Cuesys Infotech :: Consulting | Corporate Training

Upon completion of Virtual Team Collaboration workshop, participants will:

Apply strategies critical to creating and leading a virtual team
Identify potential barriers to a virtual/multinational team's success and discover strategies to overcome these
Recognize the criticality of group teambuilding and use practices for creating trusting relationships and setting group norms
Acquire cultural intelligence and steps for competency in any country
Recognize and resolve causes of conflict within a multicultural team
Determine how dispersed managers can work as a team, and how to lead upward when headquarters is located elsewhere
Use online tools to collaborate

The Virtual Team Collaboration Training course is designed to help participants apply collaboration concepts and skills to working with virtual and/or global work teams. Geographically dispersed work teams offer some unique challenges: Tone is difficult to convey electronically, time zones limit audio communication opportunities, work oversight requires more reporting, and teambuilding is exceedingly difficult using technological - rather than in-person - collaboration tools. Language and cultural differences in multinational teams compound these challenges.

Virtual Team Collaboration training is meant for those who work with others but are not co-located: peers, supervisors, or direct reports who work from home or are located in other cities, states, or countries.

COURSE AGENDA

Creating and Collaborating with a Virtual Team

Short lecture: Composition of virtual team, skills to look for; membership on a virtual team, being a "team citizen" virtually; recognizing the seeming saliency of local requests and committing time to virtual team
Activity: Building trust on a virtual team
Activity: Setting group norms on a virtual team

Openers

Discussion: What are the challenges of collaborating with a non - co - located/global/culturally diverse team?

Virtual Meeting Management

Short lecture: Advantages/disadvantages of videoconferencing vs. teleconferencing and how to overcome disadvantages
Activity: Participating effectively in virtual meetings
Discussion: Using web-meetings, web-chats, RSS-feeds, wikis, whiteboards, other web-based collaboration tools for document dissemination and management, team maintenance, collaboration

Leading upward Virtuall

Discussion: Ensuring HQ remains connected to local projects; avoiding "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome
Short lecture: Responding appropriately to HQ anxiety around overseeing non-visible work

Cultural Competency

Activity: Cultural awareness, finding ourselves on culture scales; recognizing how culture influences how we collaborate, respond to conflicts, and assert ourselves
Discussion: Tools for gaining competence in different cultures
Activity: Adjusting (without changing ourselves) to direct vs. indirect communication and individualist vs. collectivist management
Discussion: How to manage conflict while "saving face" for other person

Close Out

Discussion: Next steps
Wrap-up and Q & A