Regardless of which industry you work in, management is becoming increasingly globalized. Members of the same team can often be operating from different corners of the world and reporting to diverse senior management. This calls for a review of management practices associated with supervising such teams and bringing the most out of them.
There is no doubt that what inspires people is different in different locations and countries. An effective manager must have sensitivity to deal with diverse employees and encourage them around a common cause.
Achieving Effective Team Management
Team management isn’t just about leading and completing projects. More than anything else, it is about working with people, handling their grievances, and listening to their opinions. An effective team manager will treat all members of a team as equals and accommodate different points of view before coming to decisions.
Let us look at how you can achieve effective team management if you are looking to hire a global team.
When To Check-In
As a manager, you need to have a decent frequency of checking in with your subordinates. Staying in constant connection with those who work under you keeps them motivated and conscious of their goals. This might entail having off-time meetings, but the result will undoubtedly be worth it.
However, it is also essential that you not be excessively intrusive in the work of your direct reports. Checking in does not mean taking progress reports multiple times a day or even every day. Optimize your check-in frequency to obtain the best results.
This optimization can often be a game of trial-and-error. There is no way to know the level of check-in to which different team members might be comfortable, but you can always communicate with them to set up a comfortable frequency with you both.
Unite Your Team
If your team is diverse, your members probably have different work cultures and ethics and different causes that provoke them. As a manager, you must take cognizance of this fact and rally your team around a common cause. This cause must appeal across cultures and regions to fundamental human nature and ambition.
Professionals oriented toward a purpose are more likely to be satisfied with their jobs and return better results. Attempt to help your team realize how your work is essential and makes a difference in your customers’ lives. You must link your work to objectives that matter to your employees, and you are sure to receive excellent yields.
A common way of doing so is to remind members of the eventual goal of what you are doing subtly at some point in every meeting. This helps team members have an understanding of the larger picture and can potentially aid them in working better.
Members who are aware of larger organizational or project goals are bound to orient their activities in that direction, becoming more likely to succeed.
Balancing Contribution
Having members based at different locations in the world can often lead to bias, especially if you are at the same location as some of the members. This is where you must balance participation across your different locations. Make sure that you take steps to ensure equal contribution from all your locations.
A useful initial step toward doing so would be to establish a language of conversation, which will generally be English. In case some team members have issues in understanding and interpreting the language, you must ensure that the message gets across to them. This helps create an environment of cooperation and improves productivity.
Another step that you can take personally is to continuously revisit your work delegation activity over the past weeks and months. Try and ascertain that your work allocation is equitable and no location or member is left out in the cold. When you allocate a large swathe of work, make sure that each team member is getting something to do.
Creating A Grievance Redressal System
As a manager, you can also create an accountability system for your team members that ensures that there is no discrimination at the workplace. This accountability system can include an unbiased, externally-recruited officer whom your team members can approach in case they feel discriminated against.
Such an accountability system is just a small part of the checks and balances that you need to keep in place to get the best out of your team. While you always expect your team members to be respectful of other team members, unconscious bias can always creep in involuntarily. Hence, in order that equality is maintained, a formal system of grievance redressal must be kept in place.
Another way of ensuring accountability is making team members rate each other anonymously on consideration of diversity. This way, you will be able to figure out whether teams rate each other based on location or other diversity considerations or truly consider all team members as equals.
Diversity Training
As a manager, you must seek to understand the cultures and professional customs of the countries that you are dealing with. If this entails undergoing diversity training, you must not hesitate to do so and might even encourage certain team members to do the same.
There is no hardship in encouraging a dialogue about cultural differences across nations and geographies. This only increases empathy across your team and the trust of your team members in you as a manager.
Recognizing cultural diversity also helps your members feel personally respected and cared for. You can also make your entire team undergo diversity and inclusion training to remove unconscious biases and help them treat each other as equals.
Diversity training is also really effective in improving the quality of discourse in your team since all members can speak their minds without fear. This discourse leads to better ideas and diverse points of view becoming a part of your project.
Conclusion
Globalization is an integral part of any business. As the number of global teams grow, so will the changes required in businesses due to the various aspects involved in their handling.
As a manager, you might consider a change management certification which will equip you to better implement organizational changes, both internal and external, to your team.
By gaining such qualifications, you contribute to making your workplace more empathetic and respectful of different cultures and create a mutually cooperative environment.
