Leading Dispersed Teams E-Book

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Serie: J-B CCL (Center for Creative Leadership)
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 34

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2011

Beschreibung

This is a book about leading dispersed teams--teams that aremade up of people who don't work in the same geographicalarea. Such teams don't often meet face-to-face. Usually theirmembers are separated by time and distance, and they often bringdifferent cultural views to bear on their work. Solving potentialcommunication problems and devising processes for making decisionsand managing conflict are challenges for leaders of dispersedteams. But before they can address those challenges, they need toanalyze the support such a team will get from the organization as awhole.Dispersed teams are a necessary, strategic work unit in a worldthat continues to grow more interconnected every day. Guiding themto their full potential is a difficult challenge for even the mostseasoned team leader.

Leseprobe

Contents

What Is a Dispersed Team?

Act Global, Think Local

Leadership That Exploits Advantages

Leadership That Mitigates Disadvantages

Launching a Dispersed Team

Assessing Readiness

Meeting for the First Time

Leading a Dispersed Team

Communication and Information Sharing

Decision Making

Conflict Resolution

Dispersed Teams: Leadership Challenges for an Interconnected World

Suggested Readings

Background

Key Point Summary

Lead Contributors

Ideas Into Action Guidebooks

Aimed at managers and executives who are concerned with their own and others’ development, each guidebook in this series gives specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership problem.

LEAD CONTRIBUTORS Michael E. Kossler Sonya Prestridge CONTRIBUTORS Vidula Bal Don W. Prince GUIDEBOOK ADVISORY GROUP Victoria A. Guthrie Cynthia D. McCauley Ellen Van Velsor DIRECTOR OF PUBLICATIONS Martin Wilcox EDITOR Peter Scisco ASSOCIATE EDITOR Karen Mayworth WRITER Rob Bixby DESIGN AND LAYOUT Joanne Ferguson CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Laura J. Gibson Chris Wilson, 29 & Company

Copyright ©2004 Center for Creative Leadership.

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

CCL No. 423ISBN-13: 978-1-882197-81-1ISBN-10: 1-882197-81-X

Center for Creative LeadershipPost Office Box 26300Greensboro, North Carolina 27438-6300336-288-7210 • www.ccl.org/publicationspfeiffer.com/go/cclguidebooks

The Ideas Into Action Guidebook Series

This series of guidebooks draws on the practical knowledge that the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL®) has generated in the course of more than thirty years of research and educational activity conducted in partnership with hundreds of thousands of managers and executives. Much of this knowledge is shared—in a way that is distinct from the typical university department, professional association, or consultancy. CCL is not simply a collection of individual experts, although the individual credentials of its staff are impressive; rather it is a community, with its members holding certain principles in common and working together to understand and generate practical responses to today’s leadership and organizational challenges.

The purpose of the series is to provide managers with specific advice on how to complete a developmental task or solve a leadership challenge. In doing that, the series carries out CCL’s mission to advance the understanding, practice, and development of leadership for the benefit of society worldwide. We think you will find the Ideas Into Action Guidebooks an important addition to your leadership toolkit.

Executive Brief

This is a book about leading dispersed teams—teams that are made up of people who don’t work in the same geographical area. Such teams don’t often meet face-to-face. Usually their members are separated by time and distance, and they often bring different cultural views to bear on their work. Solving potential communication problems and devising processes for making decisions and managing conflict are challenges for leaders of dispersed teams. But before they can address those challenges, they need to analyze the support such a team will get from the organization as a whole. Dispersed teams are a necessary, strategic work unit in a world that continues to grow more interconnected every day. Guiding them to their full potential is a difficult challenge for even the most seasoned team leader.

What Is a Dispersed Team?

Simply put, a dispersed team has members who are not located in the same place. Like virtual teams or cross-functional teams, which can span organizational boundaries, dispersed teams also span boundaries. But their distances are measured by country, culture, and time zones. Their members come from different cultures and can bring with them radically different perspectives.

Dispersed teams bring together in one intriguing work unit the phenomena of human-technology interactions, teamwork, and communication among people separated by time, culture, and distance. Such features give rise to distinct challenges to effective performance and to the development of interpersonal relationships among team members.