Working as a leader and interacting with a dispersed team

NOTE: This is being cancelled for lcq-1.12

A long time ago - before the days of videoconferencing, intranets, and email - teams generally needed to be in the same physical location in order to work effectively. But those days are long gone. Now, at Linaro we work regularly with colleagues based in different buildings, cities, countries, and even continents.

Team members may be:

    in different time zones
    speaking in languages other than English
    part of different cultures

You may see some team members every day, but you may rarely see others - orperhaps you've never even met them!

Regardless of how people are organized, managing a team that's spread out in many locations can present huge challenges, even for the most experienced managers.

    How do you ensure that everyone feels they're treated fairly, if you see some team members much more than others?
    How can you prevent remote team members from feeling isolated? And how do you get all members to buy into the team's objectives and stay on track?