Course Content
Openers
- Discussion: What are the challenges of collaborating with a non - co -located/global/culturally diverse team?
Creating and Collaborating with a Virtual Team
- Short lecture: Composition of virtual team, skills to look for;membership on a virtual team, being a "team citizen" virtually;recognizing the seeming saliency of local requests and committing time to virtual team
- Activity: Building trust on a virtual team
- Activity: Setting group norms on a virtual team
Virtual Meeting Management
- Short lecture: Advantages/disadvantages of videoconferencing vs.teleconferencing and how to overcome disadvantages
- Activity: Participating effectively in virtual meetings
- Discussion: Using web-meetings, web-chats, RSS-feeds, wikis,whiteboards,other web-based collaboration tools for document dissemination and management,team maintenance, collaboration
Leading upward Virtually
- Discussion: Ensuring HQ remains connected to local projects;avoiding "out of sight, out of mind" syndrome
- Short lecture: Responding appropriately to HQ anxiety around overseeing non-visible work
Cultural Competency
- Activity: Cultural awareness, finding ourselves on culture scales;recognizing how culture influences how we collaborate, respond to conflicts, and assert ourselves
- Discussion: Tools for gaining competence in different cultures
- Activity: Adjusting (without changing ourselves) to direct vs. indirect communication and individualist vs.collectivist management
- Discussion: How to manage conflict while "saving face" for other person
Close Out
- Discussion: Next steps
- Wrap-up and Q & A