Overcoming the barriers needed to unlock the potential of multicultural teams can be challenging, but it can also bring something new and unique to work groups, says Victoria Meli, Head of HR & Compensation Malta & Europe at Credorax Bank, and FHRD board member.

In the past years, we have seen a steady increase in multicultural teams in the workforce, attributed mostly to growing globalisation, and the increasing need for workforce talent and skills diversity.

Understanding cultural differences should be a prominent consideration for contemporary managers, as poor management will most certainly have negative outcomes.

Victoria Meli

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted many organisations to radically change their ways of working or even overhaul their business models. As a result, the spotlight now shines even brighter on managers, who play a pivotal role in helping organisations adapt and thrive.

The challenges posed by multicultural teams

Cultural diversity is reflected in the different values, language, ways of thinking, and behavioural patterns of team members.

Overcoming the barriers needed to unlock the potential of multicultural teams can be challenging, but it can also bring something new and unique to work groups. We view cultural diversity as a ‘positive’ that can facilitate many beneficial outcomes for businesses, as long as they provide inclusive environments and careful management of their people.

What are the benefits and challenges of multicultural teams?

Research on the key factors influencing the relationship between cultural diversity and positive outcomes (notably creativity and communication) has boomed in the last decade.

• Multicultural teams are more creative than homogenous teams.

• Managers particularly acknowledge the benefits of sharing unique cultural perspectives, and of team members to becoming more well-rounded individuals by learning from the diversity of others.

• Language barriers present a challenge to effective communication and often reduce colleagues’ levels of trust and expectations of successful work. This in turn leads to code-switching, that is, switching to one’s native language. Apart from the obvious pitfalls associated with lack of effective communication, this in itself can prove to be a personal challenge for some team members, who are made to feel like ‘outsiders’.

• Showing patience and sensitivity to culturally specific nuances of language is a key skill for people managers to better understand their team’s behaviour. For instance, different cultures may have different assumptions about why someone is quiet. Is it lack of language competence? Is staying silent a sign of respect to a speaker, rather than speaking up? Does it mean agreement or disagreement?

These are all realistic interpretations and very often, different people interpret the same thing differently. And so being sensitive while communicating is very important – an environment fostering diverse, different, unique contributors is more important than one boasting perfect communicators.

Embracing multicultural teams through cultural intelligence

Cultural intelligence, or the ability to successfully interact among diverse cultures, is one way of embracing multiculturalism in teams and is particularly important for global leaders.

Cultural intelligence can be developed through perspective-taking and suspending judgements about others until they have enough information to understand whether that person will ‘think, feel and behave’ in the way that their culture might suggest. While culture can suggest how someone may think or behave, other individual factors, such as personality, should be understood before making a judgement.

Showing patience and sensitivity to culturally specific nuances of language is a key skill for people managers to better understand their team’s behaviour

Greater cultural intelligence is linked to enhanced performance, greater job satisfaction and knowledge-sharing, among other outcomes.

Managers highlight the importance of flexibility in approaching cultural diversity in teams, being attentive to individual differences and working styles, rather than taking a one-size-fits-all approach to management.

COVID-19 and multicultural virtual teams

The global crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has seen a dramatic spike in remote collaborations and teams. Global virtual teams (GVTs) are those whose members are often culturally diverse and whose tasks are usually conducted internationally through communication technology, rather than face-to-face.

Given that GVTs are often made up of culturally diverse members, the opportunities they present are similar in nature to those of multicultural teams who work together in a fixed location. The cultural diversity of GVTs improves their effectiveness through providing a variety of perspectives, facilitating creativity and problem solving. Whereas homogenous teams are more likely to encounter ‘groupthink’ and narrow-mindedness, more diverse global teams are likely to consider alternative solutions to a problem.

Some challenges that multicultural teams face are unique to being virtual. Firstly, working in different time zones presents hurdles, particularly to maintaining a healthy work–life balance and a lot of the shared inferred knowledge is lost over online communication. Gestures, tone and intonation, so important to face-to face discussions, are lost when communicating through text or audio channels.

How to make the most of remote working

• Encourage the use of rich media, such as video-conferencing, where possible. This will allow team members to share feedback and their perspectives, and resolve differences quickly.

• When working across time zones, build awareness of the best time intervals for team members to meet. Allowing staff flexible working hours will not only allow them to collaborate more often with their colleagues but will also reduce the likelihood of them working overtime.

• Regularly bring the team together for catch-ups and hangouts. Be creative with this – as well as regular work meetings and project updates, create tasks, games and social sessions to allow the team to touch base and provide support for each other.

Multicultural teams are an increasingly common feature of modern working life and require deliberate and sensitive management. Employers should seek to understand their own workforces directly, being attentive to their unique make-up.