Working in multi-cultural environments requires the project leader to appreciate that things will be done, seen and understood differently. Project leaders need to be curious, not shocked, and should demonstrate interest in finding out and understanding different people's world views. They need to respect values leading to behaviors alien to them, but important to the individuals and society to which they belong. Assuming things will be done 'our way' only pushes differences underground so that they become embedded blockages. This easily creates an atmosphere of winners and losers which can prejudice effective delivery.
For teams to work effectively, the roles and responsibilities of the leader and team members, both individually and collectively, must always be agreed upon. If the team is composed of people from different cultures, the expectations of leadership and membership differ. Clarifying the degrees of equality, responsibility and accountability expected of the leader and members is fundamental. So team start-up and team building is vital for success. The activities well known in team-building events will be just as important, but extra dimensions need to be added for international teams. There are three dimensions that have to be orchestrated to achieve high performance:
- ability to discuss and respect established ways of working
- awareness of own cultural programming
- awareness of others' cultural programming; ee have several layers of cultural programming:
- family, education, linguistic, gender, social class
- regional, religious and ethnic
- professional, organizational and leader/member
No matter from what culture is, the Company it will always target the revenue and growth and it will always have good points and bad points. The difference between companies is the environment created by (and for) the people.
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