In August, Betsy wrote a post on the potential of virtual worlds for leadership development. In that post she mentioned the benefits and opportunities available for leadership development in game-based virtual worlds, such as World of Warcraft, and non-game virtual worlds. She mentioned visualization in virtual worlds as one aspect that can enable leadership training through behavior change and “stickiness”… Read more →
A few weeks back, Surinder posted quick tips that virtual team leaders could use to deal with pressures to make their virtual teams more productive. I believe that sponsors and leaders of virtual team projects ought to also focus on another thing: training. While the times are challenging because of pressures to cut down costs, we strongly believe that the… Read more →
The Leading Virtually blog contains many articles that virtual team leaders are likely to find useful for effective team performance. But the articles are arranged chronologically, with the most recent ones appearing first. We believe that our readers would benefit if we took our blog posts and organized them on the basis of issues that virtual teams face during different… Read more →
Cost cutting and doing more with less is in the air. Rarely does a day go by when you don’t face pressures yourself to do more with less or hear something similar from others. At the beginning of the week, WSJ had two articles on how businesses are trying to improve productivity or manage with less (Stores count seconds to… Read more →
Although many people utilize virtual worlds for purely recreational purposes, there are a lot of companies trying to think of creative business applications for this new technology. I’m particularly intrigued by the potential uses of virtual worlds in the hiring process. Some organizations are now holding job fairs, recruiting sessions, and interviews in virtual worlds (see articles from WSJ and… Read more →
If you were asked to think of the best leader or supervisor you had ever worked for, or the best team you had ever been a member of, what would be the criteria you would use to make that distinction? How much of your evaluation would be based on the social relationships between you and your boss or your fellow… Read more →
A project leader recently asked me how to promote cooperation among members of his virtual team who are at different locations. This is a common issue that virtual team leaders struggle with. Virtual teams often consist of subgroups of team members located in separate locations. This division of team members can give rise to social categorization within the team (i.e., those who… Read more →
The WSJ published an interesting article on Monday (September 29, 2008) about Preston Fosback, a 16-year old, who engaged people all over the world to monitor, via the Internet, the Obama-Biden sign outside his front yard to make sure it wasn’t stolen. The people who monitor the sign essentially form a virtual community or a virtual group who are unlikely to ever… Read more →
Every once in a while, you come across something that defies the conventional wisdom that you need face-to-face contact to build strong social relationships (see a recent article that relies on this wisdom). A New York Times article “After Blogger’s Plane Crash, Virtual Becomes Personal” that was published on September 6, 2008 is one such item. In this post, I… Read more →
I recently read a NY Times article by Clive Thompson about the social effects of information sharing through sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Twitter. Posting frequent small tidbits of information about oneself is often perceived as a useless act. But Thompson points out some of the really useful social outcomes that can result from these acts of self-disclosure. I cover the following points: Ambient… Read more →