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Training Course Summary:

Are you managing a team of people who do not directly report to you?
• Are members of your team spread across the country / Europe / World?
• Are there cultural ‘tribes’ within your team?
• Need to communicate and manage / lead in a consistent way that takes account of individual needs?
• Want to improve your credibility and trustworthiness?

If the answer is “YES” - this is the course for you!

Virtual team-working is already commonplace across EMEA, North America and Asia Pacific and is rapidly becoming essential as organisations work in an increasingly collaborative way: both internally and externally with suppliers, customers and channel partners.

The course is facilitative in style, delegates get a chance to see things from the ‘remote perspective’ as well as the ‘centre perspective’ and come up with solid action plans to ensure their teams never feel remote no matter how far away they are geographically. We use case studies to practice identifying and switching styles to suit specific audiences (be they German to Indian, Sales to Finance!)

How will my company benefit?

Bennis (leadership author) says many staff feel that they are “over managed and under led”. Management is more pressing and demands constant attention leadership is vital to sustained progress but by definition must be proactive. Teams who do not feel the presence of their leader will often acquire greater allegiance to local peers and managers. Those with strong virtual leadership will feel involved and engaged with the rest of the team and their shared goals, this will mean greater performance and less misunderstandings.

How will I benefit?

Knowing how to create a team environment - despite challenges from geography, time zones, culture, lack of reporting lines, authority etc - will free you up to get on with people as individuals and drive performance. Leaving you less stressed and better informed in the process. You will gain more recognition for what you do.

Pre-Requisites:

This course will help you if you manage remote teams in different locations as well as if you have virtual teams who do not report directly to you.

Training Course Overview/Content:

Introduction and welcome

You will meet other delegates in a similar position to yourself.
An experienced, friendly trainer will ensure the course focuses on the particular skills you want to develop.

Virtual team working

We look at the difference between leading and managing and define what we mean by remote and virtual teams.

Drawing on the messages we will then apply this knowledge to define the role of the team leaders in the virtual team environment, and identify some of the potential benefits and pitfalls of working in virtual teams.
Global cultural perspectives

This session will explore the impact of culture on effective team working. Simple models will be introduced that will remind you about the cultural patterns you may have picked up on already. It explains how cultures differ and what you can do in terms of anticipating and adapting to these differences.

You will build appreciation and understanding of personal qualities needed to thrive in the global environment.
Departmental tribes
We explore how group think’ occurs and what to do to break out of it. We also look at the values / needs of various departments and how that causes conflict and misunderstanding between them.
Communicating with individuals
We will look at Learning Styles and how people differ in what they need in order to learn, we also discuss various NLP models and theories of motivation to understand how differently people are motivated. You will look at skills in active listening and a questioning technique to ensure you quickly drill down to the heart of the matter, so that you communicate appropriately to your virtual team.

DAY 2
Build and manage relationships
You will be introduced to the Schutz Model of Work Association and the three main steps to building relationships (Joining and Belonging, Role and Control, Sharing and Caring.) You will explore how this model relates to remote teams in terms of clarity of communication, setting and managing expectations and look at strategies for effective running of a remote team.

Flexibility in leading the remote team
We will use question based tools to assess your leadership and learning styles and use those to assess how you habitually lead and absorb information.

You will then practice flexing your style so that you can communicate and influence within your remote team. This will include discussion around communication strategy,benefits and issues with the media used and keeping a ‘whole team’ perspective.

Team vision
You will spend some time analysing what your team vision is and how to communicate that most effectively.

Applying the learning
Using the issues the team leaders brought with them to the course, interactive session to apply the concepts and learning from the day to these situations and to build SMART action plans for success.