How to Manage & Influence Your Virtual Team

If you manage a virtual team today, then you'll probably continue to do so for the rest of your career. 

If you don't, then you probably will soon.

Learning how to manage people you don't see face-to-face is an important skill that you need regardless of what industry you're in. The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) has also accelerated the need for managing people who work from home, as telecommuting became the norm.

With "How to Manage & Influence Your Virtual Team" you will learn the psychological secrets of persuasion and communication that influence your virtual team members to do what you need them to do. 

The course will also help you increase the level of trust and accountability among your team members while reducing the time you spend on frustrating meetings, useless technology tools, and back-and-forth emails. 

At the end of each lecture in the course, you'll get specific, actionable steps that you can implement immediately. 

In addition, you'll also get downloadable sample scripts and templates that you can simply copy & paste and use with your own virtual team. 

The course contains the following sections: 

• • The Psychology of Communication in Virtual Teams: Psychological strategies to effectively communicate with your team and reduce ambiguity and miscommunication
• • Principles of Behavior Change: Four strategic principles that will change your team's behavior to get things done
• • Tactics of Influence & Persuasion: Step-by-step tactics that influence your team members to do what you need them to do
• • Managing Virtual Meetings Effectively: How to have fewer meetings while increasing their effectiveness at the same time
• • Choosing and Evaluating the Right Technology: A simple framework to choose and evaluate the right technology tools to use with your virtual teams
• • Building Trust in Virtual Environments: A methodical blueprint to increase the level of trust among your virtual team
• • Killer Email and Phone Techniques: Powerful email and phone techniques that you can use to influence your virtual team members

What is different about this course? 

There are many courses on managing virtual teams. Here are three reasons why this one is different 

Reason #1: Tactics, not just strategies 

Most courses about virtual teams focus on high-level strategies and theories. 

Very few actually give you the tactics that you need to implement those strategies. 

In this course, I'll show you how to apply the management tactics to your own situation. You'll get step-by-step techniques and scripts that will save you a lot of time in managing your virtual team. 

In other words, you will get answers to both those questions: 

  -What do I need to do? 

  -How do I do it? 

Moreover, every video also has a “Summary of Actions" slide at the end that summarizes the course lecture for you, and tells you exactly what you need to do as a next step. Basically, you'll learn everything about virtual team management in simple steps.

Reason #2: Proven Science-based Research 

For the course, I did a ton of science-based research about powerful psychological and productivity studies in the areas of influence and management. 

Some of the research references include studies from the Harvard Business School, Kelley School of  Business, and McKinsey Global Institute. 

I also reference studies from international bestselling books such as “Influence: The Science of Persuasion," “Made to Stick," and “The Tipping Point," among others. 

I've tested the findings from those references myself and selected what works and what doesn't in virtual teams. 

So you will get the absolute best of the best concepts that work for you and your team. 

Reason #3: Practical insights that work (not just theory) 

I've been managing virtual teams for over 15 years, both as an entrepreneur and as a program manager. 

In fact, I still work as a remote leader, and my full-time job is to manage virtual teams across the world to deliver highly complex projects (note: I work for Cisco Systems, but all views are my own and not those of Cisco). 

Unlike most courses that are taught by professors who have studied this space from a purely theoretical view, you'll be getting a unique perspective on how to manage people remotely from someone who does this for a living. 

In short, the course will help you: 

• Communicate more effectively and build trust with your team

• Stop worrying about being caught up in pointless day-to-day details

• Save valuable time spent on useless meetings and back & forth emails

• Choose the right technology tools and techniques for effective team collaboration

• Influence  your team to be accountable for getting tasks accomplished

NOTE for Project Management Professional (PMP) certification holders 

This course qualifies for 3 Professional Development Units (PDUs) under the Project Management Institute's (PMI's) "Education" requirement. After you're done with the course, you will get a "Certificate of Completion" from Udemy, which you can use as evidence for PMI. All 3 hours can be claimed under the "Leadership" category.