E-leadership and virtual teams

In this paper we have identified some key challenges for E-leaders of virtual teams. Among the most salient of these are the following: • The difficulty of keeping tight and loose controls on intermediate progress toward goals • Promoting close cooperation among teams and team members in order to integrate deliverables • Encouraging and recognizing emergent leaders in virtual teams • Establishing explicit processes for archiving important written documentation • Establishing and maintaining norms and procedures early in a team's formation and development • Establishing proper boundaries between home and work Virtual team environments magnify the differences between good and bad projects, organizations, teams, and leaders. The nature of such projects is that there is little tolerance for ineffective leadership. There are some specific issues and techniques for mitigating the negative effects of more dispersed employees, but these are merely extensions of good leadershio-they cannot make up for the lack of it.