E. Managing Uncertainty
Uncertainty is defined as “a cognitive response and refers to the inability to predict or explain the behavior of others.” [J2] Personality of team members like degree of empathy, emotional reaction and interest towards other cultures influence how they manage uncertainty. The level of uncertainty avoidance varies between different cultures. American culture is low on uncertainty avoidance compared to Russian culture. According to [J1], when people have a high level of uncertainty, their ability to understand another person’s message is decreased and they face a hindrance to predict the other person’s behavior perfectly. Increasing anxiety follows this high level of uncertainty. [J4] To understand effective communication
…show more content…
When people meet strangers having unfamiliar culture, uncertainty is higher. [J4] When a team has just started, uncertainty is strongly related to communication with others, especially people who came from different cultures. So, managing uncertainty is a crucial process for team building. While people do not express any inconvenience when they have a conversation with people having the same culture, they show difficulty of conversation due to higher uncertainty with strangers from different cultures. [J4] When a team is able to minimize misunderstandings, the team will have effective …show more content…
Note that many of these skills could be adversely affected by having multiple cultures on a team. For instance cultural communication issues can negatively impact common purpose, quantifiable clearly defined goals, role clarity, and mature communication.
Siakas and Siakas [M10] suggest that effective teams go through a number of steps in moving towards being more effective. The second step is becoming aware of “cross-cultural and multi-disciplinary characteristics”, which they say is essential for multi-cultural teams.
Butler and Zander [M2] formulate a model for multicultural team effectiveness based on Composition, Communication, Conflict, and Creativity. Their model is useful but does not fully take into account past experience and is based on current activities that are used by the team members, rather than past experience from intercultural orientation. Although they do say that the cultural background of team members can positively impact the team 's
Team member will sometime become defensiveness, guilt, project, misreading of body language, tone and other nonverbal communication. Power struggles in the team (two chief) not enough Indians. Some team member could bias which include stereotyping. Stereotyping is the most common. Experience of individual members on the team can effect communication. Cultural different can effect team communication.
Communication, conflict resolution and geographical issues play an important role in enabling team leaders to lead effectively. Kouzes and Posner (2012) outline that good communication allows members of both virtual and non-virtual teams and their leader to exchange ideas that foster collaboration among members. This actually enables team leaders to resolve conflicts that often arise from conflicting ideas, and hence this enhances the development and adoption of solutions to geographical issues like cultural conflicts. A team with good communication, limited conflict and a few issues can excel in nearly every sector of the global economy.
Hyun, Jane. “Leadership Principles for Capitalizing on Culturally Diverse Teams: The Bamboo Ceiling Revisited.” Leader to Leader. 16 Mar. 2012: 14-19. Web. 2 Apr. 2014 < http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ltl.20017/abstract >
One of the many problems I have discussed when taking undergraduate business classes was cultural teamwork barriers. This problem will arise in almost any work place because different culture has different way of doing certain things. Of course, this issue doesn’t arise just in the work place. During my four-years in college, when I was doing team group projects, this issue will cause frustration among members as well. The most difficult part of cultural teamwork is getting the other person to accept your ideas or you accepting their ideas instead. The truth is, teamwork is necessary if you want to succeed in the working world. During my four years in college, I was able to accumulate more team collaboration skills. This is due to the fact that I am an international student and sometimes my ideas are very different than western business ideas. And in order for me to succeed in team work, I had to collaborate with different students and learn to accept their ideas. However, this does not mean I’ve given up on my ideas; I will present my ideas and share it with other team members. Also, I will use evidence to support my ideas which gives other members confidence to support my way of thinking. I believe I am the mediator type leader in which I will help solve problems among team members and get everyone to accept each other’s
A considerable amount of literature has been published on teams and teamwork. These studies ..
Most of the organizations, especially big and successful companies, are driven by different teams. Teams and groups of people lead diverse divisions, operate across distinct functions, product lines or offer to customers various services. It doesn’t matter in which sector, a company is active in, if in healthcare, in sports, in physics, or in business field, the good teamwork has an essential value to the end results of each the organization. The teamwork is important for the prosperity of a company, as it brings together the strength that each individual in the group has, so that the final work of the team is greater and more valuable than the sum of the works of each individual separately. To a great extent, teams fulfill the goals of the
Effective teams must be developed, not just formed. A group is not a team. Members of a group may sometimes work together, but members of a team always work together. The team need not all be in the same place to be working together. “With a group, the whole is often equal to or less than the sum of its parts; with a team, the whole is always greater” (Oakley, Brent, Felder and Elhajj, 2004). A team, as defined above, has certain characteristics that make it effective. Not all of these traits are present when a team is in the forming stage. Tea...
It was very interesting the multicultural teams concept in the lecture and seminar. Even I came across with multicultural team but I haven’t recognize our culture difference and never realized that differences in culture causes division and conflicts between member of team. Culture is primarily formed in the environment of individual childhood home and this point out those individuals brings their preferences culture to the team. This has consequence on how individuals view each other’s, leaders, decision making and communication. (Guilherme,
Cultural diversity is an essential piece of the team-building puzzle. As stated earlier, a heterogeneous team usually equals a successful team. A culturally diverse team brings the obvious cultural differences in language, dress and traditions to the table. In addition, less tangible characteristic such as moral values are equally, if not more important. These different methodologies and teachings help influence the team's direction. Persons of Western culture will have a different set of beliefs and methodologies from those of Middle Eastern or Eastern ethnicity. When team members take the time to learn and understand each culture's moral value, the result is a strong team foundation. High performance teams take and incorporate these cultural differences and use these different beliefs and values to attain the team goal.
The use of culturally diverse business teams is an increasingly common situation in today’s world; especially as the world continues to become a global village. Leveraging on the cultural diverse backgrounds and experiences of members of such teams can be a source of improved performance which can ultimately reflect a competitive advantage in the business market. As Symons and Stenzel (2007) aptly state, “culturally diverse teams are more likely to engage in innovative `out-of-the-box' thinking, given their different life experiences in diverse social environments.” Another pointer to suggest that multicultural teams tend to be a source of competitive advantage in business is found in the paper by Di Stefano and Maznevski (2000) where they state that “multicultural teams have an enormous wealth of material with which to create innovative approaches to complex organizational challenges.” They furthermore state that “today’s business cannot flourish without the creative value afforded by high performing global teams.”
When we think of the word team, individually many different ideas may come to mind about what a team really is. Some may think of an NFL team (Tennessee Titans), an NBA team (Sacramento Kings), or a NASA astronaut team with such pioneers as Edwin Aldrin, Jr. and Neil Armstrong as members. You might even think of the U.S. Navy, Air Force, Army, Coast Guard, or Marines as teams. In fact they all are, and they have a great deal in common as teams. However, for the purposes of this paper I will examine the characteristics of work teams, as they apply to organizations and I will supply answers to the following questions: What is a team? Where did the team concept come from? What are the types of teams? What are the advantages and disadvantages of having teams in organizations? What does it take to make a team effective?
Our BSP (Business Plan project) group consists of seven people, all of which are from different countries and therefore have different cultures. This results in many different opinions and methods of dealing with problems in different ways, which contributes heavily to well balanced team work.
Many businesses place an emphasis on the importance of teamwork. A good team consists of people with different skills, abilities and characters. A successful team is able to blend these differences together to enable the organisation to achieve its desired objectives.
Communication is the key to organization for these companies and leaders depend largely on its effectiveness. In one study of cross cultural communication, managers were asked to think of seven problems before the meeting to make the communication effective (Barriers of Cross Cultural Communication in Multinational Firms). But, how do people understand each other when they do not share the same culture? To answer this question we must first understand cross cultural management. This type of management focuses on the behavior of people working together as a group ...
All this may seem a little overwhelming and tiresome to some or to all, but do be assured it is not as hard as it seems. Just keep in mind that you have to embrace the differences between all the demographic characteristics and the culturally diverse team members that make up your group. This with an open mind, and a willingness to cooperate, compromise, and the pleasure to collaborate will harvest many great results and have the organization reaping the many great benefits along with a great top of the line fueled to the rim high performance team.