I have managed several virtual teams over the last 10 years and it always seems like a struggle to get the same type of active participation and healthy productive conflict you get with face to face teams. Such passivity in meetings often results in delayed decisions, the re-hashing of the same issues every meeting and less than ideal results.
leaders
In other words you can occasionally drop one and it will almost always bounce back, but drop the other four and they will suffer damage, possibly shatter.
Every moment of my life from the first steps of my children, first haircuts, first loss tooth, first soccer goals, first dances and first driver licenses are gone. Past relationships, homes and communities we have lived in, youth teams I have coached, volunteer work I have done, employment I have had, and teams I have led; they are all memories. I can’t relive any of it, but I can embrace all of it.
I want to start with a leader I am grateful for and then hope each of you will contribute a post about leaders that have affected you. I hope we can learn from these great leaders.
I will never forget an experience I had several months back. I was asked to provide some consulting and development for a highly dysfunctional senior leadership team. We were discussing some of the morale issues their staff was having when one of the senior leaders said “I don’t think morale and motivating people really matters. Given the way things are people should just be lucky they have a job.”
