Building High-Performing Multi-Cultural Teams

The Challenge:  The EMEA People Development team recognised that their multi-cultural teams were certainly creative but often faced a unique set of challenges when setting norms for how they would solve problems, deal with conflict, and spend their time and resources.

They especially recognised that some teams struggled with different expectations for respecting hierarchy, had different interpretations about the level of commitment and/or agreement reached in a decision or how to communicate most effectively via email, IM and video-conferencing.

Babel was asked to provide practical workshops and concrete solutions to assist with these abstract problems and to ensure their teams performed optimally.

Our Solution:  Our practical workshops have been designed to identify the keys to understanding each other’s different cultural values, preferred approaches in business and how these impact on one another; how to engender collaborative working; actions that build trust in their team; and communicating effectively using ‘global’ English.

At the end of each workshop, teams are challenged to produce their own Team Charter and agree on guidelines for how they will conduct their business. The Team Charter reflects the “best practices” that exist in the team. It also clarifies actions and roles and lessens confusion and mixed expectations, all of which are sources of conflict.

Each workshop is tailored, taking into account the mix of different cultural groups in the team.