Managing a team at the customer location

This is a case study:

Shyam Sundar (this name does not belong to anyone living or dead that I know of), was working in XOTIC Hardware systems. He was sent off to the customer's location abroad. He was pretty happy. He would earn in dollars, see new countries and it was like a promotion for him, he was going as a team leader.

The customer and the team members received him warmly enough. They briefed Shyam on what was happening. Shyam was determined that nothing should go wrong, because the responsibility ultimately rested on himself.

It turned out that things were not always so easy. If the customer was upset by the product features or delays he would blame Shyam. For the customer, Shyam was the person representing the company. He did not care if Shyam was not sitting and personally wiring together pieces of equipment. When his team members did anything wrong Shyam got blamed for it. Shyam had to accept all the blame quietly, because the project was running behind schedule.

It seemed to Shyam, working an 8 to 8 shift, that the number of complaints increased every month. He instructed his team to stop taking weekends off and start leaving late on weekdays to catch up. The customer would see how hardworking his team was. His team grumbled and did his bidding for a few days. One fine Sunday morning, however, he was the only one in office. He felt like his team had let him down. He started going to lunch alone and avoided time out with his team.

Shyam was sick of his team's behaviour and set up an internal meeting to coincide with the monthly get together with other Indians. He started to side the customer against his team. He was demotivated. He just wanted to go home. The customer’s voice and accent started to irritate him. His team started slacking off even more. Two of them actually quit and cited the reason for leaving as “Just too much pressure”.

The replacement arrived. It was a guy who was new to the job. Now, Shyam spent most of his time teaching the new guy. His other team members showed no initiative to help in anything. They seemed to take pride in making sure Shyam was perpetually embarrassed to meet the customer.

When Shyam returned home, his team was happy to see him get on the plane. They went to drop him off to be sure that he was going.

What happened here? Few simple words sum it up: Lack of Team management skills. When at customer location, under pressure, team leaders need to be able to stand back and take stock of how things are going for themselves. Customers have their own grievances and goals to achieve.
It is for the leader to view things in a more balanced way.

Shyam made many mistakes. Some of them are quite obvious. But, let's take a step further behind the scenes, and ask:

1. "Did Shyam know what was expected of him at site?"
2. "Was he trained in project and team management skills"
3. "Did he get adequate support and advice when he was there?"
   

This illustrative and purely fictional story is meant more for the bosses who send inexperienced people like Shyam to customer locations. Do people like Shyam, know what to expect, how to cope with stressful and demanding situations? They are left fending for themselves and have additional responsibilities thrust on them.

In a situation like this, the team leader needs to
- Manage the customer
- have excellent communication skills
- have good team management skills
- know when to escalate the situation to his bosses
- have project management skills
- even know how to be a buddy and mentor to new recruits.

With all this, he still needs to be able to take a balanced view of everything. If Shyam is sent to another customer site, is there any chance of his learning from his previous experience? In all likelihood, he will go with the idea in his mind , that customers will complain and team members will behave badly.

Without training before the event and support during the process, it is extremely difficult for the team leader to cope.