National Learning Institute

A Manager's Guide to Virtual Teams

Yael Zofi

Reviewed by bselden Thu 1 Dec 11

Bob's Rating:

“A Manager’s Guide to Virtual Teams” gives a most comprehensive coverage of the topic.  Yael Zofi draws on his experience of consulting with many virtual teams and their managers to provide everything one would need to know to set up and successfully manage a virtual team.

Using the analogy of a car journey down the virtual highway, Zofi takes us through the three stages of virtual team development – set-up, follow-through and refresh – with plenty of “how to’s”, examples and case studies.  There are also some good checklists to guide you down the right road and self-assessments to check your road worthiness.

This is a great book for the detail minded.  For those seeking the big picture or whose style of learning is more attuned to taking things in small chunks, I would have liked to have seen more “overview” at the start of chapters or topics.  The topic of virtual teams, particularly told as it is by way of a road journey, would ideally lend itself to some visuals in the form of road maps.  In fact, I would direct this type of reader to the checklist on pages 248 and 249 – Zofi actually labels this a “roadmap”.  It’s a pity it doesn’t look like one.

I would also have liked to have seen some of the checklists used as virtual team assessments and team communication tools.  For example, the “Eight Characteristics of High-Performing Virtual Teams” mentioned in the appendix would make an ideal assessment to be completed by team members (assessing their team as it is now) and then used as the basis of a team development meeting.

This leads me to my final observation.  Good and all as the content is, the book is taken from the virtual team manager’s perspective.  That’s as it should be to start with.  However, does there come a time when the virtual team members need to also take a leadership role?  This perspective is most evident in the chapter on “Cross-Culture Communications and Virtual Teams” where a manager from a different culture might take another perspective.  The figure (7-1) on High Context versus Low Context by countries/regions (page 197 and unfortunately not referenced) could have been an ideal vehicle to discuss a virtual team manager (role/style etc.) who is from a different culture to that of the author.

All in all this is a good book on virtual teams.  For some readers, perhaps a little too wordy, however for those readers it is worth persevering.

Bob Selden, author “What To Do When You Become The Boss”.