Probably the most common way international projects develop their communications plans is through the simple trial and error of starting a project with an international, virtual team component with no different communications planning than would occur in a single country, co located team methodology.

All of this means that those responsible for delivering the project will be dropped in at the deep end, frequently with no specific training or support and must either sink or swim, so for those of you in this situation, here are a few of my tips to help you survive your communications processes;

Assume the best of your international partners

Your international partners, those on the other and of the telephone line, email, video conference screen or at the other side of your desk if you are in the same location as they are, will generally want the same overall outcome for your project as you do; they may express themselves differently, outwardly demonstrate different levels of emotion and commitment to you but those differences are more likely cultural than motivational.

So, when you find yourself living in the same country as them, working in the same office and traveling to and from work together, it is definitely a good approach to assume the best of them, that they are there to do the same job as you and you all have the best interests of your project and company at heart.

Be patient with your partner

You may not be the only one trying to learn how to work with someone else. If your organisation has dropped you in at the deep end, to work out things by yourself, there is every chance the rest of the project is in the same situation, all trying to learn the process at the same time.

So, patience with each other is a great place to start, take the time to learn how each other work, take the time to communicate clearly and be patient when things take longer than you are used to, life moves at a different pace in different places.

Assume differences not similarities

If you assume the international members of your team, whether they are working physically along side you or remotely, will have different cultural and procedural values and approaches. you will be much less surprised when those differences become apparent. Simply assuming that because they are working on the same project as you, and may have a similar technical background, to you does not mean your international work partners will behave and react in the same way you do.

If you assume that people are different you will rarely be surprised and will find that life will flow much more comfortably.

Learn what you can about your international partners

The more you understand about your international partner’s country’s, history, language, values systems and culture the better you will understand the individual and the way those individuals behave and react in situations. However, as a word of caution, don’t simply assume that everyone from a particular culture will be the same, we are all individuals and while we share many common features with our countrymen, we all have many differences.

It is a good idea to spend some time before a deployment learning about the history of the country you are going to, if possible try to understand the culture and basic beliefs from a high, holistic level and maybe even try to become familiar with the language, but keep in mind that what you read and what you watch will come wit its own in built biases and perspectives, so judge for yourself once you arrive.

Question misunderstandings

I would recommend you develop a mutually agreed mechanism for clarifying misunderstandings, in some cultures it is acceptable or even expected to question anything you are unclear about in an open and direct manner, in others, this approach will cause great concern and offense to others, as such, develop a clear agreement between the different cultu...

I seem to have had a few conversations with clients recently on the need for personal motivation as a driving force to succeed in international communications. By motivation I am referring to the type of psychological drivers the individual needs to have the personal desire to really want to learn about and understand their international partners; to understand their culture, values, and work practices.

This is not simply a motivation to progress their career where that progression includes a period of international working as a step up the ladder. Although it is generalising, many individuals looking for international or intercultural assignments simply to progress to the next level of their career, who lack the will and desire to understand their international partners, could easily damage the very international relationship they should be charged with enhancing.

Without this motivation to understand colleagues from other cultures, it becomes easy for the individual spending time working in the foreign country, or in their home nation with people from another culture, to loose sight of the cultural differences and see only obstacles when things become difficult to manage or the pressure in the project increases. In these situations, the lesser motivated person, or the one motivated only by career goals will revert to their home culture work methods and may well start to become a destructive rather than constructive member of the project team.

Individual motivation

As an individual, before pursuing or accepting an overseas assignment or a position which will require a substantial level of international communication, I would recommend that you examine your personal motivation to work in the intercultural situation this will put you.

How much do you really want to work in this position and,

How much do you know about the culture you will be exposed to?

If you are unsure, learn a little about the new culture, try to meet with people either from the culture you will be exposed to or who have been through similar situations to the one you will be facing, learn as much as you can from them then review your position. You may well find this approach not only helps you prepare for the role, but will also inspire you to find the true intercultural motivation you will need to get the most from the opportunity, both at a personal and professional level.

Organisational motivation

As an employer, when selecting personnel for these intercultural assignments, it is important to carefully review the candidates suitability, not just look at their track record and how successful they have been in their previous positions but also what those positions required of them and what their motivations would be to be successful and effective in an international or intercultural environment. For example, a manager who has been very successful in their previous positions, but where those positions were all single culture situations, where their management style proved to be highly effective, may find it hard to lead effectively in a culture with very different power distance or uncertainty levels to the one the manager has spent their career to date working in. This candidate may of course be the right choice, and may only need coaching in the cultural differences they will need to consider before making the change.

Organisational support

Any organisational support must be considered and in place before any deployment is finalised, since the selection of a candidate with the wrong skill set and motivation can lead to the rapid destruction of trust between the cultures resulting from a manager being incapable or unwilling to adapt to the cultural differences.

Even a candidate will the best credentials,

I have been thinking for a while now about where we find the role models for our future leaders, you know who I mean, the figures we recommend aspiring leaders model themselves on, and sadly, I keep coming up short when I try to think of public figures.

A Limited Choice of Role Models

The normal, “go to” list would be business leaders, characters on TV shows and in film, political leaders and sports people, and each time I look at one of these groups I find myself less and less surprised that we are suffering from a shortage of role models. When you examine each of these groups one by one, the flaws are much more apparent than the positives…

TV and Film Characters

These are usually the most visible potential role models for aspiring leaders to try to emulate, yet, when you really examine the type of character the media develops to portray leaders they are the virtual antithesis of the modern leader. We look for our societal and business leaders to be courageous, loyal, honest, ethical, open, supporting of their subordinates and reflective, yet, the media’s version of most leaders is the complete opposite. They are typically shown as manipulative, overbearing, unethical and reactive and, while it is easy to see that the media builds characters like this because they are typically easier to build a story around, they are very poor role models indeed. If any readers can think of a really good role model in modern media please do let me know.

Political Leaders

If finding role models in media characters is hard, identifying one in a political landscape is as hard if not harder. The modern political landscape had bred individuals who are partisan, will stick to an idea long after most of society has abandoned it because it is attractive to a sector of their voters or is a platform they themselves have sworn to support, they have a very short term view, looking to the next electoral cycle rather than the long term good of the constituency they serve, and, all too often, we find they have major character flaws and are, in at least some cases not fit to hold the office they have been elected to.

Sporting Leaders

At least in our sporting codes we find individuals who embody the team spirit and courageous leadership we look for in our business leaders, but they contrast between a leader of a sporting team who is one of an extremely small fraction of the overall population who were born with the necessary athletic prowess which they combined with a passion for their chosen sport and the luck to get the opportunities they need to flourish. While many of these are similar to the career paths of many leaders, sadly, again, many of our sporting idols are shown to have feet of clay and through one misdeed or another many bring both themselves and their codes into discredit in a greater proportion to the business leaders. There are, of course, excellent leaders in many sporting teams so at least there is a hope there, except that the form of dedication and training required to be a top flight sportsperson can misdirect many younger business people into the same highly self centered perspectives many sports people are forced to follow to reach the top of their field.

Business Leaders

Logic would suggest that to find the top business role models should be a case of looking in the top businesses, and this is often indeed the case. But, and it is a big but, many of the best in this area are so restrained and constrained by their own media personnel they are unable or unwilling to show their true selves in public. They instead become corporate figureheads, occasionally reduced to defending corporate transgressions or trade-off’s that they themselves may not want to support if they were not in the roles they held. Consequently, the field of candidates tends to self select down to just a handful of brave or foolhardy souls who shun the corporate control...

We are all the same… only different.

How many times on your project do you hear conversations of proclamations from team members that include something along the lines of “Why can’t they just do it the way I want“, or “That is not what I asked for“

These comments are usually followed closely by a similar statement demonstrating that the speaker really does not understand or empathise with whoever they are talking about. Typically the speaker did not take the time, nor even recognise the need to take the time, to consider that they need to understand the views of others to get their requirements met in the way they want.

Understanding your project partners

When you embark on an international collaboration for the delivery of your new project, one of the first things you need to consider with your new partner is how your respective cultures will relate to the way you interact, and the way you interact is what determines how you structure and manage your communications.

Leveraging existing experience

Ideally, you will have people on both aides of the relationship who have experience with the partner’s culture, or at least with working with other cultures. If you are fortunate enough to have this, utilise these people for all they are worth; have them participate in workshops and information sessions to convey their experiences to the rest of the project team; engage them in the development of much of the project communication strategy and, above all, listen to them. They have “been there and done that”, first hand experience will trump assumptions, theory and conjecture every time.

If you don’t have anyone with cross cultural experience in your team, the next best option would be to have some people from each of the partner organisations spend some time on a facilitated workshop, often participants seem only to be HR professionals as they typically recognise the need before the rest of the organisation, but I would advocate that there should also be technical project people involved, since, the project people are the ones who do most of the interaction. Use these sessions for both parties not just to plan the work but to getting to know each other and how you all think.

Build in feedback

Along with all of the above, regardless of experience and planning, I would highly recommend a constant feedback loop, to monitor peoples experiences and thoughts during the project, as well as conducting ongoing research and development of approach through reading some of the following resources;

* Geert Hofstede‘s work, particularly in my view his book cultures and organizations. Hofstede was a pioneer in the field of cultural understanding and set the benchmark, standards and lexicon for many who follow his work. His work is, in my experience at least, probably the most commonly referenced in Project Management literature for cultural impact.  I will attempt to expand on some of his concepts in future posts but it is still best to refer to the source.

* The books “Culture and Leadership Across the World: The GLOBE Book of In-Depth Studies of 25 Societies” and “Culture, Leadership,

When you need to send your people overseas for extended expat project deployments, how do you pick the right ones?

Much of the early part of my career was spent working as an expat representative of my parent company in various parts of the world. Working amongst small, tight knit teams of engineers, managers and support personnel. In most of these situations the teams worked well, with a strong internal, mutual support philosophy and genuine commitment to the task at hand. There were, of course exceptions to this, and the lessons from those experiences have stuck with me ever since.

Expat Choices

I have attempted here to list some of my positive and negative recommendations.

* Expat personnel must be conversant with the company they work for and be committed to the work in hand. I have seen instances where new personnel are hired specifically for an overseas assignment, to represent the company that has hired them and typically this is a high risk option. My experiences with this is that these rarely are as successful as deploying established personnel. Likewise, the expats must be committed to the success of the task, in some instances to the detriment of their own level of short term reward. If they are there to make money, great, as long as that is their only motivation, anyone who is not fully committed to the work will lack commitment when the pressure is on.

* Wherever possible, send some seasoned expat personnel as part of the team. These personnel will typically become mentors and coaches to the new travelers. Having a whole team of newbies will lead to a lot of wasted time in the settling in process and without a mentor, the new personnel are typically prone to repeat mistakes made by others in the past as they find their feet.

* Set clear expectations of behaviour and living conditions before the expats depart. Every project and situation is different so it is very hard to generalise, but expats should know their limits and authorities before they arrive in country. This would encompass any allowances, living costs, transport both to and from and while in country, medical coverage, etc.

* Encourage your expats to integrate into the local community and culture as much as possible. While this is not always easy to do, and again every situation will be different, I would council against expat personnel living in closed communities if at all possible except for safety and security purposes. Even mixing with expats from other companies, communities or countries is better than having a single company living community.

* Select your expats on their personality, aptitude and experience before their level of technical expertise. It does not matter as much how technical strong they are if they are unable to work in the situation they are placed in, and/or can not work with their colleagues and local personnel.

* Plan for, and expect, some issues from your personnel, but try not to be too judgemental about motives. Things can happen when you live in an expat situation that are critical to the expats but seem excessively trivial and inconsequential to those in the home office, so try to be empathetic as long as any issues are genuine.

* Linguistic support is essential. This can range anywhere from the provision of interpreters, language lessons, provision of phrase books or simply learning to communicate in a form of simple common language that relies on basic vocabulary and common technical terms.

* Provide flexible travel and vacation schedules as long as they are fair to all personnel and do not impede the delivery of the project. Expats may have specific needs to return home for family or other events where this travel may fall outside of a fixed roster, or may wish to take their home trip ‘in kind’ as a separate vacation to another part of the world or even spend it in-country...

Something which comes up quite frequently in discussions I have with colleagues, particularly those new to working in virtual teams, is whether there is a protocol for establishing contact at the start of participation in a new project.

I have discussed this with a number of colleagues and given it quite a bit of thought and while there are, undoubtedly, some hierarchical legacies within company structures, cultures and generations, largely based on how individuals should interact and who should initiate contact in a home culture setting, there is no hard and fast rule. When the contact must be made across boundaries, this cultural issue becomes more complex, introducing distance and invisible cultural differences.

Contact Challenges

* Generally, though not always, there is an organisational hierarchy between individuals or teams in the different locations. In these situations, the cultural issues must be considered in the sense that the more senior party, unless trained and aware of cross cultural communication, may well expect their home culture to prevail in terms of who should make the first contact. So, if the senior party is from a higher power distance culture they will typically expect to contact the more junior party when they are ready to do so. However, if the senior party is from a lower power distance culture, they are likely to either expect that the other party will contact them when they are ready or, possibly, they will initiate the contact through a less formal route such as via colleagues etc.

* Time pressures also play a big part in the establishment of communication in new virtual teams. Generally everyone is very busy setting up their part of the project, usually this is a cascaded exercise, starting with the project manager establishing the project scope, schedule, budget, execution methodology etc. then passing the work down to their team, who pass it down to theirs etc. My experience, sadly, has been that in most instances communication protocols, frequencies and methods and, occasionally, the actual fact that there are virtual teams involved, are generally either very low on the list of things these very busy managers consider or else are overlooked completely. This can result in the virtual team members feeling isolated and overlooked which, in turn, can result in them disconnecting from the project either physically or mentally, a risk for the project in general. In these situations, I would strongly recommend that the virtual teams make every effort possible to initiate contact with the balance of the project, either through their own local management or through direct contact with their remote colleagues. Making this contact may be a difficult exercise and, if the project has become fragmented, may be a long task to accomplish, but it may be the only way.

* The establishment of a trusting working relationship early in the project is vital in every respect, not least in the way virtual teams will interact. To start to build this trust, all parties involved must act in a respectful and ethical way toward each other, and each team must be vigilant of the behaviour of all of its team members toward one another. This is especially true if the project starts to develop any form of internal tension that could manifest in a blame culture.

Taking The Initiative

So, who should make first contact and how should it be made?

My recommendations are always that structured alignment sessions should be held, with as much of the global team as possible to be gathered in a single location. While this is often not possible with very large projects due to budgetary constraints, at least representatives from each location should be present at the meetings. Where this is not possible, they should be able to call-in in some way to participa...

Often, during the process of initiating new projects, it seems that agreed budgets come under pressure. This occurs particularly when the newly appointed project manager and client are reviewing where the monies are to be spent when one of the the first things to be questioned and, often subsequently removed, is the cost of training. While the training budgets are an easy target for cost cutting on many projects, can become a false economy when measured against the overall project objectives.

The review process goes something like this; as the budget comes under scrutiny, the project team tries to push training costs onto their parent organization, arguing that the project is only temporary. They argue that the parent organisation is permanent and as such will get long term benefits from the training. The parent company usually then pushes back on this attempt, saying that the project delivery group, whether internal or external, should bear costs of training since the training is for their project, and so it goes on.

The next target to accept the training costs is the client, who again will usually advise the project team that the costs should be in their budget since the project team and their parent organisation will reap the long term benefits. And so the cycle continues until either one party accepts the costs, a compromise is reached to share them somehow, or the bulk of the proposed training is removed from the project.

Everyone Benefits From Training

However, I would argue that the benefits of the training are so tangible for all parties that the real question should not be how to minimise the volume and associated cost of training, but how much training can the combined group provide to get the best trained and efficient project team possible.

In survey after survey, the item listed as the biggest incentive for many personnel, in both project and corporate roles, is access to training and personal development. So, spending on training makes employees happier and more committed to the project. For the parent organization, a more highly trained project team will be more efficient and deliver the project to a higher level of satisfaction for the client, reducing delivery risk, enhancing the parent company bottom line and reputation as a forward looking organisation that employees want to work for. Finally, for the client, a more effective project team, on both their and their contractors sides, will deliver their project with less risk, more reliability and a better chance of improved benefits being realised from the project.

Invest Wisely On Training

So, if the parties can agree on paying more for training to obtain the highest benefits for the project, the next question is where to spend the money. For most technical projects, the team will be inclined to spend the money exclusively on technical development, such as more technology tools, specific technical design skills and training in the use of the new tools etc.

Communication skills are usually, therefore, put at the bottom of the list and clasiffied as “soft skills” that everyone already has, yet training in just these skills can deliver quick and easy benefits that will enhance all aspects of the overall delivery of the project. A team which is better equiped to communicate with one another, both internally and externally, will be a more efficicent team; meetings will become more productive, there will be less repetition of work since everyone will be more aligned to the project goals, error rates should reduce since personnel will be more aware of what their colleagues are doing, and as such will be more inclined to work on tasks which benefit the work or the collective team rather than tasks which may conflict or compete with other members of the project team’s work.

In essence then, I would argue that communications training is a low hanging fruit as far as benefits realised relative to...

In many conversations, discussions and meetings, the language and words spoken generally do not convey the whole story. Some would say that only 10 to 20% of the message in any conversation is actually conveyed through spoken words. There are facial expressions, tones of speech, hand gestures and, of course, body language. But, even taking away everything but the actual spoken word, which of course is the situation in telephone conversations, there are so many different meanings to words and sentences that it is imperative to be very careful in what you say, when talking via the telephone, to project personnel for whom your native language may be a second, third or even more distant language and who, as a result, may well miss much of the nuance in your statements.

Since much of the communication between virtual project team members in international projects will be audio only, via the telephone, it is most important that all the communicators are both careful in the language they choose to use and also in the way in which they check the message has been received in the manner it was intended.

Keep Language Simple

One of the best ways to keep your language simple and direct for all participants, regardless of their native tongue, would be to implement something similar to the special English program developed by the Voice of America radio broadcasts in the late 50’s and still in use today. This was developed with a core vocabulary of around 1,500 words to keep its news messages as simple, concise and understandable as possible. New words are added and used where appropriate, but the great majority of the news broadcast using this system uses only this core vocabulary.

While your project and industry may well have a specific dictionary of terms needed for business, the great majority of language used on teleconferences can be restricted to a reasonable number, meaning that all personnel can rapidly become familiar with this and hold more effective conversations.

Avoid Nuances, Idioms and Complex Language

Beyond that, keep the nuances as few as possible, avoid double negatives – there are few things as confusing to a non native english speaker as the question “You don’t understand that, do you?”, should they answer yes or no? the answer in fact can be as confusing to the questioner as the question was to the respondent, what would the answer of yes mean to the question… So avoid this form of language as far as possible. Similarly, avoid the use of colloquialisms and other similar speech affectations unless everyone on the call definitely understands the meaning, they can be very confusing, can display a level of exclusivity not generally wanted in a virtual team environment and are just not effective.

For many project managers and team members new to the environment of virtual international project teams, the lesson of recognising the requirements to keep conversations as simple as possible, while still getting the message across, takes considerable time to learn. Some personnel, I believe, never really do understand that the person they are speaking to may not fully understand what they are saying and will, as a result, blame the rest of the project team for the results of the breakdown of communications. Yet, if a project manager really does spend up to 90% of their time on communications as we are led to believe, they should understand how to get their message across to all members of their team, regardless of their location, language, culture of status within the project, and need only look in the mirror when communications break down.

Share your experiences

Do you have any experiences with language challenges in teleconfe...

One of the most readily apparent challenges facing the development of a communications plan for any international project is determining the best way for the project to communicate across time zones. This is a problem which changes in complexity and impact as the time zones spread out, but, regardless of the distance and difference, it is one which can have very a serious impact on the way the project is managed and communications performed.

Communicating Across Different Time Zones

As time zone differences increase, the challenges and opportunities faced change:

* With only one or two hours between locations, the time zones issue barely exists. Yes, you need to be aware of start and finish times, when your virtual team colleagues will break for lunch etc. but, telephone calls can be made with little consideration for the time at the other location and meetings scheduled with relative impunity, but as the hours increase the problem progressively worsens.

* Three and four hours difference can start to really bite into the project’s ability to have a conventionally structured communications plan typical of a co-located project. Morning in one location is the afternoon at the other, but at least there is sufficient overlap for both parties to be able to talk by phone or video for four to six hours a day. However, consideration for the time at each location is necessary so that one party or the other does not have to endure constant early mornings or late evenings to accommodate the scheduling from the other location.

* Once the difference gets up to six to eight hours, the gap becomes really inconvenient for normal business hours conversations. At this point most conversations generally fall outside of one locations normal working day so many discussions happen at the start or end of the business day, one party has to work outside of hours or the communications become more asynchronous, using email and voicemail instead of the telephone or video conference, which has an impact on the clarity of message and volume of communications.

* More than eight hours means that all discussions are outside of normal business hours for someone, and, communications can really begin to fragment as fewer members of the project team get to participate in that most human form of communication, the spoken conversation. Increasingly, at this point, communication becomes a once a week teleconference between key players, supported by email. This, for complex international exercises, is simply insufficient to avoid serious gaps. People need to communicate more frequently and in a more nuanced, natural and rich way. But, if a weekly catch up is all you can manage, when establishing protocols for these weekly meetings it is necessary to consider that, in the interests of fairness, the need to arrive early or stay late should be shared between locations so that everyone has at least some weeks of normal working hours.

Adding an additional wrinkle to the whole thing, is when the project is not simply spread between two different time zones, but multiples. In these instances, a great deal of planning must go into how the meetings and communications are structured, both to be fair to the attendees and also to get the most efficiency from the meetings. It may, for instance, be better to have several sub-meetings, each between only two or three parties in more or less similar time zones. Let each group work on their discussion points, then have an overall coordination meeting with only key players from each location at a separate time. This approach may make the meetings more time efficient for the attendees and allow more people to participate in each, though clearly the structure finally arrived at will be unique to both the project and the phase the project is at.

Share your experiences

Do you have any experiences with communications across time zones in a virtual team environment y...

So, here is a question for you to ponder, do you have communications equality in your project? does your project and corporate hierarchy, structure and access to communications tools and technology match your project’s communication aims and processes…

Many projects make bold claims of being open to input and contributions from all members of the project team, no matter how high or low in the organisation chart they may sit. They claim to have empowered personnel and open management styles, and, I know many project managers who genuinely believe and commit to these goals. Yet, many companies and projects do not walk the talk when it comes to the actual implementation of this openness.

Developing Communications Equality Through Openness

Developing openness is relatively straightforward to pursue when the project is conducted in a single location. Here, team members should have easy access to their managers and to the project management team as a whole, though even here some of these managers can be extremely difficult to meet with through time pressures or, on occasion, simply being evasive if they know they will not like the question. However, when the project is conducted in an international or domestic multi location or virtual team model, access to the top management for personnel located away from the managers home office, even for relatively senior personnel in remote locations, can be at best sporadic and at worst impossible. Superimpose on this the additional challenge that many cultures either do not encourage, or do not want a ‘western style’ open door policy, preferring the cultural comfort of a manager who dictates the way forward rather than a manager with an inclusive, decision by committee style, and things get even more complex.

Structural Barriers To Communications Equality

Additionally, many projects, often as a result of their parent company policies or cultural impacts, have developed a set of structured communications protocols whereby an employee has a fixed chain of command to follow. These policies are usually, though unintentionally, culturally biassed and, for instance, may establish a situation where personnel are discouraged from communicating with anyone above their immediate manager, who in turn has his own chain of command to follow, often making it virtually impossible for the professed openness to function in reality.

On top of this, there may well be limitations in access to communications tools, again often as a result of the parent company’s policies. On some projects, many personnel may not have easy access to communication tools often taken for granted in other circumstances; remote sites may not have reliable telephony, computers may be restricted to managers only and email may be similarly restricted. I have personally worked in projects where only the senior managers had telephones on remote sites and, where the same senior personnel are provided with company laptops even through they may not travel more than once a year, while their junior project personnel may be away from home for many weeks or months in a year but are not given the company laptop or phone as they are not ‘senior’ enough…

Embedding Communications Equality

For projects where communications equality and openness is talked about, my suggestion would be to ensure that what is included in the project charters, and any espoused communications plans are put into real effect. If a project claims to be open it must live up to its claims, put systems in place that reflect the level of openness sought. They could consider suggestion boxes, question boxes, systems for employees who may not feel comfortable asking their questions directly to have access to anonymous messaging systems, and, for those who are happy to ask face to face, provide office times to allow them to meet with the relevant manager. Of course,