10 Core Principles for Leading a Virtual Team

Below is a summary of an interview with Michael Watkins on Cheddar — a live and on-demand news network broadcast daily from the New York Stock Exchange.

Cheddar: Focusing on collaboration within a business as technology evolves. Creating a virtual team can be beneficial to your company, but what are some of the things a company needs to understand before it goes virtual?

MW: The most important thing is to understand that there really is a cost to operating as a virtual organization. Yes, there are tremendous benefits and lots of efficiencies to operating virtually, but the richness of the communication gets lost and it’s relatively easy for people to lose focus. So, you need to understand that your fundamental approach to doing work has to change in a virtual collaboration environment.

Cheddar: How do you cultivate company culture when you are remote—when you aren’t physically present in the office?

MW: It means you need to communicate in a different way and be more disciplined in the types of communication you use. The culture of an organization is not so much what the CEO says or does, but fundamentally what behaviors are incentivized in an organization. Most often, you see things go wrong when the wrong types of behaviors are incentivized. So, as you put a collaborative system in place—whatever that mix of knowledge and data management systems, collaborative platforms, video sharing, etc., is—you need to focus on the fundamental basis of incentives you put in place (e.g., how is work structured, what is going to be valued). You often have to create a new language for the organization, because when you have people coming together across geographic and cultural divides, you need to create a shared language that operates across those boundaries.

Cheddar: This raises a question about the core principles that help companies collaborate. What are those?

MW: If you are creating a virtual team, ideally you should get the team together physically, early on. However, that may not always be possible. Either way, you need to be clear about what the task structure is and what the processes are because in a virtual environment you will be adjusting as you go. You need to be sure that you have the best set of technologies for the job and that everyone is operating with the same technologies. You need to be sure you are being equitable across your team and, for example, not relegate everyone in Singapore to midnight video conferences. You need to be sure the underlying set of connections get made in a non-work sense—I call it creating a “virtual water cooler” for people to gather around to get to know and understand each other on a person level. And most importantly, you have to foster a sense of shared leadership. Everyone has to step up in a virtual environment and be willing to take on part of the leadership burden.

Ten core principles for effective virtual collaboration:

1. If possible, get team together physically early-on
2. Clarify tasks and process, not just goals and roles
3. Commit to a communication charter
4. Leverage the best communication technologies
5. Build a team with rhythm
6. Agree on a shared language
7. Create a “virtual water cooler”
8. Clarify and track commitments
9. Foster shared leadership
10. Don’t forget the 1:1s

About Cheddar

Cheddar is a live and on-demand video news network focused on covering the most innovative products, technologies, and services transforming our lives. The network covers this news through the lens of the companies and executives driving these changes.

A unique and live approach to news in technology, media, and entertainment, Cheddar is broadcast daily from the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, with exclusive CEO and founder interviews, and profiles of the technologies and companies transforming our lives.