International teamwork

How to work in an international team?

When you have your new teammates you need to start to work with them. You might feel happy, excited, and inspired, but also anxious, nervous or afraid. It is okay. The most difficult and the most useful skill you will learn in DigiYouth programme is to work together with different people using distance communication. Many international startups do not have an actual office – it is totally possible to work and communicate effectively via online channels! You will need distance communication, in order to meet your teammates from other countries, and mentors:

to discuss progress, product, problems, and plans; to ask for advice
to organize your team´s work; to keep track
to share good moments

In this session:

inspect agreements and team rules which you made during first meeting
agree basic rules of international team communication inside your team
best practices of distance communication
some communication and storage tools that are used by startups

During this session, you will learn:

to express yourself clearly and effectively in online communication
to manage time and plan activities during online meetings and between them

Classroom activities

Discuss the status of your international team:
1. Do you have a team and an idea? After the lesson, you can have a first online meeting with your team, agree on the team rules and contact the mentor. Follow the guidelines for the first letter to the mentor.
2. Do you have a team and a common area of interest, but you need time to clarify your idea? After the lesson, you can have a first online meeting with your team, agree on the team rules and use some time to further discuss the idea. Use idea creation exercise
3. Is your team still open? Ask help from your teacher. After the lesson, have a first online meeting together with your teacher and potential teammates and their teacher from the other country. During the meeting start by introducing yourselves, continue with idea creation exercise to find an idea to work with, and finally set the team rules.
Test the difference between face-to-face and distance communication
Go through the best practice of distance communication and team meetings (see below)
Discuss which online communication tools you have used, and try the different distance communication tools to find the ones you would need for your team (see introduction below)

Best practice of good teamwork

Every team is unique and has to develop its own ways of cooperation. However, there are some ground rules which are needed for good teamwork. Here they are:

we treat each other with respect
we are open in communication, share problems and challenges when they arise, ask questions when anything remains unclear
during the meetings of our international team, we speak English to make sure that everyone understands, and no one feels left out
all team members attend team meetings and complete their tasks on-time

Best practice of online team meetings

It is important to keep in touch with your team members and share information with each other in the way that everybody receives and understands it.

Have online team meeting at least once a week – seeing each other, communicating, giving and getting feedback keeps you going!
Be flexible – working in an international start-up, especially with people from different countries and time zones can be difficult. Also, everyone has other duties in school, hobbies and so on. Setting times won’t always be simple, but being flexible helps to make it work
Be sensitive – accidents don’t happen with rocks, but with people is an Estonian proverb. You never know what somebody might go through. This is why it is good to talk with your team members, if you need some extra time for a task or would like delegate a task. At the same time, if somebody is behaving oddly, ask what is going on or offer him/her your help. It is important to get the work done, and the best way to do it is to keep everyone on board and have fun.
Use full sentences when you are speaking – it might happen that people don’t understand if you don’t tell or write the whole story

Technical tips

Use video chat (FB messenger, Google Hangout, Zoom, Fleep) – in writing or audio calls it is easier to misread people or to take certain things too seriously, especially if you are using a foreign language. This is why video chat is good – you can see everybody’s reactions, emotions and body language in general. You will understand if better is person joking, being serious or sarcastic.
At the beginning of each meeting, check the sound quality – does everyone hear everyone? If not, has everyone turned in their microphone? Is the internet connection strong enough? If troubleshooting does not help, try using a headset (headphones and mic), or have your team meetings at school, and use the school´s video conference technology (table microphone, large screen)

What distance communication tools can be used for online meetings and cooperation?

NB! You can explore and test different tools, but it is important to keep it simple. So choose one communication channel as soon as possible and stick to it, as long as it works for your team.

FLEEP

for team chats, project communication and one-to-one communication
audio-video calls, screen sharing
compatible with all emails
written communication can be searched and traced back
creating groups, activating or muting messages, transforming messages into tasks, adding files to messages
pinboard; search through all the messages and files
good mobile app

ZOOM

for video and audio meetings, i.e. with mentors
chat, screen sharing and recording
easy to invite participants – just send a link
some say that the quality is more stable compared to Skype
NB! Only one-hour sessions, if you have a free version of Zoom

GOOGLE DRIVE

for content creation and storage
upload and organize text, video and audio files
create and co-create texts
share and store content
grant access rights

You can explore a time and project management tool Trello. You can also use Trello to share and store your content files.

Team tasks (home assignment)

Contact the person you want to have as your mentor. Follow the guidelines for the first letter to the mentor.
Have an online meeting with your teammates and agree on your team rules. Use a channel that is most convenient to all of you. For the first meetings, use video chat (Google Hangouts, Zoom, Facebook Messenger) as it is the closest to a face-to-face meeting.
- At the beginning of meeting make sure that you hear and see each other ok.
- Also, agree who is taking notes or use Padlet for joint content creation (https://padlet.com, if you do not have an account, you can easily register with your Google or Facebook account). During SparkUpDays, you formed teams and had some time to get to know your team members from abroad. Now it is time to start working with them. To keep the work going, and to avoid any misunderstandings, your team assignment is to agree on your team rules.
- Check-in-check-out tool for team meeting will help you to structure your team meetings

To agree on your team rules, follow the questions in the team rules template.

Write the rules down.
Save them or take a photo, and include the name of your team to the file name (for example, Banana_rules.pdf)
Upload your team rules.

Use your team rules from now on during every meeting and all communication!

Teacher tips

Estonians joke that Latvians have six toes. To Latvians, their Nordic neighbours are all very slow. Finns and Swedes have endless jokes about each other. Friendly mocking is a part of international communication. However, while communicating with each other we should keep in mind that our ways of communicating and understanding each other might be different. In DigiYouth programme, the international student teams will mostly communicate online. Therefore, it is crucial to keep the distance communication going and raise students´ awareness of the potential problems and obstacles, and ways to avoid them.

Take time during this session to discuss the cultural and communication similarities and differences between Estonians, Finns, Latvians and Swedes. Also go through the best practices and unwritten rules of long-distance communication.

Team exercise (duration 30-40 min) Make groups of four. One of the students knows the exact task and has to explain it to the others. For example, the group has to build a specific sculpture from legos, but only one (the coordinator) knows the shape and size and cannot show the instruction to others. The only way people will know what they have to build is by getting instructions from the coordinator. Every round they will get a new construction to build. During the first round, the team sits together around the same table. During the second round, the coordinator is in another room, and other team members in the same room. During the third round, there will be 2 coordinators and 2 builders. Both coordinators have the instructions and are in two different rooms. Everyone has to speak only in English. Builders can be in the same room. Measure the time the teams used to complete the task. How different were the 3 rounds? Also, discuss how different it was to complete a task when you were not in the same room. Did you have any communication issues? How can you avoid them the next time?
Fleep and Zoom exercises Divide the students into groups and solve tasks: in Fleep, form and name a group, attach files, create tasks; in Zoom, set up a Zoom meeting, separate the groups into different rooms, contact each other, agree and write down 5 rules for distance communication. Google Hangouts, Google Drive – get to know if needed.
Fun task: ask the students to pair up and send each other messages only using Fleep emoticons – let them exchange emoticon- information for 3 minutes and then tell each other what did they understand of it.

Additional reading on cultural differences:

Baltic Sea Region history: awareness among youth, national syllabi, and education, http://bridgingthebaltic.org/wp- content/uploads/2013/12/BTB-Research-doc-Unitas-Foundation.pdf