3 Keys To leading A Virtual Team

I have worked in IT for over 30 years, and I thought I had experienced pretty much every situation and working.

At the start of my career, everyone in the team was in the same building, often on the same floor, and sometimes in the same open-plan office. You could see everyone, you could meet anyone, and you could use one of the greatest management tools ever, "managing by walking around".

Then came outsourcing and offshoring, and not only were the people not in the same building, but they were also often not even in the same country and time-zone. This brought some challenges, but there would often be kick-off meetings where we would get together, establish relationships, and build collaboration and cooperation between teams that would lead us to success.

But my last project was something that I had never experienced before, and it presented its own set of challenges. This project was 100% virtual. I worked from 100% home, and I was leading teams in Russia, Serbia, UK, India, Germany, Switzerland as well as the client who was based in the UK and Europe.

I never met a single person on the project in person, in a work capacity, although I did meet one yet that was by complete accident as I was visiting the city he lived in as part of a speaking gig, and so we arranged to go out for dinner. Apart from that zero physical connection with anyone involved in the project.

This is going to be the reality for many of us going forward, and projects are tough enough according to the research the majority of projects fail, and now we don't have the option to see people in person. All of the influence we have to wield has to be done online using tools like Skype, chat, audio conferencing and even email.

So how do we lead in this kind of environment? How do we forge teams, generate commitment, foster collaboration, and cooperation and put ourselves in good position to succeed.

In this article, I want to share the three key things that were instrumental in helping us drive success and deliver one of the companies most critical projects and one of the largest Azure Migrations.

Engage

The first step was to engage the team, and this was done by not only having daily stand up meetings and review meetings but by actually engaging with them. I involved everyone is as many meetings as possible to ensure they knew what was going on, I involved them in discussions, I sought out their input and their thoughts. I got them involved in the project.

I would also make sure that I had regular one-on-one' with them.

Yes, that's right I engaged with them.

That's because the easiest way to drive engagement is by actually engaging with people.

It's a leader's job to drive engagement and we do that by engaging with people. I also made myself accessible, either through chat or skype, letting people know that if they needed anything from me they could reach out.

Why? Because this is them engaging back, and if you close that down then you are actively disengaging them. Now it might only be temporary, but do it often enough, and you can lose them for good,

You have to be proactive, you have to be deliberate and you have to take the time to actively engage. Leadership defines culture, even in a virtual team, and if you are engaged and engaging your team will follow suit.

Empower

Once your virtual teams are engaged the next step is to empower them. To empower teams we have to do a few of things

• Give them a clear area to be responsible for and let them define how they will deliver success in that area. That will get them even more involved and more committed.
• Then we have to give them the tools they need to successfully do the job. Nobody feels empowered or is willing to take accountability if they don't feel they can be successful.
• Then lastly we have to support them and back their decision making. If changes need to be made, then we have to make them, but if not let them manage and run their area as they see it.

Empowered people take ownership and always outperform the unempowered.

Excite

Create some quick wins to show that the overall approach is the right one.

On my project, we migrated some test servers right at the start, it wasn't critical from a technological perspective, but it was critical to the overall success of the project.

Why? Because it reinforced the process, it showed people that they had the capability to succeed and it helped build their confidence.

Quick wins reinforce that you can, and will be successful, it works to keep the team not only engaged but it will excite them as it will strengthen their belief and confidence.

Provide recognition, give credit and positive feedback and progress as made, as that will make people feel good about themselves and the project.

Keep reporting progress, showing the success that being made as that will keep them engaged and drive the project over the finish line.

By just taking care of these three simple things it helps you to build engaged, empowered and excited teams, even in a 100% virtual environment, that delivers amazing results!