From the course: Managing Virtual Teams

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Cultivating cross-cultural awareness in a virtual team

Cultivating cross-cultural awareness in a virtual team

From the course: Managing Virtual Teams

Cultivating cross-cultural awareness in a virtual team

- Here's something to think about, especially when your remote workers are in other countries or regions of the world. When's the next national holiday? Americans are often accused of cultural insensitivity and there's unfortunately a lot of truth to that. Many people in the US just don't seem to grasp that other countries have their own traditions, their own ways of doing things and their own days when business shuts down. In one global company where I worked in the past we had large groups of employees working in the Netherlands and China. Yet, important meetings were often scheduled on Queens Day or on International Workers' Day, or other important dates. Not only that, but there was frequently no consideration given to the fact that these employees were in different time zones. Meetings would be scheduled in the afternoon that would require people in Europe to be online after 10:00 PM. General rule of thumb, if you…

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