CHALLENGES MANAGING GLOBAL TEAMS SAMPLE

Introduction

A geographically dispersed workforce is assumed to be an effective means of achieving a successful global economy in the current marketplace. Companies are highly focused on building teams that have the capability of offering the best functional expertise with updated market knowledge from all across the entire world. Firms prefer people to have a multifocal approach to have a successful business track in the current promising market (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507). The concept of global collaboration is assumed to add value to the business along with an increase in profitability and better opportunities. Modern-day leaders focus more on a flat-world type of economy that assumes each private-sector Chief Executive Officer (CEO) is a “Global CEO” so that he/she can put efforts into considering a worldwide platform. This concept has encouraged the formation of Global teams (Vance, and Paik, 2015). These teams have different cultural backgrounds, ethical considerations, language, working styles, etc. all of them contribute towards one business objective and aim forward to achieve success. However, dealing with Global teams is getting complicated with the rise in globalization, and eventually the demand of the business is also getting upgraded (Gibbs, and Boyraz, 2015, pp.532-551). Creating a successful workforce across the world requires dynamic management skills and effective communication with a strong leadership approach. Also, trust building becomes difficult in such a remote approach as compared to a locally placed team with whom the interaction becomes easier.

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Scope & Objective

The current topic will discuss some of the major challenges in managing teams situated Globally and finding out ways to handle them effectively. Drastic market expansion is the main outcome of globalization that has opened the scope for diverse pools of working professionals that could be able to meet the demands of the present as well as of the future (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2015). The scope of this work is based on estimating the level or extent of global impact on the virtual working environment and ways to overcome the issues.

Gaps Identified

Geographically distributed teams working remotely are known as the Global team. Leaders are mainly responsible for handling those teams. Unlike local teams, global teams are different to handle and manage due to cross-border differences (Vance, and Paik, 2015). Although a lot of issues a leader has to encounter when he has to manage a global team. Broadly, all the issues could be categorized under four major challenges,

Lack of clarity – While dealing with people living in foreign countries, most of the leaders find it difficult to understand their perspective and their thought process. A lot of communication gap lies between two parties that affect their relationship development (Gilson, Maynard, Jones Young, Vartiainen, and Hakonen, 2015, pp.1313-1337). Language gap disconnects the proper passage of information and in most cases, such disruption ends up with miscommunication or communication that goes wrong. Most of the communication happens via telephone, lync, skype call, or any other kind of remote access. These means of communication are not always effective or productive, especially when there is a critical topic to be discussed.
Decision-making process gets slowed down – Decision-making is a critical part of leadership that involves critical thinking and analyzing capabilities that could help the business to grow and expand. The decision-making abilities of leaders having a global team become limited because of the understanding gap (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2015). This lack of clarity in communication could also affect the decision-making timings. Moreover, time zones will also contribute to lagging of the decision-making process.
Challenges with conflict resolution – Conflict is common in any organization and there should be adequate arrangements for resolving those conflicts. Otherwise it will affect the productivity and efficiency of the overall business. Conflict management becomes a challenge for leaders if they need to deal with the global team (Moran, Abramson, and Moran, 2014). Some communications might be misunderstood or some points might get missed. Face-to-face communication helps in effective conflict resolution.
Corporate-cultural conflicts – Global teams have varied cultural aspects. Their thought and ideologies vary and this might risk towards mismatch of views (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507). This will affect the team relationships and eventually impact negatively on the business outcomes

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Literature Review

Much research and analysis have been carried out on global team management. Most of them primarily focus on doing homework before taking up the responsibility of dealing with such intercontinental teams (Vance, and Paik, 2015). Some tips and tricks are important to be considered to have an effective business interaction.

According to Brannen, language plays a vital role in connecting people. He regarded language as the heart of international business and the key to integrating various business skills and performance outcomes (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507). According to the author, language differences act as a barrier to international business. Cross-functional integration can be successful if there is a common method of communication or a cross-language training facility is available. Brannen and his team have nicely collaborated the cultural and professional attributes to result in a successful business (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507).

Another similar article was published by Jenngibbs.net, authored by Gibbs and Boyraz. They focused on the role of Human Resource Management in the successful collaboration of global teams (Gibbs, and Boyraz, 2015, pp.532-551). The human resource department takes take all the internal and external activities in an organization. This department is located locally as well as at a global level and understands the needs and gaps in communication between teams. They can actively participate in this dynamic environment to handle and balance professional hindrances. The author has also highlighted the fact that a productive environment could be maintained by the human resource management team by fostering global collaboration, including training for global teams, working with managers at the local level to help them integrate with the local culture and traditions, etc. International business is a broad concept and it involves hard-core engagement of both the parties involved in the business.

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Comparative Analysis

A survey was done at the global level including 763 leaders across countries like India, Egypt, China, Hong Kong, the united States of America, the United Kingdom, Spain, and Singapore at the Center for Creative Leadership to understand the challenges commonly faced by those leaders across the world (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2015). The outcomes were shocking but all the data were collated, analyzed, and categorized into some prime issues, described below.

The challenge in Leading a team effectively – Team development, team building, and overall team management become difficult for leaders when they are exposed to global teams.
Lack of managerial effectiveness development – Professional skills along with other developmental components like time management, decision–making capacity, strategic thinking, etc. become challenging for these leaders (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507).
Cannot Inspire others – Leaders lead by example. However, some leaders find it difficult to inspire their team members if they are placed remotely or in some other part of the world (Vance, and Paik, 2015).
Challenge in individual development – This is yet another crucial topic for all leaders. Development of the team member is the responsibility of the leader (Gibbs, and Boyraz, 2015, pp.532-551). The gap in communication and interaction has affected the individual development process in the company placed internationally.

Thus, it is very important to get prepared before getting indulged into such international roles. These teams have different cultural backgrounds, ethical considerations, language, working styles, etc. all of them contribute towards one business objective and aim forward to achieve success (Moran, Abramson, and Moran, 2014). However, dealing with Global teams is getting complicated with the rise in globalization, and eventually the demand of the business is also getting upgraded. Creating a successful workforce across the world requires dynamic management skills and effective communication with a strong leadership approach. To handle these issues, the below steps should be considered.

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Should be well-planned – Proper planning can help in combating the issues linked with cultural or language differences. The leader should try to gather information about the country he is going to handle and should train himself about their culture (Gilson, Maynard, Jones Young, Vartiainen, and Hakonen, 2015, pp.1313-1337). It will not be possible to engulf everything, yet some basic homework will help in dealing with cross-borderers effectively. This will also help in winning the trust and confidence of them.
Multiple modes of communication should be encouraged – International communication should not be limited to virtual calls and meetings. Rather various modes of proficient communication should be applied to communicate across teams (Vance, and Paik, 2015). At times it would be great for the entire team should meet each other by face in a periodic manner.
Sufficient time allocation should be there for working – Time-zone difference is one of the major factors that affects the collaborative working of the global partners. Thus, sufficient time should be provided for work completion (Gibbs, and Boyraz, 2015, pp.532-551). This will make them feel comfortable to work and will not get imposed by the work pressure. Again, a good relationship could be developed in this kind of working environment where the team can feel like opening up to inform the leaders and sharing and discussing the issues that need attention.
Awareness moments should be created – In these moments, the leaders and the team members should discuss the gaps and challenges they are facing and find ways to deal with them (Clegg, Kornberger, and Pitsis, 2015). A point of understanding is required so that they can help each other in achieving a common objective and add value to the business.

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Conclusion

Creating a successful workforce across the world requires dynamic management skills and effective communication with a strong leadership approach. Also, trust building becomes difficult in such a remote approach as compared to a locally placed team with whom the interaction becomes easier. A lot of communication gap lies between two parties that affect their relation development. Language gap disconnects the proper passage of information and in most cases, such disruption ends up with miscommunication or communication that goes wrong (Brannen, Piekkari, and Tietze, 2014, pp.495-507). The leader should try to gather information about the country he is going to handle and should train himself about their culture. It will not be possible to engulf everything, yet some basic homework will help in dealing with cross-borderers effectively. This will also help in winning the trust and confidence of the other team members. Conflict management becomes a challenge for leaders if they need to deal with global teams (Gilson, Maynard, Jones Young, Vartiainen, and Hakonen, 2015, pp.1313-1337). Some communications might be misunderstood or some points might get missed. Face-to-face communication helps in effective conflict resolution.