Tag: Facilitation

These days many, if not all, of our projects are performed by cross-cultural teams. Not only do members come from different national and ethnic cultures, but they come from cultures based on mindset (for example progressive and conservative, woke and anti-woke), generational attributes, socio-political influences, corporate environments, and more.

Teams are vehicles for getting things done. When people come together to accomplish objectives – whether to win a game or perform a project – having an understanding among the team members regarding their objectives and the way they will work together is critical to success.

What Culture Is

“Culture is often described through Professor Geert Hofstede’s definition: The programming of the human mind by which one group of people distinguishes itself from another group – the set of shared beliefs, values, and norms that distinguish one group of people from another. As global organisations become increasingly diverse, understanding and managing cultural differences has become a critical competency for business leaders.”[1]

In human societies, culture is a concept that groups people based on shared knowledge, beliefs, values, and practices. A culture includes social norms, habits, customs, institutions, behaviors, beliefs, arts, laws, and more. We have many overlapping cultures – for example, corporate, regional, national, ethnic, generational, and religious. In teams, there are diverse cultural norms including those around cleanliness and neatness, how close people stand when talking, punctuality, and styles of dress.

Cultures are dynamic. They change as people’s needs change and as one culture is influenced by another. New cultures evolve out of this dynamic change process. Each team has a culture. Some are consciously created and understood, others, not so much.

Why Team Cultures are Important

Our culture influences our mindset with its beliefs, biases, and values as well as the way we work, play, dress, relate to one another, and communicate. The more that team members understand one another and agree upon values, goals, objectives, and communication and collaboration norms, the more team effectiveness increases.

What are the differences in behavior that get in the way of your team’s optimal performance? Are they caused by cultural differences?

“Anthropologists consider that world cultures vary along five consistent dimensions, which include collectivism versus individualism, and cultural preference for uncertainty avoidance. The extent to which cultures vary for these different dimensions can lead to very different expectations when it comes to interpersonal relationships and business communication.”[2]

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If some people have a cultural norm of rigidly adhering to punctuality and others are more accepting of a looser adherence, conflict is likely. For example, a U. S. employee visiting his Scandinavian company’s home office was shocked and insulted when he was not permitted to enter a meeting to which he was five minutes late. The cultural norm in that company’s home office was that if you were not on time, then don’t come at all. In the U. S. division coming in a few minutes late was acceptable. The American’s lateness influenced the local colleagues’ opinion of him and made integrating him into the team more difficult.

In another example, there may be a clash between team members from a culture that values assertiveness and tolerates some abrasiveness and those from cultures that view conflict and abrasive language as undesirable. When an assertive team member puts forth an idea, she might expect others to bring up conflicting ideas or criticisms. When they don’t assert their opinions, thinking of doing so as being rude or disrespectful, the assertive person, not understanding the cultural norm in play, may take silence as agreement. The result would be adopting a less-than-effective idea, creating a design or plan deficiency.

A project manager from a culture that avoids uncertainty will tend to strictly adhere to detailed structured plans and take fewer risks out of fear of failure. This can frustrate team members who have a higher tolerance for ambiguity and seek to innovate, take a more agile approach, and change the plan to obtain more creative outcomes.

What We Can Do

Cultural consciousness and emotional/social intelligence can avoid the negative impact of cultural differences. Cultural consciousness means being mindfully aware of culture as a force in team performance, of the cultural attributes of team members, of the ability to transcend cultural conditioning, and of the tendency to think one’s culture is better than others. Emotional/social intelligence means having the capacity to be aware of one’s feelings, able to manage one’s behavior and be sensitive to the feelings and behaviors of others. As individuals, we can choose to be adaptive to our current situation rather than being limited by cultural norms that are no longer relevant or useful.

As project managers, we can build a team culture that respects the cultural backgrounds of team members while cultivating an understanding of how to behave in a way that leads to the team’s success. For example, when it comes to decision-making, adopting an approach like the Six Hats model makes it a norm to look at an idea critically and from multiple perspectives opens the door to a critical analysis of the idea. Combine that with the awareness that avoiding conflict robs the team of useful information, and that exhibiting abrasive speech patterns and behavior may be taken as a sign of weakness, a personal attack causing another to back off or fire back to escalate a conflict and redirect the process away from the idea content.

Creating and sustaining effective teams requires cross-cultural awareness training to promote mutual understanding and respect, effective communication processes, and team-building activities to speed up the movement from forming to norming without much storming, to promote optimal performing.

Make sure that team members can fully express their opinions and needs. Consciously agree upon common values and goals to achieve a team culture that integrates the multiple cultures of its members.

We build a team, and once it’s built, we sustain it throughout its life. Like any structure, if we build it well, sustaining it is easy. However, it takes ongoing mindful awareness and patient effort to overcome the obstacles presented by cultural differences and turn them into strengths.

[1] https://www.hofstede-insights.com/intercultural-management

[2] https://toppandigital.com/us/blog-us/saying-no-how-conflict-avoidance-varies-between-cultures/#:~:text=Cultures%20such%20as%20the%20USA,as%20Thailand%2C%20Japan%20and%20China.

Conflict, whether you call it difference of opinion, or disagreement, is an inevitable part of project life. Managing it well is critical to short-range project success and long-term healthy relationships. Organizational success relies on both project success and healthy ongoing relationships.

While not all conflicts or disagreements can be settled to satisfy all parties (win-win), there can be many more of them if the disagreeing parties put their efforts towards addressing the conflict and the decision that will end it rather than competing with one another.

Even when there is a win-lose conflict, cultivating long term relationships better enables follow through and future collaboration. Take for example two people vying for the same job. Imagine what might happen a year or two later when the one who lost is interviewing his opponent for a position in the ‘losers’ new company.

The way the conflict was managed will make a big difference. If they perceived a fair process and there was a cordial closure, it is more likely that they will consider their experience with one another without letting emotions overwhelm objectivity.

Passionate Objectivity

Decisions resolve conflicts and set up the action that will influence the future. Objectivity is a key to effective conflict resolution because it leads to rational and practical decisions and effective action to carry them out.

We are living in a time when beliefs are confused with reality, when ideologies and emotions drive decision making, often without considering longer term outcomes. To come to an effective decision to resolve a conflict it is necessary to suspend beliefs and attachments long enough to assess their usefulness.

Are you willing to question and validate your beliefs? Are you willing to collaborate with your opponents to confront the conflict rather than one another?

“When you see.., how belief, prejudice, conclusions, and ideals divide people and therefore breed conflict, you see that such activity is obviously not intelligence. Will you drop all your prejudices, all your opinions … so that you have a free, uncluttered mind?

“If you say it is impossible, you will never find out for yourself what it is to be intelligent.” – J. Krishnamurti

Krishnamurti pulls no punches. He says that to be well, happy, and able to take care of business, you need to stop being driven by beliefs and biases, you need to see things as they are, objectively.

Objectivity is the quality of being unbiased, relying on facts rather than opinions and personal feelings when making decisions. Objectivity does not mean ignoring the role of opinions, emotions, and gutfeel. It means taking them into consideration and making sure that the decision being made is the right decision.

If we overemphasize rational analysis, we end up with solutions that are brittle and hard to implement because they ignore the human element. If we under emphasize analysis, caught up in emotions, we get poor outcomes and ongoing strife.

Confronting the Issue

Objectivity leads to the idea of confronting the issue rather than the opponent. This is far easier to act upon in projects and organizations as opposed to the socio-political realm of ethnic groups, nations, and governments.

Here, in projects we have the advantage of relatively clear mutual objectives among stakeholders. For the most part, everyone is after a quality outcome, at a reasonable price, within time constraints. There may be differences of opinions about just about everything – objectives, designs, estimates, plans, resources, etc. But if the parties take a step back and remember what they are all after, there is a good chance that they will make good decisions to achieve it.

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Taking a long view

Often, when there is conflict the tendency is to think about the short-term consequences of the decision. Objectivity requires a long-term view.

Will the design option enable easy maintenance? Will the people who are on the “losing” side take an active role in implementing the decision, even though it was not their first choice? Will ongoing relationships be healthy?

What Does it Take to be Objective

It seems so simple, objectively address the issue to come up with resolution, a decision to act, that satisfies as many participants as possible and leads to successful project completion and healthy long-term relationships. Simple, yes. But not easy.

Emotions, beliefs, and biases get in the way. If the parties are unwilling or unable to step back and objectively assess the situation and make a decision based on identified decision criteria, they will struggle to justify their position, often relying on hierarchical authority, rhetoric, and distortion rather than good sense.

Two things are required: emotional and social intelligence and an effective decision-making process.

The process is a starting point for optimizing conflict resolution. A process that includes identifying decision criteria and that uses analytical methods, opens the door to improved self-awareness and self-management. An effective process makes it less likely that strong willed, assertive people will be able to have their way regardless of the facts and what is best for the organization and project. It forces people to step back and assess things objectively.

Emotional and social intelligence promote the ability to disengage from feelings long enough to be rational and to respect the needs of others. But even when there are parties who lack the ability to exercise self-management and recognize the power of objectivity, an effective process will influence the outcome.

As you make the decisions that resolve conflicts, make the effort to step back and drop your prejudices and opinions so that you have a free, uncluttered mind? Will you take the time and effort to validate your feelings with facts and consideration of alternative views?

It takes effort and awareness to bring objectivity to bear when you feel strongly about your position. It takes skill, courage, and patience to question your beliefs, validate them, and accept that your way is not the only right way and may even be the wrong way.