Recently, Surinder and I did a day-long workshop on virtual team leadership, and I think it has gotten both of us thinking more than ever about those who are actually practicing virtual team leadership.  We try to do two things when making suggestions for virtual team leaders: first, to support them with research and practitioner experience, and second, to organize them in a framework so the information is more manageable to leaders.  And yet, there is some concern that virtual team leaders still have difficulty turning this knowledge into behaviors that help the team.  In this post, I would like to take a step back to explore what might change this for virtual team leaders.  What would help virtual leaders turn our suggestions (and those of other resources) into actionable behaviors?  What can virtual team leaders do to turn this knowledge into action?

I suggest three things would help:

1. Motivation
2. Practice, and
3. Support

These are three factors that are generally important in any attempt to make behavioral change.  This is what we hear about for quitting smoking, losing weight, getting in shape, or any other common change people want to make in their lives – no one disagrees with the idea, but how can the idea be converted into action and results?

1. Motivation

 Motivation is so basic to human functioning that it is sometimes overlooked.  And sometimes people forget to look at the motivational factors at work on leaders, assuming that they are highly motivated simply because of their position.  But even leaders need to be motivated.  With human behavior change, it all boils down to motivation.  This is the antecedent to the other points we make here – without sufficient motivation, behavioral changes will be hard to make and even harder to sustain.  This can be a conundrum for leaders, who, as a function of their position, are often expected to motivate themselves.

The two types of motivation are intrinsic (coming from within oneself) and extrinsic (coming from outside oneself), and a combination of both might be necessary to sustain the effort required for virtual team leaders to keep striving and learning better ways of leading their teams.

In order to be intrinsically motivated towards leadership development, people must first figure out what motivates them.  We tend to take for granted that societal or organizational goals for development are “right”.  But if developmental goals are not in line with personal motivation, lasting change is unlikely.  The basic idea behind the book What Color is Your Parachute is that if you find the intersection of what you love to do and what you are good at, make a career out of it.  The same principle applies to attempts at leadership development, since leadership is a skill (a complex skill, but a skill nonetheless).

This means that leaders need to determine what their strengths and interests are.  This can be done in a number of ways ranging from self-observation to self help books (such as Gallup’s Strengths Finder) to hiring professional consultants.  Then, once a person’s strengths are determined, there is another issue – whether to go with the strengths or try to develop new ones.  Some experts advocate action that is in line with one’s strengths, and certainly this is the path of least resistance.  This path seems more likely to result in change and less time-consuming.  However, people have been known to develop weaker areas of themselves, and this might be worth a try periodically as a different kind of growth experience.  However, developing your weaker points might only be feasible when there is time and space to make mistakes and reshape yourself, and when you have enough mental energy to deal with more difficult growth.

Extrinsic motivation is most compellingly sustained by real support from within the organization.  We know that a company’s reward structure should support learning and development, and yet many organizations have a reward structure that works against those goals.  Also, top management usually has a strong influence on extrinsic motivation.  When the top management team keeps a goal fresh on people’s minds and models desirable leadership behaviors themselves, leaders at other levels also have more success with achieving goals and showing effective leadership.

If you want to make the development of your leadership skills a priority, commit to it by making some part of your external rewards dependent upon it.  Tell your supervisor you want leadership development efforts to be an explicit part of your job description.  Make goals that are as specific as possible (what things will you do to develop your leadership skills?) and include these goals in your periodic job evaluation.  Remember that you can ask your supervisor to informally evaluate you along these goals before any official, formal evaluation goes on your record.

2. Practice

This one is simple – development of a leadership style or capabilities takes practice.  But that also takes a lot of patience, which is difficult.  Also, leadership development is a matter of trial and error.  When capable people are in leadership positions, it can be hard for them to make missteps or mistakes in the process of developing their leadership skills.  Having patience is the biggest suggestion we can make in this area.

Sometimes leaders don’t know whether they are making progress or doing things that are counter-productive.  Having an assessment system in place is very helpful for providing feedback to a leader, especially when trying new leadership styles or behaviors.  Only with feedback can a leader know whether their efforts are having the desired effects.

Remember too that with the quality of technology available today, virtual team leaders can practice their leadership skills in environments such as virtual worlds.  The risk is minimal, since decisions don’t impact a “real” organization, and yet there is evidence that training in such an environment may be effective (see our post “Using Virtual Worlds for Leadership Development“).

3. Support

Just as leaders are an important form of support for virtual team members, so too they need support themselves.  This can come in the form of coaching or mentoring, from people inside the organization or from resources outside (such as consultants or professional coaches).  The guiding principle is a bit the same as in therapy – someone outside the virtual team can sometimes see things clearly that aren’t obvious to those inside the team, even the leader.

Essentially, coaches or mentors provide structure that is so crucial for change.  This is the basic idea behind support groups – others not only provide encouragement, but also a little bit of pressure to change.  Having someone who holds you accountable helps most people avoid procrastination of actions that work towards a goal.  Most people hardly have time to think about development at work since so many of us spend our time merely putting out fires.  Having a coach or mentor can force you to prioritize your leadership development goals so they can compete with all the mini crises going on around you.

With all behavioral change, but especially something ambiguous like leadership development, getting started is often the hardest part.  You may find you really benefit from the pressure of a coach or mentor in the beginning, and that the support structure will help if you stumble along the way.  Eventually you may find you are less dependent on a coach or mentor for this structure, but increasingly they play a role of networking and collegial support for you.

In fact, you may want to develop a network of others who are also developing their leadership skills, above and beyond what you receive from a coach or mentor.  This network might not provide pressure for accountability and results, but with them you can share ideas or vent frustrations.  With the broad availability of social networking sites, this is easier than ever.  Some organizations have the potential to provide this network as well, particularly if it’s a large organization with networking technology in place.

Three simple factors – and yet they are not small things.  So many people in organizations think they want to develop their leadership skills, but an ambiguous task can be hard to tackle.  We think these three factors are necessary for real behavioral change to occur, at least in the realm of leadership development.  Maybe in your life, aspirations towards leadership development have been about as successful as those New Year’s resolutions to go to the gym 5 times a week.  Better to think about whether the goal is right for you than to feel bad in not achieving the goal.  Leadership development can mean a lot of things, and we hope this post can help people think more concretely about what leadership development looks like for them.