Last week, a friend (I’ll call him Al) was telling me about the challenges he’s facing in his virtual team. This team was assembled for a specific long-term project to reformulate information-sharing processes across groups in his financial services company. Team members were recruited because they are high performers and have expertise in their functional areas, so the official team leader is taking a hands-off approach to managing them. Although all the team members are great workers, this is actually causing some difficulty in the team since none of them have much experience working virtually. Al is a key example of this – he has great instincts for his industry and is moving up the ladder at a nice pace, but when communication is difficult, he has a tendency to just do things himself rather than sharing or delegating to others. In their first few months of work, members of the team have realized they need some kind of document sharing or information management system. They have trouble keeping track of information and decisions, which is ironic since those are the kinds of company-wide problems they are trying to solve. Al was looking for suggestions both for himself and for his team, since much is at stake in their performance.

Improving virtual team progress begins with identifying some key challenges the team faces. The first major issue is a lack of a clear authority structure. It is often the case that high performing teams are largely allowed to manage themselves. But in a virtual team, when there is little informal interaction and members rarely come face to face, this can leave members uncertain where to turn for direction or feedback. The second challenge seems to be a basic division of labor issue. When it takes more effort to discuss who should be doing what, the tendency is to do tasks rather than take the time to divide up those tasks. In the best case scenario this means some team members are too busy while others are not busy enough. Worst case scenario, the team has trouble meeting goals because they are functioning as individuals rather than as a team.

I suggested a few virtual teamwork basics to help Al and his virtual team. In a high functioning team, the lack of a clear authority structure can cause confusion, or it can become an opportunity for what experts call emergent leadership. Emergent leaders are unofficial (not based on title or authority) but rise to the occasion to guide their group. Currently, the leadership role has drifted to Al. It’s crucial that an emergent leader stay humble and remember that the leadership role will probably be temporary. Al should avoid anything that can be construed as bossiness, and maintain a focus on the team and the project. He must also be prepared to spend more time than he would in a face to face group touching base and reaching out to team members to find out how the project is progressing.

The leadership question is very much related to the division of labor issue. I suggested to him that the team must figure out how they are going to divide up, communicate, and document their work. Ideally this should have been done in the planning stages of the project, but it’s worth doing even at this later stage. Although Al is in a leadership role now, he has trouble delegating to others when it seems to take less effort to do a task himself. But in the long run, this will hurt the team. Some questions for his team to consider are whether tasks can be completed independently or require several people, whether different tasks can be done at the same time (a work flow question), whether it makes sense to divide up the work by area of expertise, and so forth. Also, Al’s team needs to plan how it will communicate – will it be entirely through emails or will there be “real time” working sessions and meetings? The team also needs to figure out how important information and decisions will be disseminated to all members and documented. Al’s team need to pause for a few days to implement a system of sharing and capturing important information.

Although a new mode of doing work can be frustrating at first, participating in a virtual project is a great opportunity for Al and other business workers. It’s simply a matter of applying the basics of leadership and work processes to a virtual situation. With time and practice, Al’s team will increase its efficiency and effectiveness at working virtually.