Leadership with International Virtual Teams

The last few months I've read a couple of interesting articles on Leadership. Different analogies were made with styles of leadership deployed by coaches in the Premier League (BBC), the Working Parents Guide (Nadim Saad) and many referrals to the Art of War from Zun Tsu and numerous quotes. Maybe its the time of year, in business budget planning for 2017 and closing 2016, in sports start of the soccer seasons, for students start of the academic year. Usually during the summer break I have a personal tradition to catch up on my reading including some management books.

A sample of summer readings over the years: Jack Welch and the GE Way (2000) by Robert Slater, The Tipping Point (2000) by Malcolm Gladwell, Good to Great(2001) by Jim Collins), Execution (2003) by Larry Bossily and Ram Charan, The Black Swan (2007) by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Switch (2010) by Chip & Dan Heath, How Google Works (2015) by Eric Schmidt just to name a few. Some of these books provide new content and context or a refresh or really new ideas.

The Traditional Business World

For almost 35 years I've held various global and regional leadership positions in mid-size and large international companies. A few personal success factors are: 

• Positive and constructive reinforcement overrules ongoing criticism or narcism
• Demonstrate empathy, engage, be a good listener, show competence, challenge what needs to be challenged
• Execute swift and effective, in good and difficult situations. Momentum is important and problems don't improve by ageing!
• Culture, background and history matters as well  as regional differences matters. Leadership in a global world is not one size fits all. Agility and flexibility are key assets!

The New Virtual World

During the last ten years I have experienced a growing requirement for mastering leadership in a virtual world. In todays environment people are usually working in different locations and in my case spread around the world. Teams operate in an organisation where people in various teams are linked to you with a business purpose and without a hierarchical connection, thus no management authority or simply said no direct power. So the question is what are the enablers for successful collaboration with virtual teams in a global world? Creating a favourable environment enabling to influence and stimulate individuals and teams is crucial.

Key success factors are:

• Leadership and their teams/individuals must achieve agreements on objectives and end-goals 
• Teams should have a real Mode of Operations with reasonably clear rules of engagement. Thus how we make decisions, stakeholder involvement, reporting, info-sharing, feedback-loops etc 
• Success and achievements must be championed by the Virtual Team and consequently critical stakeholders, in and outside the organisation and the Company 

As a leader one must make serious and consistent efforts to connect, build relationships, foster peer to peer collaboration, identify specialist, recognise the "passionate" few and over-communicate. To be really effective its critical to develop "Trust" within the virtual community, demonstrate empathy, recognise people and their achievements, provide guidance and at times on-hands support.

Companies are carefully looking at e.g. real estate costs to host the workforce in an office, commuting is taking time away and there is a costs related thus home working or shared office spaces through wet-desk etc are the norm today and will most likely stay for a long while.

In conclusion: I totally tried to practice my leadership success factors from the "old days" into todays world