Developing More Effective Multicultural Teams

When you bring together team members from a variety of cultural backgrounds, the result can be creative harmony and better, globally focused solutions

Culturally diverse teams are increasingly the glue that joins the globe-spanning operations of large, multi-national organizations. At their best, multicultural teams outperform traditional teams in the areas of innovating, understanding diverse markets, meeting customer needs, and aligning multiple organizational interests. When things go sour, however, multicultural teams can become expensive, unproductive hotbeds of frustration, low morale, and finger-pointing.

Here are some thoughts on ways to build more effective multicultural teams, which face their own unique set of challenges from their traditional counterparts. These ideas are based on my experiences facilitating and observing cross-functional, action learning teams for several European multinational corporations. Most teams included six to eight members spanning two to four continents, representing several nationalities and cultures.

1) Increase effectiveness by taking time to focus on team-building early in the life of the team
Conducting an initial team-building session can produce continuing benefits, including the ability to form healthy working relationships, make and execute decisions, handle conflict, enjoy organizational credibility, and generate truly innovative solutions. Organizations often avoid this step because of obvious time and money constraints. However, it becomes a matter of “pay now or pay later.” Without some way to build effective relationships early in the life of the team, the team operates at a permanent disadvantage compared to its traditional counterpart; members will be less effective in delivering quality results, resolving conflicts, exploring new ideas, and supporting one another.

2) Increase effectiveness by clarifying team expectations and norms at the outset
Effective multicultural teams are especially mindful of clarifying the team’s purpose, figuring out ways of working together, determining available resources, and understanding their deliverables early on. The teams I worked with highlight the payoff of working through and agreeing on norms during the initial team-building phase. These norms help to provide a common language that crosses the variety of cultures and backgrounds and gives each member a clear anchor of reference. In other words, these expectations and norms help connect team members to the larger, overarching organizational culture.

3) Increase effectiveness by making the extra effort to understand cultural complexities
How team members engage with one another is informed by their cultural backgrounds, so team leaders must develop a global mindset that helps them know how to best involve people from different cultures. At the same time, they need to keep in mind that individuals may not necessarily fit their cultural stereotype. I’ve met many chatty, extroverted Chinese professionals as well as quiet, introverted Brazilians — all of whom belie their cultural stereotypes. I love these layers of complexity and find them rich resources for the team to discover and exploit: the layer of unique, individual preferences, plus the layer of national and cultural backgrounds, plus the layer of organizational culture that contextualizes them all.

I once worked with a team of 15 people that represented 13 cultures from the Americas, Australia, Europe, Asia, and Africa. They were magnificent, and they completely subsumed their national cultures to embrace what they were trying to do as a team. They were an inspiring study in how to delight in cultural differences and use them as leverage points, instead of seeing cultural differences as barrier, risk, or excuse.

4) Increase effectiveness by handling the special challenge of managing conflict and creativity
Handling conflict well is difficult for any team. Multicultural teams face an added burden. Conflict is perceived, valued, and addressed in different ways in different cultures. When team members fear unwanted consequences of conflict, ideas are suppressed, discussions become sterile, and creativity suffers.

The probability for friction on any team is 100 percent. So figuring out how to handle it is a great investment of time and energy. Effective teams recognize the power of personal, face-to-face contact as the foundation to handling this conflict. They also recognize how harnessing the energy generated by natural interpersonal friction creates the potential for creative solutions and valuable innovation. This was a principle embraced in the early days of Saturn Corporation, where I worked: teams were purposefully comprised of members representing disparate interests and functions — and in the first two years of operation, more than 400 patents were generated.

Initial team-building activities lay this foundation. Finding creative ways for ongoing interaction become essential to continuing this capability. All of this requires commitment and self-discipline on everyone’s part, and finding effective ways to give and receive open feedback.

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