CHAPTER 2

The Beginning

Ben Jonas stared at his computer and pondered over the problem that just popped up in his inbox. He had recently begun a new job as vice president of international marketing at a large, Southern California software firm. Although he was very excited about the role, he was also nervous about the challenges that accompanied it. A perfect example of these potential issues was the e-mail message he just received. One of his employees named Jana had asked him exactly what her new job responsibilities would be and whom she would report to now. While these questions seemed trivial on the surface, Ben certainly understood her predicament. Most concerning to him was that he really didn’t know the answer.

Ben had worked for years managing the marketing team at a competitive firm and had an industry reputation as an exceptional leader. He was sought out by a recruiter and moved into his current job with the promise of a promotion and a significantly higher salary. He was, of course, delighted, but he was also very concerned about the new way he would be managing his team. His concern stemmed from the fact that only one member of his group of 20 worked directly with him in his office. The rest were remote, virtual workers who were based in other national and international offices. Some of his employees were based entirely on different continents and worked in varying time zones.

While Ben had managed a few virtual workers in the past, they were mostly U.S.-based employees telecommuting from home. To further complicate matters, his new organization was a matrix organization, which meant that other members of the executive team had line access to his group and in some cases could even influence their key performance indicators. Ben would later discover some new challenges directly related to this kind of organization. He began by studying the organizational chart, but there remained many unanswered questions. In the case of Jana, for example, she was a brand manager for one of their core products. Her office was in New Jersey, which put her three hours ahead of Ben’s time zone in Pacific Daylight Time. Although Ben was her direct supervisor, Jana was also required to execute tasks for other regional managers, including the local sales and the head of the customer consulting group and R&D. Ben would have to look deeper into the corporate structure and determine how he could best answer Jana’s concerns.

One of the significant and immediate issues for Ben was how he could most effectively meet and integrate with his new team. Historically, Ben always held an initial meeting with the group and each individual employee as soon as was possible in each case. He thought these initial face-to-face appointments were of extreme importance in building rapport and trust with his team members. As it turns out, he was right. Ben understood the importance of a cohesive and well-focused team. It is important for any organization to have efficient teams with employees who can work together to provide positive outcomes without major conflict. Each team member can have important objectives that impact not only their individual group, but the organization as a whole (Jane n.d.).

Managing a team within a single, local office can certainly have its challenges. Leaders must deal with varying personalities, ambitions, temperaments, etc., all the while maintaining a vision for the group and driving them toward the overall team goal. However, when the same manager is now thrust into a virtual or geographically displaced team, the complexities of leadership can increase exponentially. These additional complications in virtual management can be overwhelming to even the greatest leader of a traditional team. They can also result in a potentially ineffective and conflictive workforce that destroys project outcomes before the first task even begins. Some researchers have even proposed that diverse working groups can be less effective, while others have demonstrated that diverse teams can actually increase team performance when working cohesively (Maznevski 1994). As a result of these continuing changes in the organizational dynamic, leadership styles are frequently adapted and the old hierarchal approaches replaced with a renewed focus on telecommunications and greater connectivity among team members and management (Siebdrat, Hoegl, and Ernst 2009).

This was the dilemma Ben faced. He had over a decade of solid management experience. His hard work, intelligence, and tenure afforded him the ability to successfully lead his previous team to seven years of increasing revenue and market share growth. It was always easy to pick up the phone or even walk to the next office to handle critical issues. However, now he had to deal with people who he often wouldn’t even be able to contact for six to nine hours. Other questions bothered him too. Would the global communication technology work well? Would he be able to effectively motivate his remote employees without that daily contact he was used to? Would he be able to trust them to make decisions while he was asleep at night, and they were in the middle of their work day? Ben had legitimate concerns about his position, and his need for information was immediate.

Ben was a traditional team leader who reveled in the manager-centric and hierarchal aspects of the role. However, virtual teams often render traditional, hierarchal leadership rules useless. Technology is the key to communication, and distance can create feelings of isolation (Johnson 2010). As a result, Ben must learn to develop a greater sense of understanding for each member of his team. The potential breakdown of team coherency and effectiveness can result from ineffective management on the side of an unprepared leader. Contrarily, a well-managed virtual team can foster many positive team outcomes, including increased innovation, cross-functional team knowledge, global diversity, and even improved customer service.

To begin understanding how to successfully lead a virtual team, it is important to consider that distance working can have a profound impact on the human psyche. Furthermore, words can have a more powerful impact when working virtually and can often be misinterpreted. For example, managers may make casual promises or suggestions, without considering the long-term implications of what is being said versus the employee’s interpretation. This phenomenon is known as the psychological contract, a term coined by Denise Rousseau in the 1980s. The psychological contract essentially represents an unwritten contract that is developed through a working relationship, and it reflects the concealed emotions or expectations employees may have regarding what they consider a fair exchange between them and their manager or company. In simpler terms, the psychological contract is a mutual, unwritten agreement based on the promises or commitments made between parties.

Understanding the psychological contract can be useful because it can help leaders better understand potential emotional responses to commitments. This is especially true during times of change, when reactions can be exacerbated due to uncertainty. In such situations, a leader must use great caution with his or her words, as repercussions based on a manager’s decisions can be significant and can have a long-term impact on how employees adapt to the new environment (Morrison and Robinson 1997).

A huge concern for Ben was the question of whether his leadership style would still be viable while managing a global virtual team across international borders. Leadership can be defined in many ways. Some would say that it is simply a set of skills that can be developed over time, whereas others would argue that leadership is based on the character of a person and can inspire and create a vision for the team. Indeed, leadership is a process in which a manager can motivate, mobilize, and inspire his or her team to focus on a particular goal (Wolinski n.d.). In the past, Ben had debated about whether it is better to lead others through fear, or to take a more loving and caring stance.

Love or fear? Both approaches have been highly studied, and each has its own merit under certain circumstances. In the love approach, the leader inspires his or her team through an employee-centric focus, while the fear method is entirely contradictory in that it is the authoritarian method of management, which gives little credence to input from individual team members (Snook 2008).

After reading some books on management, Ben also thought about whether he was an autocratic, democratic, or laissez-faire leader (Cutajar 2017). Like the fear method of leadership, the autocratic method is manager-centric and puts little to no value on input from the team. On the other hand, laissez-faire leadership values employee input and minimizes the authoritarian role.

After his investigation, and based on his experience, Ben preferred the democratic leadership style, in which the leader still maintains authority, but subordinate input is accepted (Cutajar 2017). Democratic leadership, also called participative leadership, promotes employee creativity and input, while still stipulating structure from the management (Cherry 2018). The democratic leadership style reflects a balance in which the manager maintains clear control, but still gravitates toward the love approach in that he or she places great value on their employees’ input and ideas.

Across his managerial career, Ben also applied the Situational Leadership Model, which involves the implementation of transitional leadership styles depending on varying situations and employee competence and commitment (Northouse 2013). He would at times employ the Transformational Leadership Model, which focuses on leading through transformation and charisma. He did this not only to motivate employees, but also to drive real changing behavior that could benefit them and the organization as a whole in the long run (Reynolds 2015). Furthermore, he would incorporate the Servant leadership approach, which facilitated Ben’s general leadership through the emotional and personal connections he made with his subordinates. This was contrary to the fear approach, which places the manager firmly above his or her employees and promotes leadership through intimidation and authoritarianism (Snook 2008).

Ben liked the analogy of nature, where there are places, often on coral reefs, in which large fish and sharks swim slowly with their mouth agape and allow smaller cleaner fish to enter and clean their gills of bacteria and other unwanted parasites. In exchange, the fish get a free meal and they aren’t eaten. This process of two species working together for mutual benefit is called symbiosis and could also be an exceptional model for management (Muli-Kituku 2006). Ben learned that whether working in a traditional office or a virtual environment, a leader should consider the symbiotic relationship between themselves and their employees. This is especially true in times of change, as it is a process that can often have profound impact on both sides in ways that are often overlooked (Chu and Fu n.d.). Therefore, Ben found a model to represent the importance of the symbiotic relationship (psychological contract), and a framed copy of it always hung on the wall of his office (see Figure 2.1). Ben understood the importance of people as his most valuable asset and that his management style could impact his team in more ways than he understood (Chu and Fu n.d.).

Figure 2.1 A simple illustration of the key stakeholders on both sides of the corporate relationship, along with their needs and the ever-present, underlying Psychological Contract that can impact them both (Brady 2014).

As we turn back to Ben’s original problem, it is important to reflect on his plan to meet the team face-to-face first. It is fundamental for any manager to weigh the cost/benefit ratio of this decision. Certainly, there is a cost to visiting multiple employees across varying geographies and time zones. One might just consider the financial impact from the organizational perspective, but there is also a personal cost to consider. Traveling to multiple countries would take time away from Ben’s family and home and could be physically draining. Yet research and experience support the idea that an initial face-to-face meeting with Ben’s team could be a critical factor in beginning well with distant employees (Watkins 2013). Furthermore, leaders of virtual teams rely almost exclusively on technology to communicate and manage the performance of the team throughout the life of a project (Thompson et al. 2000). Ben knows that at the initiation of a virtual team project, it is generally the responsibility of the team leader to bring his or her people together and to provide guidance in reaching objectives, influencing cohesive citizenship behaviors, and pushing them to become a self-managing entity. Accordingly, the manager also has the responsibilities of developing the team and managing performance (Johnson 2010).

Maybe Ben can be an agent of connection and find creative ways to bring his team together and build trust in a more natural manner, similar to the progression in a more traditional, nonvirtual setting (Issacs 2012). Ben understands that an early face-to-face meeting with team members could help alleviate problems down the road. Additionally, managers can maintain a certain level of order and congruency by developing a framework to guide them through better comprehension of the fundamental processes and team directives.

Will Ben’s symbiosis model of management be a fit for his new virtual team and project goals? Or are alternative frameworks, like a periodic table approach which segments varying attributes of virtual leadership into a scientific evaluation of elements to increase management effectiveness, a better route to follow (Lipnack and Stamps 2000)?

Indeed, Ben Jonas had a lot to think about. While he felt momentarily overwhelmed, he knew that many of his questions would be answered with experience. It was late now, and as he stared into the blue light on his screen, he pondered the very serious issue that Jana had brought up. This, he thought, is a question of roles . . .