In global virtual teams (GVTs), members need to navigate across various types of differences to achieve common goals, whereby cultural, language and organization-related distances have been at the center of attention of extant literature. Research has largely neglected to focus on the dispersion of cognitive ability among members and time zone differences. We integrate insight from social comparison theory and the choice effect to better understand how members of GVTs reconceptualize these differences in their efforts to achieve team performance. To test our hypotheses, we employed Hierarchical Linear Regression on 173 GVTs from the x-culture project. Our analysis reveals that the individual with the highest cognitive ability drives the performance of the team, while the team member with the farthest geographical positioning from the center of instruction depicts an impediment to team performance. Thereby, both the cultural diversity within the team as well as the dispersion of time zone differences among team members influence these relationships.