Building an Team to Go Overseas

International Operations The first step in taking a team overseas is to determine what components of a team will be required. Only then can the best team be selected, but there are unique selection criteria that must be taken into consideration for an international assignment. No matter how talented, not everybody is cut out to work overseas, and the more different the culture the bigger the challenge will be. First, the team members will need some linguistic and intercultural communication skills.

Familiarity with Latin America in general will be beneficial, as will Spanish/Portuguese language skills. There are differences between the different cultures in South America, but a general familiarity with Latin culture will help anybody doing business in the region, as there are also a lot of similarities. It is also important that the people selected have a high degree of adaptability. This is perhaps even more important that being familiar with the foreign culture -- somebody of Hispanic origin who has lived their entire life in the U.S.

and is not adaptable is basically an American who will have a tough time transitioning to the new operating environment. Somebody who is adaptable will be in a better position, regardless of whether or not they have any familiarity with the culture before going. Freedom to go is another key variable. Not everybody who is capable of performing the tasks is going to be willing or able to leave the country for work. People have family and other responsibilities and it can be extremely stressful for them to leave.

In fact, one of the biggest drivers of people returning home early from overseas assignments is that their spouse is not adapting to life overseas -- without work to anchor them, the spouse often finds it more challenging than the employee. The company will still need to offer support, but where families are more adaptable, the early return rate for expatriate managers is significantly lower (Andreason, 2003). Once the team has been selected, the team must be organized.

I propose that there will be an in-person meeting of the team members to initiate the project. This will allow the members to meet each other and gain a level of familiarity early on in the process. This can be important. Studies of international virtual teams show that face-to-face introductions can reduce dissonance between team members compared with teams whose members only meet online. Establishing trust among team members will be critical to building a team that can work together under difficult circumstances overseas (Holton, 2001).

The team members can return to their locations to prep for the move once the project has been initiated in this way, and they should be able to function as a global virtual team in the short run, with a high degree of trust and communication. Part of this organizational process will be to have a training session where the team members are introduced to some of the issues that they will face when doing business overseas.

There are certain things that will be familiar to them in South America, but there will be a lot of other things that are different. For example, the safest cities in Brazil are more dangerous than the worst cities in the United States, and that is something that expats may or may not be aware of. There are a lot of other little things that can be taught, especially with respect to what makes the foreign country different from the home country.

The team will be trained on some cultural basics as well. As Zimmerman (2014) notes, there are some interesting challenges there. South America is by no means a cultural monolith, but more important is that even within a country there are differences between people. As an example, the culture of northern Brazil is very different from that of the far south of the country. The cultural training that the team receives will need to avoid degenerating into stereotypes, as those will not server anybody well.

Further, the training has to be realistic and practical. Nobody cares about what fork or who makes the first toast; that sort of training is entirely outdated. The training should instead focus on critical matters such as banking, medical care, education for families, transportation and security -- things that genuinely matter to expatriates. Social norms can be figured out later, and they are not universal anyway. Workplace norms, however, should receive some attention. The company will need to decide whether to follow U.S.

norms and rules, or those of the foreign country, and managers will need training on the differences between the two. Where the other country has problems with things like corruption or discrimination, it is advisable that the firm adopt U.S. policy in the foreign country, as long as the managers know that this need to be communicated to the local people who join the firm, and to suppliers as well (Worstall, 2013).

In addition to the advance training, it will be important for myself as team leader to go down first, and get some assistants who can help people to settle in. The managers will need help getting their lives established, in terms of real estate, and other basic functional matters. A team of locals will be required to assist with tasks like these, so that the expats and their families are not left to navigate these waters.

Contact with the existing expatriate community will be established to provide some social links for the management team. The objective will be to have the help available to allow the expats to focus on their jobs, not on how to buy groceries or where to find a dentist. Having local assistants for this is not cheap, but it costs less than having key team members run back home after three months because they are having trouble adjusting. Once on the ground, some of the cultural differences will be more apparent.

When training for this in the U.S., these differences will mostly exist in abstract. But once in the foreign country, it will be fairly easy to visualize the differences. There will also be many other things that become apparent. Supplemental training sessions will be held to address these issues. The training will focus first on reviewing what was taught before the move. The expat managers will be given an opportunity to discuss their experiences. It might also be valuable that other expats are brought in to provide more insight.

But the new things that emerge -- maybe this part of South America has certain cultural quirks that are unique, or certain rules that we realize later are very different from back home -- there needs to be an opportunity to talk about those things, identify areas where our policies and training need improvement, and then to make those improvements.

There are a lot of differences that can impact on team goals, so it is important to remember that the learning process is continuous, and allocate some time and resources to this continuous learning. Without knowing anything about the project, it will be impossible to set out timeframes.