Evi Prokopi, the Managing Director of Skema Projects, is a Business & Life Coach and a Neurolinguist and is well-known for her virtual leadership work. In 2016, she met Dr Penny Pullan when they collaborated and talked in a 3-hour workshop at the Global Project Management Institute Congress, in Spain. They talked about virtual leadership strategies and best practices and Penny featured Evi's story in her book.
A few words about the book, as seen on Kogan Page
'The future of work is virtual, with dispersed teams, telecommuting, remote working and virtual meetings becoming the norm in many sectors and industries around the world. At its best, virtual working can be productive and creative, tapping into the best people wherever they are and bringing skills and experience together efficiently and at low cost. But it can also lead to isolated and disengaged workers, ineffective communication, and uncoordinated and even counter-productive activity. Virtual Leadership discusses how leading a virtual team in our fast-paced world requires a new set of skills and a facilitative leadership approach.'
Are you wondering what is virtual leadership?
A virtual leader supervises and leads virtual teams, that is remote teams spread around a country or even the entire world. These teams rarely or never meet face-to-face. Nowadays, thanks to a few factors, such as the Internet, globalization and outsourcing, the number of virtual teams has grown and it is easier than ever before to collaborate remotely, if the virtual leader is trained appropriately. As with in-house teams, the right management of virtual teams is of paramount importance because we ultimately want to increase our teams' efficiency and productivity. However with time zone constraints, lack of face-to-face meeting, and cultural differences, this can be challenging. Of course, there is a solution for everything!
If you want to learn more about how we can help you with your remote teams and prepare you for virtual leadership roles while overcoming challenges, then just Contact Us!
https://www.koganpage.com/product/virtual-leadership-9780749475963#
Penny:
Welcome to the Virtual Working Summit. I'm Penny Pullan. I'm your host for the calls in the Virtual Working Summit. This Virtual Working Summit is also the virtual launch for my newly published book "Virtual Leadership: Practical Strategies for Getting the Best Out of Virtual Work and Virtual Teams." If you'd like to see a list of all the speakers and their topics, then please visit virtualworkingsummit.com.
Today I'm really delighted to be interviewing Evi Prokopi, who's a Greek millennial tapping into global opportunities. She's featured in chapter 9 of my book. You can see her story on page 220 if you have a copy. Evi is someone who's grasped the possibilities of virtual working and used them to transform her own life. She lives in Greece where, at the time of the Summit, the economy is suffering. Evi uses virtual working to grasp opportunities not available in Greece at present. As a project management consultant, she runs projects for clients all over the world as well as supervising Australian students in project management. We met earlier in the year when we were both chosen to present at the Project Management Institute Global Congress. We presented together a workshop on virtual project teams in Barcelona, and I thought I really should bring her to the Summit.
First of all, Evi, I'd like to thank you for all your help with my book and also with the Global Congress session.
Evi:
Penny:
Evi:
Penny:
Evi:
Sure. It all started about nine years ago when I ran my own online translation agency. Back then I was managing multilingual projects for several clients. Then, one day I saw an ad on a job board where they required project management assessors on a freelance basis. I applied there, I was trained, and ended up supervising and assessing people pursuing a diploma in project management.
Currently, I also teach a seminar in project management on an ad-hoc basis here in Athens, and I work as a project management consultant for a variety of clients.
Penny:
To read the complete transcript of the interview, please download the following file.
