Operating globally but finding it difficult to develop effective, international teams?
You are building a team with members based in New York, Singapore, Paris, and Mexico City. How do you work together effectively when you cannot often meet face-to-face?
How to Manage Remotely
Cultural incompatibility is a key factor in the breakdown of international teams. The company that can avoid this common pitfall stands to gain a major competitive advantage over its rivals.
Specific strategies and skills are necessary for managers who have geographically dispersed teams. Many managers today have employees on their teams who are geographically dispersed across the world. This presents different challenges from managing teams where members are all at one site.
How 'remote' can a remote team get?
A U.S.-based corporation operates a subsidiary in The Netherlands from its corporate headquarters in New York. Marge has been given the responsibility to co-ordinate the joint operations between the United States and The Netherlands at a major international trade fair in Germany. After meeting with her Dutch counterparts in The Netherlands, all parties agreed to stay in regular communication.
Shortly after returning to New York, Marge started working rigorously on the project, often putting in 12-hour days at the office. She would frequently call her Dutch counterparts but found them unavailable or unwilling to spend a great amount of time on the phone with her. She was beginning to feel upset by the lack of involvement in the project of her Dutch colleagues. She also began to sense resentment by her Dutch associates regarding her calls. Even her faxes marked urgent were often not responded to until the next day and in one case not for several days. The original optimism that Marge felt regarding the co-operation she would get, was quickly fading. What is going on here?
'GMT' Culture
How do you ensure that the team communicates across time zones most effectively and efficiently? How can you create a "virtual water cooler" so information and best practices impact all team members? And how do you integrate cultural influences and differing perspectives?
Global impact
How do you identify the impact cultural influences have on team performance? How do you integrate cultural influences and differing perspectives? How do you all work together effectively? How do you communicate, share ideas, and handle conflicts? And how can you create clear open lines of communication so that information and best practices impact all team members?
Teamwork Across Cultures
Delivered by experienced trainers with an intimate knowledge of both teambuilding and cross-cultural communication, the Teamwork Across Cultures programme will give you:
- Greater awareness of exactly how culture impacts on team leadership and participation
- Proactive techniques to lower the risk of misunderstandings and negative behaviours and to increase the productivity of work in multi-cultural teams
- The establishment of mutually acceptable norms or ground rules appropriate for teams using English as a lingua franca
Who would benefit?
All those who need to manage or participate in international teams, committees or
project groups. Teamwork Across Cultures will prove particularly valuable for those
involved in international project teams, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions,
licensing and distribution agreements as well as international sales.