The Role of Leadership in the Performance of Virtual Teams Among Teachers’ Training Colleges in Namibia

Leadership is the process of influencing others to act in a manner that is in line with the objectives of the individuals as well as the objectives of the team. Through leadership, teams are supposed to deliver their performance. The purpose of this exploratory study was to explore the leadership role in the performance of virtual teams in teachers' training colleges in Namibia. The study seeks to gain an understanding of leadership challenges and leadership gaps in the new operating environment. It employed an interpretivist philosophy, with an emphasis on the interaction between leaders and their organizations. The study employed an inductive approach, exploratory design, and qualitative methods to collect data from 20 purposively selected leaders. Qualitative content analysis was done through a thorough analysis of the data. The findings of this study demonstrated that leadership influence on people and teams results in improved performance because leadership affects people to realize their potential as well as act in accordance with the goals of the team. Leadership thus affects the performance of virtual teams. The study also found that the operating environment change within teachers colleges in Namibia, from operating at a local level to virtual operations resulted in leadership challenges. That was because the leaders did not adapt their leadership styles to fit the new environment. The study recommended the leaders of the organization to analyze the leadership styles that would help them retain their influence on their teams as well as retain team cohesiveness. The limitation of this study was that it targeted one section of the tertiary education sector entity and came up with results specific to the teachers training colleges’ context. Further research could target the entire industry, using quantitative approaches to come up with generalizable findings.