Humans are diverse - their worth is equal.

Many organisations see their international teams as unique assets. Diversity is a driving force behind outside-the-box thinking, but can be experienced as a hurdle to productive collaboration if not managed effectively.

We were asked to accompany a cross-cultural team of specialists from eight different countries said to struggle with meeting Board expectations. Results were presented with errors or deadlines missed. The team leader insisted she would explain requirements thoroughly and ensure buy-in; the team claimed she would not delegate transparently, making it hard to distribute workload fairly. Frustration grew, impelling the team to look for causes of errors in individuals’ functional capabilities.

Our guided workshops quickly unearthed that the loss of productivity was not down to a lack of individual know-how, but fundamentally disparate, culturally driven attitudes toward authority. In a series of five sessions, we brought to the surface the multitude of preconceptions that were determining expected, ‘correct’ behaviour toward authority in this team. As experts in cross-cultural collaboration, we highly appreciate humans’ tendency to disconnect our subjective view of the world from our own cultural upbringing, therefore mistaking it for external objectivity with no room for somebody else’s ‘truth’. We scrutinised different understandings of accountability, responsibility and the meaning of collaborating on equal footing across hierarchies with actual recent incidents; how to express disagreement, how to take ownership, how to escalate matters effectively, and simply how to say ‘no’.

Using the method of ‘role analysis’, we helped the team differentiate between their personal and individually diverse national culture norms on the one hand, and those promoted by the corporate culture, on the other hand. The team left equipped with a heightened awareness of their own diversity and a language that enabled them to compromise for the sake of their shared purpose.