Watch Yael Zofi Talk About Managing Global Teams How important is managing global teams becoming? These days you cannot toss a stone without hitting a company that has multiple offices, a remote staff and/or an offshore support team. We are…
What does global Leadership training look like today, and are the requisite core skill sets so different from what was needed yesterday? Our shrinking world brings expanding connections. We are all wired and connected, and yet many people feel disconnected. Given these circumstances, I wonder how to maintain the most basic human need for interaction, communication, and connection.
Technology is so embedded in the workplace that we take its marvels for granted, yet the human capacity to adjust takes time. In light of voluminous data, rapid information flow, and intense collaboration, leading successfully requires a new set of skills in addition to the traditional requirements of yesteryear. Today, handling conflict within the team, getting deliverables out the door and managing workflow, among other managerial responsibilities, is not sufficient.
Keeping the human connection strong is a key task common to all virtual managers, and ensuring that colleagues work successfully across distance and cultures is their great challenge. To master the virtual equation that makes these elements work together, global leadership training is essential. In fact, a virtual manager's greatest role is to link the various parts of his or her team to accomplish the goals that led to its formation in the first place. You may need to shift gears, perform team tune-ups, realign and refuel your team’s energy along the way!
Leadership in the global workplace has reflected the paradigm shift that has brought a new order of business relationships and a new definition of the role of the global leader. The very nature of a dispersed team means that virtual leaders like you can no longer successfully manage through command and control techniques through MBWA (managing by walking around). Leadership takes confidence in your team and the tenacity to integrate people, despite time and space constraints. Your team members may be out of sight, but they can’t be out of mind.
And so a different kind of leadership is emerging, which focuses on connection and collaboration and encourages people to rise above their differences and connect at the human level. At its core, this leadership is rooted in the human element and reflects an increased level of trust and transparency. Think of this as an updated role as the Agent of Connection. Clearly, one of your most important roles as a global leader.
Working with clients in global leadership training engagements, I developed a set of leadership behaviors that I have shared in the blog that I call GlobaLeadership (GL). The letter L is shared by the words because leadership is both shared and global in a dispersed team environment. As one of my favorite clients, who managed a virtual team for a medical devices conglomerate, said: “It doesn’t matter whether or not you are a global manager, and it isn’t important if you don’t have a global assignment—you are global.”
