The advent of diverse team

A Belgian works for a Japanese automobile major in the US and reports to an Indian. Sounds interesting? Well, welcome to the world of multi-cultural teams in companies. What was thought of as unthinkable during the cold war days and protectionist regimes is now a reality. People from varied cultures work in a team and help the company achieve its goals. Of course, the idea sounds good as variety brings in divergent thought processes and new ideas. But, managing diverse teams are a challenge as the company needs to channel these ideas to tangible results. A simple thumbs-up gesture throws up different meanings for people from various cultures. It is a marvelous achievement of behemoths like- IBM, GE, Procter and Gamble, Google, Apple, Royal Shell, etc for successfully managing the cultural nuances and produce startling innovations.

Learning from Indian Premier League (IPL)

IPL was the best example for cultural management. In each IPL team four foreign players and others local player are there and coach may be from different country. It seemed the team that came last (Knight Riders) in the tournament had among many other reasons the rift between foreign players and Indian players. Technical this team was among the top on paper, having some of the best players. The lesson from this is that whether it is sports or business when teams are formed with diversity (from different culture in this case) they should understand each others cultural bias and differences and work around it to be successful.

What does intercultural management mean?

Intercultural management means-
• Learn to manage an international team of individuals with different business culture backgrounds
• Builds a new culture on the basis of existing differences
• Leads to adequate solutions for dealing with international competition and pace
• Is focused on the organisational level
• Learns to balance global and local needs
• Learns to link cultural differences to international strategy

What do you mean by intercultural skills?

Intercultural skills means-
• Leads to bridging cultural different business behaviour
• Generates empathy during intercultural encounters
• Leads to adequate solutions for dealing with different business cultures
• Is focused on the individual level
• Skills help to create mutual beneficial individual relationships

What is intercultural sensitivity?

Intercultural sensitivity is all about-
• Leads to instant recognition of cultural different behaviour
• Generates empathy during intercultural encounters
• Leads to asking clarification and verifying cultural misunderstandings
• Is focused on the individual level
• Sensitivity creates mutual beneficial personal relationships
To quote an example of how important is intercultural sensitivity I would like to tell the episode that happened between an Indian cricketer (Harbhajan Singh) and Australian cricketer (Andrew Symond). Harbhajan had referred Symond as monkey in a fit of anger during the cricket match. This angered Symond and the Australian team very much, as in Australia if you call somebody monkey it amounts to racial abuse. It seems to me that the whole incident was because of cultural insensitivity on the side of Harbhajan. As for calling someone monkey in India is no big deal.

What does intercultural awareness do?

From a study that we have done on the impact of intercultural awareness the following are some of the key findings-
We realized that building awareness is a very powerful way to bridge the cultural differences. Many forms of awareness building was done, the most effective one seems to be the exchange program. It has helped to understand cultural differences at the individual and team level. It has helped in generating knowledge on different cultures and how they operate. It has lead to looking for cultural clues and providing explanation for misunderstandings, reduced judgemental behaviours from either party.
We have seen that cultural awareness has lead to open mind among the teams. By nature there are far more interactions and the quality of interactions are improved. There is a shift in the interactions from formal and business like to the informal-collaborative with a focus on the end gaols to be met.

Seeing the world through different lens

• Cultural diversity is not something that goes away tomorrow: it makes doing business more complex but enriches global business as long as the best of both worlds are recognised
• Basic concepts (like agreements) have different meaning to cultures involved in the team
• Learn to foresee and calculate how others will act / react
• To minimise unpleasant surprises and enable the team to interact successfully. E.g. business dilemma: Americans are interested mainly in profit and the Japanese in market share: how to proceed?