Today, managing a virtual team is the standard. Team leadership is an important part of achieving the objectives of an organization and coaching can be the ideal tool to ensure your team members are performing to their highest potential. The challenging part can be in effectively managing at a distance. Fortunately, the various modes of technology can provide us with the capability to diminish a fair amount of the distance. The key is utilizing the available resources to achieve the desired effect.
The characteristics of a virtual team are the same as an onsite team. In a virtual team, goals and measurements are especially important in ensuring everyone is focused on the end result. Using a proactive coaching approach will also enable you to make individual observations throughout the progress of the project. Proactive coaching includes coaching at the initiation of projects, throughout the duration of the project and at the end of the project. Since face-to-face meetings are not always possible, it is important to incorporate other meeting techniques such as SKYPE, instant chat, teleconference etc. One important aspect is to ensure you are actively engaging with your team members to ensure when a problem arises or before a problem arises, you have had enough interaction with the individual to be able help them come up with a viable solution. This can be challenging for virtual managers.
One client, a manager of a technology company was forced to be out of the office on a regular basis and his team of consultants was required to be at various client sites on a regular basis. He was concerned with becoming an ineffective leader since he thought it may be difficult to integrate an ‘open door’ policy into his management style. He believed that having regular interaction with his team would enable him to stay abreast of pending issues and coach his team through challenging situations when necessary. He also wanted his team to feel comfortable with coming to him with issues even if he wasn’t in the office on a regular basis. With the various technology programs available, he built an ‘open door’ policy into his virtual management style with Skype time and instant chatting. He regularly encouraged his team to reach out to him when he was ‘on line or in the office’ and he made it a point to incorporate ‘on-line/in-the office’ time into his day. He also scheduled regular meetings via conferences, SKYPE, instant chat and quarterly in-person meetings to ensure he was staying in touch with his team in order to provide suggestions, recommendations and coaching.
Virtual teams are the norm and each team is uniquely different. Some teams have a larger distance and more variables amongst their members. The landscape is challenging for managers today but a proactive coaching approach utilizing the various technological systems and programs can ensure team members are performing to their highest potential and teams are achieving bottom line goals to meet organizational objectives.
