Leading Effective Virtual Teams

A proliferation of new technologies has lulled many into thinking that we actually have to think less about how we communicate. In fact, communicating and collaborating across time, distance, and cultures has never been more complex or difficult.

Written as a series of bulleted tips drawn from client experiences and best practices, Leading Effective Virtual Teams: Overcoming Time and Distance to Achieve Exceptional Results presents practical tips to help leaders engage and motivate their geographically dispersed project team members. If you’re a leader of any type of virtual team and want to help your team members collaborate more effectively, then buy this book. You will learn how to:

• Build trust and cultivate relationships, virtually, across your team
• Design and facilitate virtual meetings that are focused and engaging
• Influence without authority
• Motivate and galvanize a virtual team for top performance
• Blend asynchronous and synchronous communications for better virtual collaboration
• Navigate cross-cultural and generational differences in the absence of vital visual cues
• Assess skills, strengths, aptitudes, and preferences from afar
• Handle other tough issues that can trip up virtual teams

The ideas in this book are based on Nancy Settle-Murphy’s decades of experience working as a change management consultant, facilitator, and trainer for project teams around the world. Designed to be read section by section in any order, this book shares approaches and techniques to help you address some of the toughest challenges virtual team leaders face, including keeping team members engaged from afar.

A renowned expert in the fields of remote collaboration, global teams, and managing wide-scale organizational change, Nancy Settle-Murphy is a popular author of articles, white papers, e-zines, and booklets. Her articles have appeared in publications such as The Meeting Professional, Mass High Tech, IT Executive Journal, PM Network, Association Management Magazine, and Intercom.

Drawing from more than two decades of experience in facilitating the work of global teams, Nancy leads highly productive working sessions designed to efficiently and effectively tap the best thinking of key contributors working across time zones, locations, and cultures. Among her recent clients are Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Shell Oil, Greenpeace International, Medco Health Systems, Partners Healthcare, Unilever, and the Consortium for Energy Efficiency. Nancy is an active member of the International Association of Facilitators, the Virtual Facilitators Linked-In Roundtable, Boston Facilitator’s Roundtable, and American Society for Training and Development.

A presenter, trainer, and coach, Nancy parlays her expertise to help answer questions such as:

‧ Under what conditions must we really meet face to face to get work done?
‧ How can we make remote meetings productive amidst chronic multitasking?
‧ How do we engage and motivate virtual team members in times of change?
‧ Can remote teams really cultivate trust when social relationships are not possible?
‧ What communications methods work best for cross-cultural virtual teams?
‧ How can we navigate our way around cross-cultural differences?
‧ What skills are essential for leading virtual teams?

Some of Nancy’s most popular speaking topics include: Facilitating Cross-Cultural Teams, Building Trust Across Borders, Leading Virtual Teams, Planning and Leading Engaging Virtual Meetings, and Jumpstarting a Successful Global Project Team. Nancy is available as a speaker, presenter, writer, and as a source of illuminating content for articles related to virtual teams, global teams, remote collaboration, and managing enterprise-wide change.

Nancy is president and founder of Guided Insights (www.guidedinsights.com), a facilitation, training, and communications consulting firm based Boxborough, Massachusetts, just outside of Boston.