Navigating Virtual Team Challenges with Multicultural Sensitivity

1. Virtual AND Multicultural!!Team ChallengesSvjetlana MadzarOctober 31, 2008

2. VTs are Vulnerable to… • Failure to communicate and remember contextual information • Uneven distribution of information • Differences in what information is salient • Differences in speed and timing • Uncertainty about the meaning of silence

3. Practices of Effective Virtual Team Leaders (Malhotra et al. 2007) • Trust through Technology • Focus the norms on how information is communicated • Revisit communication norms as the team evolves • Make progress explicit through use of virtual workspace • Equal “suffering” in the geographically distributed world

4. Practices, cont… • Ensure diversity is understood, appreciated and leveraged • Prominent team expertise directory and skills matrix in virtual space • Virtual sub-teaming to pair diverse members • Diverse opinions can be expressed through asynchronous means

5. Practices, cont… • Manage virtual work-cycle and meetings • All idea divergence between meetings (asynchronous) and idea convergence and conflict resolution during meetings (synchronous) • Use the start of the meeting for social relationship building • During meeting: ensure through “check-in” that everyone is engaged and heard from • End of meeting: minutes and future plan posted

6. Interpretive Barriers Functional Heterogeneity Cultural Heterogeneity Virtuality

7. Decision Making: Cultural Tips • The planning phase: • Process vs. outcome orientation • Hierarchy • Beware of cultural dominance

8. Shared Understanding: A word of caution • Stereotypes • Consciously held • Descriptive rather than evaluative • Best “first guess” • Modified with experience In the face of problems, assume misunderstanding until disagreement is proven. Adapted from Adler, Nancy J. (1991): International Dimensions of Organizational Behavior (2nd ed.). Boston: PWS-Kent, p. 72.