For exclusive use at University of Melbourne, 2015

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REV: MARCH 26, 2015

TSEDAL NEELEY

(Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek
Tariq Khan arrived home after a 16-hour meeting. He was grappling with whether to accept the global sales and marketing team manager position. Khan spent the entire day with the senior leadership of the team trying to understand the group’s challenges. However, the meeting had raised more questions than answers.
Already a rising star within his company, Khan was only 33 when he was offered this high-profile position to lead a diverse 68-person team whose members hailed from 27 countries and spoke 18 different languages. The team’s recent performance had seen a precipitous …show more content…

For exclusive use at University of Melbourne, 2015
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(Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek

The first four years of Khan’s Tek career in Pakistan included assignments in procurement, planning, and frontline sales, plus time as a sales team leader. He was also promoted to country manager for Pakistan and served on a Global Competence Development Committee in addition to his regular responsibilities. This role allowed him to visit sales teams around the world and observe their methods, motivations and challenges. When he moved to Dubai for a new assignment in business development, Khan kept his existing position on the Global Competence Development Committee.
Again, he cycled through various roles, rotating between staff and line functions. In his business development role, he led Tek’s penetrations into Iraq and Bangladesh, where he worked with a linguistically and culturally diverse team for the first time.

A Tip and Advice from Singapore
After almost four years in various business development roles in Dubai, Khan knew that his window of opportunity for a promotion was about to open again. A friend in Singapore, who was senior within Tek, notified Khan that the position of General Manager for Sales and Marketing would soon be available. The team, Khan was told, had been failing. The previous manager, known for