Teams can be tricky beasts at the best of times, but add an international component – be it people in different locations or in one place and from a variety of countries – and things get that much harder. Here’s how to run them smoothly.

1. It’s all about people. “One of the big issues across the globe is understanding what makes people tick,” says Simon Friend, an audit partner at Pricewater-houseCoopers who is responsible for 2,500 employees across several countries.

2. Think about how you present information. “When you have a team across multiple time zones, multiple cultures, multiple understanding levels, you have to think about how to get your message across and how people are going to receive that message,” says Clive Sawkins, the director of unified communications and collaboration at Cisco. Pictures and diagrams can help to overcome language differences.

3. Meet face to face. “The scope for misunderstanding is enormous if you rely entirely on e-mail and web conferences,” says Peter Dunphy, the chief executive of Darwin Rhodes, a finance recruitment firm. “The best way to drive something is to get off your seat,” Friend says. Personal relationships make it more likely that people will want to help you out.

4. Do regular language audits. Dunphy, who manages teams in Hong Kong, India, Poland and China, suggests making sure that you know who in your company speaks what languages. This can come in handy should you need, say, a Mandarin speaker at short notice in your Edinburgh office.

5. Build team spirit. Language, geography and time zones can all create barriers but a sense of being united as one team can help to overcome this, Dunphy says. Use conferences and getaways to get people into the same room at the same time. “Ideally, meet the team both socially and in an office environment.”

6. Your BlackBerry stays on. Whether you’re managing an international team or working as part of one, you’re going to confront time-zone issues; turning your phone off and heading out the door at 5pm GMT is not an option. “I am quite used to having to get up early in the morning to catch what’s happening in Australia or taking calls from the US in the middle of the evening,” Dunphy says.

7. Be prepared for resistance. People won’t be happy taking instructions from someone who is brought in from overseas to tell them what to do. Mike Rebeiro, a partner at Norton Rose, a law firm, suggests meeting as many people as possible so that you can incorporate their ideas into the scheme, giving them more of a stake in what they will be expected to do. “Don’t just impose your international business plan on people,” he says.

8. Ask, don’t guess. “Don’t assume that the way you do something is the way that it’s done elsewhere,” Friend says. A shared language is not the same as a shared culture, and business culture can differ within countries; meetings in New York have a very different feel to those on the laid-back West Coast, Rebeiro says.

9. Consider the little places. “It’s counter-intuitive, but if you spend more time with the small territories you will get the whole team gelling together better,” Friend says. “If you ignore them or treat them as second-class... things can go wrong.”

10. Prepare. If you’re joining a global team, find out about cultural sensitivities, time zones and key players in the market. “And talk to other people who have done it before,” Friend says. “Find out what the pitfalls are.”

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