Leading Virtual Project Teams

Adapting Leadership Theories and Communications Techniques to 21st Century Organizations

Margaret R. Lee

• Publisher: Auerbach Publications
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781000364378
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business Communication
• Index: Business

The second decade of the 21st century has brought unprecedented challenges to traditional workplaces. The global pandemic has forced the advance of working from home and telework. Individuals with little or no background or training in e-leadership, virtual project management, or virtual team management suddenly found themselves in the environment of virtual work.

Leading Virtual Project Teams, Second Edition addresses the challenges that today's virtual project management environment poses to traditional methods of leadership and communication. Leadership for successful virtual team management is different from that for traditional, collocated project team management. Explaining appropriate e-leadership styles for virtual project teams and the transition toward new leadership styles, the book is filled with communication techniques for leading virtual project teams. It helps project managers develop e-leadership competencies needed to successfully deliver projects in today's organizations. The second edition also examines:

• Virtual meeting techniques
• Inclusive language
• Managing virtual relationships
• Why virtual work is now more important
• The work-at-home environment

By recognizing how virtual teams are different from traditional teams, those managing virtual projects may be able to offer benefits to their organization by providing positive, successful leadership and exceptional communications, resulting in better project deliverables and products. This book provides an approach that explores all facets of e-leadership—from how traditional leadership theories and models can be applied by 21st century leaders to providing methods by which the virtual project manager can enhance virtual project communications to meet the needs of our modern global business world. It features project management checklists and templates and includes business cases, best practices, and tools and techniques for virtual project management communications.

Chapter 1

Understanding Virtual

Overview

Chapter 1 begins by reviewing basic virtual terminology, the different types of virtual teams (networked, parallel, product, work or production, service, action, and offshore) and terms that define virtual employment such as telework or telecommuting, work from home or working at home (WFH or W@H), mobile work, remote work, and remote-flexible or flexible work. It discusses the internal human resource factors, internal financial factors and external factors affecting the movement from traditional work environments to virtual organizations – including reduction/restructuring/relocation strategies, global competition, pandemics, climate change, and economic collapse. The challenges – communications, cultural teams, interpersonal, technological, and economical – of leading multicultural, global organizations are presented in this chapter. Case studies that help provide real-world application to virtual challenges, templates and “Food For Thought” sections are featured in the following chapters throughout this book.

Introduction - Virtual Terminology

Knowing the definitions of terms such as projects, virtual, virtual project leadership, and e-leadership is important to the basic premise of leading virtual project teams. Recently, a group was discussing virtual team leadership, and one individual asked what that meant. His understanding of the term virtual was “not real or existing, hypothetical, or impossible.” Determining leadership of something that was not real did not match his contextual background.

It is fundamental to define and understand specific terms to begin a conversation about organizations that embrace virtual projects. “A project is a temporary endeavor undertaken to accomplish a unique product, service, or result” [1] with a definite beginning and end. A successful project is defined as a project that is implemented on time, on budget, and with the required quality level defined by the customer(s) [2]. The Project Management Institute's definition is similar and states that project success is measured by “product and project quality, timeliness, budget compliance, and degree of customer satisfaction” [3].

The project manager or project leader is responsible for leading the project team to the conclusion of the project. The project manager uses tools, skills, and techniques gained through the study of project management to successfully meet the requirements of the project and complete the project on time, in scope, within budget, and to the satisfaction of the key stakeholders and sponsors.

Ariss, Nykodym, and Cole-Laramore [4] define a virtual team as a group of skilled individuals who communicate electronically. Virtual organizations reflect the ever-evolving nontraditional work environment of the 21st century, with virtual team members collaborating from geographically distant locations [5]. These virtual teams share a common work, product, or project goal and work together—often without physical interaction [6]. Virtual organizations are proliferating in business today and will continue to become more popular in the future [7]. Even though many organizations and industries have managed projects successfully for decades using a distributed model via regional offices or the use of subcontractors, the explosion of the Internet and electronic communications has brought virtual project management and organizations to the forefront in today's business environment. Virtual organizations consist of employees who are not collocated and work from anywhere in the world, allowing the organization to operate globally and without brick-and-mortar boundaries.

Virtual teams can be further defined organizationally as matrix, virtual reporting, or extended [8] models. In a matrix team, individuals work across functional silos and have multiple reporting lines and competing goals. In virtual reporting teams, individuals may spend only a portion of their time working on the team and are members of multiple teams. In extended teams, the team may include customers, suppliers, or partners outside the organization who need to collaborate effectively. Virtual teams can also follow a traditional virtual model, defined by team members who are geographically dispersed doing common work with a shared product or project goals. Virtual teams can then be defined even further by type [9, 10]:

Networked—diverse and fluid work, with membership changing often, internal and/or external team members

Parallel—short-term work, distinct membership, internal and/or external team members

Product—work has a defined beginning and end date and is usually longer term, members may move on and off the project as needed by skill set but team boundaries are clear, defined membership

Work or production—ongoing work done electronically, with functional, defined membership

Service—continuous customer service or support work done electronically, with functional, defined membership

Action—work as needed (emergency response) and usually immediate, specialized and team boundaries are unclear, fluid or defined membership

Offshore—continuous customer service or support, software development, specialized, defined membership

Figure 1.1 provides a graphic illustration of the organizational models and types of virtual teams as defined above.

Figure 1.1Chart of organizational models and types of virtual teams.

Managers can be categorized as traditional (not managing virtual employees), virtual (managing only virtual employees), or a hybrid (managing a combination of traditional and virtual employees). Garton and Wegryn [11] suggest that although traditional management remains the primary form of management, certain industries are seeing traditional management decline and virtual or hybrid managers becoming the norm. Traditional does not suggest old-fashioned or wrong. The 21st century traditional manager is collocated with the employees but probably uses electronic communications such as e-mail, instant messaging, cloud-based databases, and other tools to manage. In the collocated team the traditional manager often becomes the primary spokesperson for the project and is clearly in control of the project. However, many organizations recognize that some work needs to be centralized and other work can be virtual or outsourced.

Hybrid teams are prevalent in organizations and are the most common type of virtual team. Leaders of hybrid teams face the challenge of being competent at managing both traditional collocated team members and virtual, global team members—and must be able to demonstrate success with both styles of leadership. The hybrid leader is seen as the primary contact in the collocated environment but needs to recognize that in the virtual environment, leadership is typically shared among team members based upon skill or task. A completely virtual manager works entirely remotely, as do all members of the project team, using only electronic means to communicate and holding virtual team meetings. The truly virtual manager shares control and authority with the team members and leads facilitative and administrative functions as well as integrates the work, motivates, builds trust and relationships, and ensures communication among the project team members.

Several terms are used to describe virtual team's activities. All the terms define employment that is performed by the employee from an approved, alternate worksite by communicating within and for the company electronically or by phone. The worksite could be the employee's home, a telework center, or any location other than the standard office location. Terms used include: telework or telecommuting, work from home or working at home (WFH or W@H), mobile work, and remote wo...