Leading a virtual team is now more commonplace than ever before. This may be your own permanent team, where your team members are spread between offices, countries or even continents, or you may be called upon to lead a special project team whose members span the globe.
If you're lucky, you may get to meet them face-to-face from time-to-time, but despite what the text books say about launching a new virtual team with some face-to-face contact time, in reality - and with increasing cost and environmental pressures - is this honestly going to happen? On a day-to-day basis you are going to have to master the skills of being a virtual team leader who rarely gets to meet their staff, or much less frequently than one would like.
You will not just have to consider time zones or matrix organisational structures, but you could be faced with language and cultural influences too. The challenges of leading a team you actually sit with can be magnified many times when the team is spread across multiple locations. Not only do you have challenges as the leader, but your team members may also not be used to working with colleagues they may never get to meet and a team leader who may only be available to them during a small window of time each day.
This three month development programme will help you to gain the confidence to launch and develop a virtual team that delivers results through the support of a motivated and high-performing group of people. What's more, by participating in this programme entirely online, with fellow participants you are unlikely to ever meet face-to-face, you'll be truly emersed in the issues faced by virtual team leaders. As you learn and work through the programme activities, alongside your day-to-day work, you'll see tangible results back on the job from Day One.
This programme has been specifically designed for those leading virtual dispersed teams, or about to lead a team, together with organisational development consultants who are responsible for supporting virtual team leadership in their organisation.
- To understand the needs of virtual team members
- To show how you can build trust, respect and collaboration
- To look at the stages of team maturity in relation to virtual teams and how to accelerate the progression through to high team performance
- To identify the organisational structures and processes that need to be in place to support and enhance virtual team working
- To identify and use a range of collaboration, communication and knowledge sharing tools to support team processes
- To create and implement action learning goals to improve virtual team leadership
This is a totally online programme, comprising six 90-minute live webinar sessions, spread over a period of four weeks, followed with a two-month period of online coaching and peer networking and support, as you implement your action plan. At the end of this two-month period, there will be a final programme close webinar, where you will return to share your experiences and new best practices and celebrate your achievements. Before and after each webinar you will be expected to undertake additional assignments.
- Week 1 - Session 1
- Week 2 - Sessions 2 and 3
- Week 3 - Sessions 4 and 5
- Week 4 - Session 6
- Weeks 5 to 11 - Implementation of your action plan with online coaching support and peer group support and challenge, together with a collaborative action learning project
- Week 12 - Session 7
During this programme, you will typically cover the following sessions. To read more about each session, click on the session number to reveal the objectives.
Pre-session 1
- Set and share your post-programme goals
- Complete the Your Preferences behavioural preferences assessment to help you get the most from this online development programme and your role as the leader of a virtual team
- Complete a Your Experience of Virtual Teams survey
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Session 1 - Getting to Know You and Your Needs
This important first session will set the scene for the rest of the programme and begin the process of building your new virtual team of fellow participants.
- Introductions
- Working together as learning group
- Overview of programme resources and housekeeping
- Web-safari through course community space - your online home during the programme - and course toolkit
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Pre-session 2
Visit course community space, post up personal profile, and complete other Session 1 assignments
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Session 2 - Effective Participation in Virtual Teams
In this session, you'll make decisions which enable you to treat members of a virtual team in a way which appreciates their diversity, working environment, personal circumstances, roles and preferences. You'll consider a range of alternative participation and leadership strategies to apply in your own working environment.
- Building and maintaining open and trusting team communication
- Team stages and team maturity
- Work-life balance: balancing conflicting demands across cyberspace
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Pre-session 3
- Use the course community space to share knowledge and experience and best practice with your fellow course participants
- complete a teams framework audit
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Session 3 - A Framework for Teams
In this session you'll identify the legal, systems and people frameworks that will secure effective virtual team working amongst your own dispersed team. You will establish any gaps in your own current practice that you need to close. You'll also become familiar with the opportunities and challenges of applying technology solutions to team-based working and identify how they could be applied back at work.
- Risk assessments
- Internal resources that support and sustain virtual team working
- Technology and resources planning
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Pre-session 4
Use diagnostic tools to identify the stage of team formation of your virtual team
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Session 4- Team Spirit and Motivation
In this session, you'll create an action plan that provides your team with an identity and culture which inspires, rewards and recognises high performance within your virtual team. You'll then relate the basic principles of how to translate team working skills to the virtual environment to enable commitment and motivation.
- Define the nature of own virtual team
- Creating a strong collaborative, universally accepted brand and identity
- Issues and obstacles that might emerge in the early (and subsequent) stages of team formation and strategies to manage them
- Assess the effects of the change on the morale of teams and strategies to support the team through change
- Creating a plan for positive reinforcement to sustain high levels of team performance and accomplishment
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Pre-session 5
Session 5- Hands On with Collaboration Tools
During this session and thereafter, you'll be introduced to - and start using - examples of online collaboration tools.
- Managing and sharing knowledge with wikis
- Creative ways of using social networks
- Podcasts, voice messaging, RSS feeds and action planning
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Pre-session 6
- Consider the competencies needed as a virtual team member and leader?
- Work with other course participants to investigate and define a competency framework for virtual teams for your organisation
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Session 6 - Personal Skills and Action Planning
In this sessions, you'll determine the technical, operational and people skills that the team members need to acquire and use in order to collaborate and make effective use of their time. You will identify the competencies required by team members and leaders in a virtual environment and how to develop those skills both personally and in others.
- A competency framework for members of virtual teams
- Measuring your virtual team against the framework
- A routine for finding development opportunities that match the gaps in knowledge and competency of team members
- Develop own ongoing personal development and support and challenge plan
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Pre-session 7 - Collaborative Action Learning Project
After the first six sessions, you will have an online action plan based on the goals you decided at the very start.
With the support of your coach, you will be prompted to review your action plan every couple of weeks and complete a short progress update questionnaire. This process of reflection and planning the next steps will enable you and your coach to keep on track with the implementation of your action plan. If you wish, you can also use the online action plan to maintain a buddy relationship with one or more of the other programme participants.
In addition, to give you the opportunity to work intensively on your virtual team leadership and working skills, you will join forces with the other participants to work on a collaborate action learning project. You will decide on the project theme and scope during the early sessions and you will utilise all the tools made available to you on the programme to help you implement the project. At all times, you'll have the active support of your programme facilitator.
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Session 7 - Programme Close Webinar
At the end of the 12th week of the programme, having implemented your action plan and completed the collaborative action learning project, you will come back together with your fellow participants to review your achievements, examine any barriers you encountered - and how you overcame them - and share any new best practices that you developed. And of course, you'll celebrate your successes!
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£2,450 per person
There is a minimum group size of 8, maximum group size of 16.
This programme runs bi-monthly. You must make sure you can attend all of the six webinars during the first four weeks and the final programme close webinar in the 12th week. You must also have as much time as possible to complete your action plan and be an active partner in the collaborative action learning project during the 2nd and 3rd months.
The next programme begins in May 2008. Contact us for more details.
