– Research area and title of chosen topic.

Social and emotional leadership traits needed to attain high performance, engagement, loyalty and feel of belonging of virtual teams.

– Rationale, purpose, and objectives of the paper.

Working remotely has become very attractive to organizations looking to reduce cost, reach expertise around the globe or minimize the risk of pandemics like COVID-19. The objective of this paper is to focus on the leadership traits that leaders must attain when leading virtual teams working remotely to overcome performance, engagement and feel of belonging risks that may arise from the lack of face to face interaction and social settings.

– Some questions to be addressed by the topic.

  • Why knowing how to lead a virtual team is important?
  • Are the leadership styles and traits for leading a virtual team different from traditional F2F traits? If yes. How are they different? What are the factors that assist in creating a culture of collaboration trust, and the appropriate use of communication amongst virtual teams?
  • What are the past studies on the subject?
  • What are the characteristics of virtual work?
  • What are the common mistakes that leaders fall into that lead to loss of virtual team’s engagement, trust, retention, performance, loyalty, feel of belonging? What are the implications?
  • How can virtual team leaders contribute to the employee’s engagement, trust, retention, performance, loyalty and feel of belonging with scarce physical meetings or office environment? What are the specific ideas, communications and behaviors he should practice?
  • What are the unique results of successful leadership of virtual teams?
  • How can the leader strike work-life balance for employees working remotely? To avoid overworking from one hand and ensuring meeting the objectives satisfactorily on the other hand.

 

– Short paragraphs from relevant literature.

Generally, virtual teams are more difficult to lead than face-to-face teams characterized by presence and direct interaction. Virtual leaders thus face increased work demands and special challenges, especially with regard to building and maintaining trust. Little or no direct contact due to geographical distance and time differences may lead to a loss of motivation, difficulties in building team cohesion, and challenges in team coordination. In GVTs the social needs are seldom fulfilled. The team members have been noted to feel isolated and left out, and also crave for belongingness. They also feel that positive energy is missing in teams while sharing concerns and discussion of personal grievances are also reduced. Such experiences by the participants lead to higher emotional exhaustion rather than physical exhaustion in GVTs. The lesser experience of emotions, belongingness, and appreciation is a norm when one is part of GVTs.

Without the necessary training to adequately support the virtual teams, leaders often observe reduced productivity, feelings of isolation from virtual team members, and increased employee attrition.

It has been shown that classic leadership concepts applied in traditional team structures cannot simply be transferred to virtual leadership. Virtual leadership should not be understood as a leadership style, but rather as specific contextual conditions of leadership. Leadership over geographical distance in flexible working conditions therefore requires specific skills from leaders: e-communication skills, e-social skills, e-team building skills, e-change management skills, e-technological skills, and e-trustworthiness. It has been shown that classic leadership concepts applied in traditional team structures cannot simply be transferred to virtual leadership.

Virtual teams can also create higher levels of employee engagement and retention due to the additional flexibility that working virtually offers to employees who need or prefer to work do so (Badrinarayanan & Arnett, 2012; Hunsaker & Hunsaker, 2008). In addition to these workforce advantages for employee and employer, the cost structure of engaging virtual employees can be appealing (Cascio, 2000; Lipnack & Stamps, 1999; Tate, Ellram, Bals, & Hartmann, 2009; Purvanova, 2014).

There are distinct differences between virtual and non-virtual leaders. Having a strong sense of emotional intelligence and enhanced communication skills allows a successful virtual leader to address conflict via several channels, including polling outside participants in group discussions, promoting appropriate conversation channels when disagreements occur, creating a culture of trust to allow these conversations to occur, as well as encouraging the input of more reserved members of a team.

A leaders’ emotional intelligence awareness and prowess may be pivotal to improving effectiveness, particularly in virtual teams. Emotional intelligence can be the proverbial glue that bonds organizations together as it relates to relationship management and the leadership development process.

The emotional intelligence of a virtual team leader is significant, and the aspects of communication and trust are vital Bryant, 2013). Without a culture of trust from managers, team members may resist change and underperform. A compelling culture of trust between managers and virtual employees is necessary to counteract the absence of physical support.

Virtual teams require additional levels of trust due to lack of FtF interactions. Several researchers have concluded that trust plays a significant role as a moderator to leader communication with teams in affecting team performance (e.g., Chang & Wong, 2010; Dirks, 1999; Dirks & Ferrin, 2002; Jarvenpaa et al., 2004). Teams that have high levels of trust in leaders “are more proactive, more focused on task output, have a more optimistic spirit, initiate more frequent interactions, and provide more substantive, productive feedback” (Ford et al., 2016, p. 7).

There is also a need for team members to be mature enough to be able to handle the nuances and challenges of GVTs. The need to be self-managed rather than being micro-managed by managers in GVTs.

Team members who trust their leader will be more inclined to effectively complete critical tasks based on faith earned by leader’s communication and be more willing to go above and beyond with their work tasks

– Expected outcomes and sketch out your research map.

The expected outcome is a 6000 words scientific paper with a logical analysis of most important leadership traits, dos and don’ts that leaders must focus on to lead virtual teams backed up with recent academic researches and interviews of manager who managed virtual teams.

 

– Please refer sample APA research paper for the paper contents and sections. Writer may add/edit as necessary.

– You must provide critical analysis in the discussion.

– Font size:14

– You must use relevant journal articles and other sources. 5 tentative recent references for the topic have been identified. Writer may add recent academic journals (i.e. 2015-2020). Must use Harvard referencing style.

Shaik, F.F., Makhecha, U.P. and Gouda, S.K. (2020), “Work and non-work identities in global virtual teams: Role of cultural intelligence in employee engagement”, International Journal of Manpower, Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJM-03-2019-0118

 

Efimov, I.; Harth, V.; Mache, S. Health-Oriented Self- and Employee Leadership in Virtual Teams: A Qualitative Study with Virtual Leaders. Int. J. Environ. Res. Public Health 2020, 17, 6519.

 

Sean A. Newman1, Robert C. Ford, Greg W. Marshall, Virtual Team Leader Communication: Employee Perception and Organizational Reality, International Journal of Business Communication 2020, Vol. 57(4) 452– 473.

 

Alward, E., & Phelps, Y. (2019). Impactful leadership traits of virtual leaders in higher education, University of Phoenix, Online Learning, 23(3), 72-93. doi:10.24059/olj.v23i3.2113

Farheen Fathima Shaik, Upam Pushpak Makhecha, Drivers of Employee Engagement in Global Virtual Teams, Australasian Journal of Information Systems,2019, Vol 23,

 

 

– Draft out a report that shows your research intensions.

The results of this study could contribute in further researches on leading virtual teams effectively to successfully offset the shortfalls of working remotely.