Leadership of cross-cultural virtual teams: Issues and solutions

Author: Iloka Benneth Chiemelie
Published: 15-October-2014

1.      The five most important issues facing the leaders of cross-cultural virtual teams

Margaret Oertig and Thomas Buergi (2006) conducted and analysis of issues facing leaders of cross-cultural virtual teams with more than five issues identified, but the most significant of these issues include:

1.1. Managing virtual aspects of communication – difference in time zone means that some people could use more of their day while others will have to use more of their night in order to establish communication with each other. The absence of face-to-face contact also raises issues of creating an office atmosphere. Thus, a virtual leader faces the challenge of managing impacts of virtual communication.

1.2. Developing trust – the lack of face-to-face contact also means that the leader has the ultimate responsibility of developing trust between members of a virtual team. This is challenge because human nature can influence the extent of trust a member can accord another member when they have not meet before. This could also be blocked further by culture (degree of uncertainty avoidance), and past experience (online fraud).

1.3. Managing task – since the leader has not meet these members, he also faces issue of how to allocate tasks to them (in terms of their competency level), and regulating how they perform such tasks (standardization).

1.4. Managing people – in an office setting, a leader can communicate with a staff directly and provide necessary help when needed in the course of job undertakings. However, this is not possible in virtual teams and leaders face challenges of how to replicate such in virtual teams.

1.5. Managing language and cultural issues – this is probably the most significant issue because in the virtual setting, staffs have different languages and cultures. Thus, the leader needs to provide a common language for communication as well as ensure that the cultures of the members are not contradicting with what the virtual team has set to achieve.

2.      Best practices for the leadership of cross-cultural virtual teams

Considering the above issues, one would argue that it is important to addresses these issues in order to ensure effective deliver of set corporate goals in virtual teams. The best practices for addressing these issues are as discussed below.

2.1. Best practices for diversity

2.1.1.      Create a team identify (Staples et al., 2005) – diversity brings about increased creativity and innovation but it can be an issue in a virtual team because people find it difficult to communicate their ideas. Thus, the leader should develop a common ground in terms of what needs to be done and set team norms and expectations to achieve such identity.

2.2. Best practices for location

2.2.1.      Team design (Cranton, 2002) – the leaders should design the working hour to reflect working hours of team members in their locations. Instead of working together,

2.2.2.      Manage communication (Rose, 2005) – the team should adopt advanced communication features to ensure real-time communication between members. Such features include Skye, Phone calls, Facebook and other social Medias.

2.3. Best practices for leadership

2.3.1.      Charismatic and transformational (Wardell, 1998) – in order to reduce demotivated influenced by lack of face-to-face communication, the leader should be charismatic (understand challenges faced by the team) and transformational (provide them with necessary advice to ensure such issues are eliminated in the future). 

2.4. Best practices in team management

2.4.1.      Increase trust (Hoefling, 2003) – the leader should increase trust between members by detailing significant information about a given member to other members. This will make them confident knowing that they are working with fellow staffs and not strangers.

2.4.2.      Decrease conflict (Duarte and Snyder, 2001) – once the any conflict is noticed by the leader, necessary steps should be taken to decrease conflicts in order to ensure that information sharing and knowledge transfer is not hindered in any form.

References

Cramton, C. D. (2002). Finding common ground in dispersed collaboration, Organizational Dynamics, 30(4): 356-367.

Duarte, D.L. and Snyder, N.T. (2001). Mastering Virtual Teams: Strategies, Tools, and Techniques that Succeed, 2nd edition. Jossey-Bass, San Francisco.

Hoefling, T. (2003). Working Virtually: Managing People for Successful Virtual Teams and Organizations. Stylus Publishing, LLC: Virginia.

Margaret Oertig and Thomas Buergi (2006), “The challenges of managing cross-cultural virtual project teams.” Team Performance Management Vol. 12 No. 1/2, 2006 pp. 23-30

Ross, J. A. (2006). Trust makes the team go „round, Harvard Management Update, June, No. U0606B.

Staples, D.S., Wong, I.K. and Cameron, A.F. (2005). Best Practices for Effective Virtual Teams Encyclopedia of Information Science and Technology. M. Khosrow-Pour (Ed.). Idea Group Publishing, Hershey PA, 260-265.

Wardell, C. (1998). The art of managing virtual teams: Eight key lessons, Harvard Management Update, No. U9811B.