Communicating Well with Your Virtual Team

Kenneth has 14 years of healthcare experience in government and private industry. Over eight years of experience managing healthcare IT projects, operations, contracts, and personnel. His work experience includes project management, contracts and procurements, data analysis, claims adjudication, business writing, and business process modeling. Kenneth was certified in 2006 as a Project Management Professional.

  Communications Management   Talent Management   Teams  

As the project manager, you are dealing with schedules, deadlines, clients, stakeholders, risks and a host of other problems. But most essential to your success is the team that is actually doing the work on the project. In many cases, that team is virtual or working remotely. They might be located in a different office or they might be teleworking one or more days in the same town.

While these types of work arrangements can be wonderful for employees by making them more productive and more satisfied in their jobs, they also create some challenges for the project manager in the area of communication. In order to keep the team happy, the project manager should make sure they can communicate well with the team by remembering what communication is and what it is not.

Communication is Two Way
The most important thing about communication is that it must be two way. If the project manager is sending out loads of emails and hosting phone calls but is not practicing good listening skills with the virtual project team, then he is not being very effective at managing the project. He is not getting any feedback on what is going on with the project team, and that creates a situation where decisions can go horribly wrong.

Imagine the project manager who does not realize that everyone on the project team is having trouble understanding the client requirements and yet still …

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