Leading a Virtual Team

World is moving towards becoming more and more virtual. Organizations are deploying a virtual workplace model since it has many significant benefits. The team members in a virtual team can be from various dispersed locations but connected through communication technologies. Virtual teams come with their own unique set of challenges. Establishing trust, ensuring collaboration, instilling ownership and accountability as well as making the geographically-dispersed team members feel a part of a single ‘team’ are just some of them. If these challenges don’t get addressed in a timely manner, the virtual team may not be able to produce effective outcomes.

While organizations are adapting to this new way of working, the key question is - are the leaders and managers ready to lead virtual teams? Ensuring that the team members work together effectively and collaborate while working virtually, has become a critical management skill. This course is intended to exactly do that – prepare current and future leaders to manage virtual teams effectively.

This course focuses on all key elements of setting up and managing a virtual team. In this course, we will cover:
• Types of virtual teams and what makes any team a virtual team
• Key elements of difference of a virtual team against a physically co-located team
• Pros and cons of a virtual team which should be considered for taking any decision
• The concept of ‘distance’ in a virtual team scenario and how to manage the effects of it
• Step-by-step approach across the 5 key stages of life-cycle of any virtual team – from initial preparation and setting it to disbanding the team
• Identifying the right people, sizing the team right as well as defining the roles of the team members correctly
• Establishing the right culture – fostering trust and encouraging open dialog as well as clarifying roles and responsibilities
• Establishing the right contact and communication touch-points
• Using technology to enable performance, productivity and collaboration
• How to instill the most important factor of teamwork - Trust - within the team members in a virtual setting
• Key challenges that any leader of a virtual team faces and how to address them
• Ideas around establishing seamless flow of communication within the team
• Tested ways to improve productivity of team members
• Best practices which have delivered successful results
• Mindset shifts required for making the virtual team model successful
• Key processes that need to be established
• Techniques for harnessing the creative energy of the team
• How to manage various kinds of diversity within the team
• Strategies and tactics for managers to make things work in a much shorter span of time

We have added a bonus module on tips for team members who are working virtually. The course also offers many practical tools and templates which you can download and start using immediately.

This course does not cover the reviews or features of the technology platforms and products which are available in the market. This is by design, since the technology changes very quickly. Also, the inherent technology and system architecture for your organization may be very different from what may be recommended in any course and that may lead to practical difficulty. However this course does cover the key processes and factors that need to be worked upon, which can be enabled by any technology that you may be using/ planning to use.

Our team of experts has carefully curated the course content utilizing cutting-edge research as well as drawing out insights from our decades of experience of working in a virtual team setting. We are sure that you will draw lot of value out of this course.

See you in the course!

Regards,
Team Wizdom