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Remote and Virtual Teams

Team dynamics have changed dramatically in response to an increasingly global focus for many businesses and organisations.

Working with remote or virtual team members is fast becoming the norm and, with it, managers are expected to develop the skills necessary to successfully manage diverse teams of this nature.

Our management courses are designed to develop the skills necessary to effectively lead a team, no matter where, how, when and what.

Leading Virtual Teams

Keeping a remote team together, happy and productive is challenging; when doing this across cultural lines it can be doubly so. The absence of relevant cross-cultural skills can negatively impact both the manager and the teams or clients/suppliers with whom they work.

Through training and guidance our courses help clients to effectively manage their remote teams or suppliers as if they were in the same office.

Delegates will become equipped with the relevant knowledge and strategies to leverage cultural differences between team members and to ensure that team work is collaborative, open and fruitful; increasing productivity and ensuring a positive return on investment.

Case Study: Remote Management Best Practice

Our client is a global sports brand. A training module on remote & virtual management was needed to complement their internal training offerings. We were tasked with carrying out a needs analysis with stakeholders and to create a training course that would support their mid- and senior-level management in carrying out their roles.
We developed a course with excellent feedback from learners which led to further commissioning of work.

Bespoke vs Adapted Courses

We provide two levels of service in terms of training courses:

  • Adapted courses are off-the-shelf courses that are ready to go. Delivered over half or full days, the contents have been developed, exercises designed and structure already tested over the past 10 years. Small adaptations are made to the course based on further understanding of a client's needs.
  • Bespoke courses are 100% tailored. The starting point is a client's needs and the result can be anything from a conventional training course, intensive consultation and program design, a day's interactive training with professional actors or a simple online webinar. We design what the client wants.

Learning to Manage Remote Teams: Course Content

Content depends on whether an adapated course or tailored.

When tailoring content for our bespoke courses, our training consultants gain a good understanding of the specific needs of our clients and design the content from there. Factors such as the nature and split of remote and virtual team operations or suppliers within the company, languages used, the nature of virtual team technology in place and the frequency of face to face visits are all key to effective course design.

Content for adapted courses is pre-established and a course outline is available upon request.

High-level areas which are usually covered in training include (but are not limited to):

  • The drivers and makeup of high performing remote working teams
  • Effective remote supplier management strategies
  • Dos and don’ts of remote and virtual team management
  • Cultural frameworks of team members and the impact of these frameworks on approaches to work and team relationships
  • Strategies for building trust between team members of different cultures
  • Positively managing potential team conflict within the remote team set up
  • Using remote and virtual team technologies to the benefit of the team
  • Dealing with language differences

The Commisceo Intercultural Training Style

In short, we don’t do talks in front of PowerPoint slides. Commisceo, our name, frames everything we do. Our training style is about mingling of cultures, creating understanding and bringing people together – we don’t feel this can be done through slides and words.

That’s why we like action in our training courses!

Our training style is

  • Fun
  • Current
  • Engaging
  • Self-reflective
  • Constructive
  • Positive
  • Open-minded

Above all we believe our training style is effective.

Please contact one of the team if you have any questions.

One of our consultants will then call you to discuss your needs in more detail. Following this, they will develop a training solution which is most relevant to your company needs.

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Our Training Approach

Our name - Commisceo - perfectly describes our training ethos.

Commisceo is Latin, meaning “to unite, to mix, to mingle”; it infers that through people coming together, mingling and sharing knowledge, that unity can be brought about.

Many businesses and organisations appreciate that their staff need this understanding - with the global economy more important than ever they are investing in training courses, resources and intranet content to bring about “cultural competence”, “cultural sensitivity” or “cultural awareness”.

We feel many of the cultural awareness courses on offer today are defunct; they tend to be based on old, tired, monocultural paradigms and on top of that stick to the standard training-room-style format. Very few achieve true “cultural awareness” - in fact, if anything many courses entrench people further in their own cultural definitions rather than allow them to break free of them which is exactly what is needed.

As leaders in cultural awareness training and coaching we have adopted a different approach. We emphasise self-critique, skills based cultural understanding and experiential learning.

Our focus is on creating ‘global mindedness’. We don’t want “culturally conscious” people at the end of our courses, we want “culturally unconscious” people in that culture never becomes an issue for them; they don’t even think about culture as they have the skills, insight and know-how to think beyond this and see things holistically. No matter where in the world, or who they work with, they know how to make things work.

Our Cross Cultural Trainers

We are very proud of our trainers.

We believe they are the best in the business in terms of their know-how and more importantly, how they relate to and educate others.

Where do our cross-cultural trainers come from?

Professionally all our trainers are people from industry. If we deliver a course on management in Indonesia, our trainer would have been a manager in Indonesia.

If we are designing and delivering a team-building course for a global brand, our trainer would have been a manager of a multicultural team for a global brand.

Our trainers are picked specifically for individual clients based on professional experience.

Trainers are also chosen for their training styles and charisma; we don’t do ‘stand in front of audience and talk’ training. Our style is engaging, interactive, explorative and creative. All our trainers reflect this in how they deliver. Although all are natural motivators and educators, they all keep abreast of innovations and developments in methodologies, tools and the like.

The final requisite for our trainers is to wholeheartedly share our beliefs in why and how we train people. A shared ethos ensures our clients receive outstanding consultancy pre- and post-training.