individual project wk5

MANAGING A GLOBAL TEAM

The role of a project manager can sometimes be very stressful. The manager is the man in the middle, where he is pulled in different directions by everyone from the customers, the developers, the management and everybody else involved. As a manager, however, the biggest responsibilities are delivering results to the customers and work harder to achieve this goal (Chiocchio, Kelloway, & Hobbs, 2015). By doing this, one has to make sure that the development team can work efficiently. Leading a new team is especially difficult, more so when the team comes from different cultures.

Global teams are nothing new but the challenges that encounter a widely spread team are very evident. Communication is mainly one of the significant factors for global teams. To start with, I would use time and date tools with nifty world clock which will tell the time it is any place in the world which also has a meeting planner tool for time coordination. The team members will be requested earlier on to state their local time so that they can know the time variance earlier on to avoid any delay since the time factor is of great essence.

With the trickiness involved in managing multicultural meetings, it is important to put more emphasis on the style of communication since it varies from different cultures. This starts by showing the awareness of the variations existing among the members. I would first avoid stereotyping my team. As the leader of a project, it is not good treating partners in a different way just for the reason that they have a diverse background culturally; cultural stereotyping does not work at all. When dealing with people, one deals with individuals. The impression of national culture is just excellent in getting an idea of the possible conflicts one might encounter on the way. Having an experience of working in multi-cultural teams, there are challenges as well as opportunities. People will be very open-minded at the moment they realize that their peers can think in a different way than they do (Bouncken, Brem, & Kraus, 2016). At the end of the day, better results are obtained with a multi-cultural team. Every individual in the team is obligated to follow the same rules and regulations to avoid rebellion among the team members. Understanding the cultural divergence and discovering the central point between respecting diverse cultures and maintaining a strict follow up of rules will determine the kind of a leader one is.

The meeting would probably start by brainstorming about some working agreements on how to run the meeting. In the end, the team must be capable of telling the mission of the task (Binder, 2016). The success of a project majorly depends on how the team will work together. It is therefore of great essence for the team to come up with the project team plan document. This will provide details on who will be doing what in the project. This will go a long way in fostering efficient project execution, maintaining the communication of the team efficient and transparent. The project work plan will also be efficient in keeping track of all the activities, the resources, and the durations, thus acting as a guideline for the core project team.

References

Binder, J. (2016). Global project management: communication, collaboration and management across borders. Routledge.

Bouncken, R., Brem, A., & Kraus, S. (2016). Multi-cultural teams as sources for creativity and innovation: The role of cultural diversity on team performance. International Journal of Innovation Management, 20(01), 1650012.

Chiocchio, F., Kelloway, E. K., & Hobbs, B. (Eds.). (2015). The psychology and management of project teams. Oxford University Press.