With virtual teams spread across the world, different backgrounds, cultures, work styles, approaches to formality, and methods of communication makes effective team work more difficult. Sometimes it is really helpful to have an external facilitator join a conference call or video conference to help with the process of interaction, forming a work style, and smoothing over unintentional cultural missteps. Such a facilitator has no task-related responsibilities, but rather process related ones. Are the Americans talking too informally for those from Europe? Are the Asians saying what they really think, or is the brashness of others shutting them down from contributing?

The facilitator is trained to notice these things, and is responsible for highlighting them to the people involved as a new common form of interaction comes into being. They should be external to the team, impartial to the task outcome, and independent of any of those involved.

What Do I Need To Do?
Think about a virtual team that you are involved with. If there are communication difficulties, not just in the asynchronous emails but also in the synchronous conference calls, look into bringing in an external and independent facilitator.

Guided Insights offers facilitation support services, if you need outside expertise.

See A-Z of Virtual Teams: Summary for the complete list.