Leadership skills for working across borders, timezones and cultures

If you are lead or manage teams the chances are that they will be complex in that they are multi-cultural, virtual, across organisational boundaries or based in different countries.   There are some unique challenges in managing these teams that are often not covered in general management programmes.  These can include: 

• communicating virtually and the impact this has on relationship building 
• managing decision making – who to include across different time zones or location
• understanding cultural and international differences and the impact this has on the team
• understanding how the geographical location of the team leader affects team dynamics

This is a highly experiential and participative programme where participants will be faced with these challenges through a unique simulation exercise which replicates an international team environment with different time zones.  Participants will work through the exercise with the support of facilitators and draw upon models of working virtually and multi-culturally, which allows them to go through the process of learning how to do this effectively with each other.

Why should you attend this programme?

• To develop a greater awareness of your management, leadership and working practices and how they can be adapted to a complex team
• Understand how your own culture affects your way of working and how to adapt this to different circumstances
• Understand the impact of decision-making processes on team dynamics and how to address this in a virtual team
• Understand how to ‘let go’ and what to ‘let go’ of, so that you don’t end up working, or being ‘on-call’, while any team member in any time zone is working 
• Leave with practical strategies to apply back at work

Programme content

• Team building
• Team leadership structure
• Cross-cultural communication
• Virtual team working
• Understanding group and inter-group dynamics
• Applying the models of cross-cultural communication and virtual team working in practice

Who is it for?

You are leading, managing or working in a virtual, international or multi-cultural team and want to understand how to adapt your style to lead and build successful high performing teams.

Programme Director

Alex Swarbrick
MPhil (Econ), BSc, FCIPD