Working Across Distance and Cultures

Redwood Shores, CA – LSA Global, the premier one-stop performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth life science, technology, and service companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with strategy today announced results for a series of customized training workshops entitled Working Across Distance and Cultures for a leading financial software firm. Results for the virtual team training were:

• 92% Job Relevance
• 96% Satisfaction
• 187% Knowledge Gain

This client found that the promise of global collaboration was colliding with the friction of cultural norms, communication gaps, time-zone challenges, and differing expectations about authority, autonomy, and decision-making. At LSA Global, we see the same patterns across industries.

We started by establishing a shared operating system including a clear purpose, role clarity, and agreed-upon expectations for responsiveness, meeting etiquette, conflict escalation, and decision rights. Because distance amplifies ambiguity, the goal was to agree how collaboration needed to work — not just what needed to get done — in order to remove the guesswork that was derailing their global efforts.

The highly experiential Working Across Distance and Cultures workshops focused on strengthening relationships with virtual teams and with teams of different cultures, especially the culture of India where many of the company divisions are located. Participants learned how to more effectively:

• work together
• communicate
• present ideas
• handle conflicts
• make decisions
• integrate cultural influences
• respect differing perspectives
• understand and value the diversity of their teams

The Bottom Line
If you want your geographically dispersed, culturally diverse teams to excel, you must create the conditions for clarity, connection, and inclusion. Establish shared operating norms, communicate with purpose, and lead with cultural intelligence. Only then can distance and diversity become strategic advantages rather than barriers.

About LSA Global
Founded in 1995, LSA Global is a leading performance consulting and training firm that helps high growth technology, services, and life-science companies create a competitive advantage by powerfully aligning their culture and talent with their strategy. Learn more about getting aligned.