Diversity Central - Tips and Techniques

Executive Summary

"How can very different individuals work seamlessly together as part of a team?" That's the question in today's highly interconnected and diverse organizational world.

This article offers two tools to help any team member or leader of a complex project understand individual differences that can affect a team and move toward effective working relationships.

Organizations face complex challenges; from individualized customer expectations to environmental, humanistic and profit issues. Therefore they deploy more complex resources e.g. technological systems, geographical dispersed locations and more diverse teams.

Imagine the following. It's been a great start to the week. Your boss just declared you the project lead for the upcoming implementation of the new software version for the whole company. You plan to have a drink with friends tonight to celebrate.

As you prepare to leave for the day, you begin to think more about the enormity of your task. You will be leading a project team with members from different countries, departments, ages, gender and races. What a big challenge! You remember how a previous project lead struggled with the cross-cultural team when the team members did not work effectively together. The ineffectiveness led to miscommunication, frustration, costs were 20 percent higher and the implementation was delayed by 6 months (25 percent). You realize that you will need to create a smoothly working team to successfully implement this project. Your success is dependent on the team's success.

Tonight you will celebrate with friends. Tomorrow you will find a way to face the challenges ahead.

Are you in similar situations? A while ago, I was. I led a cross-cultural project team for a major technology company.

There were misunderstandings, unmet expectations and conflicts that led to delays in service delivery, missed deadlines, increased costs and stressed team members.

I observed that team members were not aware of how others think about basic concepts such as time, focus on individuals or groups, competition and cooperation, technology and other issues. When I helped team members increase their awareness of their different concepts and make the difference transparent, I learned that teams works more effectively. Misunderstandings and conflict did not vanish fully but team members learned to deal with misunderstandings and conflict constructively. Along with practical learning, I also learned about concepts and tools that help increase awareness and bridge differences.

Here I want to share two tools that can help you in similar projects. The first tool is focused on creating awareness in individuals while the second tool targets to bring this awareness into the team.

A Tool for Creating Self-Awareness

Take some time and think about what a smoothly running project looks like for you. Become aware of your own conceptions. Here are some questions(1) to consider:

This list of questions is by no means exhaustive. You can adapt it to your needs according to which aspects are crucial for the success of the project.

There are no right or wrong answers to these questions. Your attitude will shine through in your behavior. I invite you to be honest with yourself. Additionally, with your honesty you set an example for all team members. It helps you build trust within the team. If you have become aware that you have a strong tendency in one of the aspects, share that with the team. Ask them how they think it might help in the team work and how it might hinder the teamwork. Taking the risk to receive feedback from your team members builds trust between you and the team members.

A Tool for Creating Team Awareness

When you are aware of your tendencies, how do you learn about the tendencies of your team members? And how do they learn about each other's tendencies? Can you learn about each other within your work meetings and team interactions?

In group development theory, there exists a check-in for every group meeting. The check-in is an allocated amount of time in which team members share what is on their minds. It serves the purpose that every team member is in the moment and other concerns are not distracting them. For our purpose, I suggest a variant of a check-in. In each team meeting spend some time to invite team members to think about their attitude toward one or two of the aspects listed in the questions above. Then ask them to share their attitude. Start to record which attitudes are represented in your team. You can easily build a 'Cultural Team Composition' by having team members place themselves (e.g. they can use dots to place themselves along each of the lines) on the Cultural Team Composition.

The 'Cultural Team Composition' is a wheel with diameters that represent dimensions such as time, communication, technology. The endpoints of the diameters represent polarities to show the different attitudes individuals might have on these dimensions.

Note: the dots here are examples where team members can place themselves. If you have different teams working together, use different colored dots to show how the teams align or differ.

You can start with the list of aspects above. Additionally, explore with the team which aspects are really crucial for their work together. Question deeper when members think aspects are not crucial. You want to make sure the team is not avoiding a conversation around that dimension because they differ on this dimension.

The team composition will indicate to you and all team members where attitudes differ. This shows where misunderstandings and conflict are more likely. All team members can use this understanding in their interactions with each other and as a reference when the road gets rough. They can use a variation of the questions above to explore where the team members are on the crucial dimensions.

The advantage with the approach of learning about each other's attitudes over time is that it naturally integrates into the work process. This specifically helps with members who or do not trust a group and need time to integrate and share in a group.

The project is completed. Six weeks into the project you had introduced and deployed the 'Cultural Team Composition' tool. The cooperation between team members went through some rocky strikes as all learned about the different attitudes in the team. After a few months you had noticed that communication became more effective and tasks started to be completed on time and within costs. In the last 6 months you were able to save some time and money so the project was completed in time and under budget. And the biggest success, your team members want to work with you and each other again on a project. Tonight is the night to celebrate this accomplishment with the team.

(1) Adapted from Cultural Orientations Framework in Rosinski, P. Coaching across cultures, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London, England

(2) Deduction: logical process in which a conclusion drawn from a set of premises contains no more information than the premises taken collectively; Induction: logical process in which a conclusion is proposed that contains more information than the observations or experience on which it is based.

(3) Analysis: separating of any material or abstract entity into its constituent elements; Synthesis: combining of the constituent elements of separate material or abstract entities into a single or unified entity

References: Rosinski, P. Coaching across cultures, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London, England Adapted from Cultural Orientations Framework in Rosinski, P. Coaching across cultures, Nicholas Brealey Publishing, London, England

Turning cultural differences into a team's assets

Executive Summary

A Tool for Creating Self-Awareness

A Tool for Creating Team Awareness