How to determine team composition and address cultural diversity in a multinational team?

With the penetration of most sophisticated technology into every industry, the world has become a global village and this has provided many companies an opportunity to expand their services internationally. However, cultural diversity at a workspace is one of the primary hurdles that the establishments need to overcome. Because as the firms grow large, the number of cross-national teams is likely to increase and so are the complexities associated with these teams. Also keeping the fact in mind that, so far projects that sizes from small and mediocre to huge, have failed majorly due to miscommunication rather than other factors, companies are now planning to lay more emphasis on cultural management in terms of training & support. They believe that this support not only helps the team members to work effectively with people who do not share their culture and nationality, but it also prepares the intercultural teams to face unpredictabilities and urgent tasks with confidence.

The concept of multinational business has brought in a plethora of changes at the workplace and the burgeoning cross-functional teams and cross-border teams are definitely one among them. Especially, virtual teaming has traversed a lot from ideation to reality, and now with free emailing, calling, and video conferencing sources, these collaborative workforces stood as an ideal model. The cross-border teams play a pivotal role in any company’s success as they come with a wealth of knowledge about various products & markets and offer priceless problem-solving techniques and robust customer services round the clock. Due to this reason, for any conglomerate, raising revenue on a global scale heavily relies on how it manages its transnational teams.

Albeit creating a team with top-notch performance, when individuals with cultural diversity and ethnic variation come together to contribute their part towards better productivity, is now on-demand in MNC environment, gaining control over the management of global business teams is, easier said than done since the intercultural teams are characterized by dissimilarities rather than similarities. Famous Canadian Anthropologist Kalervo Oberg (1901-73) stated that when individuals introduced to the new culture, they experience a host of emotions.

To deal with these Titanic proportions, good leadership is a key element that drives the team towards excellence. The managers and other higher echelons in the team should be able to communicate clearly with people from various social and economic backgrounds. This framework will foster empathy and replace the animosity with a warm environment that spurs the interaction.

Before forming the virtual teams, the HR department and IT management should assess and choose the right technologies to communicate. This will help conquer the cultural barriers and turn challenges into opportunities. However, people management is equally important (in fact it is more equal) as virtual teaming is 80 percent of people and 20 percent of technology.

To determine team composition, the companies need to have a careful look at the screening and hiring process as recruiting the people with right propensities is winning the half-battle. The team leaders should set up specific goals (which are of course not superficial) for all the team members and motivate them towards achieving them on time. In addition, a sense of belongingness, commitment, and accountability need to inculcate among the peers and subordinates, as these qualities permeate positive team spirit and significantly improve the performance of remote brethren. On the other hand, lack of trust is the biggest breakdown.

As far as communication is concerned, the team management should initiate a communication protocol and make sure that it would be a best practice to use lingua franca (usually English) and stay away from any esoteric mentionings. The non-native speakers must be encouraged to shed out their inhibitions and take an active part rather than being passive listeners. Thus, the work moves forward and the employees get a chance to upgrade their technical acumen and achieve professional expertise.

Acknowledgment and reinforcement are two practices that the team leaders need to add to their ledger. That means when the manager assigns work to an employee, he/she should respond back by saying they received the assignment and about to start the work accordingly. Likewise, post-meeting, the managers should mail the minutes to all the teammates who had participated in the meet.