Women, despite all of the advances that our society has made, are still forced to grapple with the glass ceiling. While some women have made a name for themselves as directors and board members of major corporations, only 17% of the over 5,000 board seats for S&P 500 companies were filled by women. Europe attempted to solve this problem by adopting legislation with the end goal of having at least 40% of board positions filled by the ‘lesser-represented sex.’ However, I doubt that a similar law would ever fly here in the states. And while it is all too easy to bemoan the patriarchal structure for continuing to keep us of the fairer sex down, I feel as though there is more at play than that. Now, don’t get me wrong — I know that a large part of the reason that women cannot get onto boards is simply because many corporations are still considered boys clubs. A report released in 2012 by Ernst & Young backs up that assertion, as the largest increase in gender diversity has been on boards that were diverse already, and change amongst corporate America’s largest boards has been sluggish.
But compare those facts to the state of entrepreneurship amongst women. Women primarily found small businesses, and have done quite well as entrepreneurs. American City Business Journals discovered that women own nearly half of all companies with less than four employees. In addition to this, the Guardian Life Small Business Institute predicted that, by 2018, more than half of all small businesses founded would be founded by women.
Mom and pop shops have become more mom than pop, and while women are not making the same strides in the boardroom, this development is extremely interesting. It is dangerous to rely on personal anecdotes to back up any assertion, but when I graduated from Pepperdine, I was offered a position on a few boards. While these were not multi-billion dollar multinational corporations, they were making money and growing, so inviting someone fresh out of business school was a bit of a gamble.
After talking about it with my husband and figuring out what I wanted to do in terms of a family, I denied the offer and instead chose to follow a different path. A path that eventually led me to MyCorporation, a company I bought and became CEO of. And I chose that path because I wanted to be able to spend time with my sons and my family. While a career was important, my family was my life, and I wanted a position where I can spend time with them without sacrificing my standing in the eyes of my employer.
Board positions require an immense amount of dedication, more dedication than I was willing to give. They also typically require that you work within a strict set of standards. Not every woman wants a family, but I did, so I couldn’t spend that much time in a boardroom. I like being able to be the mom who helps out in her son’s classroom, and had I not bought MyCorp that would have been impossible to do. So maybe there is a reason beyond patriarchal constraint to explain why women are not more represented on boards – though, admittedly, sexism is still a serious problem in corporate America.
In fact, that could very well be another reason why women are avoiding traditional business models. They are flawed, static, and often inflexible. Instead of having to deal with a room full of people that are put off every time you voice your opinion, or face being stuck in a rut because no one wants to risk changing anything, many women are simply forgoing the traditional corporate ascent and striking out on their own.
Of course, those of us who have found success in business have a duty to mentor the generations of women still trying to figure out what they are going to do when they leave business school. Women who have made a board position work should share how they did it, and what to expect, and those of us who run our own businesses need to do likewise. Hopefully, as time goes on and more women make it in business, corporate culture will change and the barriers to entry that currently block many women from joining corporate boards will be knocked down.
We do not live in a world without gender – gender still defines how we view others, and ourselves, and often determines what expectations are placed on us. But there is something inspiring about the fact that, despite gender assumptions, many, many, many women are proving their mettle by striking out on their own and founding their own businesses. Not everyone will be an immediate success, but the fact that Main Street USA is becoming a bit more female is heartening.
Deborah Sweeney is the CEO of MyCorporation.com. MyCorporation is a leader in online legal filing services for entrepreneurs and businesses, providing start-up bundles that include corporation and LLC formation, registered agent, DBA, and trademark & copyright filing services. MyCorporation does all the work, making the business formation and maintenance quick and painless, so business owners can focus on what they do best. Follow her on Google+ and on Twitter @deborahsweeney and @mycorporation.
FREE PDF Guide to Women in Leadership
Executive Coach Dana Theus shares her tried and true strategies to help women excel in higher levels of leadership and achieve their executive potential.
The number of female entrepreneurs is on the rise and (thanks in part to Lean In) so is their optimism about growth opportunities for their business. Where are the best cities in America for female small business owners to thrive, and what are the best ways to get to the top? Check out the graphic below to learn more.
Being an entrepreneur is all about empowering yourself to create a business that’s right for you. It’s about facing up and rising to different challenges, overcoming the day-to-day demands, learning and planning for the future.
In a new campaign e-commerce specialists Alibaba are celebrating female entrepreneurs. They want to encourage women to realize their vision and head down the path of creating a thriving and successful business.
Starting your own company can be a daunting prospect, but listening to the stories of some of Alibaba’s successful customers can help show you how achievable it is. These stories show how, by overcoming the various challenges and with dedication, hard work, belief and ambition, you can reach your goals and realize any dream you want.
Meet Chelsea Abingdon Welch
Chelsea Abingdon Welch makes luxury designer watches for adventurous, high-flying women. At the age of just 19 she went about setting up her own business, challenging stereotypes to create a range of high quality aviation watches. She also runs a group that supports and celebrates female stunt pilots.
After initially learning to fly she noticed how all the guy pilots had amazing watches, which had all kinds of different functionalities. But she also noticed they only made them for men, so what did she do? She went out and produced a range for women, proving that there’s no point waiting for somebody else to do it when you can do it yourself.
Meet Kate Castle
Kate Castle’s story shows how you can create a business from the simplest idea and you don’t need a huge infrastructure to make it work. Being a mother of two children she noticed how, when out camping, going to the toilet in the middle of the night could be a problem. So she created Boginabag, a portable, lightweight toilet to meet these needs.
Even though she had no previous experience in how to turn something from an idea into a product, she got a product sketched out and then used Alibaba to find manufacturers and make her dream a reality. Now her business is growing into an international company — her story shows its possible to achieve whatever you set your mind to. She’s even inspired her kids to want to set up their own businesses too.
Meet Li Su Ling
Li Su Ling runs a successful clothing company that she started back in 2003. With the simple goal of wanting to produce quality outdoor clothing she’s seen her business grow and grow. She puts her success down to hard work, striving for excellence and maintaining high production values so that her team have respect for the product and take pride in the work they do.
With this solid relationship with her employees, it ensures customer satisfaction, as they know they can trust the product and the people behind it. Li Su Ling’s story teaches us a valuable lesson about creating the right work environment to encourage the best from those around you.
Find out more and submit your own story
Alibaba wants to hear your inspirational stories too. If you’re a female entrepreneur they want you to submit your story and you could be in with the chance to win a mentorship from one of five successful businesswomen.
It’s a unique opportunity to learn from experienced entrepreneurs who have turned their ideas into business acumen. You’ll learn from some of the best so you can expand your business and make it even greater, achieving more than you thought possible.
InPower Women accepted this post from a sponsor because we love the stories of these women and how they have built their businesses based on true faith in themselves. Do you have a post you’d like to sponsor on InPower Women? Contact us.
If you write a leadership blog you know the challenge of dredging the stock photo sites for perfectly politically correct photos of happy business women and men sporting every hue of skin color from creamy white to chocolate brown. If you actually run a business, you know the photo-dredgers have it easy when it comes to filling the executive suite with such variety. Building a diverse workforce isn’t so hard given the growing numbers of minorities in the U.S. population, but grooming them into leadership is another matter entirely.
We’ve all been there. Having a great day. Checking things off the to do list.
Then boom! You hit a wall worse than a marathoner bonking at mile 20.
You want to crawl under the desk. It takes an hour to get back to the same level of productivity. That’s an hour you’ve either lost or you have to tack to the end of your day. Most people do the latter, whether it’s staying late or working from home at night.
This is just one example of how we survive at work instead of excel. Unfortunately, just surviving seems widespread since some 74 percent of people wouldn’t mind a new job according to Forbes.
So how do you excel at work?
Most of us think we have to go the extra mile. Work harder. Take more on.
Wrong.
The real secret to excelling at work is learning to better fuel your body and soul. In this case, we’re talking about learning how to thrive. This article contains three easy steps for excelling and thriving at work.
Feed Your Brain
With the decrease in manufacturing jobs, we have become an intellectual economy. Whether services or products, most employees are hired for their brain not their brawn. Even retail, customer care and sales people must use their brains if they want to excel, thrive and earn bigger commissions.
Most people, however, are feeding their brains on survival mode. A 2004 study showed that ¾ of all restaurant meals were from fast food. Despite the success of the Food Network and cooking shows, we are eating most meals from the Standard American Diet playbook – sodas, energy drinks, sugar, fried foods, and refined and processed foods. The truth is, we can do all the Sudoku we want to improve our brain function, but it’s of little benefit if we aren’t providing our brain the nutrients it needs to create more neurons for better thinking.
To excel, you must start eating brain foods. Specifically eat a diet rich in polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats like nuts, avocados, cold-water fish, deep green vegetables like spinach and kale and pumpkins seeds. Antioxidants are another great brain food and can be found in berries, high quality chocolate and cruciferous vegetables.
Excel Tip: For managers looking to get more brain power out of their employees, work with your facilities and human resources managers to ditch the soda and snacks machines and stock the kitchen with brain healthy foods. Some examples are: walnuts, pumpkin seeds, fruit especially berries, fruit smoothies, guacamole, snack bars with nuts, dates and flaxseeds.
Sleep Is Not For Sissies
At a National Association of Women Business Owner panel I attended several months ago, I listened in horror as each CEO of a multi-million dollar company was proudly sharing how she was sleep deprived. They wore their sleep deprivation like a badge of honor.
Sadly, these successful women were teaching that to create a growing, thriving business you must give up sleep. But sleep deprivation puts us in survival mode once we get to work, where we are constantly seeking out sugar and caffeine to make it through the day.
I asked myself, what if they hadn’t given up on sleep? What if they had drawn a line and insisted on eight hours sleep? Might their company be even more successful?
The research certainly supports that notion. We see the amount of sleep college students get affecting grades by as much as a whole letter grade for each hour of additional sleep.
The April edition of the Harvard Business Review reported on a study at Singapore Management University about sleep deprivation and productivity. The study showed that for every hour of sleep that was interrupted, the participants spent 20% more time “cyberloafing” (i.e., personal email and checking social networking sites instead of working. Not exactly excelling.
Excel Tip: Make 8-hours sleep a daily non-negotiable. If you think that will be the kiss of death at work (like I did), take this data to your boss and suggest changing your work hours, or working from home so you can skip your commute.
Practice Giving
A giving work place culture translates into a high energy, thriving work culture. Specifically, giving yields higher-profitability, productivity, efficiency and customer satisfaction, according to research by Nathan Podsakoff of the University of Arizona. Giving also translates to lower costs and turnover rates.
As an employee looking to excel, giving can be your secret weapon.
When you are in survival mode, you feel pressed for time, huddled at your computer, typing away, just trying to get it all done, not making waves and hoping the next round of budget cuts doesn’t land you in the unemployment line. Giving is not something you’re thinking of when you’re just surviving.
Giving makes us feels good and that is the key to excelling at work or any endeavor. Giving also releases endorphins that make us happy. I suspect this happiness leads to more creativity and engagement and thus the business results found by Podsakoff.
Excel Tip: A couple of times a day, get up and visit a co-worker for a few minutes. Find out what they are working on and how you might be able to help. Even if you can only offer them a different perspective on the problem they are working on you will have served, you increase your value to the company and you feel good.
Sometimes it’s the small changes we make in our behavior that have the most profound results. Excelling at work doesn’t have to be complicated. Sure continual learning and skills acquisition is important, but these simple steps can yield big results.
Being a female entrepreneur has its upsides, but also its disadvantages. Like having to find an answer to the question I – contrary to my male colleagues ? – get asked a lot. “As a mother of three children, how do you balance your work and your private life?”
This time the question came after I finished giving a guest lecture. I shared my advice on how to be an entrepreneur. I talked about how to learn from failure, how to engage employees, … Afterwards there was time for some questions and answers. In most cases, my lectures are very interactive, so there are always lots of questions. Some of them I love very much. Like: “How did you manage two companies at the same time?” “Didn’t you prefer to manage the new one more than the other?” I like these questions, because these are things I really struggled with and I learned a lot from that.
And then in came the question that everyone wants to ask, but almost no one dares. Maybe because they are afraid it could appear sexist, maybe because they are afraid that asking the question could imply they lack motivation themselves. But this one person stood up and asked: “How do you deal with your work-life balance, while having three children?”
To be honest, I have no idea.
I don’t need a balance; I’m not looking for a way to balance my private life with my professional life. I’m just trying to have a great life. Ever since I started my first company in 2003, my professional life has been taking up a lot of my time. There have been successes, failures, crises, expansions, new developments and the challenges of day-to-day management. Sometimes a crisis forced me to skip a family vacation. Often I came home too late from work to tuck my children in.
Does that mean my children are neglected? Of course not! At some point in our life my husband and I had the feeling we weren’t around enough for our children and we had to make a choice. And we did: we decided I would expand my business, while my husband became a stay-at-home dad helping me as well, but mainly during school hours. We are certain our children receive all the time, attention, and care they need, while they also get to see the world, both literally and through stories about economy, failure, struggle, profit, VAT.
My husband and I make a great team. We found a way to live the life we love, without feeling guilty. So the answer is: I never have to think about a balance. I work with the people I like, I live with the people I love and I love the job I do.
There are two questions I get asked most frequently when I meet new people and tell them my story. The first is, “Why did you decide to leave law?” and the second is, “How did you make the change?” I recently got an email from a woman explaining that she was stuck in her career path but she wasn’t sure if she wanted to continue as an employee or take a risk and start her own business. I told her my story and then gave her this article. This is the step-by-step process I used to go from recovering lawyer to happy entrepreneur.
1. Determine that a change needs to be made. Many people contemplate job changes after a particularly bad day or week at work; however the decision to change career paths shouldn’t be a quick one. You will likely notice what I call a tugging gnaw (i.e., your intuition or gut) reminding you periodically that something is off and that a change needs to be made. If you’ve ignored that gut feeling before, then you’re like many other people I’ve talked to. When you decide to make a change, surround yourself with supportive people. Mark Twain once said, “Keep away from people who try to belittle your ambitions. Small people always do that, but the really great ones make you feel that you, too, can become great.”
2. Map out Point A to Point B. If you’re a teacher and want to be a writer, what does that involve? Be specific. What is your transition timeline? How much money do you need to save? What other financial concerns need to be addressed? What family issues need to be discussed? Do you need to further your education? If so, what will that cost? Write out your plan and review it often. Your plan may need to be revised as you progress through these steps.
3. Focus on meaning, not money. What concepts, ideas, and careers would you pursue for their own sake, without regard to title, prestige, or salary? People who are called to their work do it not solely for financial gain or career advancement, but for the fulfillment that the work brings. My work feels like a drug now – I have to have more of it, and I can’t wait to jump out of bed in the morning to get to it. I want that for you too.
4. Determine your signature strengths. Two examples of strengths tests are the VIA (Values in Action) Signature Strengths questionnaire, which is free and can be found at www.authentichappiness.org and Strengths Finder 2.0, a book by Tom Rath. Using your strengths on a regular basis will promote life satisfaction and engagement.
5. Create THE LIST. Take the information from Steps 3 and 4 and go deeper. THE LIST is everything you loved to do growing up, all of the things you thought you were good at from back then until now. These are qualities that are intrinsically part of who you are, so THE LIST is very personal. You will start to see patterns throughout your life where you felt great joy performing an activity or impacted someone’s life because of the unique talents you bring to the table. THE LIST items need to be part of your new career.
6. Do a career brainstorm. With the information you’ve collected from the steps above, what careers fit? Do you want to start a business? How do you want your new career to make you feel (e.g., secure, empowered, happy, challenged, relaxed)? What do you want to get from your new career (e.g., more money, less money but more time with the family, more control, ability to call your own shots, a sense of truly helping others)?
7. Connect with people who are doing what you want to do. People love to talk about themselves and their work. Ask this key question of everyone you talk to: “If you had to do it all over again, would you take the same path?” Ask whether these contacts can put you in touch with others, and start building a network. Online research and books are good secondary sources and will be helpful, but they aren’t a substitute for actually talking to people in specific industries.
8. Test the waters. I can’t stress this step enough. I was certain I wanted to be a pastry chef after my law practice ended. So much so that I actually applied to, and was accepted at, a pastry school in New York. Before moving my life to New York City for six months, I decided to do a pastry internship at a restaurant. To my surprise, I HATED it. That internship saved me six months of wasted time and tons of money.
9. Make your move. Making a career change is not easy, but regretting not trying is far worse.
As you begin your journey, please keep me posted as to how it’s going. I’d love to hear your story!
Take charge of your career development to get the job that supports your work and your life. Check out the tools and resources in the InPower Coaching Career Center.
If you want to be adaptable you must be willing to let go of the need to know the answer.
Why? Because there is rarely one answer: that single right answer to the questions you are being asked and are asking or the right path through the challenges you face.
Sure there are questions for which there is a known answer. For example, what is the sum of 2 + 2? There are also those answers you can find in a book. For example, if you take a test on American History in the US in school the right answers can be found in the book you were assigned.
Yet if you took an American History class in another country they might use an entirely different book and some of the answers might not be the same. And let’s not forget that for a very long time the answer to the question, “Is the world flat?” was a definitive, “Yes.”
The problem with needing to know “the” answer is the questions we are asking today are more often than not about an unknown future rather than a known past. The book is essentially not yet written.
So you have two choices: wait for the book or become the author.
The thing is, you are already the author of your life, your career, your relationships, your business. Essentially you are the author of your past, present and future. Whether you accept that or not is another matter entirely.
If you truly want to be adaptable you must first accept your role as author.
Until you do you may find yourself equipped for a world that no longer exists while you wait for someone to write the book with the answers.
Your choice. Unless, of course, you know someone with a crystal ball.
A catalyst for conversations that matter, relationships that work and results that inspire, Susan Mazza serves leaders and their organizations as a Leadership Coach, Change Agent and Motivational Speaker.
One of the founding Members of The Lead Change Group, a non-profit, global leadership community, Susan also Co-authored The Character-Based Leader: Instigating a Revolution of Leadership One Person at a Time.
Authenticity at work: is that an oxymoron? A pipedream? Most of us long to be more authentic at work, yet in most organizations, authenticity is in short supply.
Here’s a quick exercise that illustrates why that might be so. Identify a current work situation that you think is being badly handled but that you haven’t confronted. If you had a free pass to react authentically – with no threat of repercussion – what would you do? Now… if you actually did or said that, what do you think would happen? For many of us, that much honesty could constitute career suicide.
This is the double bind of authenticity. We long for it, but it’s risky. So we resign ourselves to the belief that being who we really are is only possible in ‘enlightened’ organizations – which is certainly not where WE work.
Part of our problem is that we define authenticity in a very limiting way. Many people equate it with ‘full transparency.’ But this can easily slide into spewing our thoughts, feelings and judgments onto others, all in the name of being true to ourselves. Don’t get me wrong. Sharp honesty has its place; it can clear the air and let people know where you stand. But simply letting it all hang out backfires a lot: escalating conflict and misunderstanding, eroding trust, and damaging reputations. You’re smart to be wary of that.
So what are our choices? Let it rip’ or ‘zip it?’ Ugh.
A new option has to begin with a new perspective. Rather than defining authenticity as ‘full transparency,’ what if we see it as ‘speech and actions that arise from our deepest values?’ That’s a very different proposition. This requires discipline, restraint, clarity and skill. It allows us to be true to ourselves and to connect meaningfully with others, without doing harm or selling ourselves out.
What would that look like in practice? Gwen, a client of mine, gave me a living example. She was a self-employed consultant, and had signed on as a subcontractor to a larger consulting firm. She was about to undertake her first assignment, and had negotiated the rates and terms for the project. The day before the work was set to begin, her phone rang. It was the firm’s project manager. He said, “Gwen, I hate tell you this, but we just got the final paperwork from our client today, and the approved budget is 30% less than they agreed to verbally. So although we promised you $X, we can only pay you 70% of that.”
Gwen was genuinely and legitimately furious. If she had defined authenticity simply as “full disclosure,” Gwen would likely have responded with some pretty unsavory words. But with the client expecting work to begin the next day, and with a new work relationship in the balance, Gwen had a lot at stake. She wanted to be truthful in her response, but she also wanted to be skillful. She called me to help her sort it out.
I asked her two questions; here’s how she worked with them.
What deeply-held values do you want your response to reflect? “This is my first engagement with this firm, so I want my actions to communicate that I’m not a doormat, that this is really not OK with me. Second, I believe that those who mismanaged the process should bear the largest burden of the mismanagement. Third, I want my actions to communicate empathy and my commitment to this team. This has put us all in a tough position, and I care about both the client and my relationships at the consulting firm.
What can you say or do that will successfully reflect those values? “I want the project manager to understand where I’m coming from, so I’ll start by sharing the principles driving my response. Then I’ll offer this proposal: I’ll carry on with the project, because I don’t want to leave the client in the lurch. But I won’t agree to take a 30% cut in my rate. That said, I will decrease my fees by 10% to acknowledge that I care about this relationship and that we’re all in this together.”
The result? The firm gratefully agreed to Gwen’s terms. As a result of how she handled the situation, Gwen also gained the reputation as the ‘most ethical and principled’ of all the firm’s subcontractors. Her influence and political capital at the firm remained very high for the life of the working relationship.
Gwen had acted authentically. Identifying and acting on her deeper values had been the key. Had she responded simply with emotional transparency, the relationship would likely have ended in a firestorm of blame and resentment. Gwen was true to her anger – not by spewing it, uncensored, but by using it to identify what really mattered to her and behave in a way that reflected that.
Could values-based authenticity work for you? Take the situation you identified at the top of this article, and see what happens when you look at it through the lens of the two questions. Does it show you something new about yourself, the situation, or how you might respond? Let us know!
Go into most companies these days and you’ll witness hand wringing around the complexities of managing a virtual workforce. Studies show that 80 percent of managers deal with dispersed teams, which may include managing people in remote locations, other countries, or in home-based offices. (When you factor in our dependence on consultants and cross-functional teams, my guess is that nearly all managers are leading virtually in some fashion.)
We’re doing it, but we don’t like it. Fifty-seven percent of managers say trust is a challenge with a virtual workforce, followed by communications, managing projects, and creating consensus. Virtual managers often say it’s simply harder and more time-consuming to manage when the team isn’t in front of them.
Virtual management can be isolating, and even lonely. A virtual manager’s day can be a flurry of conference calls and emails. Having personal connections and camaraderie is one of the highlights of managing others, and when you lose that, work can be a slog.
Frustration aside, and contrary to Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer’s controversial decision to eliminate working from home, most companies are moving ever further into virtual structures. Whether to extend their talent pool, appeal to a younger workforce, or for sustainability, my prediction is that the term “virtual manager” will have a short shelf-life. All management will be, at least in part, virtual.
We now have a good decade of studies showing what works well in virtual management, and what falls short. The toughest challenges are always communications and trust, so if you want your virtual team to hum, here are some best practices to keep in mind.
1. Use face-to-face meetings strategically.
Virtual teams need some in-person meetings to establish deeper relationships, so plan for them wisely. Research shows that timing matters. Gather your team after roles are clearly established, not at a team’s inception, and they will use the time together to suss out work styles, and organize socially. It’s also important to have a schedule for in-person meetings that everyone knows in advance. People will save certain communications and relationship matters if they know there will be a chance for a personal meeting.
2. Schedule informal time.
Research at MIT’s Human Dynamics Lab found that informal time was the #1 determinant of success in a team. Turns out the water cooler talk makes us more productive, not less. For virtual teams, this means that however you communicate, whether by phone or video, have a set time for informal connection. Even five minutes to talk about weekend plans can make a difference. Sacrifice some efficiency now for effectiveness later.
3. Humanize the communications.
In To Sell is Human, Dan Pink cites a compelling study about the power of seeing the face of another person. When radiologists were given CT scans to interpret with photos of the patient attached, they were far more effective at reading them, and also at uncovering unrelated medical threats. The researchers concluded that having a face in front of us changes our level of involvement, and behavior.
This has relevance for building connection in the virtual business environment as well. Put a face with a voice whenever possible. Make sure pictures pop up in your instant messaging or videoconferencing software. Or take PR firm Ogilvy’s lead. They use their internal social network to ease collaboration and relationship-building. Each person has a bio, formal and informal, with notes about their particular skills. Socialcast, Ning and Path offer low-cost ways to implement this technology for any size company.
Finally, virtual relationships are built faster when they are one-to-one. Find ways to divide the team into smaller working teams so they mix in dyads or small groups.
4. Blend task clarity with work autonomy.
Virtual teams need more communications, more protocols, and more clarity — around tasks. But when it comes to doing the work, one of the benefits of virtual work is you have more room to move in how you accomplish it. Be clear about expectations for deadlines, resolution of team issues, availability, and even communications. Then get out of the way.
5. Stack the deck.
A study at the London School of Economics showed that virtual teams are not all created the same. The best ones aren’t composed of functional experts with similar talents — rather they are quite diverse. High-performing teams have a mix of new and legacy employees with complementary skills. (The balance is critical, if the ratio favors too many legacy employees the new folks can feel left out.) Also look to add boundary spanners to your virtual team. These are folks with relationships across the company who know where to go to get things done. They can help the entire team manage hurdles, which given the complexity of virtual work in the first place, will be inevitable.
If you’re interested in more tips on virtual management, join The Trusted Advisor author Charlie Green and I on our webcast for the American Management Association. It’s free, more info here.
