culturelink- culturally diverse teams

When do culturally diverse teams become high performing?

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

When do culturally diverse teams become high performing teams? Usually not immediately. Sometimes we need to slow-down in order to move faster.

Gender is only one factor of diversity

Gender is one factors of culturally diverse global teams. Men and women do have different ways of viewing the world, of living life and of doing business in general, but it is just one of the factors. Focusing on gender difference alone when striving for diversity does not create high-performing teams.

A 26-year-old male Brazilian software engineer who grew up on the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro has a fairly different perspective of the world compared to a 55-year-old female Swiss marketing manager who grew up in the centre of Zurich. But is it’s not their gender alone that creates the filter through which they view the world. In global, project-based teams where organisations bring culturally diverse people together (virtually) so that they can gain on creativity, capitalise on less travel expenses and spend less on expatriate assignments, this culturally diverse combination is very common.

Creating trust in culturally diverse teams differs

Try searching, ‘high performing teams’, and usually the results will come up with a list of attributes that includes trust, dealing with conflict, open communication, giving feedback and valuing diversity. The first item on that list needs to be valuing diversity. The way we deal with the previous listed factors differs widely whether we are in Mumbai, Frankfurt, Rio de Janeiro or Shanghai.

Building trust with a Chinese colleague requires a different skill-set to building trust with a colleague from Hamburg. Giving feedback to a Brazilian requires very different competencies to giving feedback to a Swiss colleague. Only once we understand what the different cultural values of our colleagues are can be begin to value them and only then can we begin to contemplate how to build trust with them or how to deal with conflict in the team.

Let’s look at an example. We’ll take our two colleagues above, the software engineer from Rio and the marketing manager from Zurich. What cultural values could these two team members have that might be causing them not to see eye-to-eye?

Destiny and Time

Firstly, let’s start with their relationship to destiny and time. We’ll insert the competency of giving feedback, just to give the example a bit more depth. These are components that every ‘high-performing’ team member in any project-based team is expected to deal with daily.

Generally, a German-speaking Swiss usually feels that they are the master of their own destiny. They will wake up in the morning and plan out their day hour-by-hour (well actually, let’s face it, if you’ve ever worked with the Swiss, you know it’s closer to nano-minute by nano-minute planning), and ensure that they do everything possible within that day to reach the objectives they have set themselves.

That is to say, they won’t have any qualms about telling you that they can only speak to you on the phone for 11 more minutes because in 12 minutes they need to make another phone call. This same person is also not reluctant to give her boss some feedback at her upcoming performance evaluation telling him that his delegation skills are not great and that’s why she’s had a difficult year.

Direct speech

Speaking directly and telling the truth, no matter how difficult it might be to hear, is what a German speaking Swiss generally feels is the best policy. Planning has always been an important attribute in Switzerland. Switzerland is a country of very little natural resources with only about ten percent of its land being arable due to all its lakes, mountains and rivers. Therefore, human capital is its prime resource and in the “pre-freezer age”, parent needed to plan well ahead to be able to feed their young. 

‘Let’s make sure we harvest all the fruit by mid-October so that we can preserve it for the winter and continue to feed our children.’ 

That is what a Swiss person would usually call a healthy relationship to time.

Now let’s look at our Brazilian software engineer. Our engineer generally believes that fate will ensure whether or not the container of goods expected to be delivered on Thursday afternoon actually arrives then or not. Brazil is such a plentiful nation where twelve months a year you can go out and harvest fruit or find scurrying animals in the forest who can provide food.

The forest doesn’t freeze over so there isn’t that much need to plan far in advance. Life will work itself out. Plus let’s not forget the very unstable economy that the Brazilians have had to deal with this last century. In the 1990s they had inflation percentages of 3 to 4 digits. 

‘Whatever I have in my pockets today won’t be worth anything tomorrow, so why save it, how can I possibly plan for tomorrow? I live for today and God willing, things will go well.’ 

That went very well, thanks be to God!

A couple of years ago around a dinner table following a tedious and arduous seminar, a Brazilian colleague of mine remarked with a big smile on her face, ‘That went well, thanks be to God.’ The non-Brazilian colleague sitting with us told her quite abruptly, ‘It had nothing to do with God, we planned well.’ That did not go down very well.

‘Leave it to Batman’

Filipinos tend to use the term ‘Bahala Na’‘What will be will be’, or more traditionally, ‘Leave it to God’. Recently a Filipino in one of my workshops told me that young Filipinos today have started to give the credit to Batman, ‘Bahala na si Batman’ (leave it up to Batman). ‘Sure, Mum, I’ll be home by midnight…, if Batman wills it’.

And when it comes to giving negative feedback, well, let’s say that the Brazilians are generally far more indirect than the German-speaking Swiss at expressing negative opinions. Brazilians tend to want to save face, theirs and the people they are speaking to. Speaking indirectly keeps the harmony, the good relationship and ensures nobody is offended. That doesn’t mean they don’t give feedback, but it means you need to learn to understand it when they give it.

When you ask for feedback in culturally diverse teams you need to know how to understand it

I recollect a number of times while working in Brazil, where I had asked my team members to read over some documents to let me know if any errors had been made. Over a two-year span and many long documents, my Brazilian colleagues had not mentioned a single word to change. My French colleagues having read the same documents later on made a million amendments… What I hadn’t understood was the Brazilian way of giving feedback.

Conclusion – ask questions

So what happens when a Swiss person is working on a project team with a Brazilian or a Filipino? How can they give feedback that will not be taken as face-losing criticism? How do they deal with conflict and build trust and accountability?

So, if you ask, “Is the delivery arriving on Thursday?” and the answer is related to fate, make sure you ask many open-ended questions to figure out what the real challenges are that the team might be facing.

A ‘Culturally Diverse High Performing Team needs to understand what the cultural values of its team members are and only then can each member start to see each situation through the perspective of the other team members. And only then can the team envisage creating its own ‘third culture’ or team charter to which it will function.

Posted in Culturally Diverse Teams, Culturally Diverse Teams, Intercultural Communication, Multicultural Teams and tagged , , , .

Tania Pellegrini is an intercultural trainer who assists multicultural teams reach their desired goals by building a culture that creates team spirit, energy, motivation and trust.