Tips for Leading Multi-Cultural Teams

The modern manager understands the benefits that can be gained from team diversity, but managing a truly multicultural team is not a simple task. While many developed and developing countries are packed with organisation featuring a wide range of ethnicities, often these employees have all lived in the same country for many years and as such are not truly multicultural, as they share much of the same heritage and background.

Globalisation and the international consolidation of industry has led to large, international groups of companies becoming the norm, and with this – comes the really significant changes like language barriers, cultural differences and a plethora of new perspectives, as well as working styles. Whether you’re leading a cross-global project team, or work with internationally seconded employees, you’ll be familiar with the new challenges that these changes bring.

A Uniform Approach or a Tailored Style?

One of the first decisions you have to make as a leader or manager, is whether to use a consistent leadership style in your interactions with all people, or to effectively treat each culture differently. The latter method is simpler, and leaves your mind freer to deal with day to day tasks, however increases the risk of alienating individuals or committing a faux pas.

I believe the answer to this question lies in how many cultures you deal with on a day to day basis. Do you interact closely with a select few cultures, or are you engaged with a far wider number at a further distance?

An example of the latter would be a university lecturer who must teach a class with more nationalities than one could name. In this case, a universal approach to leadership styles seems reasonable. This is for two key reasons: The first is that ensuring one observes the often subtle manners and traditions of a particular culture requires a significant amount of effort, and attempting to do so for a class of 20 students would require more attention than in acceptable. Secondly, a relationship between lecturer and student is more distant, meaning the lecturer would often have to make a ‘best guess’ at the cultural background of the student before tailoring a response – a strategy that again would distract a lecturer from their teaching, and could result in offensive mistakes.

The opposite applies for intimate business relationships with different cultures, for example perhaps you are engaged in a consultancy project with a Japanese client, which means you have work closely with Japanese employees to produce your deliverables. In this case, developing a style of interaction suited for Japanese people is probably the most efficient and effective leadership method.

How to Develop a Uniform Leadership Style

A leadership style that ‘works’ across all cultures is one that is polite, respectful and sincere, as this will always be appreciated. Becoming a multicultural manager is about stripping back some of the traits that are actually culturally relevant to your home country, but not transferable to others.

Generally speaking, for British managers, this would involve:

• Refraining from using sarcasm, displaying cynicism,
• Not using  ‘edgy’ banter that may be taken the wrong way.
• Avoiding the use of colloquialisms unless you plan to put this in context for the listener. “As we would say in England, ‘The early bird catches the worm’.“‘
• Maintaining good body language, as this is more keenly observed by some cultures than others.

Developing a Tailored Leadership Style

In the case of the Japanese Consultancy Project, it would be worthwhile to research how westerners (or visitors from other countries) can best adapt to the often unforgiving Japanese traditions. (This site would be a good place to start). There are two levels of development of your behaviour to suit their culture; The first level is concerned with minimising faux pas, or social mistakes, which may instantly ruin the good rapport you have built up with them. The second level is about truly understanding how the other culture ‘works’, in order to sculpt your behaviour to go beyond the norm, to impress and inspire your multicultural teams.

The first level can be obtained by researching online or in books, guides written to help businessmen and travelers fit in with foreign cultures. The second level requires more forethought, and will be attained after you have built up a host of experiences with the culture in question.

Your Thoughts?

How do you set out in dealing with people from different cultures that you have never worked with before? How do you not only ‘get on’ with them, but lead them effectively? Leave your comments below!