My Experience to Lead a Team Virtually

Communication can get muddled if teams never meet face to face, trust and collaboration suffer when workers are siloed, and sometimes it’s hard to tell if employees are tasked with too little or too much. Despite these challenges, virtual teams are here to stay. Remote work allows companies to compete in an increasingly globalized society, so the real challenge becomes adapting to the new workplace.

Working with iVolunteer i got a chance to lead a team in the corporate project i.e Cummins India Coach Them Young-2018 (Cummins CTY). The opportunity I got in my very first three month working with iVolunteer Delhi Team. The team which I lead includes the interns major cities of India (Bangalore, Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune) where we must get permission from different schools in respective cities to conduct the Waste and E-waste management session.

Virtual team is different from Traditional Team in Selection of Team Members, Organization Structure, Leadership Style, Knowledge Exchange & Decision-taking, Relationship Building, Psychological Contract. Leading a Virtual team is challenging in comparison to traditional teams. With Considering the challenges posed by the virtual teams, it is necessary to pay special attention to the communication, collaboration and cultural issues. Where I learn how a team leader should follow a distinct management approach which focuses on building trust and cohesion amongst the virtual team members to harness the advantages of a successful virtual team.

To work on this project and lead it virtually, I get the inspiration from Neha Srivastava, Head of Corporate who leads all the 7 centers of iVolunteer virtually and Mohd Saleem Sr. Relationship Manager. In the four month long Cummins CTY project, we as a Virtual Team was able to reach out to 259719 students pan India and spread awareness on ‘Types of Pollution & their adverse effect on environment’ amongst the young change-makers.

It was a great achievement for me and the whole team despite the few challenges faced in the initial stage of the project. We as a team all worked together towards in one vision and accelerated pull our shocks up and meet the target at the end.