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Virtual teams are a fact of life, but not having team members in the same room poses communications challenges. Leigh Thompson presents four steps to get your people working together, no matter how far apart they may be.

Leigh Thompson - Managing Virtual Teams

Managing virtual teams

Long-distance–communications challenges can be overcome. Here's how.


A few years back, according to J. Jay Gerber Professor of Dispute Resolutions and Organizations Leigh Thompson, a long-distance conflict-resolution simulation that should have yielded benefits for students on both sides turned into a “bloodbath.” So she went looking for reasons and came up with some insights that are useful for executives at all levels.

The culprit? That pesky aforementioned distance. When people aren't in the same room, the potential for misunderstanding and other communications issues grows. Yet virtual teams are a fact of life, and challenges such as technological breakdowns and lack of trust must be faced and overcome.

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In this video, Prof. Thompson presents four steps to humanizing your virtual team and building stronger bonds in order to bring everybody closer together and get things done.