LEADERSHIP INSIGHTS

Innovation Insight: Find Success in Managing Virtual Teams

James Askew
James Askew
Board Director & CTO | Tue 20 May
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Innovation Insight: Find Success in Managing Virtual Teams

Described as a "leading revolutionary" by the Financial Times, Eddie Obeng suggests the rules about how to run a business successfully have changed. Managing virtual teams successfully will prove a corner stone in achieving high performance in today’s increasingly complex, ambiguous and fast-changing world.

In the conversations that followed Eddie Obeng’s presentation, several factors for better management of virtual teams were identified.

We have shared some below:

· Create a cyber-personality and build relationships: impression management is vital. When communicating with team members who you may not have met or seen in months, it is important to foster future exchanges and engagement by reducing over-assertiveness and bluntness (e.g. ‘this is wrong’). ‘Back channels’ are useful for members to socialise and chat casually.

· Keep one copy of notes/minutes: meeting and exchange will occur across various geographical sites. But with everyone taking their own notes, there will be various interpretations. Ideally, there needs to be one version created by a single note-taker, which can be edited subsequently with input from all members. This keeps everyone in sync and eliminates instances of people reading different versions.

· Overcome the lack of cues and body language: in virtual meetings with limited feedback processes, it is difficult to know if team members have been receptive to messages or if they even understood them. Leaders must develop exceptional briefing skills and everyone should come prepared to virtual meetings.

· Use the right techniques for the technology: Spin casting is an effective technique for audio conferences that assigns three main roles: coordinator, scribe and ‘Rottweiler’. The coordinator (chair) should facilitate inputs: he or she knows who is on the call and circulates around the group to get everyone’s inputs, and then summarises and clarifies these. The scribe captures all of this information in one document. The Rottweiler ensures members keep to time and processes.

Participants included Lloyds Banking Group, Northern Power Grid, HSBC and Virgin Atlantic amongst others.

June’s meeting will focus on a new approach to risk management, with a presentation from two industry leaders. contact a member of the KnowledgeBrief team.

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