Multicultural experience no doubt
influences team effectiveness. Teams
with more members who exhibit
cultural intelligence are more likely to
engage in team processes that
preserve cultural differences.
Cultural intelligence is an individual's
ability to deal effectively in situations
characterized by cultural diversity
(Earley & Ang, 2003). There is not
enough research yet to know why
some people have higher CQ than
others.
† You have listed four strategies
for managing these challenges. Can
you elaborate on each one of them?
Four Strategies
The most successful teams and
managers we Interviewed used four
strategies for dealing with these
challenges: adaptation
(acknowledging cultural gaps openly
and working around them), structural
intervention (changing the shape of
the team), managerial intervention
(setting norms early or bringing in a
higher-level manager), and exit
(removing a team member when other
options have failed). There is no one
right way to deal with a particular
kind of multicultural problem;
identifying the type of challenge is
only the first step. The more crucial
step is assessing the circumstances
or "enabling situational conditions"
under which the team is working. For
example, does the project allow any
flexibility for change, or do deadlines
make that impossible? Are there
additional resources available that
might be tapped? Is the team
permanent or temporary? Does the
team's manager have the autonomy to
make a decision about changing the
team in some way? Once the
situational conditions have been
analyzed, the team's leader can
identify an appropriate response. (See
the exhibit Identifying the Right
Strategy)
Adaptation
Some teams find ways to work with or
around the challenges they face,
adapting practices or attitudes without
making changes to the group's
membership or assignments.
Adaptation works when team
Interview 5
members are willing to acknowledge
and name their cultural differences
and to assume responsibility for
figuring out how to live with them. It's
often the best possible approach to a
problem, because it typically involves
less managerial time than other
strategies; and because team members
participate in solving the problem
themselves, they learn from the
process. When team members have
this mind-set, they can be creative
about protecting their own substantive
differences while acceding to the
processes of others.
Structural Intervention
A structural intervention is a
deliberate reorganization or
reassignment designed to reduce
interpersonal friction or to remove a
source of conflict for one or more
groups. This approach can be
extremely effective when obvious
subgroups demarcate the team (for
example, headquarters versus
national subsidiaries) or if team
members are proud, defensive,
threatened, or clinging to negative
stereotypes of one another.
Another structural intervention
might be to create smaller working
groups of mixed cultures or mixed
corporate identities in order to get an
information that is not forthcoming
from the team as a whole. The
manager of the team that was
evaluating retail opportunities in
Japan used this approach. When she
realized that the female Japanese
consultants would not participate if
the group got large, or if their male
superior was present, she broke the
team up into smaller groups to try to
solve problems. She used this
technique repeatedly and made a
point of changing the subgroups'
membership each time so that team
members got to know and respect
everyone else on the team.
