Madrid Fusión is a great Gastro Festival to try “Fusion Food” that mixes the best aspects from different cuisines.
Fusion teams is about mixing the best work aspects from different cultures to make multicultural teams more effective.
——————————–
We read an excellent article about this in Harvard Business Review and decided to summarise the key points and add our own training experiences training Multicultural Teams in Spain and in Europe.
Multicultural teams are usually dominated by one cultural group. Which is usually the cultural group of the head office and/or where the company was founded. This is often the first barrier to a multicultural team being truly effective but not always explicitly mentioned.
Here at The Practice Office Group we use the 4Rs approach when training multicultural teams to be more effective.
The 4R (Recognition, Respect, Reconciliation and Realization) was developed by leading expert Fons Trompenaars for multicultural teams to use the best cultural aspects of each team member to help the team be more effective.
Fusion Teams overcome the problems of working in multicultural teams where one cultural group dominates by:
-
working in small sub groups where informal conversations help to get input from quiet team members before collaborating in a large group.
-
working in small sub groups to build trust and respect before collaborating in a large group.
-
brainstorming, discussing and agreeing as a team “team norms” for working together that respect cultural differences
-
becoming more aware of cultural differences and how to use these to the teams advantage
-
becoming more curious and interested in each other´s cultures
Key Point: In our training experience multicultural teams that spend more time getting to know each other at the beginning to build trust, respect and improve communication overcome future challenges more effectively as a team.
—————————-
Learn more about our “Managing Multicultural Teams” training program at The Practice Office Group.
Read our blog post: Project Management: Anglosaxons vs. The Spanish
—————————-
Good advice, very practical. Indeed, most of the time the “dominant culture” in a team is unspoken and taken for granted. Much better to make it explicit so that it can be dealt with in a positive, constructive way.
From my experience usually the first element that can go wrong is the lack of recognition, so it was interesting to see that Fons Trompenaars makes it the first of the 4R’s. It’s all too easy to assume that because someone is “in” the organization they are also “in” the dominant culture (of the country and of the company).
Pingback: Project Management: Anglo Saxons vs. The Spanish « International Business Skills (Business English & Business Skills)
Pingback: Pitfalls when going global: Business Culture, the confusion between values and practices « International Business Skills (Business English & Business Skills)
Pingback: Can virtual multicultural teams outperform teams where team members work side by side? « International Business Skills (Business English & Business Skills)
Pingback: How Can virtual multicultural teams outperform teams that work side by side? « International Business Skills (Business English & Business Skills)
Pingback: Equipos virtuales y multiculturales – un caso de buen rendimiento « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: Learning about the Business Cultures of different countries thanks to the CIA « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: How we use our mobile phones changes between cultures and countries « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: Cultural Intelligence: How we talk about Cultural Differences and Similarities is important « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: MBI tool – Mapping, Bridging, Integrating: How to increase your Intercultural Effectiveness « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: Harvard´s Negotiaton model is missing “cultural intelligence” « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)
Pingback: Nike case study: global TEAM management– 6 simple rules « International Business Skills (Business English, Business Skills and Intercultural Communication)