What challenges and traps await virtual teams? Can each local manager manage virtual teams, especially multicultural ones? Are normal managerial competencies enough to do it? Or maybe the global manager of the 21st century needs something else to function effectively in the complex labyrinth of matrix-like organisational structures, virtual meetings, time zones, and multicultural communication styles?

by: Irek Zyzański

Globalisation is a trend there is no escape from. In Poland, there are approx. 1,000 Shared Service Centres of various types. They not only employ over 20,000 foreigners, but also manage or collaborate with teams in different countries and on different continents.

The manager’s frustration

Karolina Kowalska angrily threw a paper coffee cup into the rubbish bin. She almost cried of helpless rage. The idea of throwing the papers was starting to increasingly appear in her mind. She was simply tired of it. The worst part was that she could not quite pinpoint the problem or explain why it appeared exactly now.

Karolina had successfully worked for several years as the manager of a support team for a Polish organisation. As a manager, she was both effective in delivering results and liked by her team. She was a good boss, she appointed tasks, supported and motivated her team, and – where necessary – she was also able to openly inform about what needed to be changed. She found time for informal chats with people over coffee in the kitchen.

Her superiors valued her effectiveness and results. During the last reorganisation, she was promoted to the Global Process Support (GPS) team. Its members worked in Amsterdam, New Delhi and Jakarta. Due to her effectiveness, the company decided that she would share her time participating both at the GPS virtual teams and local initiatives.

It was supposed to be so beautiful… She did not expect that after the first three months on this position, she would feel incompetent, demotivated, and close to resigning.

The first alarming signs of a storm appeared already during the first teleconference of the new team. She asked her new team to present themselves and talk about their experiences. The Dutch briefly presented their professional achievements, but the Malaysians and the Indians started to speak about where they studied, the cities they came from, and even about their families. She would certainly not speak about it all with somebody with whom she was talking for the first time. And to top it all off, the heavy accent and the endings “la, okey-la” thrown in every now and then were distracting her. And apparently not only her – at some point, Dieter from the Netherlands lost his patience and told them to speak more clearly and go to the point.

This was like a cold shower – people from Asia stopped talking and, apart from brief statements, remained practically silent until the end of the meeting. Karolina presented her expectations regarding their work to them and established that regular teleconferences would take place every Friday morning European time. She chose that time to adapt it to the six-hour difference with Malaysia. When at the end she asked if everybody agreed to such a plan, nobody opposed to it.

She thought she was communicating her expectations of the team and project progress in a clear way; however, it turned out that clients started increasingly to complain about missed deadlines. Even though this was not her natural style, she started “grilling” her subordinates from Asia at the teleconferences, who – as it turned out – were aware of the fact that they would not be able to deliver some things, but never said it. When she constantly heard from them “yes, no problem”, shivers were starting to run down her spine, and she could sense a problem coming. So she would ask again: “Do you agree?”, and she would always hear the same answer: “Yes, Maam”.

Not only the team form Asia was a problem for her. The Dutch were communicating their frustration to her more and more openly and often in an aggressive way. They would interfere unceremoniously, challenging her opinion and undermining her position as the leader when she was presenting tasks to be completed to the team.

Open conflicts within the team began to occur. She started to receive information from her corporate network that the Asian side considered her, just like the rest of the team from Europe, arrogant and aggressive and providing unprofessional and morale-destroying feedback. It was also suggested that Karolina lacked appropriate leadership competencies. The Dutch also complained, but about other things. They were saying that she was not specific enough and that she circled around topics for too long instead of getting to the point. Today’s morning meeting has been the last straw that broke the camel’s back.

 It turned out that a high-priority project would be significantly delayed because the Asian side failed to meet deadlines. What upset her most was the fact that the team members had already known about it for some time but did not inform her about it.

What is going on here? Why is my proven management and communication method not working? Are my new people the problem or is it me?

Virtual team has many names.

What makes management of a virtual team much more complex than if we work in the same office? In both cases, tasks need to be assigned, their completion checked, the manager must develop and motivate the team, and constantly communicate with team members giving them feedback about their work. It might seem that the only slight difference is that we cannot see each other face to face. But this can be solved with e-mails, phone calls and videoconferences. This “slight” difference, however, changes everything.

Let us have a closer look at virtual teams, because they exist in many forms affecting the effectiveness of collaboration and management. The simplest version is remote work from home for some days a week. Employees live in the same city or country, speak the same language and use the same cultural communication code. Regular face-to-face team meetings are possible. This sounds relatively easy for Poland, but I remember working in Russia, when after coming to the office in Moscow, we had only one hour to talk to employees from the offices in Vladivostok or Khabarovsk, who were seven time zones ahead of us.

The situation gets complicated when it is not possible for the team to have regular meetings. I myself often worked in teams whose members I never met, because they lived, for example, on different continents.

We are social creatures; communication, trust in colleagues and the superior, and clear understanding of our roles and responsibilities are important factors affecting the effectiveness of our work.

When we stop meeting face to face, when our messages are wrongly interpreted by others, when the so-called roller-coaster ride starts, it is both the manager’s and the team members’ intercultural intelligence that is decisive for the project success or failure.

Pitfalls of the virtual intercultural labyrinth

Virtual teams with members in different countries are faced with various challenges. Let us focus on the main ones.

Time zones and weekends

In the Middle East, Friday is a free day. Another day of the weekend is either Saturday (in Dubai) or Thursday (some companies in Saudi Arabia). When I worked in the Middle East, we had a communication problem with our headquarters in Lausanne. I thought, and I was not the only one, that by organising teleconferences on those days or inviting us to meetings in Switzerland ending on Fridays or Saturdays, our superiors did not show us and our families respect. Working in the European headquarters, we should know that when organising virtual team meetings with employees from some Asian or Middle East countries, the time of the Friday prayer or working day variations connected with the Ramadan should be taken into account.

When working with people from different time zones, we should adapt communication time to their working day. We will show them respect if we change the meeting time in such a way that not only one of the parties is always in a losing position regarding the time. If we have to take somebody’s time outside their regular working hours, we should propose to compensate for that with a shorter working day some other time.

Communication method

The degree of directness in communication is very deeply rooted in our culture. We are usually not aware of our own conditioning and perceive the way others communicate as either too aggressive or too little specific. In her book The Culture Map, Erin Meyer ranks cultures on a scale from “low context” to “high context”. In the former, good communication is direct, unambiguous, and without implied meanings. This style is used in the USA, the Netherlands, Germany or Canada. On the other extreme are countries where good communication is sublime, diplomatic, multidimensional. The majority of countries in Asia and the Middle East fits into this category. If, just like in Karolina Kowalska’s team, people from the Netherlands, Poland, and Asia meet, the probability of communication misunderstandings is high. I have recently worked with a company having a branch in Malaysia. We, the Poles, were perceived as aggressive and arrogant because our communication style is more direct. On the other hand, our team had problems with deciphering negative messages from Malaysia. People from Asian culture very rarely say “no” directly. In their culture this is unacceptable. When communicating with them, we should listen carefully to sublime comments, such as “we might need more time” or “this needs to be reconsidered”. Very often it is just a negative answer, perfectly clear in Asian context, but wrongly deciphered by the other side. At the end of the day, both sides will be genuinely surprised: “Why didn’t you tell us?” versus “What do you mean? We did tell you.”

The quality of our communication is affected by the lack of possibility to meet face to face. We cannot see body language and mimicry when talking on the phone. A strong English accent will be funny to some and frustrating to others. Australian expats working in our organisation in Indonesia would arouse panic among the local employees. The Indonesians did not understand them, and additionally, the principle of striving for harmony ingrained in their culture prevented them from openly admitting that they did not understand the Australians and from pointing that out to them. I spent a lot of time making the Australians realise that they generated a big communication and cultural problem.

The role of the superior

In come cultures, the boss is more a facilitator, a peer among peers, someone who engages the team in decision-making. On the other hand, there are also more hierarchical cultures, in which the superior holds a monopoly on wisdom and knowledge owing to the occupied position, and his point of view should not be challenged. According to Erin Meyer’s works, the Netherlands, Canada or the Scandinavian countries are egalitarian cultures, while Russia, Poland, and especially Asian countries, are more hierarchical. I remember a conversation with a colleague from Indonesia, who always remained passive during our teleconferences. He explained it to me later: “Irek, how can I speak without being asked if someone from the Management Board participates in the meeting? And additionally, you Europeans take turns shouting without letting me speak. In my culture, in such a situation, the host of the meeting should give me the floor, otherwise I will be considered uncouth.”

Boosting the efficiency of virtual teams

I have a few tips for Karolina Kowalska, the manager mentioned at the beginning of the article, who was an effective local manager, but tripped on managing a multicultural virtual team.

First, Karolina must realise what problems she is facing and understand that neither of the parties consciously torpedoes the work. Karolina’s team is composed of people both from cultures characterised by direct communication and cultures in which communication is highly contextualised. The latter will perceive the former as aggressive, while the former will perceive the latter as not specific enough. Different variants of English will add to confusion, and scheduling the teleconference always on Friday evenings Malaysian time will certainly not motivate the team.

Karolina’s role as the superior is also perceived by them differently – while ones expect her to involve them more in decision-making, the others want to see the boss as a determined person who issues commands.

As the next step, Karolina should discuss the situation with the entire team. I recommend multicultural training and engaging the entire team in working together on agreeing common communication rules – what is expected and what is forbidden. During meetings, Karolina should make sure that employees from Asia have a space to talk. The fact that they don’t say anything doesn’t mean that they have nothing to say.

Karolina must also pay attention to how the word “no” is communicated. Statements such as: “maybe we should discuss this again” should set the alarm bells ringing and she should keep on exploring the subject.

Apart from virtual meetings with the entire team, Karolina should also have regular talks with each of her employees separately. This will help to build trust and get to know each other better, which is important in a situation where we have many cultures. If this impossible for technical reasons, video tools will always be more helpful in communication that only teleconferences.

Where in the office creative ideas appear, people exchange news and get to know each other better? At the coffee machine in the kitchen, of course. Karolina should create a virtual “coffee machine”, a permanently open chat that anybody can use to talk freely, gossip and exchange ideas with others.

A change of management from a local to a virtual, and at the same time multicultural, team is a significant step outside the comfort zone for most people. The HR Department should play the key role in building the efficiency of virtual multicultural teams. Appropriate on-boarding and expanding managerial competencies to include multicultural abilities are key steps on this path. I know from my own experience that stepping outside our cultural comfort zone permits us to effectively develop and manage virtual multicultural teams with great satisfaction.

Irek Zyzański

is a ICF PCC coach, mentor and consultant, director of HR and sales departments. He worked in Libya, Ukraine, Dubai, China, Russia, Indonesia, and Hong Kong.