Communication Strategies

Leadership is one of the essentials of any business organization. All the organizations work with several categories of resources, such as financial, human, capital resources etc. It is the responsibility of the manager or leader of the departments to ensure all organizational functions are carried out in coherence and unison with each other.

The word combination globally distanced multicultural marketing team refers to a group of marketers who are located in different places all over the world and belong to different cultures and identities. It would be a challenging task for me to bring them together at one platform, make them work and monitor their activities. Thus, I will have to manage them using different strategies than those of traditional leadership theories.

Bringing the Team together
A group of people which are located in different places globally can be supervised using a virtual platform. The first challenging step for me would be to choose a suitable communication channel to get my message across the marketing team that I am leading. There are many challenges, strengths as well as limitations as far as the choice of this channel is concerned, namely, choosing internet, telephone, video-conferencing etc. Internet would certainly mean communicating with the team through e-mails and such resources as msn. Videoconferencing can also be useful in case the team sitting on the other end consists of many people. Nowadays, people can also be contacted easily through social networking websites such as facebook and twitter and can be informed of the plans and schedules of upcoming meetings.

Conducting the Meeting
As the leader, my next step would be to conduct the meeting and inform my marketing team concerning our objectives, rules and methods of undertaking tasks. Once they are informed of the schedule of meeting through e-mails or any social networking site, I can hold the first meeting through videoconferencing. I would prepare an agenda of meeting and fax or e-mail it to my team. The agenda would include objectives, purpose of the meeting, points to be discussed and goals to be achieved. Then, we can talk, discuss and see each others expressions, body language and gestures of agreement or disagreement. The added benefits of videoconferencing will also let me decide and choose the participants who would be more productive to be included into my marketing team.
Strategies for the success of Multicultural Team

It is very much challenging to bring together and lead the people who are located in different places all over the world. I would have to apply such strategies which keep the team in harmony and working. My first strategy would be to develop collective trust which is vital to the functioning of a virtual team involving people from different backgrounds (Gibson and Manuel, 2003).  According to the research, trust in virtual teams can eliminate any possible conflicts and increase harmony, influential exchange of information and confidence in relationships. To keep the enthusiasm of the team alive, it is necessary to adopt the strategy of brainstorming. Since globally distanced team includes people of all cultures and classes, it would be beneficial to brainstorm as everyone would come up with different, newer and innovative ideas depending on their knowledge and aptitude. It would be very important for me to build awareness and develop knowledge of different cultures that I would be dealing with. On my part, I will have to identify, clarify and fulfill the needs and expectations of the stakeholders to avoid any sort of confusions and conflicts in the end.

I would encourage a participative style where the decision-making process would be assisted by the team members and decisions would be made and applied by the consensus of the whole team. Any problems or misunderstandings would be solved through vertical, horizontal and lateral communication. Moreover, I would take up the adaptation strategy to prevent team to become prone to misunderstandings. If the tension evolves, the structural intervention strategy would also solve the problems.

The group will ultimately excel in its performance and achievement of goals efficiently. The team members will have no complains against their leader or amongst each other. The environment of harmony and agreement would help building trust and confidence. There will be a cyclical pattern of the participation and collaborative behavior of the team members as shown below

The dynamism created in the team will also reduce the costs, time and improve flexibility and utilization of resources.

Problems
The problems that I should be anticipating in case of the globally distanced marketing team would be listed and explained further. The team may not be able to begin the execution of its operations rather it could be stuck in brainstorming or even move towards socializing with each other instead of working for corporate objectives. A few team members could appear to be performing all the tasks thus decreasing the expected productivity of the team. This could result in wasting time, resources and money. The team members could miss deadlines and deliver their tasks later. Moreover, there could be conflicts, problems in communication and punctuality. Since, this work would be done virtually and has no physical existence, the team members could just be invisible and out of contact. Then, the major problem that I would certainly expect will be the troubles with language, accents and fluency. There could be frustration or misunderstandings as the non-natives may not understand the accents or any other language (Harvard Business Review 2006). There can also be different behaviors in case the team follows a top-down hierarchy. For example, the Japanese people who are used to working in flat-structured organizations will find it difficult to follow hierarchy.

Monitoring and Synergizing the Team
I will have to control and monitor all the teams activities regularly and strictly. It would be rather difficult to perform all the leadership functions of planning, controlling, commanding and leading online. I will make a schedule of the periodical meetings and mail it to all the team members. In an effort to motivate them, I will keep rewards and incentives so that the people should keep learning and working in peace and with dedication. I would be strict with the submission of ideas and tasks within the deadlines. Moreover, I would encourage training those members who need polishing up on their marketing or related knowledge.

The wise division of tasks can result in easy monitoring and good synergizing of the team. The spirit of respect for each others cultures would also energize the groups abilities. Moreover, a good example of the synergy would be created when the people in the team will work with congruence and combined effort while productively using the skills and expertise of each other.