Leadership, Trust, and Effectivemess in Virtual Teams

Many organizations are using virtual teams to meet the increasing time and quality expectations of contemporary marketplaces. While virtual teams present advantages for cost control, access to expertise, and serving markets, they also engender practical challenges as a result of the geographic and temporal distribution of members. Previous research has suggested several factors that are critical for the functioning of virtual teams. We build upon this research with an exploration of the relationships between team leader personality, team member trust, and perceived team effectiveness in virtual teamwork. Participants in the study included 873 virtual team members within a combined government and commercial engineering environment. Our findings suggest that multiple facets of a team leader’s personality have a significant impact on team effectiveness, but this effect is largely mediated through team trust. Implications for organizational managers, virtual team leaders, and the research community are discussed.