Question

You have just accepted a leadership position of a newly formed project team. The team is geographically dispersed with team members from Europe, North America, and South America. Although the team will have quarterly face-to-face meetings at the company’s headquarters, most of the team’s work is conducted virtually (online). As the leader of this new team, you want to ensure that team members from different cultural backgrounds work effectively and efficiently together. Which of the following actions would be most effective in facilitating your team’s performance?
Select: 1
Have each team member learn something about another team member’s home country.
Tell the team that you are available for advice or help whenever anyone needs it.
Discuss expectations for team member communication and processes for making decisions.
Have regular "check-ins" with the team where everyone discusses how things are going.

Answer 1

Answer: Discuss expectations for team member communication and processes for making decisions.

Explanation:

Teams that are quite far apart are a bit cumbersome to manage so thought must go into effective ways of managing such scenarios.

Team members here need to be involved in decision making and need to feel like they are. This is why the expectations of team members' communications as well as the processes for making decisions should be discussed. This way everyone knows what is expected of them and are well involved in the running of the team or at least it's decision making mechanism and as multiple studies have shown, this motivates people to do better.