Virtual Team Management: A Must-Have Leadership Skill in 2016
Virtual team management is quickly becoming an integral leadership skill to have. Thanks to technology and the Internet, boundaries are shrinking and have increased the tribes of people who can do amazing things from the comfort of their homes.
Virtual offices are a reality.
As a global citizen and business owner, I believe that virtual team management is the skill to develop for 2016 and the years to come.
Knowing how to manage, motivate, inspire, encourage and lead a team of people, none of whom you meet in person or see on an everyday basis, is most definitely challenging when you start.
Do You Need Virtual Team Management Skills?
How do you know if you need to start developing these skills?
Do you really need them, especially if your business doesn’t have a single team member working virtually at this time?
Will it make sense to invest time and effort to learn how to manage remote teams virtually if you’re an entrepreneur and don’t have a team right now?
The answer to all these questions is YES.
Yes, you must know how to manage a remote team even if you don’t have one right now.
Because virtual teams make financial sense for a business, are quick to put together and take very little infrastructure to run.
The need to have a virtual team can come almost overnight and leave you on the back foot if you don’t have the necessary team management skills.
Even if you’re an entrepreneur and run your own ship, in order to grow, you need to hire people. A virtual team is cost-effective since you don’t need an office space with unnecessary overheads.
Knowing how to manage a team that is spread across the globe is most definitely a skill that will come handy when your organization decides to do away with in-office roles, opening the doors to hiring talent from all over the world.
How Do You Learn Virtual Team Management
Let’s say you want to learn how to manage teams virtually, where do you start? (Especially if you don’t have a remotely based team right now.)
You start where you’re at.
You start by reading and soaking in all you can about managing virtually based teams. You communicate it to everyone in your organization and get them excited about the possibilities.
As Simon Sinek says in Start with Why, “Leadership requires two things: a vision of the world that does not yet exist and the ability to communicate it.”
So, if virtual teams do not yet exist in your world right now, envision them and share them.
Start here for actionable strategies on working remotely and let it grow from there.
Have questions? Email me at info@drnasrine.com, ask me in the comments below or on Facebook.
