Team Leadership in a Truly Global Organisation

How do you address collaboration and leadership across distance and cultures in a truly global organisation?

When global customer teams from Autoneum met in Switzerland in March 2017 the answer was to play Bridgebuilders, the brand-new global leadership simulation from Workz.

The game created an awareness of issues in global leadership and provoked some really interesting discussions

We spent a full day playing all three rounds of Bridgebuilders and discussing the impact of e.g. culture and distance on the daily life of the organisation. All seven groups were very international, and the day offered interesting reflections on issues like alignment, autonomy and trust in a global matrix-organisation.

The game offers the flexibility of designing your own scenarios by combining the locations of the fictional team members in the case. At Autoneum, we played the combination where the fictional team leader in the game leads a group of colleagues spread out between Europe, North America and Asia. This combination offers an opportunity to explore some of the interesting cultural differences between these regions – from the potential clash between a direct and indirect approach to communication and feedback, to the difference between a hierarchical versus a consensual approach to decision-making and leadership.

Marianne Fischer-Rasmussen, Head of Global People Development of Autoneum, says: “Bridgebuilders accomplished exactly what we were looking for. The game created an awareness of issues in global leadership and provoked some really interesting discussions.”

Autoneum is the global leader in acoustic and thermal management solutions for vehicles supplying virtually every car manufacturer in the world. The company is represented in over 20 countries and is global in every sense of the word.