Intercultural Communication in Virtual Teams

Improve your interaction on long distance with team members from foreign cultures

When the team is spread across the world, intercultural communication skills are essential. In this course, you will learn to be sensitive to cultural differences even across long distances and through digital technologies.

In today's globalized world, many teams are spread around the world. Their collaboration depends on communication by chats, email, video conferencing and other media to cross the geographical gap. When team members come from different cultures, they must also reconcile various expectations towards communication style. The "culture gap" becomes even more obvious because such technologies can remove many of the elements of face-to-face communication through which we convey meaning, often leaving only the words with little clue as to the context in which our counterpart has sent the message.

This course on intercultural communication in virtual teams enables team leaders to understand and meet the challenges of creating a common spirit and motivating members in such teams. It helps participants to develop strategies to create a shared understanding among all team members to avoid misunderstandings and conflicts and ensure that meaning is understood among the sender and receiver.

This course helps leaders and members of virtual teams to appreciate the cultural differences within their team. They will compare etiquettes and styles across various cultures and develop strategies to improve communication across long distances.

Topics discussed:

• Cross-cultural comparison of communication styles
• Intercultural Communication in Virtual Teams
• Models of virtual teams
• Direct and indirect communication styles
• Special challenges for virtual team collaboration
• Instruments for virtual team collaboration
• Creating networks
• Time management
• Dos and Don'ts in email communication
• Teambuilding across distance

This course is ideal for:

• Members of international, virtual teams
• Leaders of international, virtual teams

Your benefits:

• Get to know the specific challenges of intercultural team collaboration
• Promote team building and enhance the mutual confidence within the team
• Develop strategies for sustainable communication in virtual teams