C lyde Boyer faced some unusual challenges during his term as governor of District 5010, which extends from the U.S. state of Alaska and the Canadian Yukon to Russia’s Ural Mountains.

Confronted with 11 time zones, two languages, and an area three times the size of the continental United States – in which some clubs are in places accessible only by plane or boat – Boyer knew his leadership team wouldn’t be able to meet face to face very often.

Fortunately, technology offers many tools for bringing distant colleagues together. E-mail, instant messaging, teleconferences, and webinars can all help people stay in touch. But virtual teams can’t live by technology alone – they also require a leader with a special set of skills and techniques.

“The virtual situation, by definition, creates some lack of connection,” says psychologist Robert Turknett, a member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta and CEO of the Turknett Leadership Group. “A leader without empathy creates a heightened sense of disconnect, causing high turnover and, consequently, failure.”

No technology can beat face time for creating relationships, and experts agree that the best way to start building a supportive virtual team is to bring members together at least once to meet in person. When that’s not possible, an online forum such as a Facebook page can allow colleagues to share photos and information about themselves – the kinds of things they might learn about each other over dinner and drinks, says Ben Rosen, Hanes professor of management at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill.

Once a team starts operating in the virtual realm, it’s important to lay down some guidelines – for instance, how quickly team members will be expected to respond to messages and phone calls. “There’s an assumption that if teammates don’t respond quickly, they don’t care or they’re not committed to the task,” says Rosen. By establishing the protocol early on, team leaders can avoid misunderstandings.

Rosen notes that communicating by e-mail can be cumbersome: Messages can pile up, and forwarding an e-mail can leave the original sender out of the loop. He prefers project management software such as Basecamp and activeCollab, which allow for discussions, task assignments, and file sharing, but he cautions that there’s a learning curve. “You have to coach people on how to use it so they’re not afraid of it,” he says. “And then you have to be a good role model by using it all the time. If you get an e-mail, tell the person, ‘That’s not how we work here, you have to use the [software].’ You have to refuse to accept or respond to one-on-one e-mail.”

Conference calls are another staple of virtual collaboration. The problem, says Rosen, is that they’re not much fun, “and the more people on the call, the less fun it is.” One way to build camaraderie over the phone is to incorporate some social interaction. “Virtual team leaders can start a meeting by asking people, ‘What’s going on in your life? What’s happening in your location?’” he says.

Turknett notes that those who don’t grab the floor easily in person may find it especially hard to make themselves heard in a virtual meeting. “The leader needs to be creative in making sure that person gets the floor too,” he says.

For someone sitting alone in an office with a speakerphone, it’s easy to drift into multitasking. One way to keep everyone engaged, suggests Rosen, is to rotate who sets the agenda and leads conference calls. “Once people have been the leader, they’re more sensitive,” he says.

The lack of visual cues with conference calls, meanwhile, can lead people to jump to incorrect conclusions. “If I ask a question and hear silence, I might think it’s a stupid question, so I’m not going to ask any more,” says Rosen. “It’s up to the leader to ensure that people understand each other well and that people feel safe to both ask questions and give constructive feedback.”

Airing grievances and disagreements is a delicate proposition under the best of circumstances, and even small misunderstandings have a way of blowing up fast when relationships have not been nourished by frequent face-to-face interaction. Holding an occasional “whine and cheese” session to air gripes, Rosen says, can help team members bond and let them address problems before they grow out of proportion.

International teams face additional challenges. For Boyer, who lives outside Wasilla, Alaska, scheduling conference calls across time zones was a complex equation. “Tuesday here in Alaska is Wednesday in Russia,” he explains. “In Russia, daylight saving time begins and ends on a different schedule than it does in North America. It was not unusual to have someone enter into our conference calls an hour after the call began, or to receive an e-mail saying they were waiting for the conference call to begin but found out it was the wrong day.”

Then there’s the risk that information will get lost in translation – a risk that’s heightened by the absence of body language cues, particularly across cultures. Rosen works with people based in Bangalore, India, where cultural norms dictate that “you don’t disagree, because it will cause people to lose face.” There, a person might say, “I understand,” as a way of being agreeable without actually agreeing. “A virtual team leader who suspects that’s going on will have to double or triple their efforts to make sure that the person who says ‘I understand’ really does agree,” he says.

Boyer couldn’t organize a face-to-face meeting for his entire team of district leaders – distance and cost were prohibitive – so he did much of the traveling himself, visiting clubs and attending training events for club officers. But technology is opening up new opportunities for connecting distant clubs. District 5010 recently launched leadership-training webinars that encourage interaction among participants; they will soon be offered in Russian as well as English. During Boyer’s term, English-speaking Russian leaders participated in strategic meetings using Skype for conference calls, and membership and grants teams are doing the same.

Technology can help overcome vast distances, but it can’t replace real-world interactions. A successful virtual team leader finds a balance by helping teams use technology to bridge the miles while working to forge personal connections. “A good leader in a virtual team,” Rosen says, “has to have all the qualities of the leader of a face-to-face team, plus more.”

Sophia Dembling is a freelance writer based in Dallas .