Leadership Through A Screen: A Definitive Guide to Leading a Remote, Virtual Team

139 Pages·2019·2.101 MB·English

by  Joseph Brady (author) & Garry Prentice (author)

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free trial, or to order, contact: reports, and peer-reviewed journal articles.
[email protected]
Corporate Communication Collection
www.businessexpertpress.com/librarians
Debbie D. DuFrene, Editor
Leadership Through
A Screen

Leadership Through
A Screen
A Definitive Guide to Leading a
Remote, Virtual Team
Dr. Joseph Brady
Dr. Garry Prentice
Leadership Through A Screen: A Definitive Guide to Leading a Remote,
Virtual Team
Copyright © Business Expert Press, LLC, 2019.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means—
electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other except for
brief quotations, not to exceed 250 words, without the prior permission
of the publisher.
First published in 2019 by
Business Expert Press, LLC
222 East 46th Street, New York, NY 10017
www.businessexpertpress.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-94858-096-0 (paperback)
ISBN-13: 978-1-94858-097-7 (e-book)
Business Expert Press Corporate Communication Collection
Collection ISSN: 2156-8162 (print)
Collection ISSN: 2316-8170 (electronic)
Cover and interior design by S4Carlisle Publishing Services Private Ltd.,
Chennai, India
First edition: 2019
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America.
Abstract
Leadership Through the Screen is a business leadership guidebook that tells
a story. The book defines and helps provide key solutions for some of the
greatest leadership challenges facing global managers today. Written in an
easy-to-read manner, each chapter highlights a single issue through the
eyes of a fictional VP of marketing.
The authors have done the research and included it in these pages
so that business leaders do not have to. This book is meant to serve as
a map to help modern managers weave their way through many of the
fundamental challenges of leading people in a global and virtual realm. It
provides the tools, knowledge, and potential solutions these leaders can
use to forge successful and productive virtual teams.
Keywords
virtual teams; team trust; technology; psychological contract; remote
workers; leadership

Contents
Preface ..................................................................................................ix
Acknowledgments ...................................................................................xi
Chapter 1 Setting the Stage ................................................................1
Chapter 2 The Beginning ...................................................................5
Chapter 3 Technology and the Roles Game .....................................13
Chapter 4 The Rocky Road to Trust .................................................23
Chapter 5 No Time to Lose .............................................................31
Chapter 6 Year-End Reviews ............................................................37
Chapter 7 The Emotional Game ......................................................41
Chapter 8 The Invisible Contract .....................................................47
Chapter 9 Filling the Void ...............................................................61
Chapter 10 What Is Job Satisfaction Anyway? ...................................65
Chapter 11 The Cultural Conundrum ...............................................71
Chapter 12 The Lonely, Dark Halls of Isolation .................................79
Chapter 13 An Additional Perspective ...............................................85
Chapter 14 That’s a Wrap ..................................................................91
References ...........................................................................................103
About the Authors ...............................................................................119
Index .................................................................................................121

Preface
Make no mistake, leading a virtual team is tough. It is a proverbial
minefield of technology, feelings, culture, psychology, and human in-
teraction. Anyone can manage a virtual team, but to do it well, that’s
another question entirely! While DQ, or digital intelligence, is an impor-
tant skill to have, it’s certainly not everything. To truly lead and inspire
a virtual team, and not just manage a bunch of remote people trying to
hit their key performance indicators requires definitive skill, leadership,
and personal development. Leadership of a local team certainly has its
challenges, but when you throw in virtual communications, geographic
separation, and major time differences, managing a team of remotely lo-
cated human beings can become a frenzied concerto of mixed feelings,
confusion, and misinterpretations. People who work remotely in isolation
can feel alone, virtual managers can have work/life balance issues and
familial pressures due to long hours, and simple verbal or written misun-
derstandings can have disastrous consequences for the team and possibly
even the company. Not only is electronic or e-leadership a challenge, but
decision making can be slow, and confusion of job roles can slow the pro-
cess down. With all of these difficulties, it’s no wonder that some say 60
percent of virtual teams fail (Witt 2011).
Taking it even further, in a survey of over 1,000 global, virtual man-
agers in 80 different countries, a whopping 98 percent felt content in
their intercultural leadership abilities. However, only 19 percent of virtual
team members felt that their team leadership was actually up to the task
of leading an intercultural team (Virtual Teams Survey Report 2016)! Is
it possible that managers of virtual teams think too highly of their abili-
ties? Are these leaders suffering delusions of grandeur? Or could it simply
be that leading a virtual team involves far greater complexity than meets
the eye?
The purpose of this book is to simplify the lives of those who are
in the position of leading remote, virtual teams. The authors know that
remote team leaders don’t have a lot of time on their plate. Therefore,