Lesson 7: Global Virtual Team Leadership

Implementing Global Leadership Best Practices (continued)

6. Cultural Exploration. Spending time visiting with culturally diverse team members and exploring other cultures will provide the team leader with a knowledge and appreciation of the other culture. Since the team is not embedded in another culture, the team leader needs to take time to learn about the other culture. He/She may wish to make a cultural moment part of the weekly meeting where team members explain cultural activities to other team members. He/She can then serve as a bridge between the two cultures to facilitate understanding as needed (www.sharingdiversity.com).

7. Cultural Context. While it may be difficult to understand the context in which people live and work when you have not experienced their culture, having this understanding helps to know how to help each team member achieve and contribute the most to the team. It helps to find commonalities between team member or bridge understandings between cultures. For example, if you are working with team members from Singapore, they may not understand how a blizzard in Alberta might affect team members there from getting to work or participating if power is knocked out. Similarly, being aware that Sundays for Christianity dominated cultures and Fridays for Muslim dominated cultures, will affect when meetings and interactions may take place.

8. Cultural Balance. Leaders find a way to determine a balance between different cultures. For example, Mexican and South American culture fosters strong relationship building prior to work. American culture encourages completing work first prior to socializing. Both aspects are important and the leader needs to be able to balance the needs of the two cultures. Scheduling time for visiting in team meetings and encouraging such planning for private meetings, will help build team relationships and support the needs of each culture. This would include finding team building activities that can be done via the Internet and determining ways to celebrate success with all team members.

The GV leader needs to balance the input of all members from different cultures. While some cultures advocate aggressively presenting ideas others are more withdrawn. If a team member comes from a male dominated culture, he may not be as receptive to an idea presented by an aggressive woman from another culture. The team leader needs to bridge this understanding and ensure that all are given a chance to express ideas and concerns. As team members are involved more in the team interactions and processes, they become more committed and engaged in what is going on.

9. Shared Leadership. While each team will have a leader over the entire team, there may come a time when the expertise of another team member exceeds that of the leader. In cases such as this the leader may have the team member with the greatest expertise guide the team actions. The overall team leader will need to offer support and assistance by continuing to monitor assignments and activities, but the person with the expertise may guide the team through key parts of the project.

Any leader in any field has strengths to lead with and weaknesses to improve. Recognizing where your own leadership strengths and weaknesses lie, provides the opportunity to improve and grow. Understand how leadership changes from a co-located team to a global virtual team enables a leader to adapt his/her skills to become an effective leader in several situations.