Skills needed to run a remote team

Are you considering taking over a virtual team? If so, make sure you are up to the challenge. The most successful virtual leaders:

Excel at building relationships. You love to talk to people and be social. As a virtual leader, you must stay connected with employees and maintain frequent communication via video chat and phone. If you are a bit of a loner who likes to avoid that kind of thing, leading remote employees isn’t for you.

Are extremely organized. With team members scattered, you will be dealing with many moving pieces that you will need to track.

Employees could be spread across time zones. Meetings are a little harder to conduct. Communication takes extra effort, and initiating changes or shifts and priorities can be challenging. If you aren’t organized, you will struggle to keep up.

Can be flexible. You will be working in a very unstructured environment. You won’t always know what employees are doing, and micromanaging them will be a waste of your time.

— Adapted from “3 Key Characteristics Essential to Managing Virtual Teams,” Darleen De Rosa, Business 2 Community, www.business2community.com.