World Business Cultures - A Handbook by Barry Tomalin & Mike Nicks

Author:Barry Tomalin & Mike Nicks [Tomalin, Barry]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
ISBN: 9781854188120
Publisher: Thorogood Publishing Ltd
Published: 2014-09-18T04:00:00+00:00

Team process

How do teams work together? In particular, what is the relationship between working on your own and working through team meetings? An example involving German and US teams is interesting here. The Germans were enormously frustrated. ‘These Americans are always talking,' they complained to us. 'We just want to get on with our work, but they keep wanting to hold these long meetings. Why do they do it?’

The answer, we replied, was different working methods. The US likes to research and gather data and then to discuss with partners how best to achieve and implement results. The Germans like to discuss the issues and problems arising and then, when consensus is achieved, go off and do the job, each assigned to his or her own area of responsibility. It was simply a problem of process. For the US it was important to study first and speak afterwards. For the Germans it was important to discuss first and work afterwards. The problem is the differences in working practice made each side unavailable to the other when they were needed.

The lesson? At the beginning of any team, ask your colleagues how they prefer to work. Consider the team project as having three stages: plan, build and run. You need to know:

When they need to discuss with their colleagues

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.