Leadership Leading Teams Differ From

Leadership Leading Teams Teams differ from other type of groups in that members are focused on a joint goal or product, such as a presentation, completing an exercise, taking notes, discussing a topic, writing a report, or creating a new design or prototype. A team is a group all working towards the same goal (What is a team, 2007). Managers are often used to closely monitoring the work of their team members and imparting new skills by working side by side with them.

If this is the case they often struggle significantly when they work in a virtual management situation. The manger often feels as if he is not in touch and cannot hold team members accountable for their work. Team leaders often find that their management style, based on certain cultural assumptions, may not align with the various team members' expectations of leadership. Differences along these dimensions can be a reflection of country, functional, regional, corporate, and other cultures (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009).

When a team leader can better understand their own work style and how it is similar to and different from team members and how that impacts team performance, they can then build concrete strategies for bridging the gap. Strategies that foster the skill of style switching have proven critical in leading virtual, global teams. As the leader increases their skills in bridging the differences and modifying his leadership style, he builds the ability to leverage the diversity in the team as an asset (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009).

When global teams are formed, issues often emerge such as how to divide work between sites and how to handle organizational resistance. Frequently, individuals believe their jobs are threatened; they experience a loss of control over the overall success of their work, and they fear the possibility of being relocated internationally. These feelings of alienation make building strong relationships and building trust within teams even more difficult. When teams are located all in one place, they are able to build relationships informally through their daily activities.

With global, virtual teams the lack of this relationship building time is especially challenging for team members whose work style is more relationship than task oriented (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009). There are several things that team leaders can do to increase the level of trust and the strength of relationships within their teams. One of the strategies that team leaders can use to build cognitive trust is to create a clear vision, and roles related to that vision, that bind a team together.

The team leader can also add to the cognitive trust of the team by giving team members data on why the team members were chosen to be a part of the team, information about the qualifications (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009). When members of virtual, global teams are asked about the challenges they face, one of the most common complaints is about time zones. There is a constant flow of communication at all hours of the day and night.

Team members often have to deal with the challenges of creating work life balance while scheduling conference calls at midnight to accommodate team members in different locations. Time zone differences can be a team's greatest asset as long as it is used to enable a project or goal to progress consistently as it is passed from team members in one time zone to another. One of the greatest challenges leaders face in enabling this to occur is streamlining the handoffs from one team member to another (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009).

Some best practices that leaders can use to better manage this challenge include: having a well-documented processes that enable team members to understand the context of what has happened in the process prior to their involvement, and to anticipate what will happen in the process when they pass it on to another team member a well-defined decision-making sequence so it is clear who should be involved in what types of decisions clarification of who needs to be consulted about what and informed of decisions that affect the overall work of the team (Leading Virtual Teams, 2009).

When managing problems in a team setting it is important to use situational analysis by focusing on what is the most important program that the group faces. The next step is to undergo problem analysis which focuses on what are the causes of the problem. The third step is to use solution analysis which focuses on what is the best solution for the problem. Lastly one should do implementation analysis which focuses on how to implement the chosen solution (Long, 2009).

In each of these four phases one should use both divergent thinking and convergent thinking in order to ensure that all angles have been considered before moving onto the next phase. Divergent thinking is used in order to block to the search for.