Management is an art. Intercultural management, a high-flying discipline.

You have always travelled a lot. You speak several languages. You have had foreign colleagues, or maybe you have even been an expatriate. You are aware of the cultural differences between people. You have experienced the richness and abundance of a multinational team, but also the clumsiness, pitfalls or disagreements that multiply when you evolve in a multicultural context.
So far, so good. You’re a little, a lot of 4×4…
Then comes the day when you have to take the lead of one of these multicultural teams and add a challenge to your already long list of challenges: Achieve your goals by making the most of these diversities.

“The potential for misalignment or different expectations goes up exponentially when you have people coming from different cultural backgrounds.”

David Livermore, Cultural Intelligence Center

 

Quicksand

Let’s first look at the quicksand under our feet:
Depending on the culture we are imbued with, our frames of reference differ and the variables are very numerous. The ones that come to mind first are obvious: time and space. These perceptions can vary extremely from one culture to another. Where a delay of 15 minutes is acceptable, or even normal, it becomes insulting to one of the participants. Where it is desirable to stay close to the other person, or even to touch him when you talk to him, other cultures protect their bodies in an invisible bubble of 1.50 m that the other must not invade under any circumstances. For one, it is confusing to leave blanks between exchanges in a conversation, while the other will simply stop communicating and bounce over his or her remarks.
Our communication is more or less verbal, more or less direct too, tinged with more or less body language. Then, the notions of loyalty, authority or respect come into play and become distorted. The relationship to money manifests itself in all its forms, as well as interpersonal relationships that make, or not, distinctions between men and women, colleagues and friends, alumni and juniors…. And when we meet and greet each other, what do we say to each other? Do we touch each other or don’t we touch each other?
Enough to get lost and make mistakes easily.

 

Managing a multicultural team: it’s possible and it’s galvanizing!

The good news is that there are several answers to the problem and that one of them is good, and easy to implement.

1. Learning the subtleties of all the cultures of the people who make up your teams: effective no doubt, but so laborious…
2. Impose your own culture, your references, your rules. After all, you’re the boss!
3. Use the human, social and managerial levers at your disposal to avoid unnecessarily difficult situations

I could list others, having tried many things when I was supervising, as a Dutch manager, a Tunisian who wore the veil, a Laotian, a Senegalese, a Jew from Israel and a man from Berrichon who worked on the same set.

 

Simple and effective tools

If you think the third option is the most viable, I invite you to discover some of these solutions whose benefits I have been able to take advantage of in the very short term:

• Set rules and goals and communicate them clearly.
• Give everyone a role and communicate them clearly.

This is true for the management of all teams, but for multiculturalists, this advice becomes vital!

 

Flexibility, listening and clarity will be your managerial keys

• Adapt. Calibrate words and messages, as well as when you convey them. Be observant, open and get rid of any judgment. This will avoid tragedies at first glance.
• Identify the stereotypes you know and start by carefully NOT TAKING THEM AS A STARTING POINT. Instead, focus on the individual.
• Adjust the distribution of tasks and responsibilities in your team based on sensitivities. Feel free to move your pawns around the board.
• If understanding or understanding is not good, explain. If it remains bad, arbitrate. And if it’s inextricable, have the GM or the president arbitrate. Consensus and discussion must have a boundary.
• De-escalate and depersonalize, in case of conflict or misunderstanding. Cultural differences are the culprits, not the people involved. They have a good back, cultural differences, go for it.
• Take the time and give the time. The secret to a successful multicultural emulsion also lies in a slightly slower setting.
• Prohibit any mockery of a particular habit, accent or gesture, and encourage those who have a different way of functioning to respect it while making it evolve to their context and objectives.
• Break the ice regularly. Do teambuilding in small, repeated doses. Ignorance fertilizes disagreement: it is therefore necessary to promote a good knowledge of the members of the multicultural team.
• Reread the Toltec principles and, if you had to remember only one: do not assume anything. Reformulate and have them reworded to limit the size and number of misunderstandings.
• Finally, remember another Toltec principle: that your word be impeccable. Neutral language and neutral subjects, because the multicultural terrain is quickly slippery….
• Respect differences, even if you don’t understand them. Rituals, religions, calendars and other traditions are thick-skinned and sometimes so deeply ingrained that it is useless to fight them, and virtuous to embrace them as wealth.
• Make an effort to be open. It’s your team. She is as she is. Without your opening, the magic of mixing won’t work.

Since the whole world is our playground, the multicultural problem has not finished infiltrating the economic fabric ever further. This is why I urge you to take advantage of this opportunity, if it is given to you, to supervise various personalities and to feed on them on a daily basis.

Philine Klop
Business Support