Comments on: Can you lead multicultural groups spread around the world?

By: catarinaalexon

catarinaalexon — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:10:04 +0000

Correct. But you have to do that even when groups are of the same nationality and working in the same office.

By: nittinj

nittinj — Thu, 07 Jun 2012 11:03:14 +0000

I think in addition to traits defined above usually patience, tolerance and perseverance are key skills required to lead a multicultural team. A leader has to understand and overcome inhibitions, reservations and prejudices of his team members in order to truly engage them and drive them towards a common goal.

By: catarinaalexon

catarinaalexon — Fri, 25 May 2012 07:34:18 +0000

True Mika and it gets more complicated when members of the team are of different nationalities spread around the world.

By: Mika Castro

Mika Castro — Fri, 25 May 2012 05:10:10 +0000

Leadership is a very important role and at the same time hard. Team leaders must be perfectly serve fair. My recent post יועצת שינה

By: catarinaalexon

catarinaalexon — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:38:42 +0000

Glad you like my article, Kay. Agree with you about the problem of inheriting people for your team. One of the worst is dealing with someone that complicates everything. It's the same phenomena that you find on social media when a person writes a comment that is as long as a book. You simply haven't got time to read the long "books" such people send saying very little. Another issue is when they only concentrate on their own interest. You have to pay team members very well but beware so that it doesn't become a company run for its employers only.

Haven't done this kind of work from Sweden. Did it mainly when I lived in London, Britain, between 1990 and 2005.

By: catarinaalexon

catarinaalexon — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:23:27 +0000

Glad you like my article, Bethany. Agree with you completely that communication has to be simplified so that it flows easily. Too much bureaucracy complicate and could even have a detrimental affect on results.

By: catarinaalexon

catarinaalexon — Wed, 23 May 2012 08:21:02 +0000

Good points Jeri.

By: JeriWB

JeriWB — Wed, 23 May 2012 00:56:33 +0000

As a secondary educator, I have a love hate relationship with groupwork. It's obviously a huge aspect of many professions, and yet public education does so little to provide students with a solid foundation in how to effectively tackle group tasks. I'll just chalk that up to one more area that our school system needs to improve in, but such things can't be assessed on standardized tests. My recent post Travel Destination: The Biltmore Estate in Asheville, NC

By: projectwhitespace

projectwhitespace — Tue, 22 May 2012 23:08:53 +0000

Catarina--great post. At work, I have to work on a geographically dispersed team. Needing lots of encouragement (as you say) is definitely to be avoided, as my own experience shows, there really isn't time for that. One of the things I have a problem with doesn't come down to culture, though. It's the interface we use to share documents and ideas. It's so clunky, and just to post one document makes us end up sending three emails to everyone on the team. I hate it. Luckily, so far, we haven't had any cultural issues. We often meet face to face, so I'm thinking that makes a difference. But I would say the distance for sure makes it more difficult. My recent post Three Great Reasons to Attend Bloggy Bootcamp

By: honolulukay

honolulukay — Tue, 22 May 2012 21:03:45 +0000

This is a terrific article, and incredibly relevant in today’s working world. There is an elephant hiding in the corner of this room, however; that would be the concept of choosing your team members wisely.

It would be great to be able to choose your team members, but this is often a luxury that we don’t get. In a multi-cultural and geographically diverse venture, you often have to mesh already established partnerships to work toward a common goal. Most teams have members with different styles of operating and, occasionally, hidden agendas. At best these few people suck valuable energy that should be spent on moving forward rather than placating them or trying to drag them back on the same page with the rest of the group.

I would love to hear what Ann Edmondson has to say about working with teams that have been randomly assigned. And I would love to hear Catarina’s take on this subject since this problem undoubtedly comes up in Sweden, where there are many European countries working in close proximity, as opposed to the US, where we tend to be more isolationistic. (Is that a real word?)

Kay in Hawaii