What are the best practices for evaluating virtual team performance with members from different industries?

Managing virtual teams with members from various industries involves understanding diverse work styles and strengths. Set Clear Goals: Establish specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. Regular Communication: Hold frequent meetings and check-ins to discuss progress and challenges. Tailored Performance Metrics: Adapt performance metrics to fit team members' different roles and expertise. Encourage Collaboration and Learning: Create an environment where team members can share industry-specific skills and experiences. Utilize Technology: Use task management software and performance tracking systems to monitor and evaluate team performance.

Agree that talking through expectations and boundaries for working from home is a must start point. You hire your people for what they can bring to the business and need to ensure that everyone is on the same page - exploration may include what flexibility is okay in working hours, how often you want them to check in, if stepping out of 'home office' to be transparent as examples. Measures and key goals should be part of the conversation so your team members can stretch themselves, and also be able to celebrate successes along the way.

Balanced criterias are a must, we need to have projects managed effectively with time frames and check points in place to track progress. At least a couple of 'team' touch points albeit virtually should be scheduled each week, with one having time built in for interaction not project focused. Leaders should also be checking in with each individual 1:1 to give opportunities for people to share their wins, and also challenges so they can stay productive. Performance should be measured on output, along with their engagement in offering innovations, and sharing risks they may see. Key for me is to keep a safe environment for authentic conversations to occur on how each person is managing.

Checking in for feedback from different stakeholders is a great way to see how the team are travelling. Open discussion in a safe enviroment - use a coaching approach to ask what is working and what is not allowing everyone to give honest opinions and input.

Feedback is perhaps the most important aspect for keeping a virtual team productive. Put away assumptions and keep curious by asking open questions that allow truthful responses. Feedback should be two way and forward thinking - we don't want people waiting for the hammer to fall. It's a discussion about a behaviour/situation, not a commentary on the person themselves. These feedback conversations should be both recognition of effort/success, and helping people do better.

Regular check ins and conversations keeps everyone abreast of where projects are, if anyone is lagging and helps the team focus on getting things done. Reality is that we sometimes have team members that need more support than others, so understanding what each persons preferences are is useful. Evaluations should be shared across the team with everyone responsible and accountable for their role. Always useful to ask for team members evaluation before offering yours - often they are harder on themselves and more open to help if they have identified the challenges.

Virtual teams need to be measured on their outcomes, especially if they are geographically dispersed as well as industry-specific. A team in India will need to act differently to deliver than one in say, Japan. Ultimately their value contribution to their employer, independent of industry or location is their contribution to the desired business outcome and as a leader, you need to trust that they best understand the industry and location within the contracted deliverables. As a leadership team, there is a need to align on those specific, clear deliverable outcomes to drive towards a common goal that delivers to business outcome value with weekly progress reviews for all. This creates momentum, focus and peer support.