I reckon the video chatroom presents an excellent opportunity for managing virtual teams in general without being overly surveillancy.

Take the following into account because the problem of virtual management seems under-appreciated:

The Economist, studying European companies, discovered:

(Only) one in three executives agrees that virtual teams are badly managed. This is probably a result of virtual working simply evolving into being rather than being planned in advance, but it is also to do with the difficulty of leading people from a distance.“ That might be excusable were it not for the fact, as Forbes observed, that “Managing virtual teams has become a must-have leadership skill.”

A survey of workers themselves — The Challenges of Working in Virtual Teams Report — found that a majority of respondents thought their team successful, identified the inability to read non-verbal cues as the biggest negative in working virtually. Other challenges, in the order of their importance to the 600 respondents, were:

1. Collegiality;

2. Difficulty establishing rapport and building trust;

3. Difficulty seeing the whole picture;

4. Reliance on email and telephone; and,

5. A sense of isolation.

For instance, the SHRM report, Successfully Transitioning to a Virtual Organization: Challenges, Impact and Technology, offers the example of on-site team members dominating meetings with their remote colleagues:

“Remote workers felt irrelevant and unable to significantly contribute,” says the report. Remedying that took a “conscientious effort” by the manager to have the remote workers speak first. And it helped that he sent Starbucks cards to the remote workers so they wouldn’t feel left out as their in-house colleagues enjoyed company provided coffee.

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Ten years ago there were few global virtual teams. Today it is rare for companies not to have teams dispersed across countries, cultures and time zones – colleagues who are expected to work together… while at the same time working apart. How should managers organise these globally dispersed teams? How can they build trust when their team members rarely come face to face? Which techniques bridge cultural, linguistic and geographical distances – not to mention time zones? When do cultural differences produce creativity rather than crossed wires? Above all, how can distance and diversity be turned into competitive advantages?

It facilitates what Insead considers the virtues of virtual management:

Cross Cultural management Self awareness Trust Communication Negotiation Cooperation Innovation