Greg James team had a huge trouble: it was the second time that the team had failed

to respond promptly to a customer system outage as required by a $300K service

contract. Soon after reading emails and initial investigation, James realized that there
were cultural variations and some miscommunication among US, India and the UAE
which caused the problems with his team. James perception was backed by the cultural
tools designed by Professor Geert Hofstede after he learned more details. For example,
Nick did not update the customer contact number assuming everyone would go through
him to get in touch with the customer. For people from US, the tool shows a high score
on individualism indicating they expect to be directly consulted most of the time
whenever there is an issue. Another example, Jamil did not change the queue even
though he noticed the misuse. For people from UAE, the tool shows a high score on
uncertainty avoidance indicating they tend to maintain a rigid protocol and are intolerant
of unorthodox ideas even though a change is strongly recommended.

As demonstrated by this incident, people from different cultures often bring very different
sets of assumptions about appropriate ways to coordinate and communicate with
others. Cultural differences among James team are present, challenge their
communication but are largely overlooked. More importantly, it gets intensified with this
virtual team setting. For example, on each conference call, Indian team felt inferior to
others as they had fewer meeting agenda, their concerns were reviewed last and they
were consistently interrupted. Meanwhile, the UAE team whose culture required
extensive relationship building felt they lack sufficient face-to-face contact with James.
Another challenge to James team which has aroused the interpersonal issues is posed

by their work processes. First, the Indian team were often left to do customer
maintenance work instead of technology innovation, which exacerbated their inferior
complex. Second, although the French team had recently voiced the displeasure about
the compensation mismatch with US team, their US counterparts complained the unfair
workload taken over from the French teammates when they took several weeks of
vacation due to statutory law. Third, the ongoing conversation between James and his
US team had left the non-US teams feeling that they were only copied as an
afterthought for the decisions that had been made.

To be a more effective team leader, there will be a lot of improvement opportunities such
as keeping remote team members more engaged, enhancing intercultural awareness,
evaluating open work effectiveness periodically, and developing the trusting relationship
in a structured team environment. In particular, I would start with the following priorities.
First, I must improve the cultural awareness among the global team and help reshape
their behavior. For example, I could use the first five minutes of each team meeting to
share something unique from their culture and keep rotating through team members.
Ideally the sharing should focus more on personal and behavioral aspects. Second, I
need to better manage the differences among the team. For example, I may establish a
one on one phone conversation to resolve an issue than a confrontational approach in a
group setting and be cognizant that each culture manages conflicts differently. Third, I
can establish a reward system to recognize team members for their contribution to the
problem solving as well as the dedication to serving the customers so that everyone will
be motivated to achieve excellence.