Virtual Transformational Leadership: The New Superpower

Virtual teams (VT) face challenges that are dynamic, isolating, and utterly different from office-based teams. This requires the person in charge — the VT leader — to find an approach that speaks to those characteristics. To that end, consider the concept of virtual transformational leadership (VTL), which conveys the values and behaviors of VT leaders who adopt the transformational mindset.

Individuals Matter in VTL

People work better when they feel noticed, valued, and heard. Transformational leadership focuses on leaders who recognize this. In virtual teams, where members often work alone and dispersed, it takes effort on the part of the leader to achieve this.

A frequent complaint I hear from VT members is they feel isolated in their work. Online team meetings characterized by no video and muted mics can make collaboration seem like it is happening in a void. One-on-one interactions with the VT leader can be infrequent and one-sided, with the leader doing most of the talking.

With VTL, leaders work consciously to develop each member of the team from afar, bearing in mind their unique strengths and weaknesses. Any VT leader worth his or her salt knows that in a virtual context, people have to feel confident in their ability to work well independently while also working collaboratively with team members who aren’t sitting in the next cubicle.

VT leaders need to get to know each person on the team at a richer level than “that’s Bob from Marketing or Joan from Accounting.” Such relationship-oriented knowledge allows leaders to act as a coach for each team member across miles, helping team members grow and evolve.

Make time for individualized interactions with team members. During such interactions, ask questions that relate to each person’s current situation and what they seek in terms of personal and professional goals. Actively listen to what members have to say, about themselves, their work, or the challenges they are facing.

VTL is About Stimulating Work

 In 1936, Charlie Chaplin made the film Modern Times about factory workers engaged in monotonous, mind-numbing, and depersonalized work. Chaplin’s character struggles because his creativity is underutilized and communication is limited to managerial-made demands. He literally becomes a cog in the organization’s machine, runs amok, and eventually causes a factory-wide catastrophe.

People like work that makes them feel challenged and stimulated on a regular basis. Transformational leadership invokes the need for leaders to foster critical thinking and push for new and exciting ways to solve problems. VT leaders should engage workers through coaching, have them consider problems from different perspectives, and take risks.

Engaging workers in stimulating work from remote locations can be hard, but don’t let these constraints stop you from doing it. In a virtual setting, interactions serve two crucial functions from the VTL perspective. First, they help engagement occur, and second, they build trust and a sense of community for virtual members whose primary interaction is often limited to their dog. With trust, VT leaders can work to better engage team members in what they do.

Stimulating work and interactions only occurs in a climate of psychological safety, where members feel free to offer suggestions, take risks, and make mistakes. All it takes is one overly harsh response from the boss when they offer an idea to kill a team member’s motivation going forward in a virtual context.

Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft since 2014, exemplifies what it means for leaders to provide psychological safety. In a culture that infamously made employees afraid to admit mistakes or ask questions, Nadella makes a point of admitting his own mistakes, encouraging workers to take risks, and showing interest in his employees’ ideas.

VTL Inspires People

Transformational leadership demands a particular attitude and set of behaviors on the part of the leader themselves: leaders must inspire the people they lead.

For VTL, that means creating an authentic sense of interest about team goals and the team’s future. Not only that, but leaders should also communicate clearly about how goals may be reached and how each member factors into the equation. Members are more likely to listen and be inspired when you make them an active, essential component to the process.

Consider a VT leader who has scheduled a weekly online team meeting, conducted via video conferencing. She can go through the agenda herself, trudging through topics while members email colleagues or play solitaire. Or she can ask questions, call people out for their opinions and ideas, and publicly praise a team member for initiative. Even better, she can privately discuss each member’s potential contribution to the forthcoming meeting before it begins. Yes – this takes time. But it is time well spent, especially if the meeting is strategic in nature.

Ensure positive results by modeling the behavior you want to see in the team during one-on-one or collaborative sessions online. Anyone who is a parent will tell you that actions speak louder than words. If you tell a member they are a valuable part of the team, and then in meetings the only one who contributes is you, that sends a message to that member not to care.

 Inspirational leaders make remote workers want to get up from their kitchen table and get to work. VTL demands that leaders hold virtual followers to high standards of performance, and they demonstrate those standards in their own behaviors.

You don’t have to be a “charismatic” person to effectively employ VTL, but you do have to interact with and involve people using all the tools at your disposal. And I argue that the most crucial tool the virtual leader has is communication.

Communication and VTL

 For virtual workers, communication is a lifeline, both in terms of direction and human connection. Research indicates that virtual workers need more intentional, structured, and clear interactions from their leaders.

That said, virtual communication is limited. It lacks nonverbal cues and is prone to be asynchronous in nature. Frequent, clear, authentic, and meaningful communication that requires both the leader and the team member(s) to play an active role is essential for VTL to flourish.

The idea of transformational leadership is to put the worker front and center in everything you do, especially in dynamic, complex environments. Given this, VTL offers virtual leaders a valuable perspective that enables the virtual team to flourish. When leaders embrace the perspective and techniques of VTL, they make a difference in the work lives of their members and in the outcomes of the virtual team overall.

Learn more about how virtual team leaders can make a difference in their teams with our Virtual Team Leader workshops!