In today’s post-pandemic world, it’s impossible to talk about the workplace without mentioning the terms hybrid, online, and remote. And while geographically dispersed teams are more prevalent across all industries, one aspect remains relatively new: the intersection of a multitude of different cultures, all within the same work environment.

Team members from all over the world bring many new opportunities and challenges. To keep your business productive and your employees happy and engaged, it’s important to address them promptly and effectively. In this comprehensive article, you’ll learn how to manage your remote intercultural team to reap these benefits.

What is an intercultural remote team?

As the name suggests, a remote intercultural team is a group of employees who work remotely and come from diverse backgrounds. These differences can include aspects such as ethnicity, religion, language, gender, sexual preferences, and more.

The ability to successfully lead such a team may seem a little out of reach at first. After all, each of your employees has specific needs, goals and expectations of you.

For example, some of them may be new to some of your technologies and wonder, “How does VoIP work?” Others may need much less supervision and “micromanagement” as they are already seasoned experts in their field.

The only way to find out all of this – and more – is to establish a transparent, open and non-judgmental line of communication between you and your cross-cultural remote team. Before we offer you some suggestions on how to achieve this, let’s take a closer look at what challenges and opportunities a cross-cultural remote team can offer.

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Intercultural Remote Teams: Benefits and Challenges

Leading a cross-cultural remote team brings both opportunities and hurdles. We have compiled a list of the most common.

Advantage 1: Diversity and inclusion

Today, the drive by companies to hire a more diverse pool of employees is no longer seen as something “nice,” but an expectation and necessity. Not only do candidates prefer to work for multicultural teams, clients also show a preference for brands that promote diversity and inclusion by hiring great talent regardless of personal or cultural differences.

Advantage 2: Global talent

When you decide to build a remote cross-cultural team, you automatically open the door to a global base of candidates. This allows you to attract the best talent to the job and attract the right people, regardless of where they live or work.

Advantage 3: Agility and flexibility

Because a cross-cultural remote team brings a broader range of skills, expertise, and perspectives to your organization, you can expect to achieve greater agility and flexibility in managing and executing projects. These types of teams generally know how to make the most of the resources at their disposal, resulting in smoother and more efficient workflows.

Challenge 1: Productivity

Staying productive as a cross-cultural remote team is probably one of the biggest challenges you will face as a leader. With each employee located in a different part of the world, it can be difficult for you to keep track of everyone’s performance. Later in our guide we will explore how to solve this.

Challenge 2: Communication

Ensuring clear, constant, and coherent communication is paramount to running an efficient and productive cross-cultural remote team, but it can also be challenging. When you have to deal with different time zones, lifestyles and backgrounds – and possibly different languages ​​- you may risk not getting your message across. Don’t worry – we’ll tell you how to achieve this.

Challenge 3: Constant learning and training

By this we don’t just mean that your team will need regular training and learning sessions – you will need it too. As the manager of a remote cross-cultural team, you’re always learning something new, which is why it’s imperative to stay current and up-to-date on topics like diversity, inclusion, and equal opportunity in the workplace.

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How to manage remote intercultural teams in 5 steps

Now that you know what a remote intercultural team is and what the potential opportunities and challenges are, it’s time to get to work. Let’s find out how to ensure your remote intercultural team stays engaged, productive and motivated.

1. Focus on the opportunities

First, you should get rid of all negative thoughts by shifting your focus from the challenges to the opportunities accessible to you by leading a remote cross-cultural team. Take a close look at each of your team members.

What can they bring to the table? What are their strengths and how can you encourage them? How can you make sure they do their job well while also feeling part of a team that encourages and supports them? Write and execute a detailed plan of action.

2. Respect and value differences

A cross-cultural team will open your eyes to amazing differences in physical traits, personalities and emotions. Appreciate this, embrace the differences, and acknowledge them in a positive and empowering way.

With that in mind, you must not attempt to create an environment that is forced to be neutral about cultural differences. Yes, each and every one of your team members deserves and must be given the same respect and professionalism, but that doesn’t mean negating the qualities that make them unique and valuable.

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3. Don’t be afraid to communicate

Earlier, we briefly pointed out that communicating with and within a cross-cultural remote team can often feel like a challenge. While that’s true, the good news is that there are many ways to ensure that the way you communicate with your team is efficient, positive, and productive.

First, you should consider implementing some well-known employee communication and collaboration platforms. There are many of them: from Skype to Airtable, from Slack to Notion, from Zoom to Google Meet and Microsoft Teams, you are spoiled for choice.

You then need to train all of your employees on how to properly use these tools. Don’t assume that because Skype or Google have been around for a while, everyone knows exactly how to get the most out of them for business purposes.

Another important aspect is the language. If you are an English speaking company, all of your employees are expected to be proficient in English. However, as many of your new team members will be from different parts of the world with different native languages, it is important that you make it clear that all communication will be in English.

Finally, remember that over-communicating is always best than making your employees feel lost, confused, or neglected. An extra email, another WhatsApp message, and an emoticon sent at the end of a long video conference call—it all adds up and helps keep your remote team engaged, connected, and happy.

4. Encourage attendance and involvement

A solid, transparent, and well-communicated work culture is paramount in any work environment, but even more so when your team works primarily (or exclusively) remotely. Work culture can help employees create and nurture a sense of belonging and make them feel valued and important.

All this, in turn, allows you to enjoy many business-related benefits, such as: B. increasing productivity, retaining talent and generating higher profits. Creating your unique work culture requires organizing regular team events, setting aside time for one-on-one meetings, sharing knowledge, and connecting with everyone to make sure you’re all on the same page.

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5. Accept and handle potential conflicts

Things don’t always run smoothly in the working world, and this also applies to intercultural remote teams. However, when problems or conflicts arise, it is important not to turn a blind eye or feel that you have failed in your leadership responsibilities.

The first step you need to take is to determine what mistake was made and what the consequences are. Then you need to reach out to the team member responsible for the problematic event and talk to them about it privately. Try to do this as soon as possible to avoid letting negative feelings fester for too long and obscuring your ability to rationalize and solve the problem.

Before you start speaking, let me explain what happened. It’s important to hear their perspective on it, as it will help you better assess the whole situation and figure out next steps.

Finally, remember to learn from such situations. What could (or should) you have done to prevent this conflict? What did the conflict reveal about the people involved? How will you deal with a similar situation in the future?

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Build a strong, efficient global team

Leading an intercultural remote team is not an easy task. However, our guide illustrated the benefits you can achieve by choosing the right leadership style and how to implement that style of leadership.

Whether a remote team member works in facilities management, human resources, marketing, sales or another department, by following our tips you can ensure they get the support and encouragement they need. to succeed wherever in the world it is.

Author bio

Richard Conn – Senior Director, Demand Generation, 8×8

Richard Conn is Senior Director for Demand Generation at 8×8, a leading remote phone system with integrated contact center, voice, video and chat functionality. Richard is an analytical and results-oriented digital marketing leader with a track record of delivering significant ROI improvements in fast-paced, competitive B2B environments. Richard Conn also published articles for domains like Socialbakers and LitExtension. Check out his LinkedIn.