Building Successful Virtual Teams

Typically, a team building program focuses on two elements:

Behaviors:

Identifying and leveraging in order to maximize communication while reducing the potential for conflict and stress.  The focus would be on knowing my dominant behavior and recognizing what I need to do to build and improve the relationships that produce successful outcomes.

The ideal instrument to delve into behaviors (not personalities) is DiSC® from Inscape Publishing.  Each participant would complete a DiSC Personal Profile.

If program delivery is facilitated in a meeting setting, a paper version is practical.  If facilitated electronically – Webinars, etc. – the electronic version of DiSC is recommended.

In both situations, the mornings would be dedicated to understanding and managing behaviors.

Teaming Roles:

Successful teams understand and leverage five roles to ensure quickly moving from forming to productive output.  Successful teams – whether virtual or collocated – have members who know the five roles and ensure that the team has individuals who naturally fill the roles based on their behaviors and strengths or ask team members to adapt into a role.  The five roles include:

• Creators who generate new ideas and fresh concepts.
• Advancers who communicate new ideas and carry them forward.
• Refiners who analyze ideas for flaws or revise projects systematically.
• Executors who deliver concrete results and seek successful implementations.
• Flexers who have an equal preference for most or all of the roles and can often adapt their styles

To help the attendees understand their teaming strengths and identify when teams are stagnated because a role is missing or being under performed, all attendees complete a Team Dimensions Profile from Inscape Publishing.

The discussion that surrounds completion of the DiSC® during the morning and the Team Dimensions Profile in the afternoon focuses on clarifying and understanding the issues unique to virtual teaming (and virtual leadership).  It is also critical that those attending understand that today’s business environment, with its growing emphasis on global initiatives like outsourcing, needs people who successfully operate in a virtual environment that depends on effective, efficient use of communication issues like email, calendars, reports, time management, telephone usage, teleconference do’s and don’ts, and tracking activities and commitments