NetDynam 2.0

VB: What are some of the key skills required of team leaders and facilitators of virtual teams?

Jill Nemiro: Well, first of all, I would have to say that in virtual teams, team members are often required to play many different roles on multiple projects. So a person may be a team member on one project, and a team leader on another, but still be part of the same virtual team. Thus, the skills that team leaders need are really important for all team members. That being said, there are a set of eleven different team member and leader competencies that I lay out in Creativity in Virtual Teams as crucial for effective virtual teamwork.

The competencies include:

• Developing an awareness of yourself and how you interact with others;


• Developing and practicing supportive communication skills;


• Building the ability to communicate effectively across cultures;


• Resolving conflict effectively;


• Problem solving and decision making skills;


• Managing stress because virtual work schedules are often 24/7;


• Time management and personal productivity skills;


• Developing and motivating others – coaching and empowering;


• Utilizing positive political skills to push ideas forward;


• Knowledge management, data gathering, and information access skills; and


• Developing ways to advance one’s career in the virtual workplace.

What is interesting about the skills needed is that they function at many different levels – the individual team member and leader, the team, and the organization. It’s important for individual team leaders and members to be self-aware, manage stress, be personally productive, use positive persuasive and political skills, and develop ways to advance their individual careers in the virtual environment. At the team level, team leaders need to communicate supportively across cultures, collaboratively solve problems and make decisions, help to resolve potential and real conflicts between team members, and motivate and coach virtual team members. At the organizational level, there needs to be systems in place to help team leaders and members manage knowledge and information.

VB: If you were putting together a virtual team what weighting would you put on personality compared to skills? What kind of personalities are most suitable to achieving a highly creative virtual team?

Jill Nemiro: Not all individuals are comfortable, or even want to work in virtual teams. And of course there are many different forms that virtual teams take.

Some virtual teams are composed of people who never meet face-to-face, and some have varying degrees of face-to-face interaction involved. So that would be a variable that might influence the type of personality needed. For those individuals who require, as one of the team members I interviewed shared, “warm, human contact”, being on a team that is totally virtual may be somewhat isolating. On the other hand, another team member I interviewed said she did not require this type of social interaction from work colleagues, and actually rather enjoyed only having contact virtually with her fellow co-workers. She commented that there was less politics involved. So I suppose the degree of interpersonal connection one wants at work would be a factor.

What I think is even more important is a sense of self-discipline and responsibility. Virtual teams require team members who are self-driven, responsible, and proactive. So to go back to your original question about what do I think about personality versus skills in terms of a highly creative team, I’d say that it is extremely important to have members on virtual teams that are self-motivated – especially those in which the level of synchronous and face-to-face communication is limited.

Beyond that, I’d say that the development of the eleven skills I mentioned earlier are much more important than any other personality traits for developing a highly creative and effective virtual team.