Peter Zimmerman - the relative importance of leadership behaviours in virtual & F-2-F interactions in global virtual teams

Peter is with Shell and has based his study on observations of the operation of virtual global teams from inside Shell - he has an engineering background and already his slides are displaying complex networks and array of connections within and between the teams he's observing. He is allying his paper to knowledge into action and positions the paper as action research. The paper posits leadership as 'influence' and applies this to how global virtual teams (GVTs), and is founded on a literature review that isolates the discourse on task-focused and relationship-focused behavioural concepts. Peter carried out a web based questionnaire, with 30 respondents; together with some semi-structured interviews. Such is the basis of Peter's paper.

Referring to an earlier post about 'consumption' and action. I find myself adopting a consumer identity as Peter speaks, looking to gather and utilise the conclusions he makes. Such as, the degree of virtualness increases, so does task-orientation.

Some behaviours that were rated with high importance were:

• keeping promises


• demonstrating confidence in the professionalism of others


• recognising individual team member contributions


• clarity of communication as the team becomes more virtual


• anticipation of problems


• use the most appropriate CMC tools and language

Peter's slides are very detailed and are a representation of the gist of his paper. I find this interesting: speakers here only have 20 minutes to 'get across' the gist of their papers - a kind of performance, not dissimilar to the performance of this blog. Questions? What conclusions can be generalized and what are context specific in Peter's research? What are the life-cycles of virtual teams or organisations. One questioner from the OU works in a team where the leader has almost dissapeared, and where my colleagues are only email addresses. And what is virtuality?