Essential Traits and Skills of a Virtual Leader
Organizations increasingly assign virtual teams to adapt to current conditions, trends, and challenges. The virtual form of work has advantages, allowing talent to be found worldwide, reducing the cost of work travel, and making collaboration at different distances easier (Northouse, 2022). Since this approach is relatively new, studying the differences from face-to-face communication is essential. Learning in detail is especially important for leaders who must develop new skills and traits and choose a style to manage virtual teams effectively.
Virtual team leaders should make efforts to change their work. Working from home is conducive to relaxation but has unique stressors, such as work-life balance problems (Mawson, 2020). Leaders should develop skills in using technologies to organize connections between team members, which will be closest in quality to face-to-face communication (Northouse, 2022).
Virtual leaders also need organizational skills to maintain team members’ schedules from various time zones. Finally, it is crucial for leaders to motivate their participants and to use communication and empathy skills to ensure that workers remain committed to their duties (Northouse, 2022). Given the highlighted features of virtual work, leaders should have qualities such as empathy, adaptability, self-motivation, resilience, and organization.
Effective Leadership Styles for Virtual Teams
Since virtual work has unique characteristics, it is essential to determine the leadership styles that are most appropriate for it. Transformational leadership empowers workers, emphasizes the importance of their needs, and seeks deeper motivators (Mawson, 2020). This style meets the requirements of motivating employees and responding to new, unique stressors in a virtual work environment. Moreover, transformational leadership supports trust and social cohesion, which is more challenging to establish in virtual circumstances (Mawson, 2020).
Strategies for Encouraging Employee Return to the Workplace
Trust and open communication will also be helpful when the need to return to the usual form of work requiring a presence in the organization appears. Based on personal experience, it is required to explain the reasons for returning to the office, show examples, and discuss the benefits, such as improving team social ties.
Thus, virtual work establishes new features and calls for teams. As a result, leaders need to pay attention to additional qualities and skills that will help them in such a job. Leaders should use technologies to support employees, find motivation for themselves and the team, and invest much effort in communication. A transformational style may be most appropriate for virtual work, as it maintains social cohesion and can address motivators and challenges in virtual work.
References
Mawson, A. (2020). The perfect virtual leader. Forbes. Web.
Northouse, P. G. (2022). Leadership: Theory and practice (9th ed.). SAGE Publications.