Virtual teams

Managing and working in complex environments has become the norm for many organizations.

But all ways of cooperating are not all the same and can come in several ‘flavors’ –  each present their own complexities and challenges in the way people work together:

• Remote: Separated by distance and where most communication is done through technology.
• Matrix: Individuals work across functional silos, have multiple reporting lines and competing goals.
• Virtual reporting: Individuals only spend a proportion of their time working on the activity and are members of multiple teams. The manager may have ‘dotted line’ control over people or may operate purely through influence.
• Global: Bringing the additional challenges of working across cultures and time zones.
• Extended: Increasingly include customers, suppliers or partners outside the organization who need to collaborate effectively.

Because each way of working has a unique blend of challenges, we have  developed a series of modules to address the challenges of cooperating across distance, cultures, time zones, technology, organizational complexity and where we have different levels of formal control over the members of the group.

Training virtual teams

Our training is typically designed for:

• leaders – developing the skills and capabilities to lead these complex teams.
• members – building the skills to work with colleagues in a complex environment.

Training can be run either as an open enrolment skill building program, or with intact teams to help them quickly implement the learning.

You are the expert in your specific needs. We work with you, often using our team benchmarking survey, to identify how your specific group or organization compares with others in our extensive database. Based on this, we can quickly design a program specific your needs, but rooted in our existing intellectual property (IP).

Our  roll-out and implementation support materials enable participants to take the tools back to their real work environment and offers practical support in implementing the tools and concepts from the training to deliver the benefits – fast.

“I was feeling bad that I was only able to get face-to-face once every six weeks. My family were also complaining that I was away so much. I used the CLA tool to drive a discussion of their expectations of me and found that, for many, this was more than they expected. We developed a plan to make sure I was as accessible as they needed me to be, which actually led to reduced travel for me, and more time to spend with my family and the new people who really needed my support.” European Logistics Manager, FMCG.

We can deliver training in highly interactive face-to-face workshops, through a range of technologies including webinar, video and podcast or by training in-house deliverers of the material. (See more about these options in ‘How we deliver’ – above.)

You can also use our benchmarking survey to measure performance before and after our interventions.

Training benefits

The typical benefits of our training include:

• faster delivery of results.
• reduced time and cost spent on unnecessary meetings, emails and other forms of communication.
• improved motivation and confidence in virtual working.

One particular application of our training is our ‘Save a day a week’ program, which focuses on cutting out unnecessary meetings, conference calls, e-mails and controls that can cost each typical team member a day a week in unnecessary work.

“Being the line manager in the simulation was a great learning experience for me. The concept of ‘Community Decay’ was so powerful I have built it into my kick-off event and communication plan. My latest kick-off was much more focused and the team seems to be coming together much quicker this time.” VP Operations, Software Industry

Why not…..?

• Request our white paper ‘Virtual Teams’.
• Request more information or speak to one of our specialists

You’ll find an easy to use form at the right side of this page (on most devices)  to help.

Last updated: May 2013

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