Leadership Journey: Teams in Virtual Space

Program Overview

When global disruption hit and isolation became the norm, we showed that we are resilient, compassionate and — given the opportunity to shape how we work — deeply innovative. Leaders today face a dramatic wave of unknowns. There are many questions about what the world of work will look like and feel like. Will compassion, intimacy and flexibility still be valued? How will we work together as a team? Will decision-making be as expedient? When we lose the level-playing field, will every voice still matter?

Our faculty keep a close pulse on these challenges. We recognize that the puzzle pieces don’t fall into place without help. In response, we offer virtual Leadership Journeys with this transition in mind — targeted learning and development programs that tackle the mindset, skillset and behaviours key to re-engaging. These powerful, high-impact initiatives are tailored to support individuals, teams, and organizations as they reaffirm a leadership identity.

This journey focuses on leading your team as you work together through and after the crisis. You are a leader who wants to take your team to the next level of performance, even though your team’s daily routines have been thrown into disarray. For many teams, the amount of virtual interaction has increased dramatically. Working remotely may have placed a strain on your team, and at the same time you may have seen that some things work better virtually. Maintaining your team’s high performance and efficiency requires careful leadership and collaboration. You want to take the opportunity to leverage this new way of working for even better performance in the “new normal.”

What You Learn

Manage remote and virtual work

• Reset how your team works together by applying the best practices and research on virtual teams.
• Improve awareness of how team basics are even more important in virtual teams.
• Increase your ability to assess your team’s needs across changing situations and contexts, and act to improve your team’s dynamics in targeted ways.
• Harness the benefits of working virtually for your own team, no matter how “virtual” or co-located you are.
• Learn how to develop leadership in the team, increasing empowerment for the team and its individual members.

Construct a new foundation

• Review the fundamentals of high-performance teamwork through an assessment of your current team. Identify how much and which elements of teamwork went unnoticed – maybe around the water cooler? – when you were working in “normal” times.
• Compare your team experience with others to develop ideas and insight about how to prioritize the most important dynamics.
• Practice reinforcing the foundation of your team and reflect on the impact. Participate in a computer-based complex group decision-making simulation, with a team of others from this program.

Train for complex teamwork

• Dissect complex teamwork: the impact of conflicting and changing goals, evolving information and context, and distributed (virtual) work. Best practices for team processes that maximize the team’s performance.
• Use a simulation to apply new tools to your performance as a program-team, and extend the lessons to your own teams at work.
• Practice complex teamwork tools with your team and reflect on the impact. Watch a short video and read a book chapter (optional) on harnessing diversity in teams.

Harness your team’s diversity

• Examine the link between diversity and performance and identify two sets of tools to unlock inclusive principles and bridging behaviours.
• Explore the relationship between identity and inclusion – bringing your whole self to the team and creating an environment where others can do the same; discuss how to apply this to your own team.
• Choose actions to encourage and develop your team’s inclusion, empowering individual differences. Reflect on the impact, and on your team’s evolution and next steps.

Lead powerful, sustainable teamwork

• Discover how and when virtual modes provide advantages for teamwork, even for teams who normally work face-to-face. Examine how to sustain teams and develop leaders through complex teamwork.
• Develop a plan and a set of principles for supporting your team and its members through a high-performance journey that evolves as the context and the members do.
• Choose how you will build habits of reflective team development, supported by peers and others in your network.

Ivey Academy Coaches

Ivey Academy executive coaches take a blended approach to development, combining world-class coaching processes with leadership advisory services. Your coach becomes a confidential thinking and sparring partner, sharing and challenging your ideas. They help you navigate “in the moment” challenges, illuminate blind spots, and accelerate decision-making. They also help you understand yourself more deeply as you move into different career roles and stages, so you flourish where you are and prepare for what’s next.

Our coaches are selected to join an elite community because they combine deep coaching expertise across many contexts, credibility through their own practical experience, and a passion for supporting leaders’ personal development journeys. Through our Ivey Coaching Certification Program, they master Ivey’s unique experiential learning approaches, our leading-edge knowledge about business trends and frameworks, and the very latest research and assessment tools to support advanced leadership development.