Global ExcellenceManaging Multicultural Teamwork 
      David Trickey TCO  International Diversity Management
      The technical ability to communicate with anybody, anywhere in the world 
      both simplifies and complicates our lives. 
      Technology, market pressures and improved transportation links are 
      thrusting professionals together across distance and culture. There is 
      growing pressure to achieve business results in an interdependent work 
      environment where individual technical brilliance is no longer enough. We 
      are compelled to find success through working with others. These others 
      will increasingly not share our language, not share our local way of 
      thinking, not even share the same building, city, country or continent. 
      Being a successful team-builder in this new environment means building 
      teams in a lingua franca  probably English; building teams across 
      functional, corporate and cultural differences; building teams at a 
      distance. 
      One of the critical components of building international teams is the 
      creation and development of trust. Trust provides the invisible glue which 
      can hold a dislocated team together. However, it is more natural to trust 
      people in whom we can identify a level of positive predictability in their 
      actions and words. Working with other cultures leads to a stressful level 
      of unpredictability in our interactions. As Percy Barnevik (ABBs ex-CEO) 
      remarked, there is a natural tendency for human beings to stick to their 
      own kind: "We are herd animals. We like people who are like us". Other 
      team members from different cultures can leave us puzzled and frustrated 
      by inexplicable comments, behaviours, needs and beliefs.
      In traditional national teams we often know what motivates the members and 
      so can try to create the necessary conditions for them to work together. 
      In global virtual teamwork, we know even less about what we dont know and 
      how it may show up. Understanding people when we share a common corporate 
      culture, using the same mother tongue and meeting frequently and 
      informally is in itself challenging. The international dimension often 
      removes these unifying factors, leaving us struggling once again to fathom 
      incomprehensible reactions, to communicate our intentions clearly with 
      imperfect linguistic resources and to build team spirit across cyberspace. 

      It is not surprising that international teamwork promises so much but in 
      fact creates new frustrations in its wake.
      The promise is often portrayed as a means to manage the problems of 
      adaptation to a business environment where:
            Skills and knowledge are widely distributed across cultural borders 
            Quick responses are required to dynamic changes 
            Rigid hierarchical systems and ethnocentric attitudes are breaking 
            down as the pressure to compete moves from product and price to 
            people 
      Often these teams are multi-cultural in the sense that they are drawn 
      not only from different national cultures but also from different company, 
      functional and professional cultures both within and outside the 
      organization. Such multicultural teams have a clear intuitive appeal. 
      The benefits can include:
            Providing a greater range of perspectives and options 
            Enhancing the quality of decisions taken 
            Developing the global awareness of team members, and improving 
            relationships with key partners through working together. 
      However, there are a number of problems that inhibit the rewards that 
      teamwork can bring. Firstly, multicultural teams are often formed less as 
      a deliberate attempt to promote better decision-making and more as an 
      inevitable consequence of the geographical compression caused by 
      globalisation. Secondly, and more importantly, while potentially solving 
      problems linked to external adaptation, multicultural teams bring their 
      own problems of internal integration. Indeed they have been shown, as can 
      be seen in the diagram below, to be highly effective or highly ineffective 
      when compared to culturally homogeneous teams.

      Team builders of the future will need to struggle with a strategy rather 
      than rely on improvisation and instinct. Instinct tells us that our own 
      values and norms are the most reasonable and correct ways to operate and 
      therefore what is good for us is also good for everyone. Instinct is 
      fundamentally ethnocentric. This clearly makes handling international 
      group dynamics more complex.
      A strategy will have to include answers to the following questions: (1)
      CULTURAL QUESTIONS
          1. What is the degree of difference or similarity between the cultural 
          norms of the individuals within the group? 
          2. How much do these individuals manifest their cultural norms? 
          3. How much of an issue is English language fluency? 
          4. What different expectations are present about precisely what 
          constitutes effective group behaviour and communication styles? 
          5. What leadership styles are preferred and valued within the group? 
          6. What different stages of intercultural sensitivity has each member 
          of the team reached in managing diversity (within the team, in their 
          local area and in relation to the Head Office cultures)? 
      ORGANISATIONAL QUESTIONS
          7. What is the relative status of different cultures and sub-cultures 
          within the team? 
          8. How will geographic spread affect the group? 
          9. How will the similarity or difference between functional and 
          professional cultures affect the group dynamics? 
          10. What impact does top management have on the success of the team? 
      If these factors can be managed there is a high likelihood that 
      multicultural teams will be much more effective rather than much less 
      effective than single culture ones.
      As as facilitator of multicultural teams, I have found it is often 
      difficult at the outset to predict which of these factors will affect the 
      team most. However, my own experience and corporate research suggest that:
          1. Legitimising differences and discovering similarities is a key part 
          of preparing a team to work together. Large differences, such as 
          between Italians and mainland Chinese, enhance the potential for 
          richer solutions, but they may also lead to greater communication 
          difficulties within the team. Equally important is the acknowledgement 
          of difference between cultural cousins (e.g. Italians and Spanish), 
          and at the individual level in terms of personality types. 
          2. Some members of the team, owing to their life experiences or 
          international exposure, may be cultural marginals and not behave in 
          a recognizably standard way for their culture. Others may overlap 
          strongly with their co-nationals norms. 
          3. The team needs to be sensitised and find solutions to the different 
          communication preferences present (quantity of speaking, fluency of 
          speaking, attitudes to talking at the same time, thinking before 
          talking vs. thinking as we talk, etc). These are unlikely to be shared 
          across culturally diverse groups. 
          4. The team will need to bring to the surface differing expectations 
          about the most effective way to work together. This can include 
          different attitudes to showing emotion, handling (or avoiding) 
          conflict, communicating information, concepts of hierarchy, the need 
          to be relationship or task oriented. Once the issues are in the open 
          they need to be reworked and agreed upon so that everyone is involved 
          and committed to negotiated group guidelines. 
          5. The team will need to discuss and agree on an appropriate style of 
          leadership. Some may have expectations of a more directive style based 
          on norms in their home culture, others a more consultative style. Some 
          may be chosen for their level of influence within the organisation, 
          others for their technical or managerial expertise. An effective 
          leader from one culture may be considered incompetent in another. 
          6. Different members of the team are likely to have developed 
          different beliefs about diversity. Some may deny any differences exist 
          and express superficial statements of tolerance while believing that 
          the others in the team are somehow less real because they are 
          different. Others will think in us and them categories and try to 
          either defend they dominant culture or feel their non-dominant 
          identity threatened. Still others may minimize differences by saying 
          that everyone is essentially the same (i.e. like them!). These members 
          who show ethnocentric behaviours will have to be coached by the more 
          interculturally sensitive mediators in the group. 
          7. Team members will have to be aware of the different perceptions of 
          status within the group. Some national cultures may be considered 
          more or less dominant and people who seem to have the ear of the 
          dominant culture will be deferred to irrespective of their competence; 
          resentment may exist owing to different treatment of managers 
          because of differing expatriate or local contracts. There may be 
          subtle perceptions that some are better educated or more experienced. 
          This will affect participation, motivation and creativity in team 
          meetings. 
          8. The geographic dispersion of the group means that an appropriate 
          choice of available communication technology and channels will have to 
          be decided upon if meeting times are to be used effectively. Initial 
          research (2) is suggesting that productive global teams use more 
          face-to-face meetings to focus on handling hot issues and for 
          developing group understanding and commitment on a personal level. In 
          fact, these teams depersonalise differences at a distance and openly 
          discuss them when they meet, focusing more on task-based communication 
          when apart. Best practices are beginning to emerge. 
          9. With differing functions present there is the risk of forming 
          distinct professional groups. There may also be key terms used 
          habitually by people which are part of the national or corporate 
          culture. This terminology along with some basic words like meeting, 
          report, presentation, discussion, autonomy or involvement 
          may need to be clarified since each bring their own culturally-based 
          and unconscious interpretation but may assume others understand the 
          term in the same way. 
          10. The ability of a team to function successfully can be dramatically 
          affected by the attitude of top management. If no sympathetic sponsor 
          exists among executives, the team will be negatively influenced by the 
          existing corporate culture. The ad hoc needs of a global virtual team 
          means that unique processes should be developed to optimise working 
          practices. Corporate culture tends to reflect standardised solutions 
          based on the home country of the parent company. If these values are 
          radically different from those held by team members, results will be 
          compromised. A senior executive sensitive to the complexities of 
          international teamwork would have the power to create the necessary 
          flexibility and avoid the corporate culture straightjacketing the 
          innovative potential of multicultural teams.
      The interplay of these factors creates the typical difficulties of 
      international teams. The main theme linking them is that in the rush to 
      focus on task and results the process can be overlooked. Since in 
      multicultural teams each participant brings their own unconscious process 
      and often assumes (or wants to believe) that there is more similarity than 
      there is, the result can be:
            Paralysis through stand-off politeness 
            Domination by individuals or subgroups 
            Exclusion or one or two members 
      This explains how cross-cultural groups can be highly ineffective. At the 
      other end of the scale, the competitive advantage in setting up 
      international teams is undoubtedly linked to their potential for 
      interactive synergy. In order to leverage positive rather than negative 
      results, our experience and available research suggests that:
            Differences need to be understood, acknowledged, respected and 
            explored before people will start to value and utilise them. 
            Learning across the team will probably not occur until this aspect 
            is in place. 
            In this process critical moments will occur in the group 
            accompanied by feelings of discomfort as people face the realities 
            of confronting the issue of diversity. These can be turned into 
            breakthroughs with the help of the facilitator and/or the group 
            leader. 
            At this early stage of the groups life cycle, it is impossible to 
            overemphasise the importance of preparing extensively for kick-off 
            sessions. A facilitator needs to have information about each 
            persons expectations, their attitudes to each other and their level 
            of commitment, i.e. any hidden agendas. To this end it might also be 
            useful to send team members a short questionnaire asking them about 
            their expectations, perception of hot issues and convergence or 
            divergence of styles noticed. 
      In conclusion, multicultural teams need cultivating in an atmosphere where 
      the alchemy of diversity can work its magic. This depends principally on 
      the ability of members to manage intercultural relationships rather than 
      managing data. It is our experience that to harvest the potential of 
      international teams, companies need to provide the appropriate nutrients  
      specific training, external facilitation, benchmarking, guidelines and 
      sensitive sponsorship from senior management. Much investment goes into 
      creating the technological links to facilitate global teamwork, but there 
      is often much less support for teams to meet the more complex challenges 
      of nurturing and developing the human relations on either side of these 
      links. Without support in managing the process of working together, 
      international teams will be left to their own instinctive devicesand in a 
      multicultural environment, instinctive devices lead to divided teams. 
      (1) These questions and the subsequent discussion of team facilitation are 
      closely based on Sue Canney Davisons eight factors affecting team 
      dynamics and performance, and make international teams unique. To these 
      eight I have added factors 6 (based on Milton Bennetts Intercultural 
      Development Inventory) and 10.
      (2) Based on a study by Dianne M. Hofner Saphiere in an unpublished 
      article Productive Global Business Teams
      Bibliography
      Canney Davison, S., 1996. Leading and Facilitating International Teams in 
      Berger, M. 1996, Cross-Cultural Team Building  Guidelines for more 
      Effective Communication and Negotiation. London: McGraw-Hill
      Schneider, S.C., & Barsoux J-L., 1997. Managing Across Cultures
      Prentice Hall Europe. Chapter 8, The "Multi-Cultural" Team
      Nicola Phillips, 1992 - Managing International Teams Financial 
      Times/Pitman Publishing
      Adler, N.,J., 1997 International Dimensions of Organizational Behaviour. 
      Cincinnati, Ohio: South-Western College Publishing

      David Trickey can be contacted on: d.trickey@tco-international.com
      TCO  International Diversity Management web address is: 
      www.tco-international.com
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