Social Media Outreach Initiative aimed at increasing the diversity

Welcome to Human Resource Function. In this first challenge you're working on a project team to deliver a social media outreach initiative aimed at increasing the diversity of applicants to the Unilever Leadership Internship programme. The project team is based all around the world and within different functions. Each member has their own agenda for the project. There are strong personalities involved and there have been a number of disagreements on how to engage the right audience. Time differences have made communication challenging and individual workload pressures have impacted progress. It now looks like your team may miss its deadline. So tell me What would your priority actions be? How would you influence others to support your priorities? What would you do next time you were working on a similar project to mitigate the risk of these issues happening again? 

Answer 1.

My priority actions would be to not miss the deadline and complete the project on time and for that, I will try to communicate with all the members of the team and request them to come to a virtual meeting where all our disagreements could be resolved and we can reach consensus on some topics and therefore work together as a team. I will convince all the indulged parties to understand that meeting deadline are a necessity and to even succeed individually the overall performance of our team should be above standards. My focus would be on taking follow-ups over email and addressing any issues arising in between to complete the project on deadline.

Answer 2.

I would influence others to support my priorities in the following way:

I will try to present the benefits which will get as a by-product by completing my priorities. I will make others feel important and tell them that I need their help in completing my task and without them; it would be not possible for me to do the same. I would try to connect with all the strong personalities involved in the project and try to bring on the same page as me because stronger personalities may have influence over other team members and they will naturally be influenced to follow my priorities once there is no resistance from any stronger personality. Successful people inspire their co-workers, and as a result, they gain a lot of clouts. I'll continue to increase my influence by inspiring others. I will inspire my colleagues to help me complete my goals, and in exchange, I will provide them with whatever assistance they need.

Answer 3.

If I am working on a similar project, I would do the following to mitigate the risks of these issues:

At the very beginning of the project, I will arrange meetings to resolve all the issues amongst team members, I will make sure all the members are on the same page and a consensus is built up amongst them.
I will devise a plan to hold meetings at a time when people in all the time zones are comfortable, for e.g. 2:00 p.m. Eastern Time. I will also make a group on instant messaging apps where people can post their queries and the same can be resolved immediately without getting into the hassle of emails that are more formal.
From the very beginning, I would try to be a leader and influence others so that if the need arise my colleagues will listen to me.
If possible I will try to avoid any members of strong personality if I was given to choose my team and if this is not possible I will make sure the strong personalities of the team do not have any issues or resistance towards the project/its work from the very beginning.
I will request all the team members in the very beginning to save some time of the day for this specific project so at the end they will not feel the burden of completing this task when the deadline arrives.
I will handle all disagreements on priority from the very beginning.
There will be only one goal and one way of achieving the it from the beginning of the project and hopefully, we will not encounter any disagreements in between.