Leading a Globally Distanced Team

1743 Words7 Pages
Managing a multicultural team is challenging enough and when you add distance to the equation it is magnified. Global distance teams tend to be more heterogeneous and come with challenges associated with time, cultures, and language differences. My interpretation of a global distance teams is a group of people selected to complete a project with limited physical interaction with each other. Therefore, when tasked with leading a global distance multicultural marketing team, my initial apprehensive reaction was understandable. Immediately after being appointed as the team leader, I created a prioritized list of objectives to accomplish prior to starting the project. Before a team can successfully execute a project, the leader must understand the dynamics of the project and its importance. A team leader must have a clear understanding of the project goals and be able to articulate it to the members. If the goals are not clear by the team members, the shared interest will not exist, therefore, creating barriers which will lead to failure. To alleviate this, I created a viable vision statement describing the team’s objectives and how those objectives will lead to the end state. The vision included how the teams would behave and some team values. This step must be accomplished expeditiously to provide purpose and clarity to the task with the hope of motivating the team to contribute selflessly. Next, I conducted a thorough review of each team member history and culture to become aware of potential challenges as it relates to communication and cultural barriers. According to researcher, one of the leading causes of failure for multicultural teams is mistrust which can result from communication and cultural barriers. According to Alder (p.135), “mistrust usually results primarily from inadvertent cross-cultural misinterpretation”. Through research, I
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