The Idea in Brief
If your company does business internationally, you're probably leading teams with members from diverse cultural backgrounds. Those differences can present serious obstacles. For example, some members' lack of fluency in the team's dominant language can lead others to underestimate their competence. When such obstacles arise, your team can stalemate.
To get the team moving again, avoid intervening directly, advise Brett, Behfar, and Kern. Though sometimes necessary, your involvement can prevent team members from solving problems themselves-and learning from that process.
Instead, choose one of three indirect interventions. When possible, encourage team members to adapt by acknowledging cultural gaps and working around them. If your team isn't able to be open about their differences, consider structural intervention (e.g., reassigning members to reduce interpersonal friction). As a last resort, use an exit strategy (e.g., removing a member from the team).
There's no one right way to tackle multicultural problems. But understanding four barriers to team success can help you begin evaluating possible responses.
The Idea in Practice
Four Barriers
The following cultural differences can cause destructive conflicts in a team:
Direct versus indirect communication. Some team members use direct, explicit communication while others are indirect, for example, asking questions instead of pointing out problems with a project. When members see such differences as violations of their culture's communication norms, relationships can suffer.
Trouble with accents and fluency. Members who aren't fluent in the team's dominant language may have difficulty communicating their knowledge. This can prevent the team from using their expertise and create frustration or perceptions of incompetence.
Differing attitudes toward hierarchy. Team members from hierarchical cultures expect to be treated differently according to their status in the organization. Members from egalitarian cultures do not. Failure of some members to honor those expectations can cause humiliation or loss of stature and credibility.
Conflicting decision-making norms. Members vary in how quickly they make decisions and in how much analysis they require beforehand. Someone who prefers making decisions quickly may grow frustrated with those who need more time.
Four Interventions
Your team's unique circumstances can help you determine how to respond to multicultural conflicts. Consider these options:
Intervention Type#When to Use#Example
Adaptation: working with or around differences#Members are willing to acknowledge cultural differences and figure out how to live with them.#An American engineer working on a team that included Israelis was shocked by their in-your-face, argumentative style. Once he noticed they confronted each other and not just him-and still worked well together-he realized confrontations weren't personal attacks and accepted their style.
Structural intervention: reorganizing to reduce friction#The team has obvious subgroups, or members cling to negative stereotypes of one another.#An international research team's leader realized that when he led meetings, members "shut down" because they felt intimidated by his executive status. After he hired a consultant to run future meetings, members participated more.
Managerial intervention: making final decisions without team involvement#Rarely; for instance, a new team needs guidance in establishing productive norms.#A software development team's lingua franca was English, but some members spoke with pronounced accents. The manager explained they'd been chosen for their task expertise, not fluency in English. And she directed them to tell customers: "I realize I have an accent. If you don't understand what I'm saying, just stop me and ask questions."
Exit: voluntary or involuntary removal of a team member#Emotions are running high, and too much face has been lost on both sides to salvage the situation.#When two members of a multicultural consulting team couldn't resolve their disagreement over how to approach problems, one member left the firm.
Copyright 2007 Harvard Business School Publishing Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Further Reading
Articles
Making Differences Matter: A New Paradigm for Managing Diversity
Harvard Business Review
September 1996
by David A. Thomas and Robin J. Ely
You can strengthen your teams' ability to use the adaptation process suggested by Brett, Behfar, and Kern by fostering a working environment in which cultural differences are valued. To cultivate such an environment: 1) Encourage open discussion of cultural backgrounds. For instance, a food company's Chinese chemist draws on her cooking, not her scientific, experience to solve a soup-flavoring problem. 2) Eliminate forms of dominance-by hierarchy, function, race, gender, and so forth-that inhibit team members' full contribution. 3) Acknowledge and swiftly resolve the inevitable tensions that arise when employees from different backgrounds share ideas and emotions.
Harvard Business Review
May 2004
by Byron Reimus
In this fictional case study, executives from an English firm and a German company who are seeking a supposed "merger of equals" must resolve cross-cultural tensions threatening the deal. Four experts provide suggestions. For example, develop a new shared vision and common strategic goals for the project (such as "Beat the competition and become number one") that rise above national differences. Cultivate personal relationships with the "other" to eliminate stereotypes, by getting together in relaxed, shoptalk-free social settings. When you get to know one another as individuals, it becomes easier to let go of negative stereotypes.
Harvard Business Review
October 2004
by P. Christopher Earley and Elaine Mosakowski
Team members can further strengthen their adaptation skills by developing their cultural intelligence. 1) Look for clues to the shared understandings that define another culture. For example, do people from that culture tend to be strict or flexible about deadlines? Are they receptive to highly imaginative ideas, or do they prefer more conservative thinking? 2) Adopt the habits and mannerisms of people from other cultures. You'll discover in an elemental way what it's like to be them. And you'll demonstrate respect for their ways. 3) Cultivate confidence that you can overcome multicultural obstacles and setbacks and that you're capable of understanding people from unfamiliar cultures.
