|
Whether it’s due to globalisation, mergers or acquisitions, joint ventures, BPO/BPI, outsourcing, offshoring or growth, it’s increasingly the case that more and more people are expected to work as productive teams - but on a remote and distributed basis. Some of these teams are going to be wildly successful at it - from experience, a lot more aren’t.
Many of the challenges of distributed team working can be predicted, managed and accommodated. Examples include different time zones and language differences. However, it’s often what we don’t expect that can impede effective working at the team level.
We take it for granted that our view, outlook, expectations and norms of behaviour, values and general culture are just the way things are (or should be!). They aren’t. We each live in a ‘cultural bubble’ that defines the environment in which we work - and to some extent, who we are in that environment. It’s expected, assumed, taken for granted - until it’s not there anymore. We experience this when we change job and notice that the new organisation does things differently, that people express things differently - and that’s OK. Over 2-4 months most of accommodate the new ways of working on a daily basis and assimilate into the new culture with relative ease.
When a team of relative strangers are put together on the basis of working remotely from each other these differences and challenges are magnified and, if not addressed in a timely way, can prevent the team from functioning at the levels of performance expected.
We can:
- accelerate the process of becoming an effective team
- identify and remove common blocks to developing team cohesion
- work with each team member to develop awareness of their norms and expectations
- work with the whole team to identify effective ‘rules’ for team communication
- find the common ground for behaviour that works for all team members
- monitor team interactions to create a high performance team that succeeds!
Want to know more?
|
