Leading Distance Teams: Results Without Travel

 

"St. Louis, London and Dallas, are you on yet?"

Roll call on conference calls may become a thing of the past with Internet teaming tools such as Sametime, which shows who is participating on the monitor. Microsoft's Exchange Conferencing is another of several anywhere collaboration tools to help remote teams collude. Although these new tools and others provide features to help teams work together from afar, no team can succeed without overcoming the process and people issues.

So how do you manage a team made up of individuals spread all over the nation, or world? If you are leading such a team, and you try to do the back-office management exclusively through calls to individuals, your team won't gel and your deliverables may never materialize. Here are some steps and insights to help.

First, get to know your team. Ask each team member to share their bio, inclusive of what they have to offer the team. If some are shy and fear they don't have enough experience compared to others, encourage them and ensure them that the team needs willing researchers more than it needs arrogant observers. Once your bios are in hand, use this information to establish who has leadership skills and who the tech leaders are likely to be. If you discover experience gaps that need filled, ask team members to nominate someone to fill those gaps. Now you are well positioned for success, but this is …

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