Into the 21st Century the need to manage people at a distance is fast becoming a reality for the majority of organisations. Globalisation, delayering and downsizing, e-commerce, the desire to be located close to the customer base, the growth in homeworking and more flexible working patterns and the increasing sophistication of communication technology has lead to situations where more and more managers and their teams are no longer co-located.

This has tremendous implications for managers who are now expected to lead people they seldom meet face-to-face.

Many of the traditional management skills no longer apply and managers are starting to become aware of the need for new strategies and techniques and are asking themselves such questions as:

• What is my role as a virtual team leader?
• How do I maintain team identity and performance
• How much control do I give to others?
• How do I use the different technologies that are available to me?
• How do I make a fair assessment of performance?

The Centre for Distance Management, established in 1995, has long recognised the challenges of virtual leadership and through its extensive research and continuous involvement with distance managers is in a unique position to help organisations. We have worked with over 3000 managers in the public, private and voluntary sector and as a result we have a huge data base of best practice which we share with our clients.

It is our belief that successful virtual leadership is 90% about the people and organisational issues and 10% about the new technology.