Tag: global virtual team

Managing a Global Virtual Team? You’ll Need These Vital Skills

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Over the past several weeks, we’ve talked about the unique challenges that global remote teams face.

The team itself might have different work styles, motivation factors, and information gaps.

On top of that, working remotely sees different challenges than an office environment might, involving task management, productivity, accountability, and communication.

And yet, remote work is becoming a norm across the professional world.

As a manager, you’ll need special skills to successfully lead a cross-cultural remote team.

The following are just a few of the skills that will take your leadership from mediocre to exceptional.

Adaptability

As we’ve emphasized in this blog, the ability to adapt is essential to not only cross-cultural management but to living in a foreign culture.

In fact, adapting is one of the major steps in cross-cultural integration, which I discuss in my book, I am the Monkey!

Why? Because being flexible in your view of values, norms, and cultural behaviors will enable you to keep an open mind without judgment. 

Whether you’re integrating into a foreign culture or managing in a multicultural environment, an accepting and adaptable perspective allows you to move in the world with greater ease.

As a manager specifically, it will help you adjust your leadership style when necessary to accommodate different perspectives and behaviors. 

You will be better able to relate to your team and integrate aspects of their work style culture into your management toolkit.

Communication

Communication is of course top of the list for success in any managerial position, but when it comes to cross-cultural remote management, communication becomes even more key.

Particularly when communicating with team members who speak the shared language as a second language, it’s important to articulate and speak at a slower pace. 

If other members of the team tend to speak quickly, you might ask them privately to slow down or repeat what they’ve said, in order for the whole team to understand.

Lead the team in this deliberate way of speaking. It will set the tone for the entire team to follow.

Moreover, when voicing important info in voice memos, meetings, or calls, things can be lost in translation, so it’s helpful to reiterate the major points and finer details in a form of written communication as well.

This will enable those who speak the shared language as a second language to have a document to refer back to.

Self-awareness and Reflection

We’ve all said the wrong thing a time or two or committed a faux pas.

Well, in cross-cultural environments, this will most definitely happen more often.

I call these cross-cultural faux pas “monkey moments.”

Although you can do your research about cultures (and I advise you to), no matter how prepared you are, you’re likely to stub your toe every now and then.

Any leadership role requires a high degree of self-awareness and reflection, but a cross-cultural leadership role requires an even higher one.

You must be gracious, patient, and open to understanding and change.

Regularly address your innate biases and ensure they’re not getting in the way of your leadership.

Be deliberate in your team interactions, and challenge yourself and your own perspective.

You may see ways in which you might adjust your perspective and/or your behavior.

This type of leadership growth only comes with an advanced degree of self-awareness and reflection.

The Virtual World: Management Challenges Faced By Global Virtual Team Leads

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As a virtual manager, how do you monitor your virtual team from afar?

Last week, we talked about challenges that managers face dealing with global virtual teams, specifically in a cross-cultural context.

But some challenges have to do with the environment itself.

While the virtual environment comes with significant advantages, you might face difficulties as a manager with communication, task management, accountability, etc.

Communication 

From virtual meetings to chat tool procedures, you have the tools at the ready for quality communication on your virtual team, even if it isn’t in-person. 

But as a manager of a virtual team, you shouldn’t assume that everyone is familiar with the program your using or chat procedures.

As a manager you should:

  • Instruct your team about how and when to use communication tools, whether a phone call, a chat, or an email
  • Collaborate as a team over virtual meetings to work together and solve any issues on the project
  • Clearly deliver the team’s expectations and aims
  • Encourage remote team bonding to nurture relationships amongst team members

Task Management

Managing a team virtually is very different than in an office environment.

You can still check in on progress, but you can’t step into your colleague’s office and visually see where they’re at in a group project.

Ensuring that each member of the team is on task and in sync to complete the project by deadline might therefore seem like an impossible task.

But don’t worry; the virtual world has software to assist in monitoring progress from your laptop.

Teamwork, Wrike, monday.com, ProjectManager, Mavenlink by Kantata – all of these project management tools will allow you to track the progress of each team member…without having to badger them every single day.

Productivity & Accountability

While the above tools can help you hold your team accountable, it’s still difficult to know whether they’re truly being productive or not…or if they’re scrolling through Facebook all day long.

Some of your employees may be new to virtual work; others may have a million distractions in their remote working environment.

As a team lead, teaching your team how to remove the distractions and work independently is essential to keeping them productive.

Some ways to keep your team accountable and productive:

  • Communicate your work targets regularly and ensure they’re met by each team member
  • Recommend website blockers, timers, and noise cancellation software to keep team members on track
  • Teach effective time management methods, like the Pomodoro Technique, to improve focus

All of these tools, along with an emphasis on communication and task management, will help you create a virtual environment that’s engaged, task-oriented, and collaborative.

The Team Itself: Management Challenges Faced By Global Virtual Team Leads

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Have you ever dealt with a colleague who has a very different work style than you?

Or one who is driven by different motivations?

How did you resolve these conflicts in approach and perspective?

Whatever skills you’ve used to confront any collaborative issues you’ve had with your colleagues are likely to pay off in a global virtual team environment.

As we’ve discussed over the past two weeks, cross-cultural remote teams come with their own unique challenges.

Some of them are familiar; some are completely foreign.

I’ve outlined a few below.

Motivating Factors

While we are all motivated by different things – be it money, accolades, achievement, etc. – culture often factors into our motivations.

That’s because different cultures have different values. 

And values are what often drive motivation.

Some cultures emphasize tangible things; thus, bonuses or other such benefits would be motivators for these team members.

Other cultures value work/life balance, so job satisfaction and time off might be a motivating factor in this case.

Knowing where your team members come from and what they value will help you motivate each member in an individualized way.

Work Style

Often, different work styles are common amongst different cultures.

This often has to do with how the culture views workplace hierarchies.

Are your team members from a culture that demands a strict hierarchy and a top-down approach to management?

Or are they from a culture with a flatter more egalitarian team approach?

On a cross-cultural team, members will have different managerial needs due to their backgrounds, so understanding their work style – whether they need more hands-on or hands-off guidance – will help you better lead them.

Information Gaps

Information gaps on a global virtual team can impact everything from data flows to communication to processing.

Giving all team members access to the right resources for your project goals will ensure that no one falls through the gap.

Doing so will also improve collaboration, as everyone will be working with the same information.

These are just a few challenges that managers face while working with global virtual teams, specifically in a cross-cultural context.

Next week, we’ll talk about challenges that have to do with the virtual environment itself.

Cross-Cultural Training for Global Virtual Teams

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As the working world goes remote, our work dynamics – and those with whom we work – have changed.

One of these changes is that our teams have become more international.

Last week, we talked about what makes for a successful global virtual team.

While you can build a contextually diverse team to maximize creativity or a team that is low in personal diversity for projects that need a quick turnaround, any team you build will need cross-cultural training.

Why?

Because training = competency.

Cross-cultural teams need intercultural skills to thrive.

Such teams face unique obstacles – like differences in work styles and time management.

There are also varied collaboration styles across cultures.

Some team members may not know how to join in and participate, as their own culture may have different hierarchical workplace structures (matrix vs. flat, for instance) or different communication styles (passive vs. dominant, etc.).

This is why cross-cultural training for global virtual teams is paramount to their success.

The Stats

According to culturewizard, formal cross-cultural training was delivered to less than a quarter of working professionals on virtual teams in 2020.

This may be why other stats show that:

“only 15 percent of corporate leaders reported having been successful in leading teams across cultures and countries.” (Culture Wizard, 2018)

How do you run a successful global virtual team if none of them have the tools to work across cultures?

As my book, I am the Monkey!, explores, the deeply ingrained biases we have toward our culture’s own values and norms are something that must be overcome when living and working in other cultures.

It is natural to assume that your methods are “right” while others’ are “wrong.”

Cross-cultural training is essential to acknowledging and overcoming these biases and differences in order to work together more cohesively. 

The Training

While cross-cultural training may be broad or more specific to the project goals at hand, either should cover the following:

  • The development of deeper intercultural insights
  • The ability to channel teammates’ differing cultural perspectives
  • The ability to adapt one’s work style to gel better with the group dynamic
  • The development of constructive intercultural communication skills

Cross-cultural training may delve into other project-specific intercultural dynamics, but generally, any training on the subject should cover these bases.

They are pivotal to a working team.

How to Design the Most Effective Global Virtual Team

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In our increasingly international and virtual environment, working and collaborating with global teams has become commonplace.

Harvard Business Review quotes a 2018 survey of white-collar employees from 90 countries in which 89 percent said that they complete projects via a global virtual team (GVT) “at least occasionally.”

And that was pre-pandemic; I can only imagine the frequency and prevalence of working on GVTs have only increased in the last four years.

There are obvious benefits to working globally and virtually.

For instance, you have a broader scope of creative insight and perspective on a global team, and you can maximize productivity and have a flexible support structure due to teammates working in multiple time zones.

But there are also many challenges.

A study by Harvard Business Review identified some of the ways cultural differences can shape how GVTs function.

Personal Diversity & Contextual Diversity

The study evaluated the interactions and behaviors of 804 remote international 6- to 8-member teams over multiple months of business consulting projects. 

The teams relied completely on digital communication and featured members from different countries.

Two categories were tracked: personal diversity and contextual diversity.

  • Think of personal diversity as involving such characteristics as gender, age, skills, values, and language.
  • Think of contextual diversity as the environments of team members, including the countries’ political systems, their institutions, and their levels of economic development.

Task Performance & Team Climate

Task performance and team climate were also monitored and evaluated.

  • Think of task performance as the quality and timeliness of the team’s efforts, as judged by industry experts.
  • Think of team climate as team member satisfaction, team cohesion, their enjoyment of the process together, as indicated in weekly surveys.

The Results

The study found that a deep contrast in contextual diversity can be incredibly advantageous to task performance, particularly when it comes to tasks requiring creativity and problem-solving.

The varying points of view due to different backgrounds and experiences can lead to unconventional approaches and innovative solutions.

On the other hand, personal diversity was found to be disadvantageous to team climate.

Different ages, values, language levels, etc., leads to less trust, less understanding of others’ motivations, less enjoyment in working together, and less general communication.

Conflicts arise, while cohesion sinks.

How Managers Can Benefit

These takeaways can help managers design an effective global team.

Creative projects benefit from teams that are contextually diverse, so seeking out team members from diverse backgrounds and cultures can produce the unconventional approaches desired for such projects.

Projects that are routine but that need a quick turnaround would do well with a team that is low on personal diversity, but other cultural differences don’t impact the results of these types of projects as much.

In the end, building a GVT is not a science but using this data can only improve your odds of designing an effective global virtual team.