Your Meeting May be Virtual, but the Cultural Differences are Real.
What You Need to Know to Manage Cultural Differences in Virtual Global Meetings.
Before you get on that next virtual global meeting, read this:
“So Tanaka-san, what do you think of Sandra’s idea?”, you ask of your team lead in Tokyo on a Zoom conference call. You’re in London, Sandra is in New York, and several other members of the global team are in various other world locations.
Tanaka responds with what looks like a smile on your screen, then remains silent. Maybe it’s the connection, you think.
“Tanaka-san, how’s your connection?”, you ask.
“Good, thank you, Collins-san”, he replies.
“Oh, ‘cause I didn’t hear your response, so I just wasn’t sure if the connection was OK or not.”
Screen shots of the faces of other members of Tanaka-san’s team indicate they seem unsure of what’s happening, and look somewhat apprehensively at each other. Then, after what feels to you like an uncomfortably long moment of silence, Tanaka-san responds,
“Collins-san, there were many fine ideas in Sandra-san’s comments. A few things perhaps need some further study. Maybe we can all share some ideas and questions between now and our next meeting for further clarification”.
“But I thought the purpose of our meeting today was to make a decision about my budget request“, Sandra says.
Tanaka-san remains silent. Some members of the Tokyo team are looking silently at each other, while Mario and Elena in Rome leave their desks and apparently step out the room. Raj in Delhi then jumps in,
“Would pre-poning our next meeting date help?”, he suggests.
“I’m sorry, Raj, what did you say?”, you ask.
“I’m sorry, sir, I was merely suggesting how we could…”, when Juan and his group in Mexico City begin conferring among themselves on screen in Spanish.
“Would we not like a ten minute break about now?”, you suggest, frustrated and confused as the meeting seems to be dissolving right on screen in front of everyone.
Then Otto in Frankfurt adds, “I don’t see the purpose of taking an unscheduled break right now. This was not on the agenda, and I am concerned we will run out of time without any decisions.”
Dissolving, indeed. If any of the above sounds familiar, then you’ve already experienced the challenge of running global meetings, where attending members from different countries and cultures come together through technology (Skype, Zoom, Webex, Facebook Live, etc….there are countless platforms available) to have a virtual meeting. Now, a virtual meeting is the same thing as a physical meeting, except that we are communicating with each other across time and space through technology. If this global team were having a traditional across-the-table meeting in the same physical location, their cultural differences would be on display at that table, and affecting the success of the meeting. Seasoned global managers understand how profoundly cultural differences affect the success of global team meetings, influencing everything from how we speak with one another, our language comprehension (or not), the rules of formality, our expectations regarding roles and responsibilities at the meeting, who and how we make decisions, how we set the agenda, how we deal with conflict, to even something as basic as what the actual purpose of the meeting is. Cultures can have very different ideas about all of these issues regarding running meetings and these cultural differences exist whether the meeting is a traditional across-the-table meeting in the same physical location, or whether it is a virtual meeting with members dispersed around the world communicating with each other through technology. In both cases, it’s critical that meeting members understand how to manage the cultural differences that are inevitably present at the table.
But technology complicates the picture: it both de-sensitizes us to the cultural differences we’ve got to deal with, while at the same time amplifying them. For example, to assume that we’re all operating with the same set of expectations just because we are all communicating on the same technology platform would be a big mistake. And while technology has gotten very good at making the virtual meeting experience as frictionless as possible, that only means that cultural differences are even less hidden in virtual meetings. Therefore, virtual meetings actually require us to be even more aware of, and skilled at managing, cultural differences, if our virtual meetings are to succeed. So what do we need to know about culture to insure successful virtual meetings? Let’s start by unpacking some of the hidden cultural issues that were de-railing our earlier virtual meeting.
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