What skills do team leaders need for conducting effective virtual decision-making meetings?
by Dan Power Editor, DSSResources.COM In general, team leaders need planning, organizing, staffing, directing and controlling skills (cf., Huber, 1980), but the technology setting of virtual decision-making meetings creates a need for new and more sophisticated behaviors in each of these skill areas. This Ask Dan! question is motivated by both a personal “need-to-know” (see Power, 2/14/2006) and by the increasing importance and use of communications-driven DSS for conducting meetings. A virtual decision-making meeting is conducted by means of information technologies. The term “virtual” distinguishes a conceptual, technology supported meeting from a physical, face-to-face meeting. Virtual meetings may be conducted using teleconferencing, online collaboration tools, web conferencing and/or videoconferencing. Each of these technology solutions creates challenges for team leaders. Teleconferencing is a phone call connection where many different calls are joined into a single conversation.
