The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the adoption of video conferencing systems and online collaboration tools in organizations. This rapid technological advancement facilitated the transition from traditional to virtual teams (VTs), compelling leaders to rapidly adjust to new leader-follower relationships. Consequently, leaders have faced sudden and unexpected challenges. From an academic perspective, there is a critical gap in understanding the multi-layered challenges of e-leadership in VTs through a socio-technical lens, which includes individual micro-level, team-related meso-level, and organizational and external macro-level challenges. Despite numerous systematic literature reviews on e-leadership, an in-depth understanding of e- leader’s perspectives in a business context, particularly regarding the challenges encountered during the COVID- 19 pandemic, is still lacking. To address this, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 36 leaders, including ten C-level executives from German DAX-listed companies, and analyzed using Braun and Clarke's (2006) thematic analysis. The results uncover challenges hinder effective e-leadership of VTs at the micro level in areas such as leaders’ communication, leaders’ follower orientation and humanization as well as leaders’ organization and control. Additionally, the study reveals meso-level challenges, including team structures and workplace dynamics, and macro-level challenges, encompassing organizational structures and national and international conditions. Our findings contribute to the current discussion on e-leadership by presenting multi- layered challenges as determinants of effective e-leadership in a transparent and comprehensive manner. Furthermore, the results assist practitioners in developing actionable strategies to enhance e-leadership and, consequently, the performance of VTs, thereby maintaining organizational effectiveness in an increasingly virtual environment.