Tara Powers is an award-winning expert on talent and leadership development, and she’s the founder & CEO of Powers Resource Center.
She’s worked with over 200 companies and more than 15,000 leaders building programs and launching initiatives that deliver high impact for her clients.
Her leadership programs have earned her recognition as a Top 10 Leadership 500 Award winner by HR.com, and she was recognized in Colorado Business Magazine as a Woman to Watch.
In this Q&A interview, we discuss her latest book, “Virtual Teams for Dummies“ and how it can help you manage your team.
Quick disclosure: I was asked by Tara and Wiley to be the technical editor of the book and I was honored to be part of her project. So I’m obviously biased when I say this, but this is a must-read book if you manage virtual teams. It covers everything from soup to nuts regarding virtual teams and would make an excellent reference guide on your bookshelf.
Q: What drove you to write “Virtual Teams for Dummies”?
A: My clients were continually asking me what resources and support I could offer them as they started to transition more and more to virtual teams, remote work, leading virtually, etc. I didn’t actually feel like I had enough knowledge to help so I decided to engage a survey company to help me build a validated survey that we used with companies across all sectors (government, corporate, non-profit). The survey was focused on insights from 3 audiences including executives that support virtual teams, leaders of virtual teams and virtual team members. We focused on discovering what makes virtual teams effective and we found some interesting data that we started to publish and talk about. I was then contacted by Wiley about writing a leadership book for them and I mentioned this research study and our findings and out of that conversation came the Virtual Teams for Dummies book.
Q: Who would benefit the most from reading it?
A: I wrote the Virtual Teams for Dummies to the same audiences that I included in the study: Executives that are considering moving to a virtual workforce or are having trouble understanding what support their current remote teams need, virtual team members or those who would like to work remotely even part-time and finally, the majority of the book is written to support the virtual team leader and strategies and techniques to help them lead effectively in a virtual environment.
Q: What’s the biggest obstacle preventing organizations from adopting virtual teams?
A: What we found in our research are a few things:
#1 – Perception Gap: There is a perception gap between executives and remote workers on how productive they can actually be when they aren’t face-to-face. Interestingly both virtual workers and virtual leaders reported that they were more productive, able to get more done and be more efficient when they worked virtually and could limit distractions. Certainly, companies like Zapier and Basecamp have proven that this model can work with great success – having close to a 100% virtual workforce. I do think that their perception gap has caused some company Executives to hesitate in adopting virtual teams
#2 – Innovation Concern: It’s true that individually people can be creative but together people can produce innovative ideas, products, and solutions that transform work. In a virtual world, it’s more difficult to create an environment where innovation regularly occurs and it requires more intentionality from the team leader and team members. I do believe that a concern that innovation will suffer has also held back the adoption of virtual teams and this is a valid concern that can be addressed if leaders and team members align on common practices, agreements and connection points when working virtually that help innovation to flourish.
#3 – Varying Degrees of Technological Savviness: In order to have effective virtual teams that are cohesive and high performing, they must embrace technology and become experts as using collaborative software in their day to day interactions and project management. Many organizations are faced with a workforce that isn’t comfortable with using these different types of technology in a virtual environment and without the training they need, they’re setting up these virtual teams for failure.
#4 – Maintaining Company Culture: Another fear is that it will be difficult to maintain company culture when people aren’t face-to-face. I can understand that concern but having a savvy virtual leader can ensure that culture is instilled in the people working for the company whether they are virtual or not.
Q: Do you believe organizations that have current virtual teams models will backtrack on them in the future?
A: I believe that the best path forward is striking a balance. Virtual teams need to get together face-to-face at least once a year and we propose once a quarter if possible to connect personally and align around strategy, team agreements and norms, etc. as a best practice.
What I see happening today with Yahoo and IBM is in my opinion a desperate measure to improve the bottom line when there are much bigger issues at play. I think this type of behavior will (and already has) backfired on these companies. The talent market is moving towards more and more remote work for reasons that aren’t going away including overhead costs, real estate expense, talent shortages, traffic commutes, etc. It’s also a boon for the environment when more people work from home and it provides people with more flexibility in their lives to spend time with family and on personal hobbies which increases overall happiness and satisfaction. Virtual teams are the future of our work in some form whether it’s being remote a few days a week to full time.
Companies need to do a better job at being intentional in setting up these teams for success, providing them with the technology and training to stay connected and engaged. They also need to budget time and resources to bring the team together face-to-face a few times a year with the goal of building trust. That is what my book focusing on and provides techniques that teams and leaders can put in place to make this happen.
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To learn more about Tara, you can connect with her on LinkedIn or check out her Powers Resource Center site. I’m also going to be interviewing Tara on my “Writer on the Side” podcast in the near future, so make sure you subscribe here if you’d like to learn more about how she wrote the book while running a company.
