Assume that you are leading a team composed of members from the UK, Brazil, Egypt and Colombia. You are from the US and have been educated at American universities. You have never worked or met with your team members prior to this assignment.

Your team is faced with making a recommendation regarding a flaw in a manufacturing process for operations in two plants. The first plant is based in Ireland and the second plant is located in Honduras. Each member of your team represents subsidiary or sister companies that feed raw material into the manufacturing plants in each of these locations.

Thinking about the cultural differences between the team members (e.g. language, decision making processes), prepare a short list of recommendations that address the following:

1. What guidelines will you develop for yourself when leading the team through its decision-making process?

2. How will you communicate the objectives to team members?

3. What steps might you take to enhance the team’s cohesiveness? How successful do you think such as effort would be?