Distance
can wreak havoc on projects.
Many
project teams today are comprised of members that live many miles and time
zones away from each other. Even on-site project teams have to work hard to
build collaborative, trusting teams. But when you are dealing with team members
who have never met, who come from vastly different cultures, and who speak
different languages, the challenge of building trust and meaningful personal
relationships is compounded.
Certainly
technology can help. To begin the process of creating a sense of team, hold
regular team meetings with visuals to give team members some familiarity with
one another. But understand that this is not enough.
Over and over, as we work through project post mortem analyses, we hear that team members regret not having had the
chance to meet face-to-face. They feel that they would have been able to
establish better relationships, to better understand one another and work far
more smoothly and effectively if they had actually met in person. Use
technology but don’t consider it a fully satisfactory substitute for shaking
your remote colleague’s hand in an actual, not virtual, interaction.
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