Leadership Challenges and Team Building Lessons in Multicultural Groups

 

As a result of the current global business environment, many multinational companies and even, educational institutions rely on multicultural teams to perform work-related activities. People from different nationalities have different views on professionalism, and have different behavior regarding time management, work norms, decision-making, and problem solving. Multicultural teams face various challenges, due to different cultural backgrounds. Team members’ different cultural backgrounds influence their own way of communicating and functioning in a work environment.

Adding to that, culture also influences leadership ways. In multicultural teams, a leader needs to pay attention to cultural diversity and also, to adopt a challenging set of skills to be able to effectively motivate and lead these teams. Managing multicultural teams can present its own unique set of challenges and obstacles. Not only will one have to effectively manage language barriers, but there are also cultural and training barriers to overcome, as well.

1. Language Barrier

It is always easier if all team members speak a common language. But we are all tied to our language, which is why it can be difficult traveling to a foreign country where most people speak a different language. Now, managing a multicultural team where many of the members speak a different language is even more challenging.

2. Cultural differences

Similar to the language barrier, people from Eastern cultures will have varying cultural norms from those in a Western culture. For instance, a Western manager may seem too assertive, loud or direct for a team member from Japan or other Asian countries where requests are made more politely and indirectly. For another instance, an employee from a Western background may be more inclined to speak up when something feels wrong as opposed to someone from an Eastern culture who might have been taught to never question the leader, even when they are wrong.

3. Technical Challenges

An employee from the U.S. is often used to using many of the most popular tech offerings available today. They would need little training in this regard. On the other hand, an employee hailing for a less technologically advanced country, might not be as used to working with popular American tech and software. For example, a team member for West would be fully familiar with Google search Engine while it may be completely foreign to someone from China where Baidu search engine is used. A real-time example would be, for our GlobCom Project, our global leader who hails from Thailand asked us to use an application named Slack to work in sub-groups. Now, many other team members did not have any idea on how to use this app, which made it a little challenge for the leader to explain it to everyone.

4. The decision-making process

Cultures have different styles of making decisions. In America, managers are expected to make decisions quickly where in other cultures managers may take their time for analysing, gathering more information and often consult team members to make sure that the decision is arrived at unanimously.

5. Style of communication: Tone

Cultures have different styles of communication. For example, American managers tend to be more aggressive and straightforward than their Eastern counterparts. For some team members, this can come across as too direct. There’s a fair chance that one may come across a leader who might look down upon people from an underprivileged background which would make it even more difficult for an employee to be a team player.

So, managing multicultural teams requires learning, due diligence, and diplomacy.