My 8 Best Practices for Working with International Teams

Working with international teams is both challenging and rewarding. The small and large differences that your surrounding culture has on you makes a difference in how problems, words, tasks, and goals are viewed. These differences create challenges when working with a dynamic team of international people, but they also create new and different ways of thinking that should be leveraged to achieve success.

The list below represents some of my own best practices that I use to ensure smooth program management and success when working with international teams.

1. Fully understand your objectives and the objectives of the project

You cannot get the results you are looking for if you don’t know what you want. In order to properly explain any given task at hand, you must be very specific with what you are looking for. The best way to do this is have your own deep understanding of what is needed and why. Leaving room for ambiguity early in a project will lead to confusion and scrambling later on.

2. Find how to communicate with each member of your team

Every culture and every person digests information differently. Understanding how to effectively communicate makes the overall process much smoother. Being flexible with your team and responding to their preferences individually will help you to get the most out of their efforts.

3. Distribute information early

Whether it be resource, documents, marketing materials, or summaries of phone calls. Allowing your team to access and digest these will allow them to know what is available and what they need to ask for.

4. Leave room for feedback from your team

Leverage your team’s skill sets. If located internationally, they have a breadth of direct experience with their home market and often others nearby. If they specialize within a specific department, they have expertise in that area that I am going to tap in to. I want to maximize these assets. When I am working with international team members, I have to remember that I don’t know what I don’t know. I make sure to ask frequent questions and check my own understanding to ensure that I am not making a silly mistake.

5. Set checkpoints

Set dates for everyone to have their information in. Give the team their tasks and when they need to be done, and let them go after it. Normally, (unless I’m training) I don’t break up their work and give it to them sequentially. But rather the whole at once and provide them with the tools and support needed to make sure that they are getting their tasks done on time. Combine these dates and the best practice below avoid many of the headaches of last minute scrambling.

6. Frequent and often communication

I personally like to have (if possible) a 10 minute check in every Friday to hear what is going well, what’s not going well, etc. This keeps all issues out in the open and allows the project to stay on track. Make yourself available to your team and answer questions honestly. By being open with areas that I find challenging, team members more likely to share their issues and let you help.

7. Build relationships

Ask about their day, their kids, talk about something non work related. Developing helps you before, during, and after projects. The human element of work may sometimes be forgotten, but it certainly shows up in the end result. Plus, it’s simply more enjoyable to work with people that you can get along with. 

8. Be thankful

If you’re working on a project, chances are each member of your team has other responsibilities. Being respectful of their time and thanking them for their effort can go a long way.

what are some of your best practices?