AchieveGlobal's blog

All For One… Virtual Workforce

By Sharon Daniels

In my previous posts on leading virtually, I wrote about what it takes to lead a virtual team – separated across geographies, cultures, and even time zones. To recap, leaders must overcome several challenges, including understanding how to address the diversity of a virtual workforce while also recognizing that virtual leadership requires far more than mastering a few technological tools or platforms.

In order to build a productive virtual workforce, leaders can use a simple framework that provides a focus on key principles. You might think of this model as representing a Yin and Yang balance for virtual leadership.

Two key elements define the first level: cohesion and commitment.

Effective virtual leaders build awareness that, despite team members being separated by distance, they must be united in focus, goals and collaboration. Specifically, leaders can help team members understand that the work they do leads to meaningful outcomes. Leaders should also think of ways to build clear communication and encourage both inclusion and responsibility.

While group cohesion is vital, it’s also imperative that individual team members build a sense of commitment to the mission of the team and to the broader strategic goals of the organization. To build this individual commitment, leaders should provide opportunities for virtual team member success by communicating often with team members, while encouraging individual action and ownership.

What can leaders do to help build both group cohesion and individual commitment?

Leaders should focus on helping all team members, regardless of their location, to feel both satisfied and valued on three levels:

• Competence (team members should feel valued for their knowledge and skill)
• Relatedness (they should feel fulfilled when collaborating with co-workers, and valued for this)
• Autonomy (team members should be encouraged to exercise individual discretion to achieve business goals).

If a leader can create an environment that helps team members feel valued for these traits, it increases the likelihood that the virtual team will build success.

It really is a balancing act, and striking that perfect balance builds a team that works harmoniously, which means productivity and ultimately, success for the organization.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Absence Makes the Workforce Grow… Stronger?

By Sharon Daniels

The heading of this post is based on that age-old saying, “Absence makes the heart grow fonder.” But there’s a less-known second half of that saying: “It also makes the fond heart wander.” So there are potential positives and negatives to having space between two people in a relationship – whatever defines that relationship.

A similar duality can be said to apply to virtual workforces.

In a recent report on Leading Virtually, the point was made that when managed properly, teams that are dispersed can perform even better than teams that are collocated. The question is, what is “the secret recipe?” Using technical tools and cutting edge technology platforms can help, but virtual leadership requires a much broader set of skills.

Back to our analogy of a long distance relationship…

These days, families are called on to function across great distances for a host of reasons – job travel, kids “leaving the nest,” or military service to name a few. Making a relationship survive across distance requires much more than just being a good letter-writer, or a good “Skyper” for that matter. It takes devotion, loyalty and commitment, and an ability to express those things across the distance that separates.

In other words, it requires an understanding of what it takes to build a strong relationship in any realm, with an ability to master the reality of absence.

Similarly, effective leadership of a virtual workforce requires mastering traditional leadership skills like giving vital feedback, offering verbal recognition, and making sure the workforce is wholly focused on the broader business objectives. But even more than this, being an effective virtual leader requires planning, and leadership that encourages collaboration, individual contributions and dialogue.

So the reality is… for virtual leaders, while traditional leadership skills are a necessary part of creating a strong team, it’s also imperative to master a whole new slate of skills too.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida

Make Sure You’re Not Just Virtually Leading, When You’re Leading Virtually

By Sharon Daniels

You might say that the world of business these days is defined by crossing boundaries: reaching out to customers across market segments, negotiating with vendors across the globe, and shipping goods and services worldwide. So it comes as no surprise that leadership today requires the ability to lead across boundaries that are defined demographically, geographically, culturally, hierarchically, and in terms of organizational function or talent expertise.

The reality is that many leaders are managing work groups that include team members who live and work in far away geographies perhaps whom they’ve never even met in person. For leaders working in this reality, challenges abound! 

In our recent report on virtual leadership, we examined what it means to lead a team of people who may be united by a common business goal, but whose locations, cultural experiences and work environments are completely disparate.

Among several compelling discoveries, we found that across the world leaders of virtual teams have many common concerns:

1. Virtual leaders feel as if they’re relinquishing control and relying on trust with virtual employees, since it can be difficult to assess whether workers are fulfilling all their responsibilities.
2. Communication can become complicated since there are fewer opportunities for feedback and valuable face-to-face interaction.
3. It becomes more difficult to develop meaningful work relationships that in non-virtual circumstances would otherwise build greater alignment between leaders and workers.
4. Time differences result in fewer windows of opportunity for live interactions by phone, for instance.
5. Leaders also feel ill at ease with cultural differences that may be real or perceived.

As organizations continue to cut costs in response to tough economic times, and opportunities for face-to-face interactions continue to decrease, the realities of virtual leadership continue to resonate among many leaders.

But the point needs to be made: that feeling of being a voice in the virtual wilderness need not be a reality of leading across boundaries. In my next post, I’ll address how leaders can move beyond technology and adopt a simple framework for virtual leadership.

Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida