Making Virtual Teams Work: Management Strategies
This paper examines the strategies and characteristics that make virtual team management effective. Drawing on research by Kerber and Buono (2004), Bell and Kozlowski (2002), Combs and Peacoke (2007), and Mindell (1993), the paper argues that successful virtual team managers must function as facilitators and coaches rather than traditional authority figures. Key topics include building credibility and trust with geographically dispersed teams, maintaining member engagement on strategic priorities, distributing leadership responsibilities across the team, and adopting a process-first approach to technology integration. The paper concludes that exceptional commitment and passion on the part of the manager are essential to sustaining above-average performance in virtual work environments.
- Introduction: Overview of virtual vs. collocated team management
- Characteristics of Successful Distance Managers: Trust, accountability, leadership and engagement strategies
- Keeping Virtual Team Members Engaged: Sustaining focus on strategic priorities from a distance
- Technology Implications of Virtual Teams: Process-first approach to selecting collaboration tools
- Conclusion: Leader commitment as foundation for team excellence
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What makes this paper effective
- Grounds its argument in multiple academic sources (Kerber & Buono, Bell & Kozlowski, Mindell) and applies them systematically to each dimension of virtual team management.
- Moves logically from manager characteristics, to member engagement, to technology — creating a layered framework rather than a list of disconnected tips.
- Uses a clear process-first argument to challenge the common assumption that technology alone solves virtual team problems, which gives the paper a distinctive analytical stance.
Key academic technique demonstrated
The paper demonstrates synthesis across sources: rather than summarizing each citation separately, the author weaves Kerber and Buono, Bell and Kozlowski, Combs and Peacoke, and Mindell into a single coherent argument about what makes virtual team management succeed. This is an undergraduate-level skill — using sources as evidence for original claims rather than letting the sources drive the structure.
Structure breakdown
The paper opens with a framing introduction that previews the facilitator-coach model, then devotes its largest section to manager characteristics (credibility, accountability, in-person investment, emotional leadership). A second body section addresses member engagement and the risk of tactical distraction. A third section presents the process-before-technology argument. A brief conclusion ties these threads together around the idea of removing roadblocks so members can excel.
Introduction
Creating virtual work teams nationally or even globally, as opposed to teams that are centralized, requires two fundamentally different organizational strategies, each demanding a different skill set on the part of managers and their staffs. The employees who comprise virtual work teams need higher-than-average levels of initiative, resourcefulness, self-motivation, organization, and effective time management. Kerber and Buono (2004), in their article "Leadership Challenges in Global Virtual Teams: Lessons from the Field," provide an excellent analysis of what it takes to create strong virtual work teams. One of the most important attributes they identify is the level of experience and maturity of team members when those members are located across a broad geographic region. Combs and Peacoke (2007) offer a series of pragmatic insights into the management of virtual teams, including the development of team etiquette and ground rules for making geographically dispersed teams work efficiently.
When the research analyzed for this paper is organized into a framework, the role of the manager for virtual teams emerges as more that of a facilitator and coach than an autocrat. The role of process and communications enabler — a distance learning coach, in effect — is what best practices in managing virtual teams are fundamentally about. Among all the process areas that cause virtual teams to fail, a lack of focus on knowledge transfer and accumulated organizational learning is among the most damaging. Conversely, best practices in managing virtual teams have more to do with enabling and fostering high levels of knowledge sharing and group-level learning. When these processes are integrated into virtual teams, those teams become highly effective at synthesizing information and reacting to it quickly. This paper analyzes the characteristics of successful distance managers and the strategies they use to manage virtual teams.
References
Bell, B. S., & Kozlowski, S. W. J. (2002). A typology of virtual teams. Group & Organization Management, 27(1), 14–49.
Combs, W., & Peacoke, S. (2007). Leading virtual teams. T&D Magazine, 61(2). Retrieved from EBSCO Host.
Kerber, K. W., & Buono, A. F. (2004). Leadership challenges in global virtual teams: Lessons from the field. SAM Advanced Management Journal, 69(4), 4–10.
Mindell, A. (1993). The leader as martial artist: An introduction to deep democracy. HarperCollins.
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