Having grown up in different cultures, client and offshore team do not always speak the same languages. Words do not always have the same meaning and expectations are not the same.
As a westerner you will have the feeling that offshore team members are often eager to please the client. This is a natural feeling except that it becomes problematic when dealing with a relationship focused on delivering output with tight constraints. I remember once where offshore engineer noticed a problem in the specification we wrote but did not ask for any precision and the problem resurfaced later. This is one major difference, where a western engineer would have noticed and ask for clarification.
Offshore team members can be often seen as eager to please you quickly . And as a result they sometimes do not go deep enough on certain subjects and try to answer you as fast as possible.
Another cultural difference to be also taken into account is that in Asian societies, older managers/elders are often more respected (and consequently more effective) than younger ones.
Efficient ways of overcoming these communication issues during phone calls are:
- have at least one of the team members send an agenda and status before the conference call meeting.
- to have both teams rephrase with their own words what has just been said. this is valid for both the local and offshore teams.
- have at least one of the team send meeting minutes after the conference call meeting if new items arose during the conference call meeting.
Have face to face meetings regularly both offshore and locally and Offshore people should be able to travel to Europe or USA.
As a general "communication" advice, as I wrote it previously: ease communication as much as possible but rely on it as least as possible.
