Virtual projects often include the collaboration of multiple organizations or employee-client relations through; which leaders lost the ability to influence the workers, and hence use information; and also communication achieve by the change in management principles
Leadership in Virtual Teams;
A virtual team is a group of individuals who exist geographically dispersed, and cross-functional and work on highly interdependent and collaborative tasks. Virtual Team Building Activities managing working life cycle
For me leading virtual teams requires all the leadership and project management skills
Challenges faced by Virtual Teams;
The virtual teams have different and greater challenges than the traditional workplace environment; Also, The working lines will cross over geographic locations, boundaries, cultures, networks, and alliances. Since the virtual teams are very diverse, they have a very unique set of problems rather than collocated teams. “The virtual teams face the issues of trust, communication, goal alignment, shared purpose, skills, resource availability, and role clarity”. The virtual team has to overcome the following external and internal challenges.
External factors are outside the control of a virtual team; and the team has to find a way to manage them for example, distance, time, and technology. Internal factors are those that will be within the control of a virtual team; the team can directly influence or interact with these factors
The Maintenance of cultural identity, a brand of employment, and employee-manager satisfaction requires consistent and regular communication. Leadership skills are necessary for virtual work. According to O’Neill, Lewis, & Hambley, generally, leadership includes in virtual teams a strong focus on relationships, emotional intelligence, a track record and innovation, a focus on process and outcome, and the ability to give positive and constructive feedback. “In the virtual organizations, the role of leaders tends to shift from one of the controllers to one of coordinator or coach and organizations must promote trust and working relationships”.
Diversified Leadership Roles in Virtual Teams;
According to Chen, Yang, & Tsou, diversified leadership roles influences both leadership effectiveness and team trust. Some factors that influence the team’s effectiveness are team trust, propensity, and leadership effectiveness. The researchers also found that trust mediates the relationship between both leader and team effectiveness.
Synchronous ICT ( Information and Communication Technology) tools can be different in terms of social presence and information richness and text, audio, and video-conferencing systems are classified under these tools. From e-mails, discussion forms, and bulletin boards, to workflow, scheduling, and other project management applications the ICT tools vary in wide ranges. The success of the virtual teams is a clear purpose, goals always should be measurable; an appropriate number of individuals in the team, establishment of guidelines, communication, decision making, and processes.
The behavioral complexity theory stressed the importance of leaders in improving their team effectiveness through their diversified leadership roles. The roles of leadership categorize into three types they are, interpersonal contact, information processing, and decision making. The type of challenges such as ICT-enabled communications, cross-cultural communications, global logistical design, and technological complexity are more prevalent in virtual teams. “Diversified leadership roles, leadership effectiveness, and propensity to trust all positively influence team trust, in turn; will contribute to two types of indicators of team effectiveness, performance, and satisfaction”.
Building Trust and Cooperation;
Project managers are the key
The descriptive findings of the study suggest that it is important to adapt to the new technology frequently; According to Thomas & Bostrom The leaders failed to recognize technology adaptation although they recognized inherent tradeoffs. Information and communication technologies usage failures will have a domino effect on productivity; this means if the leaders fail to influence the team members and lost control over management power the whole team mechanism will lose its balance.
Other things;
Hence leaders can affect the team’s outcomes by managing adaptions of their team information and communication technology. “Project managers doing virtual projects must look at the big picture and not micromanage”. The leader of the virtual team should ensure standards stand met; and they should intervene with the team’s activity when there is a problem, like non-compliance with standards.
They get to know every team member and learn how to motivate them and communicate preferences. It is suggestive that the people are happier when they exist left alone to do; their work and team empowerment stood positively related to process improvement and customer satisfaction and vice versa. The project leaders first should understand clearly the project and the objectives they are working on. After that, they have to determine the essential skills required for the projects to select the subordinates. Trust stands developed through guidance, not by micromanaging.
Leadership in Self-Managed Virtual Teams;
In most organizations, virtual teams are typically project-based with a limited time of life span and few deliverables. These teams exist as self-managed and do not have any designated leader to lead those teams. “In this electronic context, might be better viewed as a collective effort distributed among team members characterized by the sharing and rotating of leadership roles”. Although teams typically do not have any leader assigned these teams will have external supervision. Within such teams, we can find diverse qualities of leadership behaviors exhibited by team members. The study was conducted on 22 virtual teams; which had undergraduate students from three universities, these experiments had diffusion threats and time threats to external validity.
Because the communication exchanges among high-performance teams stand characterized by a high level of directive leadership and the behaviors exhibited among the teammate by leaders were persistent over time. For me, this research gives a better idea that the Article focused more on identifying emergent leadership behavior. It found that leadership behavior stood strongly associated with the performance of these self-managed teams.
The author suggests that shared monitoring and concentrated producing behaviors were more likely to exhibit by high-performing teams. Subordinates exhibit leadership behaviors early in the team’s life; which are more predictive of success than those exhibited later during the process of emergence. “The two likely bi-products of the shared commitment to high-quality team outcomes are better relational development and greater trust among team members”. To ensure the self-managed teams are more successful both individual and collective leadership behaviors play a major role.
Model of Conflict, Leadership, and Performance in Virtual Teams;
Virtual teams are common in large organizations nowadays and more professional employees believe to work or already worked on virtual teams during their careers. These virtual teams stood dispersed geographically and culturally to facilitate the organization; with round-the-clock work and to allow qualified professionals from all over the world. These virtual teams may use for R&D, customer service, etc. Since the virtual teams have great diversity than collocated teams; these virtual teams tend to have more conflict within the team.
This study mainly concentrates on the model of conflict, Leadership, and the performance of virtual teams with conflict. The leaders are subject to Quinn’s model of leadership and evaluated for their performance concerning conflict solving skills. The data for this study stood collected from the virtual team members employed by a major U.S telecommunication corporation and virtual team members representing five firms in Korea. The firms and their location stood chosen based on the researcher’s contacts.
More things;
The test measurements were based on hypotheses of different models like The monitor role and task conflict, Use of technology-mediated communication, leadership role and team conflicts, Coordinator role and process conflict, Mentor role and relational conflict, Facilitator role, and form of conflict and leadership roles and leader effectiveness, leader effectiveness, and team performance. All the teams stand subjected to participate in electronic communications like emails, group discussions, messaging, and video conferences. The team’s leaders will virtually guide the teams to resolve the conflicts between the team members.
This research stands motivated by an interest in understanding how team leaders can effectively manage conflicts
Transformational and Transactional Leaders;
Ruggieri stated that the effects of transactional and transformational leadership
The results suggest that both transformational and transactional leadership perceived equally positive figures; Transformational leaders are intelligent and sensitive in many aspects of their leadership roles. Some of the leaders exist oriented more towards developing the relations of the subordinates rather; than focusing on the goal of the team, these exist known as charismatic leaders. They concentrate more on the future and development of the workgroup. Since these leaders involve in developing personal relations and exist future-minded; they tend to induce a more positive attitude in subordinates and motivate them toward goal achievement. Apart from being intelligent, these leaders stand stuffed with more creativity and originality.
On the other hand;
Some of the leaders stand more tasks oriented rather than focusing on building relations; they exist self-esteemed and authentic about the job definition
Transformational leadership includes nourishing and empowering followers. Since transformational leaders tend to show charismatic behaviors, these leaders can become role models to their followers. Transformational leaders encourage others and celebrate their accomplishments. In the end, transformational leadership induces a positive attitude in minds of followers making them feel better overall and increasing their contributions to achieving common goals. Transformational leadership is more efficient than other types of leadership due to its authentic factors like motivation and trust, whereas other types of leadership will have some sort of inconsistency and trouble maintaining the relations with the subordinates.
The Effects of Leadership Style and Communication Medium;
The authors explained the process briefly with their outcomes and effects on the subordinates in the teams. Also, Leaders lead the teams virtually by using communication technology as a medium where the subordinates are geographically isolated. The purpose of the study is to evaluate
Since all the teams are handled virtually the communication between the team members will be in different kinds like text messaging, emails, video conference, teleconference, discussion, and many more. Also, This study gives a better idea of how the leaders are approaching the team members; and the type of interactions used by them to get the job done. The study stood conducted with 30 graduate and undergraduate students from the department of psychology acting as participants in six experimental conditions.
The purpose of this study is to evaluate the leaders by conducting experiments in all possible conditions and ensure; that all the leaders are successful with the teams and typically time
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