You have your ‘flat’ team. You’ve got your finite travel budget. Go ahead, lead. The first lesson you may learn is that a low-hierarchy international team does not sort itself; it requires leadership. But what does this mean in practice? The overarching themes emerging from our research are: integrate team dynamics and corporate goals to provide focus.

One way is to end the segregation of business planning from individual and team development. This is true of all business teams, but especially crucial in international teams, where face-to-face time is limited and must be used to its best advantage, and where difficulties in team interaction can create an exaggerated impact on the bottom line, owing to the sheer difficulty of repairing fractured relationships that are stretched across the globe.

Blending business meetings with team-building work and ‘time to hang out together’ is highly beneficial to all parties. It makes the business side more engaging, and the social interaction and teamwork more purposeful. For international teams, there is limited time to meet. This has the disadvantage of allowing less time together than the team might ideally need, but it does carry with it an advantage in that time spent together is precious, creating an impetus to use it well. It can also help to delineate strategic and socialising time (face-to-face) clearly from day-to-day interactions, which can be done through other media. When managed well, fire-fighting is displaced by a strong dashboard, clear milestones, and a highway to drive on.

Concetta Lanciaux, Executive Vice-President Synergies at LVMH finds the blending of individual and team agendas into the corporate agenda very effective. She says: ‘It is essential that teams bond. Professional activities are bonding events just as much as a social event. Our LVMH House sessions normally last a couple of days during which there is formal and informal interaction where people get the chance to ask the difficult questions and discuss solutions and options to the way forward. People are not motivated if you get together only to socialise. However, combining the two is very successful. After the workshop participants fill out evaluations where they usually say that they appreciate the blend of the content, the networking and the sharing of knowledge.’