| 07 February 2010
It can be challenging to work together while being physically in different continents, but it has become more and more popular to use virtual teams, where everyone is in their own virtual office, no matter what type of organization you’re either running or work for. It isn’t necessary any more for colleagues to all sit in the same place.
To be successful cultivating your virtual team, you and every person in the team needs to understand that they are there to fulfill a requirement, meet a target and reach a goal. They all should have a purpose. At the same time, like in a normal office, team members need to build relationships with one another. Even if they’re not together physically you still should have meetings. Just have them over the phone or with web conferencing tools. Share your desktop so that everyone is looking at the same notes, documents or presentation. Give everyone the opportunity to participate.
With virtual teams, its easy for individual team members to feel isolated since they may be on their own anyway, working from home. To minimize this, you should make sure that the team is interacting with one another on a regular basis. Give them shared goals and targets that they need to work as a team to achieve. Make sure that you give them deadlines as well. It’s easy not to feel pressure when you’re working on your own at home, but with some tight deadlines you can give a healthy amount of pressure for them to achieve.
Make sure that your team develops good working habits. They need to understand that even though they are working from home, they need to work in an environment free from distractions like children, pets or even TV. They have to learn that they shouldn’t mix their home life with their office work.
Training a virtual team is going to be different to the traditional office team. Give them the tools to train in their own time using online learning courses. Make them become experts in technology, as technology is what is facilitating their day to day communication and work activities. They need to be more than comfortable using all the tools and systems at their disposal.
Once you’ve set your team, have faith in them. Trust is a major factor in running a successful virtual team. You’re not going to be there looking over their shoulder at what their doing, so you can’t be a micro-manager. You need to set them goals and targets, and let them complete it. Reward them when they’re successful and be stern with them if they don’t meet their deadlines.
Running a virtual team is much more difficult that running a team that you see day to day. It’s challenging but rewarding and by following these tips, you should soon be reaping the rewards. Good luck!
