Introduction This article reviews a case study of a multi-cultural IT team with members located in different global locations across different time zones. It evaluates the team against a list of eight characteristics of team excellence, and discusses what is the approach Jim Towne, the team manager, should take to overcome the challenges facing the team. It also explores specific leadership functions which would help improve the team, such as performance management, team development, contingency leadership, and human resources management.
Analysis A group consists of two or more freely interacting individuals and has collective norms, collective goals, and a common identity. The IT team in this case has 20 professionals who live and work in Canada, USA, Europe, South America, Africa, and Australia, all are direct reports of Jim. The team’s task is to develop and implement technology innovations for all global business units in the company, so members are excited about the importance and innovative nature of their work.
It is a production team, producing technology for the company to use, as well as a project team, implementing the innovative solutions within the company. Building, developing and maintaining high professional teams are important for high-tech technologies (Robbins, Judge, Millett, & Boyle, 2013). With the progress in informatics and telecommunications technology, more employees get flexible working contracts, such as distance working, which increase their satisfaction and productivity, but leaders need to beware of potential problemssuch as the social aspect and alienation of teleworkers (Merdzhanovska, 2016).
Problem Evaluation based on The Eight Characteristics of Team Excellence in terms of the eight characteristics of team excellence, this virtual IT team has clear, elevating goal (developing and implementing technology innovations), competent team members (long tenured and competent in technical skills), and a collaborative climate (respecting each other, enjoying teamwork). Its strength is a diverse work force, which enhances creative problem solving, and innovations. However, it is lacking in principled leadership and unified commitment.
The team has difficulty getting off the ground, in prioritization with frequent business travels affecting productive work, and inability to show organizational value; team members have never worked together previously on any projects and some recently joined the company through a corporate merger, requiring socialization into the organizational culture. Moreover, standards of excellence and results-driven structure are lacking, as evident from each member replies to all on every message resulting in one member having 500 unread email messages, while the norm seems to be starting as many projects as needed but not finishing them.
There is also no external support and recognition, with only minimal nondedicated secretarial resource. In addition, the team is lacking in morale, self-assessment, and operations metrics, which are important for team effectiveness. Solution Application of Hill Model of Team Leadership The Hill model of team leadership (Northouse, 2016) prescribes an approach of problem solving, where the team leader decides whether to continue monitoring or to take corrective action and assesses whether it is an internal action (task or relational) or an external action.
Finally, the results of the action loop back to the first step in making leadership decision. Since the individual morale is low and the team is under-performing, Jim should not wait to intervene, with internal actions from the team. As team members are competent and are not delivering because of work overload, the mitigation actions would be relational instead of task oriented. On the other hand, effective team leadership should always have collaboration and support from sponsors outside of the team.
The team’s output needs to be valued by external stakeholders, in order to garner required resources for team’s success. Leadership Functions to Improve the Team To make this virtual team work, Jim need to be effective in the following leadership functions: performance management, team development, contingency leadership approach using effective leader-member exchanges, and human resources management. Performance improvement cycle.
When managers consider employees’ abilities, skills, and job knowledge, and apply activities such as goal setting, feedback and coaching, and rewards and positive reinforcement, they are likely to produce desired outcomes such as personal growth, job performance, job satisfaction (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013). Ciobanu and Ristea (2015) found that employees differ in satisfaction with performance appraisal experience due to extrinsic motivational factors, such as work environment and conditions, and the rewards distribution based on the performance appraisal results.
They recommended that managers have a good knowledge of the needs, motivation and aspirations of team members, and adopt an efficient and transparent individual performance appraisal mechanism. Thomas’ four building blocks offer managers an approach to construct the right conditions for intrinsic rewards, namely meaningfulness, choice, competence and progress. Jim can acknowledge team members’ knowledge, skills, and expertise, provide positive feedback, set high, noncomparative standards, create meaningfulness work, show trust in workers through delegated authority, and create a ollaborative climate in joint problem solving.
Team development. For high performance team, shared leadership is important as a project moves through the stages of forming, storming, norming, and performing. Wu and Cormican (2016) found that shared leadership is prominent at the early stage, where with team members interacting, cooperating and exchanging information, and at later phase, leadership would turn to focus on few individuals with demonstrated leadership competence.
Relationship-building (to establish trust, embrace diversity, foster team-spirt, and motivate team members), technical, leadership skills, and the ability to defuse the frustrations of virtual team members are essential for leading virtual teams, and the ability to use communication skills and technical tools to connect global teams, and using emotional intelligence to create a supportive team environment are all part of the leadership skill-set (Roy, 2012).
Emotional quotient (EQ) alone explained 58% of a leader’s job performance (Collins & Mirriam, 2016), while having processes and procedures in place to support leadership, relationship-building, and technical skill competency would help virtual team to be successful in global projects (Roy, 2012). Contingency leadership approach. The (9,9) team management style on the managerial grid is right for a diverse virtual team, and Fiedler’s contingency model suggests the use of three situational controls, namely leadermember relationships, task structure, and position power, in choosing the right leadership style (Kreitner & Kinicki, 2013).
In applying the Leadership Making approach, Jim can move each vertical dyad from the stranger phase, through acquaintance phase to the partnership phase. In so doing, the member would move from self-interest to group interest, and in-group members would do more for the team than they would normally do (Northouse, 2016). For this multicultural virtual team, the leader needs to consider the cultural aspect of individuals when applying LMX theory.
Nie and Lamsa (2015) found there are differences between the LMX theory and the ocial and moral norms of guanxi for Chinese employees, so the team manager could consider the cultural difference of each member in their leader-member relationship, especially for the members from Europe and South America. Human resources management. Browne, Dreitlein, Ha, Manzoni, and Mere (2016) wrote that human resources can leverage cross-cultural innovation and creativity by initiating various programs (such as recruitment, selection, promoting, and training), and processes (such as rewards and incentive programs) that support global projects.
If properly supported, human resources creates value for the company, ensuring survival, growth, and profitability through proper human capital management, attract a diverse pool of talent, and encourage cross-cultural sharing of ideas. Browne et al. (2016) recommended creating a training program for the team members, promoting communication amongst everyone involved in the project, selecting team members carefully based on their skills and experience, acknowledging the cultural and language differences among the team members, and researching laws, regulations, and permits required by the local country.
