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Creating World-Class Collaboration In A Global Team

Forbes Chicago Business Council
POST WRITTEN BY
Kim DeLine

In an ever-evolving global landscape, executives find themselves more and more overseeing the work of a distributed workforce. Whether your employees are spread domestically across the U.S. or even more diversely across the globe, there are things you can do to improve the team and culture.

As the leader of a global operations team with members in a centrally based Chicago office, others domestically distributed across the U.S. and a large team in Mumbai, India, there are some key things I recommend to keep in mind as a leader that can make your team better and more cohesive -- and, therefore, more effective.

Create a culture of empathy.

Having a diverse workforce can present a set of challenges where cultural norms differ at a base level. It’s important to ensure that your team members acknowledge this in all interactions. Reminding team members that what might be “normal” for you isn’t normal for your teammate across the globe is important. Encourage team members to step back, explain the bigger picture and review the "why" behind decisions, as the person on the receiving end of a message might not always immediately jump to the same conclusion.

Think about your teammates.

If your organization is scaling and improving processes by the day, it’s important to remind team members to consider their peers, especially the ones who aren’t in the office. It’s easy to implement changes and forget that your actions will also change the processes and patterns of someone you don’t see every day, especially when they are in a different time zone or country.

So, suggest that your team members take a step back and think about all the impacted parties when implementing a change. Before moving forward, collaborate. Ask your peers in other departments if or how a change will impact them. And again, make sure people understand why the change is happening. Creating that sense of buy-in on why something is being changed is just as important as the change itself. Team members need to find purpose in things that change the way they do things.

 Assume innocence.

This has long been one of my favorite sayings. It’s simple, but during communication, it’s important not to jump to conclusions about someone’s motivations. It can be easy for globally diverse teams to forget they are all on the same team and moving toward the same set of goalposts. So, always start from a position of assuming innocence, and assume that another person’s actions or changes aren’t meant to undermine you.

Approaching all communications from this position will allow you to ask questions and collaborate in a way that puts neither party on the defensive and allows you to reach a common ground more quickly — without misunderstanding.

Celebrate diversity.

Encourage your team to celebrate their own cultural traditions and share them with the rest of the company. For example, at our organization, one of the great things we’ve done is to implement global team activities where we celebrate one another’s holidays and diversity. These activities range from singing Christmas carols to flying kites for the Makar Sankranti festival, a celebration that marks the beginning of the harvest season in India. Through this, we have been able to create space in our culture and schedule for teams to embrace and showcase similarities, differences and celebrations. In doing so, we create opportunities, without travel, for our global teams to learn more about one another on non-work-related topics.

As a leader, it is your job to model the behaviors you want to see from your team. Be proactive to ensure you are eliminating cultural bias, treating teams equally and seeking solutions that better the entire team and organization. That should be your focus. And in my experience, using the above strategies will help demonstrate to your team the importance of and great things that can come from working together.

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