TEAM+SELECTION

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 * You’ve said, “Yes”! **


 * It’s happening. **


 * Now What? **

The opportunity of a lifetime to put together a team in an exotic, foreign culture is now yours. It’s something you’ve dreamed about, read about and now that date is marked in your calendar.

Questions you might want to ask either yourself or your employer.

If so, contact them and ask if you can use them both as resources before you go, advising you on what to expect, and if they can give you references. Can they recommend places to stay, eat, and people to show you the ropes? Ask about the expatriate community, how important is speaking the language, how common is it to find locals who speak your language?
 * //Do you know others who have worked in this country/city//?

“To be effective internationally we need to be nearly 100% present” (Fontaine, 2006, p. 20). The more comfortable you feel the more present you can be. “Ultimately it’s all about trust. Over time, relationships develop among people in a group because of their experience with one another, eventually enabling them to become a team (Lipnack and Stamps, 2000, p. 210).
 * //How much time are you allotted to get settled?//

“Constraints of distance, time and communication allow (or necessitate) their being somewhat more independent of the home office and because they are often given somewhat more ‘latitude’ by that home office because of the recognized need to be doing things differently in an attempt to accommodate to the local ecology” (Fontaine. 2006, p. 3). The structure that you are used to in your home office will not exist. It will become important (Avoid setting up a ‘central group with a mandate like structure’…it’s a blurry, messy world and everyone is scrambling to catch up” (Lipnack and Stamps, 2000, p. 10). It becomes about creating something together with those you assemble, that will be greater than the sum of its parts.
 * //How comfortable are you working independently or virtually?//

It is useful to think in terms of what you will be counting on each member to do. Then simply evaluate their skills and experiences based on those criteria. Team members personalities are important in terms of what you’re counting on them for, matching skills, personalities with what you are counting on them for is essential to your success.
 * //How long to you have to assemble at least a preliminary team, or have they already been assigned to you?//

What you are really looking for in your team members is who is the best person you can find to help you achieve your ultimate goal within the specified time and your budgeted amount, a difficult task at the best of times and more challenging in a new culture. So, it’s necessary to be very clear what skills you need and then you begin asking EVERYONE you meet in your new environment if they know anyone who fits that description. Sitting in your residence, hotel room, or office isn’t gong to work. You’ve got to build real relationships with as many people from as varied backgrounds as is possible. That is why having a timeline to start your project is a must. Everyone knows someone, who knows someone—you’ve got the idea. This is about you asking a few key questions about what you are looking for and doing a lot of listening to the answers you are receiving. Kennedy and Eberhart (2001) quote “Henrich and Boyd (1998) hypothesized that there are two general cues for learning, social and nonsocial. Use of nonsocial environmental cues amounts to acquisition of knowledge by observing others” (p. 242). Beginning the task of evaluation of team members includes the importance of the “task objectives to the assignee, their past experiences on similar tasks, their current relationship with one another, their anticipation of future interaction and their motives, skills and personalities, and so forth” (Fontaine, 2006, p.9).

// "Create questions, not simple answers, and you will excel, she believes // " (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p. 33).

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Hearing the Music
"Linda Pierce, a Shell oil employee, who was part of a Leadership Council on addressing governance, “Networks are leaderful. Any virtual team that attempts to operate with one formal leader is not going to make it, in the networked world, things are continuously changing, so the leader with the answers has no answers. Pierce refers to this quality as ‘hearing the music,’ meaning that there is a new background coherence for people in networked organization. To hear it, you have to part with the traditional trapping of power—having the single right answer. Otherwise, you only hear noise" (Lipnack, Stamps, 2000, p.33). Ultimately you have to "hear the music" of your team to optimize your product and your experience together.

“Rule number 1 of every team is to get the purpose right early and review it often (Lipnack and Stamps, 2000, p. 215). It is important that everyone understand and believe in the possibilities of the projects. When nothing is working as planned it is coming back to this central agreed to purpose that will create the success that you are looking for. “People or purpose, which comes first? Answer: Both” (p. 219).
 * //Do you feel that the project is doable?//

“Shared expectations of the participants for completion of their task form the basis of a “barebones” Microculture (MC)” (Fontaine, 2006, p. 47).
 * //How long before you’re expected to show results on your project?//

It would be wonderful if once you’ve answered these questions and others that you are guaranteed success, when in fact if you need all of your questions answered in advance you are probably going to have a difficult time, at least for a while, on your new assignment. Adapting to a new culture is probably more of an art than a science, so look at all of the information that you assemble as if it were an abstract painting and know that the real key to a successful assignment abroad is described best in verbs…adaptability, flexibility discovers, unfolding…the picture will come together as you change your perspective. “Many assignees assume that people everywhere are basically the same. They don’t recognize cultural diversity, or at least acknowledge the significance of it” (Fontaine, 2006, p. 51).