Webcast:
Team diversity is a competitive advantage, but global teams have unique challenges such as fragmented effort by isolated team members who may confuse meanings and lack clear understanding of goals and tasks of the team. On the upside, high-value global teams use information together to innovate, learn and execute business strategy for a global enterprise to operate effectively. This webcast addresses three essential characteristics of productive global teams-engagement, cohesion, and goal clarity--as well the underlying competencies of global collaboration. You'll leave with insights to critical processes and performance areas to help your global teams work effectively.
Don't miss these webcast takeaways:
- Apply a blueprint to construct solid performing global teams
- Best practices for building virtual relationships
- How culture and country affect ways we interact, manage, and think
Webcast on Demand
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Presenters
Dan Tesnjak is a Global Account Executive at GlobalEnglish Corp. where he advises major global companies on how to develop their global business communication capability.
Prior to GlobalEnglish Dan held international business development and consulting roles most recently with Aperian Global in Zurich and the Corporate Executive Board in London and Washington D.C. He has extensive experience in global sales and marketing. Dan has led consulting engagements, coachings and team building sessions in over 30 countries, and worked closely with clients like Accenture, Novartis, Swiss Re, Novo Nordisk, BCG, Carlsberg, KPMG, Dell, AIG, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse and Pfizer. Dan's engaging style and deep cross-cultural understanding of global communication, business processes and climates along with his experience working with senior executives made him a lead consultant on issues of global leadership, global diversity and inclusion and multi-cultural teamwork.
Steven Pritchard is Director Global Accounts and a Board Member of TMA World based in Europe. He delivers programmes worldwide on globalisation, global leadership, teaming and cross cultural capability. Steven also has extensive international experience in Human Resources Management, and Sales and Marketing. During his career he has worked throughout Europe, North America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. He currently leads a team of 36 Consultants based in 26 different countries delivering training in 14 different languages, 70% of this team's work is located in Emerging Markets.
Great preasentation .It should also be applied to corporate culture. Trust should be a primery goal as part of spinal cord throughout culture of the organizations.
Thank you
Sara Houser Asked: Fantastic information on global teams. How do you suggest that the global teams/management begin to use/apply/place these concepts into practice?
Attached to each performance zone are practical actions or activities that team leaders need to initiate. For example achieving global team ‘Convergence’, is significantly aided by the team defining what we call ‘convergence markers’. These consist of formal agreements to achieve team focus, and are created through ‘purpose statements’, ‘definition of team values’, ‘globally agreed priorities’, ‘global team metrics’ etc etc. I have plenty of examples and templates if you wish to discuss this further.
Another HCI member asks: How can teams assess the level(s) of trust that are strongest and where the team can improve (this was a great aspect covered in the webcast btw)?
Trust is difficult to assess. Trust ...or the lack of it tends to become more noticeable when people or sub-teams deviate from an expected outcome. ‘Contractual trust’ and the ‘trust of competence’ are the easiest forms of trust to assess or gauge, because they tend to focus on professional capabilities, and overt commitments. However the trust of ‘self-disclosure’ and ‘trust of intention’ are far more emotionally sensitive and therefore risky for people to engage with. They are also highly valuable forms of trust to acquire, because they enable you to sense ‘the mood’ of your team. There is no easy way to enable such trust to exist, other than placing yourself in the position of the ‘humble leader’. By demonstrating ones humanity and perhaps even vulnerability in certain areas, we open the way for others to express their own hopes and fears, free from retribution or ridicule. I believe this can be achieved however without losing one’s authority or credibility as a team leader. As someone once rather wisely observed – paradoxically, leadership demands that we become a little more human ...rather than super-human!
How does "momentum" (different sense of appropriate timing) in different geographic locals lead to fragmentation, and what can a team leader do to address this? The first thing to recognise is that differences in momentum WILL arise. In my experience this challenge is more often encountered in the form of individuals or sub-teams enthusiastically 'racing ahead' in an uncoordinated manner and going beyond what is required of them; rather than sub teams taking too long to meet internally agreed deadlines. This creates fragmentation because local solutions, developed without a wider global dialogue, run the risk of deviating from optimised global formats or standards. You can't afford the risk of sacrificing people’s enthusiasm, so I find it is better to define work requirements precisely, and ask people not to go beyond an agreed ‘limit of progress or exploitation’ without direct consultation with yourself as team leader. By doing this you can at least keep some 'sense of shape' to your overall progress.
The biggest challenge I face with a global team of 36 consultants? In short - the coordination of global communication across the team. Lesson 1 - Don't imagine you'll ever get 36 people on one global conference call :-) ...so I offer three different options for people to attend the same call - and repeat it three times. Lesson 2 - Provide a webcast for no shows personally addressed to them, to promote a spirit of inclusion. Lesson 3 - Try to keep a rhythm to communication planning I.E quarterly (strategic / global); monthly (operational / regional - functional); weekly (regional / local) - obviously this needs to be calibrated to the needs of each team.
'Where in the World is My Team?' by Terence Brake is both an entertaining :-) and instructive guide to running global teams! It's not a 'formal' business book, but rather an engaging story of a young manager trying to survive and keep his sanity in the new workplace... there are some great tools and concepts. (The 6Cs framework from the webinar is the core proposition) - Try Amazon for more info...
In my opinion the 3 most important things gobal team leaders must to get teams working well are:
1) Self management - accept that the challenge of leading your team is going to look 'messy'. That's normal! This is not a job for control freaks! Influencing, guiding and supporting along with clear vision, strategy and structure will establish the right foundation for progress.
2) Impress upon team members the need for 'Self Leadership' - in other words team membership is not a passive activity but an active one, in which each member must display a greater degree of initiative than in a normal domestically based face to face team.
3) Finally to improve the efficiency of global communication - if possible try to 'regionalise' your team by appointing regional leads to act as your ambassadors for your teams overall mission. This minimises the need for over loading people with inconvenient global conference calls, which should be kept to a minimum. (Chose your regional people carefully...give them all the support they need!)
Another HCI member asks: How can teams assess the level(s) of trust that are strongest and where the team can improve (this was a great aspect covered in the webcast btw) ?
Another HCI member asks: How does "momentum" (different sense of appropriate timing) in different geographic locals lead to fragmentation, and what can a team leader do to address this? Thanks in advance...
Another HCI member asks: Steven, with such a large global team of 36 consulants, what is the biggest challenge you face?
Another HCI member asks: What are the 3 most important things leaders can do to get their teams working well?
Sara Houser Asked: Fantastic information on global teams. How do you suggest that the global teams/management begin to use/apply/place these concepts into practice?
Great book related to today's webcast is "Where In The World is My Team?" see http://www.whereintheworldismyteam.com/