Affiliate since: 05/03/2002, Power Rank: 302 | Read Mar's 582 other Ask SC answers

Managing your team that's spread out in many locations worldwide can present huge challenges, even for the most experienced Team Leaders. How do you ensure that each of your team members feels they're treated fairly? How can you prevent your remote team members from feeling isolated? And how do you get all your team members to buy into the team's objectives and stay on track?

How to manage your team with many cultures and time zones to navigate:

- Establish a strong communications strategy

This is especially important if your team members are in different time zones and speak different languages. SFI provides excellent communication tools, such as instant messaging SFIM, PSA/CSA, Genealogy Group Mailer to get in touch with your team members who are scattered across the globe. As a Team Leader, you need to communicate team’s objectives clearly and frequently.

- Emphasize to your team members the importance of being a team player.

You’ll need team members who can demonstrate reliability, communicate constructively, being active participant and so on to help each everyone achieve both short and long term goals.

- Give frequent, fair, and appropriate feedback to everyone in your team, and make sure you're always available to them, so they know that they’re valued.

Following these important points will keep a dispersed team unified and motivated.

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Managing your team that's spread out in many locations worldwide can present huge challenges, even for the most experienced Team Leaders. How do you ensure that each of your team members feels they're treated fairly? How can you prevent your remote team members from feeling isolated? And how do you get all your team members to buy into the team's objectives and stay on track?

How to manage your team with many cultures and time zones to navigate:

- Establish a strong communications
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Affiliate since: 08/29/2023, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Osaro's 206 other Ask SC answers

I do not think there is any special way you manage cultural and time zone differences in your team because SFI is an international company. However, this does not detract from the fact that you may need to adapt strategically by recognising these differences and directing your guidance and leadership skills accordingly. Some of these tips may be necessary:

1. One of the problems that may arise with diverse culture is where certain words in your communication may be interpreted differently therefore producing unintended responses. You may as a matter of precaution avoid using words that may be subjected to different interpretations.

2. Some cultures may not permit some affiliates to engage in certain aspects of this business, so you have to respect the preferences of members of your team and do not persist where they do not follow your guidance in certain areas.

3.Be careful not to be too cosy or personal to certain members, especially women as it may be perceived by some cultures as undue interference of privacy, so it will be better to be professional in your dealings with members of your team.

4. One way to create an effective culturally diverse team is to reassign affiliates to others within the same cultural background, which will also resolve the problem associated with language difficulties where translation software are not effective. This type of reassignment will also create trust and improve assistance as they may be faced with similar problems that require similar solutions.

5. Though I have seen where some affiliates complain of the effect of different time zones, between their countries and SFI time. I personally do not see this as a big problem because the onus is on individuals to adjust to the SFI CST. However, you can direct your team to set the auction time to their local time for example. Also, if you engage in virtual discussion with your team, then you may need to split sessions to accommodate the different time zones in your team as much as you can, in such a way that you as the team leader will be the only one suffering the inconvenience of these different time zones, because uneasy lies the head that wears the crown. Alternatively, you may sent the url of any virtual discussion or webinars to your team to watch at their own respective convenient time where practicable to do so.

6. You may also rely heavily on sending team mails as this does not have any negative effect on different time zone within members of your team.

Finally, ensure you operate with the overall perception and professionalism that SFI is an international business that has no boundary.
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I do not think there is any special way you manage cultural and time zone differences in your team because SFI is an international company. However, this does not detract from the fact that you may need to adapt strategically by recognising these differences and directing your guidance and leadership skills accordingly. Some of these tips may be necessary:

1. One of the problems that may arise with diverse culture is where certain words in your communication may be interpreted differently
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Affiliate since: 07/05/2024, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Nafisa's 286 other Ask SC answers

With technology - would be my simple answer.

It is without a doubt a very powerful tool to be able to communicate so easily and with such speed across the globe that we no longer can provide inaccessibility to people as an excuse for not staying in touch.

I adopt various methods that make it easy if any members of my team wish to communicate with me. The foremost is provide my email which circulates within SFI. In addition, I provide my telephone or skype contacts where appropriate so that even if there are time differences, messages are relayed and I respond to them immediately I log onto my PC. This takes care of time zones.

It helps to know or have multiple language skills but not everyone is blessed with this capability though in my case, I have knowledge of various ethnic languages to help me. These challenges are met by help from a2a friends who are very accommodating whether they are within your region or outside. You can count on them to connect them with my team member who may be in the same country/region as my a2a friend. In time you build a rapport and understand the culture as well.
In many instances you can use an online Translator if there is no one else to rely on.
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With technology - would be my simple answer.

It is without a doubt a very powerful tool to be able to communicate so easily and with such speed across the globe that we no longer can provide inaccessibility to people as an excuse for not staying in touch.

I adopt various methods that make it easy if any members of my team wish to communicate with me. The foremost is provide my email which circulates within SFI. In addition, I provide my telephone or skype contacts where appropriate
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

Thanks for this interesting question.

The answer is quite simple.

We are in business. SFI is a business - That too an international business. All our Team members are in business. All are from different walks of life.

The growth of each person is linked to the other in one aspect or the other. As sponsors our job is to support them so that they will become strong and remain active and will look for opportunities to develop and expand their team.

We communicate with them through SFI Group Mailer System or SFI Chat System, etc. Movers and Genealogy Reports give us the requisite information about each and every one in our Team.

Based on this we react on a member to member basis. If everything is fine a simple Group Mail is fine. If somebody needs to be supported individually then a Tip Card or a individual mail is adequate.

English is the thread that unites all our Team Members with one another. If any member feels it difficult to read/understand English that is always known to us in advance when we receive their commitment letter (after their sign up).; Their Profile will tell us whether their language is English or others.

If any of them remain inactive because of language barrier we have Free Translator to convert our English Text into their language & send it to them. That way it will help the Sponsor and the Down line remain connected.

When some one in the Team is serious he or she will certainly look for means to communicate & get their problems settled. More over, when ever we introduce new sign ups we always tend introduce people (friends/relatives, etc) from our own area. This way language/culture/timezones may not pose any serious problem.

We have consider every person's situation & circumstances on their merit and should act suitably. It can not be generalized.

If you ask about my Team specifically, I do not have this problem as I have mainly local members (from my own country and own native area); I do have some members from other countries where English is the normal language in use. Still there are few members who may not understand English. I translate my texts into their language and encourage them.

The other side, many of them still remain inactive due to reasons known only to them.

Conclusion:

In short, managing the team with many cultures and timezones is not a problem at all. Having strong and active members under your Team is the biggest challenge all of us face here.

For this too, we need to be patient. Perseverance is the key. Let's do out job and remain optimistic. Who ever is serious will definitely active - if not today at least in future!!
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Thanks for this interesting question.

The answer is quite simple.

We are in business. SFI is a business - That too an international business. All our Team members are in business. All are from different walks of life.

The growth of each person is linked to the other in one aspect or the other. As sponsors our job is to support them so that they will become strong and remain active and will look for opportunities to develop and expand their team.

We
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

I manage my team one on one.

I send out an SFI newsletter once a week helping them understand new things that are coming to SFI and how to use them. For example the new JMT gateway.

If they're online I like to click on the chat button and say hi!

Every once in awhile I'll toss it up with a newsletter about me and what's going on in my life and how I'm handling it.

SFI is a global company. Cultures and time zones shouldn't be such a big deal. SFI will always be SFI. The culture and time zone and what works best for you and your team leader should be communicated and if it's not than it should be communicated to your team leader instead of complained about to your fellow affiliate or a2a. Success requires a lot of self discipline: doing lots of things you don't want to do.

It may take a little to help someone from a different culture to understand how you explain things, but eventually it should work if both people have an open mind and want to make their own SFI business work.

My team leader is on a different continent, but we understand each other just fine!
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I manage my team one on one.

I send out an SFI newsletter once a week helping them understand new things that are coming to SFI and how to use them. For example the new JMT gateway.

If they're online I like to click on the chat button and say hi!

Every once in awhile I'll toss it up with a newsletter about me and what's going on in my life and how I'm handling it.

SFI is a global company. Cultures and time zones shouldn't be such a big deal. SFI will always
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Affiliate since: 01/14/2013, Power Rank: 576 | Read Sule's 287 other Ask SC answers

In this business, managing a team with many cultures and time zones is where your real leadership qualities come to the fore. Luckily for us, SFI is a 24/7 business online and the available tools do help a great deal to overcome cultural, language and time zone barriers. Taking full advantage of the tools provided, to manage your team successfully, you simply need to do the following.

1. Relate with all your Team Members as business partners and not as employees or dependents.

2. Lead by example always.

3. Respect their individual sensibilities as in culture and language barriers then find acceptable ways around them.

4. Appreciate individual differences and find ways to work with all persons irrespective of these differences.

5. Be open and receptive to all types of ideas and suggestions from your Team Members.

6. Be a reliable source of information and tips for the benefit of your Team Members.

7. Find credible ways to motivate and encourage your Team Members.

8. Communicate regularly with your Team Members in ways acceptable to them but be extremely temperate in your language.

9. Recognize and take time zones into account when making requests/demands from your Team Members.

10. Encourage them and show them how to be Team Leaders themselves irrespective of where they are and what their backgrounds are.

11. Encourage a two-way communication irrespective of language differences by using language translation tools provided.

I believe the foregoing can serve as credible ways to manage your team even with many cultures and time zones to navigate.

I hope you will find this answer helpful.




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In this business, managing a team with many cultures and time zones is where your real leadership qualities come to the fore. Luckily for us, SFI is a 24/7 business online and the available tools do help a great deal to overcome cultural, language and time zone barriers. Taking full advantage of the tools provided, to manage your team successfully, you simply need to do the following.

1. Relate with all your Team Members as business partners and not as employees or dependents.

2.
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

Interesting question. Let me phrase this question...How do I manage my team with many cultures and time zones to navigate.

Firstly I only think in line of SFI Culture.
For me my definition of culture is:

"Culture is a lifestyle one creates to live/survive in"

According to SFI culture or the lifestyle of the affiliates is uniform, same with all the SFI affiliates.

This lifestyle deals with:

- organizing your time to log in daily at SFI.

- training yourself to learn from the materials and tools provided by SFI for free.

- becoming : a marketer, home business owner,second income earner, building and growing your business for the future, an investor...

Sooner then later I will be an expert in my own SFI culture. That is the goal!

As for time zone every individual has a time zone...wake up in the morning....day activities.....they do what they need to do. Night time...resting, sleeping however being an Affiliate night time would be the best time to do your SFI Business but it all depends on individuals how they manage their time. Whether it be day time or night time.
There's a day and there's a night ....time management is all on you.

Hope I have been of help!

Have a great and successful year!
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Interesting question. Let me phrase this question...How do I manage my team with many cultures and time zones to navigate.

Firstly I only think in line of SFI Culture.
For me my definition of culture is:

"Culture is a lifestyle one creates to live/survive in"

According to SFI culture or the lifestyle of the affiliates is uniform, same with all the SFI affiliates.

This lifestyle deals with:

- organizing your time to log in daily
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Affiliate since: 12/31/1969, Power Rank: 99999999

Hello, Carlos Guzman.

I personally look at this issue as a positive feature of the SFI business.

Isn't it better to run a business on which people are working every minute around the world?

In other words, our shops are open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

That increases our potential of making money at exponential rates.

And you are right, we need to know how to use this efficiently to our advantage, making "the diversity of cultures" and the "spanning of SFI" around the Globe to benefit us.

At the outset, it is important to understand that there is only one "Business Culture", especially in the world of Internet.

That one culture is: "The culture of efficiency, cost effectiveness and Making Money"

When you focus on being efficient, providing cost effective ways to do business and helping people make money, everybody around the world will understand your message. This will break the language barriers and attract people to your business, regardless of their culture, language of communication, or their locations on the map.

This is how I deal with it:


A. Creating Sponsoring and sale Tools that are available 24/7
There two types of such tools: personal and collective.

1. the Personal Tools are: your website, your blogs and your press releases.

2. the collective tools are the social media and the built-in marketing and advertising features such as groups, business pages, tweets, pins and other specific instruments with varying names from one social media website to the next.

B.Targeting our sponsoring and duplication efforts to those of our team members who are dedicating themselves to work SFI successfully.

Through the various SFI communications tools, you can reach your team members 24/7. You have specific mailers to reach your Genealogy, or your PSAs, or CSAs, or any other specific group in your Genealogy.

The point here is two folds:

First, aim as wide as possible in your efforts to reach SFI prospects, Tripleclicks customers, Pricebenders Auction Bidders, and Eager Zebra Game players.

Second, narrow you duplication efforts to whose who show genuine interest after they sign up in your team.

Those are the ones for whom timezone is not an impediment in working to grow their SFI business.

I hope this is useful in helping you solve your problem. Aim to achieve Greatness in 2015

Good luck to you.

Good luck to everybody.
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Hello, Carlos Guzman.

I personally look at this issue as a positive feature of the SFI business.

Isn't it better to run a business on which people are working every minute around the world?

In other words, our shops are open for business 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year.

That increases our potential of making money at exponential rates.

And you are right, we need to know how to use this efficiently to our advantage, making "the
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Affiliate since: 10/22/2014, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Adriano's 46 other Ask SC answers

Hi,

I personally have adopted this method, I made a pattern where I see in real time the clocks of all my affiliates.

As for the different cultures, I try to respect the different aspects informing me, I have many friends of affiliates all over the world and as I said the basis of everything is respect.

At the beginning of my adventure in SFI had a little bit of fear in the face and confront people with a different, but then I realized that sincerity towards our neighbor is the best thing.

Of course, if some people have problems with the language, I try to write them in their language and I saw that it is much appreciated.
However the basis of everything is always the greatest respect for every person of any culture.
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Hi,

I personally have adopted this method, I made a pattern where I see in real time the clocks of all my affiliates.

As for the different cultures, I try to respect the different aspects informing me, I have many friends of affiliates all over the world and as I said the basis of everything is respect.

At the beginning of my adventure in SFI had a little bit of fear in the face and confront people with a different, but then I realized that sincerity towards our neighbor
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Affiliate since: 10/27/2012, Power Rank: 99999999 | Read Atchariya's 3 other Ask SC answers

I find that sometimes it is an advantage. I work at night and do SFI in the day. My USA affiliates are working SFI after they get home from work and it is easy to connect.

To keep track of every one I have an excel file with their Name, Country, SFI ID, and Email. Then I use this link to set up skype appointments. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

I encourage every member to go to the Leadership page for their country and connect with Top SFI Affiliates in their country via A2A.

https://www.sfimg.com/Leaders/Country

Once they get a reply to the A2A friend request I have my affiliates send this message:

Dear NAME

Thank you for befriending me in SFI's A2A members area. I too am an SFI affiliate from COUNTRY. I see you have done well in SFI and I was wondering, are there any problems I may have since I am from COUNTRY? Is there any advice or direction that you might give me? Do you have your own ECA, or have you recruited any ECAs from COUNTRY, that I might visit and support?

Thank you for your Time. Your A2A friend,
Affiliate's Name

These things work well for me.

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I find that sometimes it is an advantage. I work at night and do SFI in the day. My USA affiliates are working SFI after they get home from work and it is easy to connect.

To keep track of every one I have an excel file with their Name, Country, SFI ID, and Email. Then I use this link to set up skype appointments. http://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/

I encourage every member to go to the Leadership page for their country and connect with Top SFI Affiliates in their country
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