Building an e-team what are the issues in remote global teamwork?

These days many of us have the opportunity to work in teams with colleagues from different national backgrounds, dispersed across the globe in different locations. With the globalisation of business activities, these remote international teams have become more necessary, and with the availability of electronic means of communication, more feasible. While the team benefits from the skills, information, and output which people at each location contribute; building and sustaining at long distance the co-operation and effective communication which an "e-team" needs presents certain problems.

What are some of the challenges which people have encountered so far in e-teamwork?

Difficulties in Keeping Focused
Members of a remote team are often drawn away from team priorities by local needs and local management. Furthermore, a remote team, by virtue of its dispersion, may have little visibility to the rest of the organisation, making it difficult to obtain the support and resources it needs from outside.

"Out of Sight, Out of Mind?" - or Out of Sight, Out of Control?
All teams need the right balance of good relationships between the members and the discipline of procedures and systems. But remoteness from one another, the availability of e-mail and the telephone notwithstanding, may cause the team leader or its members to feel that they do not have sufficient support or back-up. They may also become anxious about progress, schedules, work in progress and other necessary information. The tools are there, of course, but the easy exchanges of information in spontaneous office conversation with other team members are not possible. The team have to work much harder to keep each other informed.

Dealing with Changes to the Team
A dispersed multi-national team may find it difficult to integrate a new team member in a remote location. It will be difficult for him or her to "put faces to e-mail addressees" and to establish the good personal relationships that supply much of the 'glue' to a remote team. Changes in team goals, roles and responsibilities require extra effort at communication, and the way the team works together will change as a result.

How Will the Team Work?
Individuals differ in these areas, but many of these can also be culturally based differences. In a companion article in this issue, we look at issues Europeans face in working with Americans in global teams. Europeans differ from each other and, of course, team members from elsewhere in the world may have different values and expectations as well. While any multi-national team faces this possibility, remote teams run the further risk that in the absence of close relationships, members may invoke national stereotypes, usually negative, when someone overseas does not appear to be as responsive as they might wish.

E-mail and Remote Conferences
These are what hold the team together, and allow it to work, but there are pitfalls. Language ability or culturally based differences and preferences in communication style may mean that some members may find e-mail awkward, too informal, or unsuited for long open exchanges.

Tele-conferences and video-conferences allow the team to bring voices and faces together, but to a greater degree than a face-to-face group meeting, these events require strong discussion management and facilitation skills which team members may not possess.