Leadership & Team Building

Introduction

Digitalization is penetrating more and more rapidly and deeply into various areas of our ac-

tivities and daily life. Today, digital technologies are actively used in industrial enterprises, educa-

tional institutions, medical institutions and in every home. The emergence of virtual business pre-

supposes appropriate management of the activities of virtual teams in the new economy. The situa-

tion with the global pandemic has pushed organizations to accelerate the trend of digitalization, act-

ing as a kind of catalyst: more and more services are going online, more and more services people

can receive without leaving home. This dominant trend is considered by companies as part of their

strategy, by society as a certain set vector of development. With the total use of information and

communication technologies in the activities of virtual teams, changes occur in the management of

teams, so the traditional leadership style fades into the background, transforming the classical un-

derstanding of leadership. The narrowing of communication channels requires new approaches to

building a communication network and decentralizing the powers of the virtual team leader. This

paper will discuss virtual teams, what challenges leaders face in virtual teams, as well as how the

COVID-19 pandemic has affected the maintenance of virtual teams.

Virtual teams

According to the definition of Morrison-Smith, and Ruiz (2020), virtual teams are intelligent

teams that communicate through computer networks. An interesting classification of teams is pre-

sented in the work of Bagga, Gera, and Haque (2023), according to which project groups are

formed either as a project team or a management team. According to this approach, it can be estab -

lished that management teams are created on a permanent basis, whereas project teams are tempo-

rary until the project is completed and the customer’s needs are closed, which indicates that man-

agement teams are created virtually extremely rarely.

However, due to globalization, technology development and the increasing speed of change,

organizations have a request to switch the management team to online mode. In our opinion, man -
agement teams in the near future will have a mixed typology – management virtual teams, there are

already multiple requests for software products such as online electronic voting of the board of di -

rectors, and in the future this area will be supplemented by VR (Breuer et al., 2020).

Despite the sufficient degree of knowledge of traditional teams, the question of determining

the features of virtual teams remains debatable. Virtual teams have a lot in common with traditional

teams, and first of all, it is the presence of a common goal that team members achieve through joint

efforts, sharing responsibility on the way to achieving results.

The use of electronic information and communication technologies helps to increase team

productivity by distributing tasks, and the formation of digital traces makes the management and

promotion structure more open. Newman, Ford, and Marshall (2020) noted that the choice of a

channel and a high-quality technical solution for the work of the team may exceed the optimization

of the costs of maintaining the team and the office. The advantages of virtual teams should also in-

clude a predominantly horizontal type of connections, which in turn allows the team to have high

flexibility and the presence of self-management in the team.

The significant disadvantages, in our opinion, include the lack of experience in forming a

virtual team without a face-to-face meeting, Breuer et al. (2020) also noted in their definition of a

virtual team that such teams use ICT more often than others, but this does not replace or exclude

personal meetings, and even more so when forming a team.

Thus, the use of virtual teams is dictated by the trends of digitalization, the globalization of

the business environment, the “battle for talents” and the situation that has arisen in the world, their

demand will only increase. It turns out that the “battle for talents” can be lost if the management

processes are not adjusted to it, in turn, the distribution of the team significantly aggravates the neg -

ative impact of flaws in the processes, which is why it is necessary to study the issue of formation

and management of such teams in conditions associated with changes.

Problems and challenges of management and leadership in virtual teams

there are some peculiarities. It is obvious that in any form of teamwork, the leader solves tasks re -

lated to recruitment and team building, encouraging cooperation and interaction in the team, main-

taining and organizing the development of the team and team members, granting authority to the

team (delegation of tasks and responsibilities).

However, a number of difficulties may arise in the format of virtual commands. When work-

ing with a remote team, it is necessary to purposefully increase the culture of openness and rapid re -

sponse, therefore, when hiring employees in a virtual team, it is necessary to make sure that they

will be able to work effectively in a remote format (Davidavičienė, Al Majzoub, and Meidute-

Kavaliauskiene, 2020).

Making managerial decisions in the work of a virtual team requires decentralization and

trust in its members. In the work of virtual teams, the culture of remote work is important (rapid re-

sponse and a high level of independence), therefore, the leader of the virtual team transfers a wide

range of powers for the prompt solution of tasks.

The motivation of the members of the virtual team in comparison with the traditional ap-

proach to teamwork requires serious study. A charismatic leader in a traditional team with direct

communication (emotions, facial expressions, friendly handshakes) can easily motivate an em-

ployee to complete a task (Lechner, and Mortlock, 2022). However, in the work of virtual teams,

this becomes impossible due to the lack of personal contact. The motivation of team members be-

comes directly dependent on their involvement in the performance of tasks assigned to the team.

Formal and non-formal communications are important in the team’s activities, both types of

communication are typical for traditional teams, but in the activities of virtual teams, the level of in -

formal communications is minimized or absent altogether (Mysirlaki, and Paraskeva, 2020). Work-

ing in a virtual team involves a lack of constant contact and features of remote communication and,

as a result, communication channels are narrowed, it becomes more difficult for the team leader to

assess the motivation and involvement of team members.

ties of virtual teams, it becomes obvious that the quality of management processes affect the quality

of tasks performed and expected results. In a traditional team, these events can be leveled due to op-

erational planning and information collection, which becomes more complicated in a virtual team. It

is important for the head of the virtual team to regularly assess the level of awareness of team mem-

bers about the required level of quality and perform corrective actions if necessary.

The ability to identify and assess risks and opportunities in teamwork is a prerequisite for

the management of both traditional and virtual teams. However, in a virtual team, the process of

managing risks and opportunities is significantly complicated due to the fact that the use of ICT lev-

els (distance, possible communication failures) the information support of team members in deci-

sion-making, which in turn tells us about the occurrence of a serious risk associated with decision-

making in conditions of uncertainty (Taras et al., 2019).

The analysis of possible communications allows us to conclude that a positive feature of the

virtual team’s work is that communication mainly uses a horizontal method of communication.

However, the fact that some communication channels are reduced to a minimum may lead to

limitations in communication in virtual teams. So nonverbal communication in online conditions

becomes impossible. Analyzing the properties that increase the effectiveness of a virtual team mem-

ber, it indicates that a team member should be able to formulate and prove his point of view, since

the role of charisma and nonverbal communications is significantly reduced.

It also becomes obvious that the channel of verbal communication is narrowing, so written

communication via the Internet has radically affected the logic, structure of language, and speech

means. Communication via the Internet is interactive writing, a new form of speech that has come

to our speech arsenal after oral speech, written speech, printed written speech. Interactive writing

requires the speeds inherent in oral speech, the desire to speed up the speed of writing communica -

tion participants resort to shortening, thereby complicating the quality of communications.

The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on virtual teams

spread of virtual teams, and now teams – more than ever – rely on technology to perform work

tasks, communicate and exchange information. However, they also did this long before the pan-

demic and will certainly continue in this direction. In addition, organizations that worked before the

pandemic increasingly relied on virtual teams, and we assume that this trend will not slow down de-

velopment after the pandemic; therefore, understanding how to work and lead these teams is of

paramount importance.

The global COVID-19 pandemic sent workers home en masse and forced almost everyone

to unite into a virtual team overnight. The digital transformation that has progressed over the past

decade has finally been put to the test. Many technologies have failed, while others have turned into

professional and personal “lifebuoys”. In a matter of days, almost everyone had to learn how to use

a set of information and communication tools that many were too afraid to try before (Chamakiotis,

Panteli, and Davison, 2021).

So what should a manager and leader do in times of a pandemic to manage virtual teams?

Fundamentally, virtual work involves important changes in the organization of work tasks, in ac-

tions, and in the management of relationships with other people, which essentially requires job de-

sign perspectives (Garro-Abarca, Palos-Sanchez, and Aguayo-Camacho, 2021). The impressive

growth of network-mediated organizational relationships has generated additional interest in how to

successfully manage virtual teams.

As organizations increasingly expect their managers to manage employees remotely, it be-

comes necessary to identify and train employees in the skills that allow them to do this effectively

(Feitosa, and Salas, 2021).

Over time, strategies have been identified that have been recognized by successful organiza-

tions seeking to help their managers lead virtual teams. While all successful managers must provide

basic organizational support to their employees, effective leaders also ensure the building of trusting

relationships.
 In addition to the development of information technology and the introduction of a stable,

continuous communicative component in the methodology of the organization and work of virtual

teams, it is necessary to develop (virtual) key factors of team effectiveness that affect the factors of

efficiency in virtual environments. These include: leadership, planning and establishing clear rules

of interaction, conflict management, trust and psychological security, technology compliance with

the message (Whillans, Perlow, and Turek, 2021). What is the essence of these factors of building a

virtual team. The idea is that it is necessary to remove stress from virtual work and make the

process as clear as possible, with simple work instructions, a common goal, specific tasks. Also, el-

ements of trust, flexibility and tolerance are introduced. The leader needs to establish a conflict res-

olution system, virtual interaction implies the establishment of kind and humane relations, under-

standing, flexibility, adaptability and individual consideration of situations.

The reliability of an organization is compromised when leaders are not aware of the time

and cultural differences between team members, when reward systems are focused on individual

rather than collective achievements, or when team members are not trained to accept each other or

the specific requirements of their project. This also applies to traditional face-to-face teams, but the

importance of this common team management tactic is reinforced in virtual teams. It is all too easy

for members of virtual teams to believe that “out of sight” leads to “incompetence” when it comes

to organizational leadership, and increases the need for organizations to inform remote team mem-

bers that their work is recognized and appreciated, and that their careers are protected (Abarca,

Palos-Sanchez, and Rus-Arias, 2020).

Now there is an active accumulation and systematization of knowledge about the function-

ing of virtual teams, which in the near future will allow you to effectively simulate virtual teams

and get the maximum benefit from their implementation.

Conclusion

Thus, the list of tasks for the leader and the leader in the virtual team is not narrowed, but is

complicated by remote communication and delegation of these tasks to team members. In this re-
gard, the distribution of roles in the team is of interest. We consider it important and necessary to

consider the possibility of distributing roles in teamwork, this condition will help team members

avoid conflicts and difficulties in communication.

Summarizing, we note that, despite the fact that the essence of virtual teams does not differ

from traditional ones, according to formal signs, the leader of virtual teams has factors that signifi-

cantly complicate their activities, such as reducing the speed of managerial decision-making, pro-

vided that power is decentralized, the ability to motivate team members at a distance and maintain

team spirit, while building communication channels so that the information is accurate and always

on time, provided that the communication channels are significantly narrowed.

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