There are times in every virtual teams project, when there is little real substitute for a face to face meeting. Getting everyone, or at least a majority of the project’s key players into a single room, for a series of meetings, is periodically essential to keep the project on track.... read more →
Apr
05
Mar
29
Communication skills are one of those things most of us all believe we have developed pretty much by the time we have learnt to talk and write, however, the real skills of an effective communicator are far more subtle and much broader than those learnt through the course of our day to day... read more →
Mar
22
For most people, coming to terms with all of the changes involved when moving to a new country and experiencing new cultures and the culture shock associated with the move is a daunting experience. After a few days, weeks or, in rarer cases, months, what initially felt strange and possibly threatening,... read more →
Mar
15
Quite some time ago, I began thinking about how best to help senior, and generally very busy managers improve their communications abilities when running or working in virtual team environments. These people usually come from a world where they are assumed to know everything, and yet rarely have the time to learn... read more →
Mar
12
In the Knowledge Age, being a professional requires much more than a qualification or ‘know how’. Every industry has a mix of practitioners and professionals; regardless of whether they are engineers, accountants, lawyers or doctors, work in procurement, human resources, project management or any one of many hundreds of other... read more →
Mar
08
I am going to conclude this short series of articles on communications and directions of communication in project teams, which began with communicating down and communication up, with this, the third and generally most common direction of communication in any project, whether domestic of international, co-located or virtual team, and that is peer to... read more →
Mar
01
One of the most important tasks a project manager must perform to be effective in delivering their project is communicating down, communicating to inform, inspire and direct their team. It is often easy, in the heat of the project, to forget that the project is, in reality, delivered by the... read more →
Feb
23
For the majority of project personnel, in every project, on a hourly, daily, weekly or monthly basis, you will find yourself communicating up to one manager or another. You will need to communicate either the project status or the status of your part of the project to your managers or even... read more →
Feb
16
In an earlier article I discussed the different levels of support and training offered by organisations to their people when deploying them onto international projects, either as expat's, or as home office based personnel working with international offices. In my experience and observation, many organisations will give their personnel some level... read more →
Feb
09
Last week I posted an article titled "How Companies Develop International Communication Skills" where I discussed ways organisations can support their personnel when they are working in virtual team based projects and accepting expat roles. I talked about how some level of ongoing support can help the personnel to continue to grow together... read more →