Gary Thomas and the book Virtually Disastrous.
Click on the heading to read more.
Why the provocative title?
This is the book. Virtually disastrous. Also available here In German as die virtuelle Katasstrophe.
When you place words like disastrous or catastrophe in a book title, that raises some eyebrows. If you work in a virtual, remote team, however, you probably understand where it is coming from.
Quite naturally, when leaders begin to work in virtual teams in different locations over distance, they apply their usual management style and add some long distance media such as e-mail or telephone conferences. The problem is, that doesn’t work.
Virtual teams have a bunch of challenges that lead to disastrous levels of performance. Lack of team identity and common purpose, isolation, lack of trust, lack of alignment on how to communicate across distance. It gets worse if your team is a matrix organization and if different cultures are involved.
In a nutshell, that is why virtual leadership is a whole different kettle of fish and why most virtual teams underperform and are rife with latent conflict.
It does not have to be that way. That is why I wrote the book. If you have the ambition to have a high performance virtual team and you are willing to change your approach to leadership or teamwork, why not take a look?