Employing a geographically dispersed, and culturally diverse workforce helps multinational companies to compete in the current business environment. However, managers guiding multinational teams are up against tough challenges. One basic difference between global teams that work and ones that don’t lies in the level of social distance – the degree of emotional connection among team members. Mitigating social distance is the primary management challenge for the global team leader.

Global Teams That Work

Employing a geographically dispersed, and culturally diverse workforce helps multinational companies to compete in the current business environment. However, managers guiding multinational teams are up against tough challenges. One basic difference between global teams that work and ones that don’t lies in the level of social distance – the degree of emotional connection among team members. Mitigating social distance is the primary management challenge for the global team leader.

Neeley has come up with the SPLIT framework that identifies and manages social distance, and it consists of five components:

• Structure (and the perception of power): When talking about global teams, the structural factors that determine the social distance are the location and number of sites where team members are based, and the number of employees who work at each site. The major issue here is the perception of power. Example:
• When the majority of a group is situated in country A, and two or three in country B and C, there may be a sense that the members from group a have more power, whereas in the group A, members might feel resentment towards the minorities, believing that the latter will try to get away with contributing less than its fair share.
• When geographically dispersed team members perceive a power imbalance, they often come to feel that there are in-groups and out-groups. To correct perceived power imbalances between different groups, a leader needs to get three messages across:
  • Who we are: the leader should encourage sensitivity to differences but look for ways to bridge them and build unity
  • What we do: The team should be reminded that they share a common purpose have to direct their energy toward business-unit or corporate goals
  • I am there for you: Team members located far from the leader require frequent contact with him or her.
• Process (and the importance of empathy): Empathy helps to reduce social distance. Because geographically dispersed team members have less face-to-face time and are thus less likely to have a sense of mutual understanding, global team leaders need to build the following deliberate moments:
  • Feedback on routine interactions: Leaders and members of global teams must actively elicit reflected knowledge, or awareness of how others see them.
  • Unstructured time: Unstructured communication is positive, because it allows for the organic unfolding of processes that must occur in all business dealings. Small talk is a powerful way to promote trust.
  • Time to disagree: Leaders should encourage disagreement both about the team’s tasks and about the process by which the task gets done.
• Language (and the fluency gap): In global teams very often there are varying levels of fluency with the chosen common language, and this is likely to heighten social distance. For this reason, team members should respect three rules for communicating in meetings:
  • Dial down dominance: Strong speakers must slow down their speaking pace and limit the number of comments they make in a set time frame, as well as seeking for confirmation that they have been understood by the others.
  • Dial up engagement: Less fluent speakers should monitor the frequency of their responses in meetings to ensure that they are contributing.
  • Balance participation to ensure inclusion: Global team leaders must keep track of who is and isn’t contributing and deliberately solicit participation from less fluent speakers.
• Identity (and the mismatch of perceptions): Global teams function the smoothest when members ‘’get’’ where their team-members are coming from. Yet, decoding someone’s identity and relating can be very difficult. Behavior can be revealing, hence particular behavior might signify different things for different identities. In order to adapt to one another, the following has to be taken into consideration:
  • Learning from one another: When adapting to a new cultural environment, a savvy leader will avoid making assumptions about what behaviors mean. Therefore leaders should ask for information in order to get a sense of how someone truly feels. A leader ought to solicit input as to empower others on the team, leading them to participate more willingly and effectively.
• Technology (and the connection challenge): It must be carefully decided what types of communication will be used by global teams, as technologies can both reduce and increase social distance. When making this consideration, a leader must ask the following:
  • Should communication be instant?
  • Do I need to reinforce the message?
  • Am I leading by example?