Lessons learned from geographically distributed teams

Many professionals work for global organizations, which requires connecting with other professionals all around the globe.  “Across sectors and geographical locations, global competencies are a workplace necessity, especially as small businesses and enterprises expand globally” (Duus & Cooray, 2014, p. 244).  Those who are accustomed to this type of work environment know that distance is frequently prohibitive to meeting face-to-face, therefore meetings are predominantly virtual, taking place at various times of the day due to time zone differences.  These folks have a leg up on other professionals that have not had to adapt to a virtual business environment and are now doing so thanks to COVID.

Global competencies include “the ability to work collaboratively with teams of people from a range of cultures and backgrounds, excellent communication skills, and the ability to embrace multiple perspectives” (Duus & Cooray, 2014, p. 244).  To be effective with geographically distributed teams, or during COVID, there are seven important actions to consider, helping teams “cope with important differences in interpersonal communication styles, preferred approaches to organizational control and authority relations, and work-related knowledge and problem-solving approaches” (Cramton & Hinds, 2014, p. 1056).

• First, send out an agenda or a pre-meeting plan which calls out the timing of meeting stages as well as the specific participants (Moran, Abramson, & Moran, 2014).  By doing this, all participants (from diverse cultures and environments) will be better prepared to follow along and stay engaged.
• Second, be sure to ask for feedback from all participants, particularly those who are more reserved or quiet, as the latter might be afraid to speak up without being asked (Moran et al., 2014).
• Third, make it clear to all participants who is actually participating.  This can be accomplished by calling people by their names when asking questions, or by ensuring that the participant roster is visible when using platforms such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams.
• Forth, work hard to build a shared vision together with all participants.  Set goals that are clear and make the team’s progress known.  Whenever possible, it is best to first meet face-to-face to establish a vision and a set of goals, but when that is not an option, spend time getting to know the individual participants as you would if meeting for a cup of coffee.
• Fifth, set rules of conduct related to email communication.  Determine the reasonable amount of time in which a reply should be received (and have the group adhere to it), establish guidelines around the recipients of communication (as not all members need to be copied on every email), and be sure to read all communication one last time to consider the recipients’ perspective, especially as cultural diversity comes into play (Moran et al., 2014).
• Sixth, assign roles within the team or group to predetermine “who will be responsible for what decisions, and how will differences in opinion be resolved” (Moran et al., 2014, p. 276).   As it is harder to reach an agreement when distance is involved, acknowledge this in advance and make plans before a disagree occurs.
• Finally, accommodate others who are in different time zones, switching from late-night to very early morning meeting times.  Such empathetic gestures “go a long way with those who usually suffer the most with time-zone differences” (Moran et al., 2014, p. 276).

For those of us who do not work for a global organization (yet), consider this change to a virtual work environment as a challenge to expand your use of technology, utilizing the incredible advances that have been made in computer graphics and software.  And don’t forget to expand your knowledge of different cultures, as research shows that diverse virtual agents are being designed to appeal to collectivist societies as well as individualistic societies based on the location of the human participant (Mascarenhas, Degens, Paiva, Prada, Hofstede, Beulens & Aylett, 2015).  If the bar has been raised to that level for virtual or automated computer agents, than as leaders, we must step up our [virtual] game!

 

References:

Cramton, C. D., & Hinds, P. J. (2014). An embedded model of cultural adaptation in global teams. Organization Science (Providence, R.I.), 25(4), 1056-1081. doi:10.1287/orsc.2013.0885

Duus, R., & Cooray, M. (2014). Together we innovate: Cross-cultural teamwork through virtual platforms. Journal of Marketing Education, 36(3), 244-257. doi:10.1177/0273475314535783

Mascarenhas, S., Degens, N., Paiva, A., Prada, R., Hofstede, G. J., Beulens, A., & Aylett, R. (2015). Modeling culture in intelligent virtual agents. Autonomous Agents and Multi-Agent Systems, 30(5), 931-962. doi:10.1007/s10458-015-9312-6

Moran, R. T., Abramson, N. R., & Moran, S. V. (2014). Managing cultural differences (9^th ed.). NY: Routledge.