Team communications here means communications between the project leaders and individual team members and communications among team members. There are three general areas where project leaders approach individual team members. One is status—covered later. A second is to discuss a problem or opportunity. The third is just to see how people are doing. Here are some guidelines for project leader–team member communications:

• Encourage individual and pairs of team members to come to you with issues and problems. Always be open to problems. This avoids very unpleasant surprises later.

• To find out about issues, use the third area of contact where you ask them how things are going to get issues out on the table.

• After you ask how things are going, find out what else they are working on. This will indicate to you if they are experiencing being pulled in different directions and being subjected to pressures from their other work. Then ask them what you can do to help.

• Don’t accept at face value what one team member says. Always look for validation and another point of view from the other team member that is working with them. Do not attempt to do this right away; it will appear that you do not trust them. Wait a few days and then casually contact the other team member.

• Do not attempt to be fair in reaching all team members the same number of times in a given period. There is no time for this in most international projects. There is too much to do. Instead, the project leaders should concentrate on areas of the project where there are issues and risk and the areas of the international project that are critical.

• Keep a log of the contacts with the team members. Update the issues database as you uncover more issues.

It will then be easier to monitor the work and have some confidence that things will go right.

Another guideline is to have the team members share their experiences in working together in the lessons learned meetings. In that way, other team members might pick up some useful tips in working together