If you interact with customers, suppliers or co-workers located in other countries you can appreciate the sublime challenges of navigating a global career. In between rare moments of exhilaration and fear lie the everyday challenges of mastering the virtual workplace.
Fuzzy communications. Time zone gaps. Cultural differences. Puzzling global standards. Complicated logistics. These are among the daily concerns of global workers.
“It is much more common today for companies to have distributed teams, and a lot of them are international,” notes multicultural consultant Colleen Garton, author of Managing Without Walls. “Managers who maybe only five years ago would be managing team members in the same building are managing people in different time zones who speak different languages. You’re dealing with a lot of different communication tools and problems than they would have had to deal with a few years ago.
We asked Garton to prepare a Career Primer (a kind of self-guided slideshow) called Global Virtual Management that both introduces the subject matter and also suggests a number of best practices. We encourage you to contact us with your suggestions about it or other possible Career Primers.
Still, not everyone is ready to apply these best practices.”I think the first thing you have to ask yourself is how adaptable are you,” says Garton. “It’s important for somebody deciding to learn a new way of management. If you’re ready to take that next step and your company is saying Hey we’re opening an office in China there’s a career opportunity there for somebody who can say I have a little bit of a clue about why this might be different,” says Garton.
