Leading Teams203
Managing virtual teams
Just as cross-cultural teams have become increasingly common, virtual
teams have become almost ubiquitous. You’re leading a virtual team if your
people don’t consistently share a location. Maybe some members of your
team are permanently anchored in Singapore, while others are in Seattle,
CASE STUDY
Manager in the middle
When a major international software developer needed to produce a new
product quickly, the project manager assembled a team of employees
from India and the United States. From the start, the team members could
not agree on a delivery date for the product. The Americans thought the
work could be done in two to three weeks; the Indians predicted it would
take two to three months. As time went on, the Indian team members
proved reluctant to report setbacks in the production process, which the
American team members would fi nd out about only when work was due
to be passed to them.
Such confl icts, of course, may aff ect any team, but in this situation,
they arose from cultural diff erences. As tensions mounted, confl ict over
delivery dates and feedback became personal, disrupting team mem-
bers’ communication about even mundane issues. The project manager
decided he had to intervene, with the result that both the American and
the Indian team members came to rely on him for direction regarding min-
ute operational details that the team members should have been able to
handle themselves. The manager became so bogged down by quotidian
issues that the project careened hopelessly off even the most pessimistic
schedule, and the team never learned to work together eff ectively.
Source: Jeanne Brett, Kristin Behfar, and Mary C. Kern, “Managing Multicultural Teams,” Har-
vard Business Review, November 2006.