Facilitating, Making, and Play with the KITT: Kinetic and Inclusive Teams Toolkit

What are the best ways for companies to manage and take advantage of virtual teams? This collection of articles from MIT Sloan Management Review examines the unique challenges of managing dispersed workers and the tactics managers can take to help them and the company overall thrive.

Virtual teams are an integral part of today's global business environment. Traditional face-to-face communication is frequently replaced with technology-mediated communication methods including phone, e-mail, fax, synchronous chat programs, and videoconferencing. While virtual teams offer various advantages to organizations and individuals in flexibility and the ability to overcome geographic distance, they face unique challenges. Virtual teams often are made up of members of various cultures and ages with diverse communication styles. Men and women also tend to behave differently in virtual environments. Challenges occur in the forming, storming, norming, performing, and adjourning phases of team development, and virtual teams must be able to cope effectively with those obstacles if they are to be successful and reach their potential.

Set your virtual team on a path to success In the global marketplace, people can work practically anywhere and anytime. Virtual teams cut across the boundaries of time, space, culture, and sometimes even organizations. Rising costs, global locations, and advances in technology are top reasons why virtual teams have increased by 800 percent over the past 5 years.

Remote work gives teams flexibility and options, but when you're not face-to-face with colleagues, it's difficult to set and manage expectations, deal with inevitable tech glitches, keep your people (and yourself) motivated and engaged, and infuse warmth and personality into the blunt communication tools you're using.The Virtual Manager Collection gives you the solutions you need to be productive, whether you're managing a team, a project, or just your own work. This specially priced three-volume set includes Virtual Collaboration, Running Virtual Meetings, and Leading Virtual Teams.Tips and strategies cover: getting your technology up and running--and keeping it there; building and maintaining relationships from afar; communicating well through a variety of media; running productive virtual meetings; setting and managing expectations for your work; leading geographically dispersed teams.

In recent years, virtual teams have become a feature of most corporate workplaces, yet few academic programs prepare students to work in virtual teams, and few textbooks support the development of key skills for virtual teamwork. The primary purpose of this book is to enable higher education students to participate in virtual teams with students from other institutions, who potentially operate in different countries, time zones, and/or cultures. The book guides students through the process of working in virtual team projects for their classes, and helps them to engage with the learning experiences, and to respond to potential challenges.