Building High-Performing and Resilient Virtual Teams

Support and strengthen the capabilities of your remote team

Members of mission-critical teams within a vast number of organizations interact almost exclusively in a virtual setting. Achieving sustained excellence in virtual teamwork is extremely challenging under the best of circumstances. Organizations and the virtual teams within them are often confronted by situations characterized by volatility, uncertainty, complexity, or ambiguity (also known as VUCA contexts). Within these environments—wherein teams are quite likely to experience multiple, major setbacks—continuous high-performance may appear improbable. We will explore how to build virtual teams that perform extraordinarily well on a continuous basis, rapidly rebounding from and even thriving in response to significant adversity.

Upcoming course date

Friday, April 16, 2021 from 12:30-3:00pm

Benefits of attending this online course

You will improve your skills to build, lead, or otherwise support a high-performing and resilient virtual team. This workshop covers concepts and principles you will find useful regardless of your team-related role.

This workshop will equip you with tools to:

• Craft an overarching framework that unifies and galvanizes team members.
• Identify and mitigate your team’s major, inherent vulnerabilities.
• Develop your team’s capabilities to (a) respond in-the-moment to significant adversity, and (b) subsequently learn and grow based on your team’s response to the adversity.
• Create and revise a team charter to continuously improve your high-performing virtual team.

Building High-Performing and Resilient Virtual Teams content overview

In advance of our class session, workshop participants will have the opportunity to discuss the virtual teamwork breakdowns they have experienced or envision and share ideas about potential fixes for them. During our class session, we’ll explore what generally distinguishes effective from ineffective virtual teams. Regarding resilience, we’ll consider how you can (a) pinpoint your team’s primary vulnerabilities and address them in advance of experiencing adverse events and (b) set up your team to respond effectively to significant, unexpected adversities. Workshop participants will have the opportunity to create a preliminary charter for building or improving their virtual teams.

Seminar participant reviews

“The class helps you to come away with several ‘tools’ to make your virtual teams more effective. We discussed several problem areas and developed ideas/actions to overcome.” – Mark St. Peter

“In today’s business climate, the content was very relevant for the challenges that we are facing. There are many aspects of virtual teams that will be here to stay and I was able to take pieces back that I can apply to my business and use immediately and in the future.” – Chris Ritchie

“The material provided offers great learning and perspective along with some tactical things to tackle to improve teamwork and ultimately effectiveness of the organization.” – Joshua Mintling

“This course allowed me some time to think through how to approach my team in this new virtual environment and gave me some tools to analyze ways to improve.” – Liz Larsen

Registration and Fees

Program fee includes instruction and learning materials. Payment must be made by credit card or UW budget transfer. It is strongly encouraged that you register early as space is limited. See discount and cancellation policies.

Faculty

Professor Greg Bigley has been a member of the Foster School of Business faculty since 2000. He teaches courses on Organizational Leadership, Leading Organizational Change, and Teamwork Effectiveness in the MBA and executive MBA programs. He has provided training or consulting services for a wide range of companies, including Amazon, Avista, Boeing, China Aviation Supplies Holding, Costco, DocuSign, The Everett Clinic, Group Health, Hyundai Heavy Industries, Microsoft, Paccar, Pacific Coast Banking School, POSCO, and the SK Group. His research interests focus broadly on motivation, leadership, teamwork, and leading organizational change. He has co-authored two books, Leadership and Motivation at Work and Motivation and Work Behavior, both published by McGraw-Hill.

Logistics and practical info

Like our in-person courses, online courses from Executive Education are designed and led by Foster School faculty and taught using the same evidence-based research and application. Students will participate in discussions, breakout sessions, and direct interactions with our faculty. Courses are conducted via Zoom, which facilitates real-time interface between students and faculty via webcam and text-based chat.

Two weeks prior to the live class session, you will receive information about any pre-readings, assignments, or case studies that need to be completed before class.

In addition to the faculty, each course has an assigned Program Manager who will provide guidance throughout the course.