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Leading the Virtual Workforce

Leading the Virtual Workforce

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- World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset value

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World markets are unsteady, unemployment is on the rise, housing foreclosures are up, asset values are down, and the political landscape is shifting. Under such tumultuous conditions, people often look to leaders to soothe battered nerves. But in today's rough and tumble environment, there are reportedly few leaders the average person relies upon.

Over 80 percent of Americans believe that we are in the midst of a major leadership crisis. And over 75 percent of executives from around the world are seriously concerned about whether businesses can develop good leaders for the future. And yet not one leadership book squarely addresses the issue of the changed workforce, the virtual workforce, and why old leadership models just don't work - until now.

Leading the Virtual Workforce builds off the ground-breaking concept of Virtual Distance introduced in Sobel Lojeski seminal first book, Uniting the Virtual Workforce. And in never-before-published interviews, leaders from IBM, Merck, Western Union, Alcatel-Lucent, HP, AT&T, and more share detailed case studies about what's different about leadership today and how to become a great leader in the Digital Age. Leading the Virtual Workforce covers:

The most common myths about leadership for today's virtual workforce
Why old leadership models need to be reshaped for a new era
What great leaders do differently to thrive in the globally connected enterprise
A new leadership model custom-built for today's workforce realities
Advice from the greats for those looking to advance their leadership and management effectiveness for the virtual workforce

The virtual workforce is a relatively new phenomenon. The Virtual Distance Model provides the quantitative data and predictive power needed to understand how new behaviors, born out of the Digital Age, impact performance, innovation, and other critical success factors. And now the time has come to reshape leadership models to best serve worldwide organizations in the twenty-first century. Leading the Virtual Workforce does just that - paving the way for future leaders to create unmatched competitive advantage and performance improvements in the growing world of virtual work.

Books in Brief Summary in HR Magazine

"How can you manage and lead people whom you seldom—or never—see? How can employees linked only by e-mails and the occasional call or videoconference really act as a workforce community? Karen Sobel Lojeski says that with strategy and technology, leaders can foster the cohesiveness to turn virtual workers into connected workforces.

Lojeski cites a study saying that by 2011, 73 percent of the U.S. workforce will be mobile—not tied to a desk and an office at a single company location.

The book provides a “virtual distance leadership model” to help employers work with and motivate employees who are dispersed—whether the dispersion is geographic, cultural or functional. The leadership model outlines three core competencies for leading the mobile workforce:

Leaders need to bring context, a common framework, to the workforce. Virtual workers can be disconnected from any larger picture of their co-workers and the relationships among them. Projects and people come and go. Virtual teams are “forming, dissipating and re-emerging” in new forms all the time. Leaders need to be informed, consistent and a constant amid a changing virtual structure.
Leaders need to focus on creating community among virtual workers. Fostering interdependence helps foster community. Case studies look at how firms used consistent messages, virtual meetings, storytelling and more to build a sense of community.
Leaders need to share leadership with other people, who may work for other organizations or whom they may never even see. Lojeski shows how AT&T, Hewlett-Packard and other companies have activated new leaders who use informal influence to get things done.

Lojeski also demonstrates how using e-mail, teleconferencing, blogs, social networking and other technologies can build the communities virtual employees and their managers need. Throughout the book, she uses examples and advice from executives of firms including IBM, Merck, Crayola and more."

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