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While working in a project execution with members with multi cultural diversity, various problems arise including the language, behaviour,notions etc To take the project to a successfull conclusion, all these differences has to be levelled among the team members. Many of us will have a lot stories and experiences in this aspect.
People below have given some good answers, and I agree with them. I would like to share something that is based on my experience in managing different nationality people (Indian, US, and Chinese). Important thing while managing multi-cultural team members, you need to consider the cultural differences when you communicate with people. Usually a proverb, or a joke is viewed differently by asians which will create misundenderstandings. As a manager you need to create an environment to get people open up and raise their concerns, ideas and suggestions. Until you establish good rapport, you need to hold one-one touch base meetings, talk about general things to make people feel comfortable interacting with you. Other than common meeting you have to communicate project goals, objectives you need follow-up discussions with certain people to make sure everybody is on the same page.
Also, the manager should set ground rules for common communication templates and tools across the team; encourage more social gatherings (team building activities) to bridge the gap between people that is created due to cultural differences.
Rule of thumb: Be aware of the cultural sensitivities of each member and avoid, at all cost, to offend anyone, as this will only create unnecessary personal conflicts and misunderstandings, leading to functional problems inside the team. I will tell you something that happenned in a project managed by an italian female engineer, during a meeting with some koreans, which were main contractors. As you might know, all asian cultures are used to ask several time the same questions, while italians are less patient. Well, when the koreans asked the same question for the sixth or seventh time, I saw the italian PM simply exploding, ready to put the table on their heads...Not funny, but an example of what may happen.
Some other time, while working with some norwegians, and after a long and complicate meeting on issues of quality, I received an email having as subject "what happens when you do not respect the technical specifications" and a collection of photos attached. I thought "what the heck, we've just finished our analisys...what have we done wrong?" . Well, it was just a collection of humoristical technical blunders. Take a look at some of them: http://www.chilloutpoint.com/funny/top-40-funniest-construction-mistakes.html
We have the four stages of team work; they are forming, storming, norming, and performing. It would be very difficult to reach the third stage if the team members are from backgrounds and cultures, but it's up to the manager to be able to manage them. The first thing that a manager needs to establish that all team members are equal, and they share a common goal, which is the successful completion of the project, and emphasise that working as a team would be the behaviour that will be rewarded. Issues of communication and tensions caused from the different cultural background can be resolved by being open to each other, and actively work to bridge these gaps by the individuals and the manager. This will not resolve that completely, but at least it would mitigate some of the issues, and by knowing that all are equal, and there is not bias towards any skill/culture/origin will relief the stress in the team.
Hope this helps
My answer will be strictly personal and reporting to my personal experience:
1. Once I was asked to do a software that could read from references from an excel life, parse it to a database, make a CRUD system and client side calculations to deliver selling price as a function of a set parameters such as order quantity or color standard or corrosion standard or expedition site etc. The company was settled in Portugal but management are Swedish as also was the biggest supplier. The project went really well I delivered in time, made some more technical cross-selling and best of all I got paid in time a reasonable amount.
2. I was asked to deliver an e-learning platform, so I did some research, suggested a few options, and a choice was made, afterwards I gave the initial training on distance learning and Moodle ,while I went to Green Log in May2012 at Yasar University in Turkey. Turkish keyboard was a bit of a handicap.
and I could go on, but in all circumstances what I've tried to do was, keep things right on track and deliver, even if sometimes I felt out of place, but the important thing to remember is that we need to maintain professional.
It is so difficault but must be handle by, alot of rules, standerd, and meeting, to resolves alot of conflict.
The fact that dealing with multicultural and multinational difficult process need to be statesmanship in dealing
when you confirm that every n on the team has done his specific assignments we can set together and discus honestly and openly our projects future as a team work, this will strength the team relationship and can be higher strengthen in future meetings of the same level
While working in a project execution with members with multi cultural diversity, various problems arise including the language, behaviour,notions etc To take the project to a successfull conclusion, all these differences has to be levelled among the team members. Many of us will have a lot stories and experiences in this aspect.
Multicultural teams offer a number of advantages to international firms, including deep knowledge of different product markets, culturally sensitive customer service, and 24-hour work rotations. But those advantages may be outweighed by problems stemming from cultural differences, which can seriously impair the effectiveness of a team or even bring it to a stalemate. How can managers best cope with culture-based challenges?
The authors conducted in-depth interviews with managers and members of multicultural teams from all over the world. Drawing on their extensive research on dispute resolution and teamwork and those interviews, they identify four problem categories that can create barriers to a team’s success: direct versus indirect communication, trouble with accents and fluency, differing attitudes toward hierarchy and authority, and conflicting norms for decision making. If a manager—or a team member—can pinpoint the root cause of the problem, he or she is likelier to select an appropriate strategy for solving it.
The most successful teams and managers, the authors found, dealt with multicultural challenges in one of four ways: adaptation (acknowledging cultural gaps openly and working around them), structural intervention (changing the shape or makeup of the team), managerial intervention (setting norms early or bringing in a higher-level manager), and exit (removing a team member when other options have failed). Which strategy is best depends on the particular circumstances—and each has potential complications. In general, though, managers who intervene early and set norms; teams and managers who try to engage everyone on the team; and teams that can see challenges as stemming from culture, not personality, succeed in solving culture-based problems with good humor and creativity. They are the likeliest to harvest the benefits inherent in multicultural teams.
Initial challenges are their working habits and sense of responsibility. Some cultures do not take harsh or rude behavior as positive and might resist whereas in some cultures working habits involve pushing again and again for a certain job may be mandatory. But I think professionals of any country will be close to each other in work thics.
You always got to keep in mind ... they are people too.
Learn about there culture, raise, customs and learn the language (or enough to communicate); perhaps a person which can translate and explain the culture than you can easier see what the issues and misunderstandings are to eliminate these problems.
If different cultures and raises work together there will always be misunderstandings and miss-communication. To keep this to a minimum is a hard task, but to keep in mind that the Project is our common goal and nothing is more important than finishing it (with preference in time and budget).
