Preparing Your Global Team For Success
You’re working on a team, bringing in people from different parts of the world for the first time. All of these people have different cultural understandings. And your job, is to help them work together successfully.
According to a recent study, 16% of companies globally are fully remote. Remote workers and cultural differences can be more challenging to manage. It can feel intimidating and overwhelming because you may not know how it will go.
Below are a few things you can do to ensure everyone works together seamlessly.
1. Trainings
The first thing you may want to consider is bringing in different forms of training. These are trainings everyone can take together. The goal is for everyone on your team to feel comfortable in this new global working space.
Consider the following:
- Sensitivity – Sensitivity training can help everyone on your team feels comfortable interacting with one another. Sensitivity training aims to bring awareness for employees to consider. Sensitivity training covers race, gender, difficult personalities, gossip, and more. When you are in charge of a global workforce, you want to ensure your team understands what is expected from everyone. This is why you need to implement this training for your international team.
- Communications – The way people communicate varies depending on the culture. Cross-cultural communications training can help set up your global team for success. For example, if you have people from high-context and low-context cultures working together, you will want to ensure they understand how to communicate with each other productively.
When you bring in different types of trainings to your team, it can spark curiosity. This can help everyone keep an open mind to new and different ideas.
2. Communication Audits
Another thing you may want to consider is planning regular communication audits. This means checking in with your team with specific agendas and items to ensure everyone feels comfortable and is communicating and participating.
Consider the following:
- One-on-one – Depending on the size of your team, you may want to consider carving out time to do one-on-one check-ins with your team members. If your group is large, you may want to do these check-ins with the team leaders, rather than every single employee. These check-ins can be weekly, monthly, quarterly, or yearly. For example, if you decide to do weekly check-ins, you can provide a short agenda to stay on track and make the most of your meeting time. Allow your team member to bring up any issues they are having.
- Team – Regular team check-ins are a great way to take a temperature check of your team. Because you are most likely working with people in a remote situation, you don’t have the luxury of seeing your team in person. This means, taking time to check in regularly is vital. For example, you can host a once-a-month check-in. Ensure you send your team a detailed agenda, so they know what to expect and can prepare to participate.
Regular communication audits can help you ensure your team understands your message the way you intended. These audits also allow your team to bring up anything that needs attention.
3. Processes
As you prepare your global team for success, you may also want to think about having streamlined processes. Because you and your international team have different styles and ways of working, you will want to ensure there is efficiency and productivity.
Consider the following:
- Processes – Processes are the steps you take from beginning to end. As you set up your global team for success, you want to ensure everyone knows the steps they need to take. For example, if you are in charge of the worldwide marketing team, you want everyone on your team to understand how they get a marketing project approved. The first step may be to send the rendering to the head of the department, and then from there; it is sent to compliance, then legal, etc. When people don’t understand the process, things can get lost, and this is when mistakes happen.
- Systems – The systems you create are how all the processes you have in place work together. For example, the marketing processes you have in place together make up the marketing system. The marketing system needs to work together with the events system. If the two systems don’t communicate well, the marketing required to promote the event may not get to the event team in time. Making sure you have solid systems is critical to your company’s success.
Creating processes everyone can get on board with and understands is critical.
Considering these three things and implementing them consistently can ensure everyone is working together seamlessly and cross-collaboratively.
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