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Learning to work in a distributed team and a multi-modular executive-education design
Working in distributed teams with members scattered around the globe is an increasingly demanded competence for modem executives. Many have to acquire the skills related to the organization of work and communication with colleagues in different time zones by trial and error. Although companies, business schools and consultancies include the topic of working in distributed teams in their management-development programmes, they often limit the method to traditional case-study discussions or to simulated exercises where participants work on an artificial task in different rooms of the same building over several hours.
At the same time, leadership and management-development literature has been calling for multi-method and multi-modular design of training and development interventions spread over a period of time and combining in-class experience with experiential learning between the modules (e.g. Kets de Vries and Korotov, 2007; Snook et ai, 2012; Korotov and Kets de Vries, 2010). Designing inter-modular assignments that make sense for participants and their organizations, that are self-contained and manageable within the time and resource constraints typical for today's training budgets, and that are interesting and meaningful for managers who may come from different departments and professional backgrounds, poses a significant challenge to the faculty of executive-education programmes. The inter-modular projects often become senseless exercises, draining participants' energy and time.
As a way of coping with the challenge of creating inter-modular assignments that would avoid the challenge of artificiality in diverse management groups distributed around the globe, and under the increasing pressure to help participants to learn about working in distributed teams in an experiential setting, we designed and tested a task for participants that would simultaneously address a number of modern managerial competencies.
First, it puts the participants in a situation where they have a deliverable, self-contained final product while working from their remote locations (distributed teamwork). Second, participants learn to use technologies available for support of their distributed team work (mastering modern communication technology). Third, they get feedback on their results and also reflect on their experience with the view to distil lessons for their future work in distributed teams (reflection based on action-learning). Additionally, we thought about a project that could offer visibility to participants within their own organizations...