Intercultural and Global Teams

Too often in organisations, teams are teams in name only. Rarely have we seen the kind of synergy and performance that one might observe watching a symphony orchestra.

Our goal in working with teams is to help them generate results through establishing clear direction and performance criteria, building trust, creating alignment and accountability, and dealing with intercultural and interpersonal differences.

Our approach has several features.

1. Transforming team effectiveness takes time. A three-day workshop can do great things, but unless there is consistent follow through, the team will likely relapse. We care about breakthrough and sustainable improvements in performance.
2. There are certain critical conversations that teams are required to have.  The so-called "Eight Conversations of a Team“ can be difficult, and we enable teams to have them.
3. We focus on relationship dynamics: interpersonal issues and conflict.
4. Diversity and difference matter. Globalisation means global teams, and global teams can necessitate fundamentally different ways of communicating and deciding. Often, a ‘global leadership role’ simply means a well-stamped passport: lack of cultural self-knowledge, lack of understanding of other cultural norms in business decision making, and lack of embodied skills in working through the conflicts that arise from these differences can have extreme consequences for team performance.

The most sophisticated approaches to leadership development embed this type of education in their programmes. In addition, a high-performing team (especially a new team) will do this work ‘up-front’ before cultural differences and conflicts impair performance and relationships.

The literature on this subject is vast, but we have highlighted a few excellent books and articles to provide a ‘primer’ for leaders and their teams with new global roles.