I'm an expat from a Nordic country who moved to the UK, working with very mutlicultural teams. I took up managing a remote team in Poland recently. I completely

I'm an expat from a Nordic country who moved to the UK, working with very mutlicultural teams. I took up managing a remote team in Poland recently. I completely agree! It's ALL about culture. Do your employees and co-workers share your values? Do they have the same priorities as you and the company? Do they overshare or undershare when they have problems? Different cultures have very different expectations of how you talk to your peers. Some of the SE-Asian people I've worked with will work very hard but never ask clarifying questions, so they might slave away for a week building the wrong thing unless you check in on them. The Polish people I've worked with are straight shooters and always ask really good questions. They're very blunt but great to work with. The Brits are more cautious but generally do a good job, but they're formal to a fault. The Americans are the worst for "toeing the company line". To me they come off as insincere suck-ups, but I know it's just the culture. I myself enjoy being the slightly loony "weird foreign guy" on the office. I'm quite blunt and tell jokes at inopportune times to troll the Brits :) - but ONLY if I know everyone there knows me well and understands my style of humour. It's all fine if you know your team intimately but unless you know the culture, that new guy who joins you remote is going to be a pain to work with, and they also won't understand what's expected of them, making it difficult for them to do a good job. I've also found that a lot of people who've never left their original environment (i.e. never worked abroad) are totally deaf to this and will always interpret cultural differences as insubordination or arrogance. If you're going to effectively manage a multi-national team you need to very quickly gauge people's style of working and communicating or you're doomed to fail.