By Sharon Daniels
If you have been following this blog (and I thank you for doing so), you know how much time and energy the AchieveGlobal team devotes to leadership research and best practices.
Whether building new training modules, speaking at conferences, or adding insights to various published articles, our mandate is to share information that makes people at all levels of an organization better leaders.
Recently, we have set our sights on developing principles and resources related to virtual leadership. For leaders who seek success in the world of virtual work, there are a multitude of tried and true strategies. While managing technology can help, on a fundamental level, these strategies have less to do with technology and are far simpler than we might imagine. The reality is that behaviors and traits that make leaders successful generally are the same for leaders of virtual workforces.
A recent article in The Public Manager makes this point beautifully. In the Spring 2012 issue of this magazine, AchieveGlobal’s Keather Snyder examined virtual leadership as it relates to the federal government, and pointed to AchieveGlobal’s Six Zones of Leadership, recognizing how each zone applies to virtual leadership:
Reflection
Leaders should examine their own attitudes toward virtual work, and how these affect their capabilities in managing virtual teams.
Society
Strength in this leadership zone means that virtual leaders understand how economic and environmental conditions affect the company and its workforce, and also how the organization impacts these conditions.
Diversity
Virtual leaders embrace gender, ethnic, age, nationality and work style, among other differences, and develop a more nuanced approach than one-size-fits-all. They encourage collaboration among people with disparate talents, backgrounds, and work arrangements.
Ingenuity
Virtual leaders should recognize, and promote, the importance of creative thinking and innovation among teleworking teams.
People
It goes without saying that virtual leaders must place high emphasis on securing commitment from the team, inspiring a distant workforce, and communicating effectively from miles away.
Business
To drive bottom-line results, virtual leaders remain committed to making use of technology and the ability to maximize both synchronous and asynchronous capabilities of virtual work to measure performance and drive productivity and efficiency.
Virtual leadership is not a new discipline but rather a subset of the broader capabilities that make a good leader. Whether managing workers in person or remotely, great leaders use the Six Zones to build satisfied and productive teams.
Sharon Daniels is CEO of AchieveGlobal in Tampa, Florida
