The challenges of working in a multiculture team
ABSTRACT
The proliferation of cross-cultural teams is a result of the globalized economy which makes companies to expand their businesses in international markets. Students too are crisscrossing the world by acquiring education in countries outside their homelands. Members of work teams have different cultural background and have different values. This article attempts to discuss the challenges faced by these cross-cultural teams. This article would also focus on the strategies to grapple with these challenges of cross-cultural teams. The article will be based on secondary data taken from journals, magazines, reports and internet. The authors will make use of these tools (journals, magazines, reports and internet) to conclude the objectives of the study. Different ways are also suggested to deal with the challenges. The article is also focusing on how to create effective management of multicultural teams.
INTRODUCTION
Multicultural team is a global team that include people who come from different cultures and unique experiences. According to Sogancilar and Husniye (2018 p. 259-268) "The globalized business world is considered to be reason behind the increasing mobility of people and labour". A team is the working together of distinct mindsets and skill sets that collaborate to work for a common purpose. It is difficult to manage a team with contrasting personalities. What makes it even more challenging is managing a cross-cultural team that go beyond different cultures and geographies.
Globalization at the workplace give us the means in dealing with people across numerous work ethics, languages, traditions and cultures in a way that does not cause friction or tension in a team. To build work relations and trust cannot happen overnight. It is indeed a gradual process to build an environment for collaboration. There must be conscious effort on the part of team members to respect individual differences and understand them in order to have unity in a culturally diverse team.
The challenges of working in a multicultural team are not only inevitable but are verse, numerous and comes in various dimensional positions. "Due to diversity, multicultural teams are more prone to face difficulties including language barriers, ineffective communication and differences in communication styles" (Adler 2002). It requires knowledge, due diligence, tact and diplomacy. Therefore, one needs to effectively manage the situation as the challenges could be the one of language barrier, or interaction among team members or attitude to training or work ethics or divergence in opinion or conflict resolution. There is a need for conscious effort to identify these cultural differences otherwise working together in this kind of diverse background would more often than not bring about misconception, mutual suspicion and lack of understanding. A major concern in managing a cross cultural team is to find a unified thread that bind all the distinct team members together. Therefore, the big onus is on the multicultural team leader, who as a matter of fact has to be culturally neutral and have a competent and reliable skill in handling diversity. Simply put his cultural competence should be top notch. Lee and Liao (2015 p. 23-30) assert that "multicultural leaders may relate better to team members from different cultures and resolve conflicts more easily".
Aside, the team leaders who needs to be jolted into cognitive action such that they would not only see things from another team member’s perspective, but they have a strong sense of emotional intelligence, empathy, sympathy and honest communication, other team members too need to be open minded and embrace cultural intelligence. In the IESE insight, Lee and Liao (2015 p. 23-30) "Cultural intelligence is a competency and a skill that enables individuals to function effectively in cross-cultural environments. It helps people develops to become more aware of the influence of culture and more capable of adapting their behavior to the norms of other cultures".
The inherent good news is that a multicultural team if managed in the right direction can lead to greater efficiency, taking into cognizance that team members will try to look at problems practically, they will also be more innovative, creative and all-inclusive about their solutions and they would be forward thinking. Working across cultures, could truly be an enriching experiencing.
CHALLENGES AND EFFECTIVE MANAGEMENT OF CROSS-CULTURAL TEAMS
Language difficulty
In a multicultural team, mainly team members will be native speakers while others would not. In this dispensation the logical thing to do is for the team members to go along in a language that was designed or adopted as the official language of communication in the team. Communication can be the hardest wall to break down if not handled properly. This is one major obstacle we would unavoidably confront when we find ourselves in a multicultural setting as an international personnel or student. We all have strong affinity to our language, which invariably makes it difficult for us to communicate or relate properly in a setting or a team, where different languages are obtainable. This obvious confusion may lead to a breakdown of communication in terms of managing these different tongues. For example, if a team member take notice that some other team members are speaking in their local language or displaying any kind of bias due to the language barrier, they might possibly feel less free to voice their opinions very well or provide any insights. They might feel discouraged or being discriminated against in some way.
As a team leader, one will strife to avoid team members to feel isolated and withdrawn, which may make them to be most reluctant or less enthusiastic to contribute or share their opinions in the team. In this kind of situation, the team leader must ensure that there should be an effective way or method of communicating with one another. The team must work under a unified single language. Teamwork is a collective responsibility, and all members must understand the direction of the discussions clearly.
Against this background one major step that can make the team overcome this challenge of language barrier is to make use of an interpreter, who also interpret the meaning of what is said and communicate meanings that would resonate with the sensibility of team members. In this regard all team members would be carried along thereby making them to have a sense of belonging in the team. Team members should not feel underappreciated and largely dominated by other team members. The major concern of the leadership team in this situation is the nuances of communicating in a way that all team members are on the same page.
Cultural differences
It is obvious that people who converge as a team would come with different cultural values. For example, team members coming from Africa has different cultural outlook from the western team members, while the eastern cultural norms are different from both African and western cultures. To further portray the complexity of cultural differences, for instance, western team members may tend to be loud and direct in terms of voicing their unfiltered opinions and ideas with others. They are more disposed to speak up when they feel that things go wrong, while the team members from the eastern hierarchical hemisphere may be too polite or deferential and indirect in their approach to issues.
In this kind of different cultural norms, one has to be skillful in learning to perceive these nuances and dynamics in order to communicate appropriately as the occasion demands.
Exposure to different technical challenges
People that form a team are familiar with different knowledge of technological gadgets therefore the team may face the challenge of working together if team members are used to different software. For example, Google search engine is well known to team members from western world while a Chinese team member may struggle with it. In this context this challenge could turn to advantage because having a diverse set of members can be professionally enriching in the sense that members would be exposed to new skills and approaches to work. In addition, it is possible to uncover specialized skills that can be beneficial to all team members.
There is need for training to bring all team members up to speed with the latest kind of technologies and soft wares they want to use to work as team.
Decision making in a Team
Being a leader in a culturally diverse environment could come with its own challenge especially in decision making. Your style of leadership would understandably be informed by your cultural background. After all culture influences the way we view or perceive the world. However, in this situation the challenge is the priority of either flexibility or a linear time construction to accomplish the task. For example, a leader may be used to quick unilateral decision while in other cultural climes a leader takes due diligence and arrives at unanimous decision through consultation.
Going by the above situation, a team leader must borrow from the work of Phillips (2014 p. 7-8), who asked the vibrant and salient question...."If you don’t have a diverse group of people on your team, how can you ensure that you will have robust discussions and decision-making"? In order to avoid this seemingly conflicting situation a team leader needs to endeavor that every person in the team understands his style and the process of making decision in the group. There should also be feedback mechanisms which will ultimately lead to an all-inclusive atmosphere of cross-cultural cooperation that would essentially bring about an excellent way to bond team members across the board.
Prejudice or negative cultural stereotypes
Another challenge that can work against multicultural team is to allow prejudice or negative cultural biases to set in. In this kind of cultural mix, faulty assumptions should be relegated to the background. It is important to foster integration among team members in order to avoid members to work in isolation thereby limiting synergy of trust and collaboration. Negative prejudice (particularly if there are basic prejudices between and among cultures e.g. Polish and Germans, British and French, or Chinese and Japanese) more often is detrimental, needless to say that it is highly disruptive and affects the morale, progress, and productivity of the team. Team members must come out of their ethnocentric world view and jettison prejudices so as to attain the decent height of a global citizen.
Work ethics
It is expected albeit understandably in this kind of multicultural mix that every team member would have a unique work style that is predominantly powered by his culture. Consider this situation for instance, while some team members expect some level of autonomy to perform their task, others would expect explicit directions from the team leader before they could carry out their task. The former are likely people from the western world who have been used to work independently and do not call for any further request when it comes to an instructions or guidance, while the latter are people from the eastern world like the Chinese, Korean and Indian people who will be much happier to goes with the instructions from their superiors.
Nonetheless this should not be a recipe for chaos such that every team member would now work in different direction. For this reason, there must be a synchronized, conscious and concerted effort to create a structure for success. It behooves the leadership of the team to establish clear cut norms for team members to adhere to. It should however not be an imposition kind of a thing. Leaders should take the necessary steps to explain the imperative of certain norms and train members to join in this effort, and the implementation should be done from different cultures to create uniformity.
In a team it is important that all members understand the common goal. Having a shared goal and a common purpose will give the team an identity that can bring them together. In the same vein, leaders should clearly outline the expectations of each team member and let everyone know that their contribution matters. Furthermore, leaders should try to breakdown the common goal into actionable steps that define each member’s role and responsibilities. In this way everyone will collaborate and work together without stepping on each other’s territory.
Conflict Resolution
Conflict arise mostly in all cross-cultural team. It is possible that when conflict does occur within a team, members from different backgrounds may react to it in different dramatic ways. The best thing for the leadership is to address it promptly before it permeates the fabric of the team.
A leader must have to understand the different cultural perspective at play and try to resolve the conflict by taking a middle course. A leader should as well serve as a cultural bridge to connect different team members and bring unison.
CONCLUSION
The explosion of cross-cultural teams might bring challenges, but it can be handled effectively with understanding and respect for other cultures. The team leader only needs to introduce a structure that makes it easier to understand individual differences and leverage those differences to bring out the best capabilities in a team. More often a clear understanding and acceptance of cultural differences is what it takes to successfully manage a cross-cultural team. Having a cross-cultural team is the greatest opportunity to learn different backgrounds, innovate new solutions and produce success. Cross-cultural teams should be perceived as an asset and not a liability!
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Tawakalitu Animashaun, BSc nursing student in Novia UAS.
Anita Wikberg, Supervisor, RN, RM, PhD, Senior lecturer at Novia UAS.
REFERENCES:
- Adler, N. J. (2002). International dimensions of organizational behavior. Cincinnati, OH: Southwestern, 4th Edition.
- Phillips K. (2014). “How Diversity Makes Us Smarter,” Scientific American 311(4), p. 7-8. Available from: https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-diversity-makes-us-smarter/ (Last accessed 14-10-2020).
- Lee Y. & Liao Y (2015). “Cultural Competence: Why it Matters and How You Can Acquire It”, IESE Insight. 26, p. 23-30.
- Sogancilar, N., & Husniye Ors. (2018). Understanding the challenges of multicultural team management. Journal of Business, Economics and Finance (JBEF), 7(3), p. 259-268.
