Virtual teams face greater complexity and uncertainty as they strive to overcome the barriers of time, distance, culture, and communications. When successful, virtual teams enable the best talent to come together and amplify energy, competencies, and creativity. However, there are significant challenges to developing highly-effective teams across time zones and cultures. One of the top challenges for virtual team leaders is the critical importance of developing and maintaining trusting relationships across their team. Trust is an essential, if not the essential, ingredient in developing and sustaining strong relationships. For a virtual team, the level of trust is reflected in the confidence and positive expectations teammates have about each other’s behavior and the team leader. Equally critical is how trust develops — especially if you are the leader of a virtual team.
Start with a Mirror
In their report, Trends in Global Virtual Teams, the researchers at CultureWizard identified key challenges to virtual team performance and well-being. Those challenges include team leaders lacking self-awareness resulting in (or being caused by) a strong superiority bias. The numbers tell the story — 98% of self-identified global team leaders said that they were happy with their intercultural leadership skills. Whereas, only 19% of team members…
