shared, you will enhance the likelihood that simulation learnings will be committed to memory—and, ultimately, put into practice on the job.
One way to incorporate memorable stories into a virtual management simulation is to make stories a focal point of facilitator-led “touch point” discussions that take place at the end of each simulation round. For example, we typically arm our facilitators with memorable anecdotes to underpin the content of each task performed within a simulation. During each touch point discussion, the facilitator prompts the participants to share insights from the simulation and relate key learnings back to the job. The facilitator also takes this opportunity to share one or more of the stories in her back pocket at opportune times during each touch point discussion. And because stories are best retained when they are told by participants themselves, she also makes a point of eliciting and capturing personal stories tied to each task from the participants themselves.
Another way of incorporating narrative power is to establish a storyline at the beginning of each task you assign. For example, if you want to teach your virtual managers how to team-build effectively, you might begin a team-building task by upping the ante with a story. (E.g., “Team morale is low. Team members feel disconnected and there is no team ethic present.”)
Once you’ve set up the narrative's dramatic tension, follow it with a task, such as having the manager find a way to build a sense of esprit de corps. Then, give the manager choices as to how he’ll tackle the challenge—be it coaching; assigning a task to two or more people who have never worked together before; establishing a virtual water cooler; allotting five to 10 minutes for social interaction before every teleconference begins; or creating a social networking space so that team members can get to know one another better.
Finally, use your dashboard to show the manager how each decision he makes relative to a given task impacts the performance of his team. By offering your managers the means to see the impact of their decisions in real time, you’ll ensure that they quickly learn what works (and what doesn’t) when leading a high-performing virtual team.
Beth Zadik is a program director at Regis Learning Solutions.
Contact Beth
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